This is a grand hotel, The Lansdowne. In the early nineties it hosted a pub novelty act called "The Bum Puppets" which featured three holes in a black curtain through which the posteriors of the actors protruded and various tricks performed. Apparently they sang, danced and ate!!
While we were both appearing in "The Producers" we stayed in the upper floor of this building....a white loft style apartment which we never wanted to leave
Directly opposite is the charming Victoria park
These two buildings were once the huge Grace Bros department store. The one of the left was scooped out and added to and is a large mall. The one on the right houses uni students in small dorms.
This graff reminds me of the time in the sixties when a Melbourne department store imported a replica of the David and the Victorian State Police branded it obscene and ordered the genitals to be covered. Just like below
Broadway has some lovely facades left
This is one of about six deco inspired pubs that clung to the now almost demolished brewery which is being turned into apartments. Two of them have gone. They would have been where the brewers spent the money they earned drinking the product they made.
I think this section of the brewery will be kept as a feature. An ongoing art project is using it as a canvas
The lower installation is a series of photos mostly from the 60'. A Miss Australia
A waif
The brewer scoffing the amber he made
Just can't get it up today
Another deco pub
Abandoned bank
What they take home
This lovely piece for the commuters to catch their buses under is right from the heart of the government architect. It was made by the people who churn out razor wire.
It seems now everything always was something. The mail exchange is a hotel
A gem
Railway Square from the Central Station concourse
To put a dagger into Sheldon's heart..the pointy block of horror is on the site of The Maj
Inside Central
The corporates have been allowed in to embelish the lovely old terminal
A disgruntled railway empolyee did not know what the initials NSWGR meant
We've got great characters too
Now up at The Cross again This little lane still reeks of the twenties
This alley was once full of second hand record and book stores that Sheldon combed as a teenager
This is the old Metro Theatre where the orginal Oz production of "Hair" opened. Sheldon, feel free to embelish this posting with as much goss and detail as you wish
Closed! A Cross institution since the 50's! Maybe just being renoed.
My whole reason for today's trek was to catch up with Mr Keith Robinson, actor and friend, and in particular my co-creator along with Mr Geoffrey Rush of the mad frolic, "The Popular Mechanicals", which we presented at Belvoir St in 1985.
Keith has suffered a debilitating illness which has left him, at present, unable to walk. I picked him up at his ground floor flat in Roslyn Gardens and was immediately put to use as pusher down the two hills and across to the cafe in the middle of Rushcutters Bay Park. As we were trundling down the less than even tarmac, studded with potholes and tree trunks, he happened to mention that, despite her immense wealth, Miss Elizabeth Taylor had owned this chair. My mind went into another dimension and I tried to work out when She had been to this fair land and why. When that didn't compute I asked if it had been sent to him from Los Angeles. Were Miss Taylor's bum juices still on the leather or did it smell a bit of White Diamonds? "No, you nitwit!", Keith shrieked, "The same model !" From then on a gale of whooping laughter would emerge from the vastly amused Robinson and we would have to stop and get it over before we rumbled on.
Look, here is the proof
We had a great lunch and catch up and this is the environs we noshed in
I pushed Keith across the park and up two hills and was surprised by my stamina. Those New York walks have paid off.
Was on my way home from seeing my agent when I passed the East Sydney Hotel on Cathedral St where Garry Scale worked for five years!! It is the last freehold pub in Sydney and its passing has made La Scala very sad
Here is a lovely building near the Domain
Sheldon, Scale and I did a pantomime at the Tilbury Hotel called "U Bewdy and The Beast" We used a lots of string puppets that Scaly built and an army of sewers, including my mother, dressed. This is the building that inspired the prince's castle and a little cardboard one was plonked onto the tiny stage.
It was horrible then and it is horrible now!
This is the view of the city from the park leading up to the NSW Gallery
The apartments that crowd over Woolloomoolo Bay. The matches itch to burn them down
That lovely old round building housed a casting agency long gone but fondly remembered, "Forecast"
These are the matches. A Brett Whitely sculpture that always reminds me of the art of totally burning a lucifer to the very end.
These are the finger wharves of Wolloomooloo. They are now exclusive apratments worth zillions. Bars and cafes where a glass of mineral water is 7 bucks line the lower stages.
That's "The Bells" pub. Like those pubs around the Broadway brewery they served the local dock workers and the working class tenants of the housing commission terraces.
And you can just see some letters on the top facade of The Tilbury Hotel where our pantomimes packed 'em out every Christmas season. In "U. Bewdy and The Beast" I played Ursula Bewdy a delicate maiden who would fall in love with a werewolf and only really finds true love when he bites her face off and she becomes one too. Before she falls into canine bliss she sings of her love for the area in this playful innocent ballad.
"AH, MY LOO. MY WOOLLOOMOOLO
THE PLACE TO LOLL AND LINGER.
EACH CORNER GIVES YOU SUCH A VIEW
EACH WHARF GIVES YOU THE FINGER.
I LEAN AGAINST THE WALL AND WATCH THE SAILORS PASSING THROUGH.
AND I ASK THEN WITH A WISTFUL SMILE
"WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE MY 'LOO?"
It is now a up market boite
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