city bingo (final) - the bins

Sydneysiders have bins for everything, and they are everywhere. There is a whole ritual of wheeling out and wheeling in, and a happy disregard for by the binmen about what is left where after they have been through. Again, actually to easy for city bingo; would have to be only the most outrageous pile-ups.

the view, the view

Finding it tough not to continually take photos from K's living room as the view across Elizabeth Bay is not only what is best about Sydney but also changes all the time in the most magical way. Easy to spend considerable time just staring out the window.

the weirdness of broken hill

As part of the journey, we got to stop at Broken Hill, once a boom town for mining, and now - still a mining town but more normal. Well, I say normal, but the whole sojourn felt quite surreal; and not just because we were woken up before dawn (after not sleeping the previous night due to it being a train and all) and were a little lagging. First, we were driven around almost every street in a bus, up and down the small town grid, being shown absolutely everything - some of it twice. I kid you not, we were even introduced to the Coles supermarket as an exciting event; all given out in full chatty and obvious jokes compere mode. Which was followed by a murmured repeat across the whole bus, due to a larger than usual number of older, hard-of-hearing people who needed to be told all over again by their nearest and dearest.

Then, at some unclear point, we were driven to the waste earth/slag heap piled up by the town, on top of which has been built a miner's memorial, in honour of those who had died. A mixture of poignant and community hall, with volunteers serving scones and tea. But also, since I had been reading a book called Terra Nullius on the train, also echoed strangely of missing - indigenous -voices. Neither the tour nor the memorial plaques contained any reference to aboriginal history or people, a whole world ignored and marginalised. 

At the same time, there was another absence - the fact that all the time we were at the memorial, we were walking on top of a working mine, and the tough hard work that continues to involve.

city bingo (not): old-fashioned

Have been thinking about how to extend Sydney city bingo, but struggling to find good examples. Just as a reminder, the idea is to choose things that are particularly distinctive to here but not so ubiquitous as to be easy to locate. 

Something I keep noticing is how weirdly old-fashioned the school uniforms here look to me, but am aware of being careful taking photos of children (got asked what I was doing for this one, and explained that I made sure I did not get faces…).

So not a good category, if the ultimate aim of city bingo is to get loads of people playing it.

city bingo - more on letterboxes

Been a pretty wet and windy (if humid) week. Proving my point that sydney letterboxes do not seem that fit for purpose...

...and dressing up

The other side of being comfortable in small amounts of miscellaneous causal wear is an enthusiasm for proper dressing up. As far as I can tell, this is of two basic sorts: smart casual and fancy dress. The first – at the risk of sounding unfairly derogatory - tends to 80s disco and the kind of blingy dressiness that people in the North East of England do very well. The second is the propensity to use any occasion to party in a costume; starting with party hats and getting more and more outrageous as required (for example, playing bowls dressed as characters from superhero films). Or not just being Father Christmas in the pub, but also some Christmas parcels.