The Godfather: Peter Corris on digging up Newtown
The advantages to living in Newtown are many and varied. Transport? Trains and buses in all directions. Shopping? Two kilometres’ worth on both sides of King Street – newsagents, supermarkets, discount outlets and top-of-the-line establishments.
Entertainment? The Dendy cinema, several theatres and live performance venues. Cafés and restaurants? An embarrassment of riches.
I once disagreed with Jean as to whether there were more Thai or Vietnamese restaurants and took a notebook to mark them down as I walked the whole length of the strip on both sides. I forget who was right and who was wrong but, from memory, there were 17 of one and 16 of the other.
I’ve written about the pubs in an earlier column: many venues catering for different drinking styles and tastes. Alternatively, there are two substantial, well-appointed and maintained parks and a number of small reserves with seats, trees and flowers. Adapting Dr Johnson, one might say – He or she who tires of Newtown is tired of life.
But nowhere is perfect. What are the down sides? Rents and house prices are astronomically high and it’s noticeable that some iconic businesses, like Holy Sheet at the corner of King and Church Streets, have been squeezed out by excessive rents. And there are problems at ground level.
King Street’s gutters cannot cope with Sydney’s occasional monsoonal rains. They overflow and it is impossible to cross at most points without getting one’s feet thoroughly wet.
We cop it sweet, but also troubling, as well as intriguing, is the fact that Newtown is constantly being dug up. Walk about on any given day and you’re sure to find a section of footpath, lane or street being staked out like a gold miner’s claim or a crime scene (which actually happens from time to time, but that’s another story). Huge plastic barriers bar the way, as do witches’ hats, metres of tape and swarms of men and women in hard hats and day-glo vests. Peer across the barriers and you’ll see holes – the clay and sandy soil of Newtown that has not seen the sun since Bligh and Macquarie. It almost seems as though as soon as a new cement or bitumen surface is laid it is being ripped up again.
For someone like me with poor eyesight these activities are a hazard. Thankfully, the workers are invariably courteous and helpful, but what are these excavations for? I assume they are for telephonic, electrical, gas and water maintenance. The workers are busy and I’m generally reluctant to question them but I did when I saw the enormous hole behind the former post office building in King Street, which is undergoing renovation.
Skirting carefully around digging equipment, I asked what the hole, which seemed to leave the actual building looking as if it was teetering on a cliff, was for.
‘Drains,’ was the answer.
For whatever dubious purpose the lovely old building is fated for, I imagine, rather than to help the gutters to flow.
As far as I know we don’t yet have NBN fibre to the node, still less to the home. God help us when, to use the jargon, it is rolled out.
