The good, the bad, and the ugly

Morricone's classic 1966 whistling echoes around the village School of Arts. The lights dim. A hush falls over the packed audience.

The jaguar heels of Van Cleef click-clack over the burnished boards and come to a halt with the stage in full view. A gasp escapes the audience. Wallach continues to strum, a smirk consuming that ugly visage. A delicious triangle has swirled around him since that faithless lapse out the back of the Brown Mountain road-house.

The clear bell-like voice of the good-wife resounds into the rafters. Reaching the end of the phrase, she steps into the path of the intruder ...

Vice regal incongruity

Taken at Government House in Sydney's Botanic Gardens, these photographs surround a concert given by William Barton under the aegis of the Historic Houses Trust. With unbelievable inner resolve, I managed to still my trigger finger during the concert itself. Why is this incongrous?


Government House is of the establishment; William Barton is an indigenous Australian who is probably the foremost exponent of the didgeredoo in our country today. I felt goose-bumps up my spine as I watched him perform into these microphones under the watchful eye of King George V of England and her colonies.

Ooo ... how I wish I were one of those rudies who just flashes away with the hide of a rhino!

Performing Arts - the wharves (2)

Although it looks like the radio interviewer is the aggressor here, photos can conceal the truth! This is Bob Ellis, a crumped, shuffle of a man, with a rapier wit and a froth of sarcasm second to none. He is a legend in left-wing political and social causes and one of our better writers and raconteurs.


Poking into the harbour within the shadow of our "coat-hanger", the wharves are a classic throwback that every city deserves. They are quaint, they are illogical and they are a joy.


Each May, this arts precinct resounds with the blather of words and opinions of readers and writers during the Sydney Writers' Festival. The Main Stage, Heritage Pier 2/3 was no different: witty words, bolshie blokes, and what we know here in Australia as "stirring-the-possum".

Performing Arts - Treading the boards (1)

Walsh Bay, and the timber wharves extending out from Hickson Street, is rapidly becoming Sydney's performing arts "engine-room". The wharves house The Sydney Theatre Company, The Sydney Dance Company, The Philharmonia Choirs and The Song Company. It is the site for The Sydney Writers' Festival each May.

Much of the Walsh Bay wharf area was demolished and rebuilt after the devastating 1913 bubonic plague which the government of the time used as an excuse to reclaim large swathes of land along that short wharf section of the harbour, and back up the slope to The Rocks. This was prior to the construction of the approaches to the harbour bridge and the massive works required for the southern pylon of the bridge. Due to shortages of materials after World War 1 timber was used instead of the planned concrete. The wharves were two-storey with steel bridges - originally planned for 1921 but put on hold until the 1930s - giving upper and lower access.

Hickson Street - named after Robert Hickson, an Irishman who was the first president of the Sydney Harbour Trust - was carved from the steep slope that ran down to Walsh Bay. Henry Walsh - after whom the wharf area was named and who migrated to Australia from Ireland in 1877 - was the Chief Publc Works Engineer between 1901 and 1919 instigating improvements to the ports of Sydney and Newcastle.