The Flippening: The City and the Bush

The northern expanse of Sydney is noted for its steep, hilly terrain, and extensive wilderness. As on the Central Coast and indeed the Illawarra to the south, the rugged topography impeded the region's development, but thankfully preserved its natural environment. Consequently, protected, interlocking conservation zones abound, among them the Ku-ring-gai Chase, Berowra Valley, Garigal and Marramurra National Parks as well as Muogamarra Nature Reserve. They are sliced by freshwater streams, and studded with Aboriginal carvings (if you know where to find them). Black cockatoos screech across the canyons with their mournful, wailing cries, while bush turkeys scratch around the undergrowth. In winter, fog crawls out of deep gullies and cloaks the genteel settlements on the ranges.

Occupying much of that is known as the upper North Shore, the Hornsby Plateau is part of a larger geographical feature, the Sydney Basin, and it includes any number of gorges (for example, the nearby Galston Gorge). The deeply incised landscape creates microclimates, with exposed ridges being more subject to extremes than the sheltered valley sides.

Berowra Creek, on a hot summer day (Australia, 2025)

In pre-colonial times, Berowra Creek is believed to have marked the boundary between the Dharuk and Kuring-gai tribes, and, as such, the surrounding Berowra Valley probably played an important role in ceremonies in which both groups participated. In fact, as the Guide to Elouera Bushland Natural Park reported: "‘Berowra’ is a word in the Dharuk Aboriginal language meaning ‘windy place’, ‘south-west wind’, and ‘place of many winds’. There is speculation as to what the word ‘Berowra’ really meant. Aboriginal languages did not have the sound ‘ow’ as pronounced today..."

With its leafy streets and manicured lawns, Berowra (33 ° 37' S 151 ° 09' E) today has an "old money" feel. You could imagine that many of the kids around here attend private schools, such as Riverview or Pymble Ladies' College, or Asquith Boys High. When they finish high school, they enroll at Macquarie University.

It's obvious that this district is more affluent than the adjoining Central Coast by the price of specials at the local RSL. They actually do offer a "tradies' special" here, but it costs AUS$18, and the patrons who eat it are often not real tradies. They are generally well-spoken, educated and chat about middle-class issues (certainly not the appeal of Pauline Hanson!)

Jet lining up to land at Mascot, as seen outside Club Berowra (Australia, 2025)

Berowra Waters Road leads from the Old Pacific Highway to the creek, which is even more prestigious. Degustation menus are frequently served down there, some of them prepared by Michelin-starred chefs. On the way, you transit through Berowra Heights with a shopping center, pizzeria, and a tavern. Jack Smith established a boatshed at Berowra Waters in 1898. The road was completed in 1900 and extended to Arcadia in 1902.

BEROWRA ATTRACTIONS
Berowra Waters Holidays: Various Locations. Phone: (0405) 565 256. Website: website here.

A suite of exclusive accommodation options is available along Berowra Creek, including studios, cottages, houses and apartments. Many of them have a motorized tinny, kayaks or fishing rods included in the price. You probably need a boat to get around some of these remote stretches of the river. A seaplane might come in handy too!

Club Berowra: 997 Pacific Hwy, Berowra. Phone: (02) 9456 1844. Website: website here.

I was hoping that my Mounties Group card from Wyong RSL might allow me entrance to this venue, opposite the railway station, but unfortunately it wasn't accepted at the door. I had to do a manual sign-in instead, before eventually becoming an official member later in the week. Inside the club is not at all flashy, ambient lighting is dim, and the appointments dated. One evening when I was there, the VB tank went dry, so I had to switch to their house beer. That said, the staff are friendly if a little slow. 

Entering the greater Sydney sprawl, in Nanna's Tesla (Australia, 2024)

Berowra acts as the terminus of the North Shore line, which runs via Hornsby and Chatswood to Central Station. The freeway (M1), meanwhile, blasts through dynamited Hawkesbury sandstone past Mount Colah and Asquith to a fork at Wahroonga. From there, the Pacific Highway proceeds to Sydney via Pymble and Artarmon and the airport. If you keep on the road, which now takes the name of the Cumberland Highway (A28) you will soon reach Normanhurst, 22km northwest of the central business district.

Approaching the Pacific Highway turnoff, on the M1 (Australia, 2024)

Entering Mount Colah, we are now part of the greater suburban Sydney sprawl. Blocks of flats become more frequent, obviously not as gargantuan as those in the outskirts of Tokyo or Beijing, but you can tell the population density is increasing. Living in apartments is not a typical trait of Australian culture, although it might appeal to Koreans or Chinese.

Mount Ku-ring-gai Track, marching to Berowra (Australia, 2026)

If you prefer more indigenous, oldschool forms of transportation, the Great North Road is your highway. Constructed by convicts between 1825 and 1836, it traverses over 260 kilometers on an absurdly roundabout route through thick bushland from Sydney to Newcastle. Mount Ku-ring-gai (sic) Track is but one tiny fragment of this epic route, linking Mount Kuring-gai Station (note the small difference in spelling) with Apple Tree Creek, and then Waratah Bay. The journey to Berowra Station takes 4 hours, passing by Cowan Station.

On the edge of the national park, at Mount Kuring-gai Station (Australia, 2026)

Leaving Mount Kuring-gai Station from the western exit, meanwhile, a hotspot for Aboriginal art is said to be in very close vicinity, although I didn't manage to reach it myself. Despite being just a few hundred meters north of the station, the trip seemingly entails walking treacherously along the highway into the face of oncoming traffic, and I chickened out after the first bend. Hiking the World, however, made it to this site and this is what he recorded:

"We clambered up onto the rocks and saw a mundoe – which is a spirit footprint. Then we saw a male and female figure with a boomerang. I think this represents Baiame and his wife. We explored the area trying not to step on anything and found lots of mundoes. In a drawing in Nathan Tilbury’s book 'Man made the city but god made the bush' I saw there was another wife on the other side of Baiame but was almost impossible to see in the light that I had. The mundoes seemed to lead to Baiame so they were likely his prints as the book suggested."

STAYING IN MOUNT KURING-GAI

Mount Kuring-gai Motel: 705 Pacific Highway, Mount Kuring-gai. Phone: (02) 9457 9393. Booking: book here.

The cactus logo at the entrance suggests that this facility was once a Mexican-themed roadhouse motel which is now turning Oriental. This suspicion is intensified by the Asian stone lanterns placed next to random cacti in the garden. Indeed, the owners appear to be Chinese and although they speak with Australian accents, they proudly display Chinese watercolors and pottery in the foyer.

Like Brookyln Motel where I sojourned last year, the decor in the rooms is on the dark side (possibly it is an 1980s touch, as Jimmy Ray proposed when he viewed their website). Ruby-red and dark timber, that seems to be the vibe. Unlike Brooklyn Motel, some of the paint on the walls is peeling. The view from my door of a transmission tower was hardly inspiring, too.

Hardly a stellar view, but it is what it is (Australia, 2026)

On the plus (light) side, there is a work desk right next to the window which I initially found quite convenient, before realizing that it exposed me to cars with bright beams pulling up outside in the middle of the night. That was too much intimacy, too fast. It was raining on the first evening of my planned two-week outstay and the air-con felt warm and cozy. Paradoxically, the dark and earthy tones created a warm and cozy atmosphere. On subsequent, non-rainy nights, the din from the highway overpowered the white noise of the air-con, and triggered my anxiety. In fact, there was a lot of noise, not just from the highway (B83), but the freeway (M1) too, as well as the railway tracks.

Dark and earthy tones, inside the Mount Kuring-gai Motel (Australia, 2026)

As always, it takes time to adapt to a new home away from home, and I did adapt to the decor, somewhat. Unfortunately, the chronic, incessant traffic noise defeated me. I could deal with it in the daylight hours, but not at midnight, when I was trying to sleep... and those Flare ear plugs only filter out so much. It is also possible that the dark walls were making the room feel more claustrophobic. I never considered claustrophobia as a potential panic trigger before, but there you go. The walls were closing on me. And so it was, with great reluctance, that five days before I was due to check out, I pulled the plug.

Feeling a bit haggard and ragged, on my final night at Mount Kuring-gai Motel (Australia, 2026)

For those undeterred by my obviously "anxious" review and are willing to give the motel a shot, the owners operate a garden restaurant kitchen cooking generic but supposedly excellent Chinese meals, to be delivered to rooms (between 6pm and 7.30pm). Apart from this kitchen, there are evidently no other dining options in the entire suburb. Mount Colah down the highway at least has a McDonald's and a Liquorland barn, and there is another Liquorland and KFC further on, in Asquith. Asquith is home to my psychiatrist Suresh Goripati, and also a prestigious golf course, on Lord Street.

ASQUITH ATTRACTIONS

Asquith Golf Course: 2-46 Lord Street, Mount Colah. Phone: (02) 9477 1266. Website: website here.

One of the best-known golf courses on the North Shore, with a buffet bistro and live bands. Belmont Parade swings by close to the fairways on its way to Bobbin Head, passing the Kalkari Discovery Centre with its kangaroos and wildlife. Bobbin Head also boasts a marina and picnic ground.

South of Asquith Station, there is no doubt that we are in a major city. Almost every piece of land is developed or being developed, and there is no shortage of cafes or somewhere to eat. Peats Ferry Road branches off to the west while the highway continues straight. If you stick to the Pacific Highway (now called Jersey Street North), you will quickly come upon the Hornsby Maintenance Area, a huge railyard housing numerous Sydney trains under repair.

A development with a troubled history: Asquith Rise, near Asquith Station (Australia, 2026)

One train stop south of Asquith is Hornsby Station, accommodating 20,000 passengers per day. Disembarking from the Peats Ferry Road exit, it appears that every second shop or restaurant is Chinese. Meanwhile, every third business is Korean or Vietnamese. There are also a few Nepali restaurants on this road, and an erotic massage parlor or two. Supermarkets sell exotic products like prunella vulgaris and star anise.

Tonyon Chinese supermarket, on Peats Ferry Road, in Hornsby (Australia, 2026)

HORNSBY RESTAURANTS

Cafe Talk: 282 Peats Ferry Road, Hornsby. Phone: (02) 8924 1545. Website: website here.

This is just one of several Nepali restaurants in Hornsby, and can be found on Peats Ferry Road near the station. During my stay at the aforementioned Mount Kuring-gai Motel, I planned to try their Buff Momo, delectable Tibetan style dumplings stuffed with buffalo meat, but unfortunately the venue was closed when I arrived there. I should have checked their website to learn that it opens daily at noon. Nonetheless, next time I am in town I will definitely dine here and along with the dumplings I might explore their other delights, such as a goat kebab style dish known as sekuwa, deep-fried potatoes, thukpa (noodle soup), keema noodles, savory lentil fritters, and even exotic looking beaten rice and tripe meals from Bhutan.

Oh My Pho!: 183 Peats Ferry Road, Hornsby. Phone: (02) 8407 9260. Home Deliveries: deliveries here.

As I was too early for Cafe Talk during my previous visit, I opted to lunch at this large, classic Vietnamese joint on the opposite side of the road. The menu on the table was book-length, which is often a bad sign when it comes to food quality, but my bowl of udon noodles with pork and blood sausage was banging enough, if just a little bland. I was so thrilled to be eating authentic Asian food again, in an authentic Asian environment. Who knows, I might make this place my regular haunt in the future!

Back in Asia, at Oh My Pho! in Hornsby (Australia, 2026)

It is remarkable how in just 11 kilometers, from Berowra to Hornsby, you progress from primeval wilderness to buzzing urbanity. There is involved in this process a dramatic "flippening" of the classic Australian polarity of "the city and the bush". As Hiking the World claimed earlier in this piece, man built the city while nature designed the bush, and for the past 14 years I have been confined to the peripheral backwaters of society, longing for some diversity. It took 14 years, but now I have finally escaped the Central Coast, and Sydney is within reach... in fact it is already conquered!

The real flippening, to be sure, is not the geographical passage from the bush to the city, but rather the cultural transition from scarcity to abundance, the provincial to the metropolitan, the monoculture to multiculturalism. The colonial to the post-colonial: meat pies to phở, McDonald's to O'Bombay. The quarter-acre block to luxury units in the sky. I can spend an afternoon in Bangkok at Doodee King near the Buddhist water pendulum clock in the mall, or follow a virtual Silk Road of cold and spicy noodles at Xi Bay. I could explore the world in miniature, an even more complete miniature world than that encapsulated by Singapore. After the sun goes down, I can resume my Asian dating odyssey at the likes of Hornsby 142. 

It's been altogether too long!

Stumble on Baby Step #2

For every six hotels I stay at going forward, one will be like Hotel Gosford, and one will be comparable to the Bayview Hotel at Woy Woy, which I have just checked out of. Yet another will be like the Ocean Beach Hotel (Nightcap at Umina), my next step on the road, where I will still be staying in a pub, but at least I will have my own toilet. The Nightcap will be grade 3, while the Metro Mirage in Newport will be one step above, at level four. Hotel Gosford has been the grungiest of my hotels thus far, partly due to its location, as well as facilities and clientele. Bayview Hotel is just as cheap as Hotel Gosford, but has a friendlier vibe, and a sunnier outlook. That might be due to its location, and the demographics of the city. 

In Woy Woy the population is more gentrified, genteel, and geriatric. Local motorists stop for you when you are crossing the road, rather than beep their horn as in Gosford. There are a lot of zebra crossings... too many, in fact! I feel guilty holding up the traffic. My room was facing north, and directly opposite the Central Coast Ferries wharf on Brisbane Water, which is critical for my attempts to knock off the first two six baby steps out of the Central Coast. All things considered, it was quite cozy, though a little dated.

Afternoon sun in the standard Queen room at the Bayview Hotel (Australia, 2023)

The only problem was that there was no table nor chair, so I was forced to sit on the floor with my laptop resting on the side of the bed for my lessons for iTalki. And while sitting on the floor might be comfortable in Japan, where homes and hotels are often built around this discipline, Australian accommodation is not as accommodating. Carpets can be dusty and unhygienic, with none of the spring of your typical tatami mat. After a couple of hours of sitting crosslegged I would get sore legs, numb extremities, even muscular spasms. I assumed that I would get used to it eventually.

That said, I ticked off the first of the my baby steps easily enough. To be fair, I was suffering mild derealization upon arriving at Davistown, after talking to the boy with the toy brontosaurus on the boat, and the Elvis impersonator at the bus stop on Paringa Avenue, near the shops. In retrospect, my anxiety level seemed to be about 1.7 Distress Units (DU). After that early success, I was confident and complacent (which is always a dangerous combination). Unfortunately, the second baby step to Empire Bay on the other side of Cockle Channel didn't go so smoothly. It was a stormy day, and I had foolishly left my raincoat in the hotel, thinking that it wouldnt rain until evening. As soon as I arrived at the wharf, it started pelting down... (For the full report of my setback on the catamaran to Empire Bay, click here.)

How to Escape the Central Coast (in Six Baby Steps)

If the Lake Haven epoch was ruled by the car, and my fragmented Gosford ages built upon the bus, the coming Woy Woy microlife will focus on ferries. During the two months that I hope to spend there, acclimatizing for the hop across the Hawkesbury, I must:

1 -- Cruise to Saratoga or Davistown on Central Coast Ferries (if I am too anxious for whatever reason, I can try to bail out at the first available wharf!)

2 -- Catch another catamaran to Empire Bay, the last stop on this service some 30 minutes from Woy Woy. I could then hike back to my hotel via Daleys Point and St Huberts Island, with their multimillion dollar views. 

3.-- Catch a Fantasea ferry from Ettalong to Wagstaffe Wharf, en route to Palm Beach, and explore the nearby national park.

4.-- Take the same ferry once more, this time directly to Palm Beach, before returning to Woy Woy. This will be a one-hour round trip over deep water, and my first landfall on Sydney territory in nine years.

5.-- Return to Palm Beach, and then get the bus to Newport, some 10km south, where there is a hotel that I can (barely) afford.

6 -- Stay at said Newport hotel one night, to see if I can handle it.

 

The Saratoga docking at the Central Wharf in Davistown, on Cockle Channel (Australia, 2022)

Each cruise will be a baby step in the escape from the Central Coast, and the migration to Sydney's Northern Beaches. I have a lot of mucking about in boats to do!

Ten Cents a Ticket in My Double Bed Blanket (a New Music Video!)

Who would have thought it: me the wannabe writer, the wordsmith, I've gone and done something completely left-field, and become a music video producer! It was never something I imagined I would be good at, or even able to attempt... but for the past couple of weeks, I have not only been making videos, but getting paid for it! Exploiting skills honed over many years of manipulating images on Gimp or Online Image Editor, and expanding my savvy to encompass Windows MovieMaker, and YouTube. I know I am not going to win any awards for these clips, or infect the world with a virus, much as my sponsor might hope so. I'm certainly not going to get rich, and neither, probably, will he. I don't really care, and I've never really gone for the viral success thing anyway. Ever since I hit "rock bottom" last month I have been looking for any excuse to escape, and clamber goat-style back up the slope which by definition must rise (since I am at rock bottom), somewhere around me, if only I can find it. One day last month, sunk deep in my funk, stranded on my desert island, I received a message from one Sam Evangelidis, an associate of Garnet Mae, asking me if I could help him out. Sam was the famous milk truck investor for Meat Pie, if my memory serves me right, and lives in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. He wanted me to produce some videos for his songs. He has a lot of them, and most of them are pretty good.

Slaving over a hot keyboard, working for Sam Evangelidis (Australia, 2013)

This joyride here, is the third video I have made for Sam. Called Ten Cents a Ticket in My Double Bed Blanket, this is hip hop with a suburban Sydney twist. Not quite MC Kerser, but it's mean enough. Samples and a bassline which sound like something on a Drum&Bass track. Drums and bass and a delicious diva... what could be better than that? What could be better than the fact that I am involved in it?

Pop Up Shops, and Art Incubators: A New Way to Utilize Urban Space

Last year I had the chance to talk to Lawrence Gibbons, plus some other concerned inner-city cats, about the sad and sorry decline of Oxford Street, Sydney's original Golden Mile. I must have missed this story while I was away in my 10 years in Japan; when I left Sydney in 2000, Oxford Street was one of the trendiest parts of the city, and certainly one of the most colourful. Nearly every March I would cram in with the throngs on the side of the road, shirts off and hopping, as the Mardi Gras floats made their hectic way beneath the rainbow flags. Mardi Gras is still held every year, but it doesn't seem the subversive festival that it used to be... perhaps somehow it is a little tired? Or maybe I am the one who is tired of it! Furthermore, back in the day, Oxford Street was the place you picked up imported dance music, trance and techno, drum&bass; throbbing beats spilt up dark stairways, out of shopfronts on to the pavement, promising rare treasures. I am sure those record stores are still around, but surely they must be a little redundant now, in this age of the digital download? Who wants to spin vinyl these days, anyway, when there is a whole universe on your iPhone? Who buys clothes on Oxford Street, when the prices in Australia are so obscene? According to Lawrence Gibbons, president of the LOVE 2010 Business Partnership of local businesses, there has indeed been a retail flight from the Golden Mile, and a collapse in daytime trade. Oxford Street still rocks at night, perhaps even more so than ever... but it takes more than pubs and clubs to make a community, Gibbons reckons. Exacerbating the problem, the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) treated the Golden Mile like a thoroughfare, with cars and buses flying along it out of the city, to Bondi.

Oxford Street, Sydney's famous "Golden Mile" (Australia, 2005)

Sydney's Lord Mayor Clover Moore (the woman they should not ignore) agrees that Oxford Street is in a bad state, and said she sees art as being part of the solution. "It is a centre of intense night-time activity yet suffers from perceptions of a lack of daytime trade, imbalance in the business mix and safety issues," Moore said in a 2011 mayoral minute. "The intensity of daytime traffic, which includes more than 200 buses per hour, and exacerbated by RTA's removal of parking and creation of clearways, also severely impacts on Oxford Street as an attractive destination." Another mayoral minute put out in 2011 goes on to say: “Artists living and working in an area bring a vibrancy, diversity and bohemian feel. Due to the high cost of living, gentrification and increases in the rental market artists are being forced out of the City. The City of Sydney owns a number of buildings in the Oxford Street Cultural Quarter that may be appropriate for conversion into use for the creative industries as retail, studio and exhibition spaces.”

In line with this vision, the City has announced cheap rents for artists in 16 underused areas on Oxford Street. On top of that, enterprising creatives are colonising otherwise vacant spaces with a new style of retail, known as the "pop up shop". This year we have seen, springing up like beautiful weeds in a discarded parking lot, pop up cafes, pop up boutiques, a pop up Nike outlet, and now the most innovative of them all, a Pop-up indoor camp site. These shops and cafes and urban camping sites are not supposed to last forever; they are meant to be ephemeral.

There is something Hakim Beylike in this process of moving into the cracks and crevices, left empty by the retreat of High Capitalism, and creating something beautiful. Even especially if they are fleeting. Pop ups are transitory, nomadic, Vagabondist... just like me really! Now, I know a Nike outlet might not exactly satisfy Bey's vision of the Temporary Autonomous Zone, but I still think it is kind of cool. A lot cooler than parading around on Mardi Gras, anyway, pretending that you are changing the world!

Fouling the Nest

During my Australian life (realUniverse#1990s) I was employed as a journalist for Cumberland Newspapers and worked at many of their titles in Sydney and on the NSW Central Coast. One of my gigs was at the North Shore Times where, as well as being general office shitkicker, I served as the resident restaurant reviewer. I didn't understand why all of my colleagues thought it was a shit job, I myself assumed it would be something of a prized position, and definitely a lurk... anyway, as soon as I lobbed up at their office in Chatswood, one of the first things I got asked was: "Can you do the restaurant reviews?" Some female reporter there had been doing it but she was more than happy to let me take over if I didn't mind, and anyway she was going to be far too busy from now on with her new brief (which was writing about real estate, or something like that). Being the new guy, I was kind of obligated to oblige, and help her out. Being the new guy, I was expected to take on the tasks that others didn't want; I had to be a shitkicker, at least temporarily. I shifted in my seat, smiled, said, "Yes, of course I can!" and then the job was mine, just like that. Possibly the other journalists there regarded it as a waste of time, not "serious" enough for them, or an impediment to their career... but while the guy I sat next might have dreamed of being a Rugby League reporter at the Sydney Morning Herald, I was after nothing more than a free feed! And nothing is better than getting free food, than being paid to eat it! Of course, nothing is really free in this world, and I had to work for those meals, I had to fawn and flatter for them, and write nice things in print. I had to spend the odd evening in a drafty restaurant somewhere with the staff photographer mopping up curry with naan and making small talk, when I could have been at home. Naturally, I wasn't allowed to write anything negative should the food disappoint because the restaurants were also advertisers, and advertising was the name of the game at Cumberland Newspapers, it was their bread and butter you might say. In any case, even if the food was good, and it usually was, the restaurant review system didn't seem like a fair way to go: as the establishment in question always knew I was coming, they naturally laid on a good spread, waiters buzzing around like moons and all the rest. Had I visited incognito, guerrilla-style, it might have been a different story, a more honest story! That's why websites like urbanspoon are so much more honest, and so much more candid... they're democratic, and tell it how it is. I wasn't allowed to do that in my reviews (or in any of my "harder" stories, to tell you the truth.) And maybe that's why, in their wisdom, my fellow journalists at The Times hated writing the reviews... they knew it was just glorified copywriting. They had places to go, and bigger fishes to fry. They were aiming for the top, which left me the bottom to colonize.

The United Colors of Crows Nest, near North Sydney (Australia, 2011)

Journalistic ethics aside, I was on a roll at the North Shore Times, and as well as scoring lunches at French and Swiss bistros that I would not ordinarily be able to afford, I scoffed Korean bulgogi, bowls of pasta, gourmet hamburgers, and plenty of good Chinese. It was mighty convenient that I was living a 10 minute walk away, across the highway from the Royal North Shore Hospital, just past St Leonard's railway station near Crows Nest. I had a Hong Kong girlfriend and a leafy backyard... what could be better than that? Okay, my Trekkie flatmates were kind of anal, and they had a psycho cat to boot (and boot it I did, from time to time, when they weren't watching!) I split up with my Hong Kong girlfriend after just a month or two together, and the sea monkeys she gave me when we started out together died, dissolving into a milky cloud. But anyway, I had Crows Nest, just a matter of blocks away! Back then, before I had moved to Japan, I used to think Crows Nest was kind of sophisticated, exotic even, but not really that edgy. There were gorgeous multicultural treats in easy walking range, Italian pizzerias run by guys with names like Vince, or Dino (or Pino), and Thai takeouts with humorous/sarcastic names. In due course, I reviewed many of these establishments for the North Shore Times. I was totally spoiled for choice: North Indian, Japanese, Korean, there was even a Mongolian place in which I lunched with the Cumberland crew (I had to pay for this one). When I was off-duty, there were two bottleshops in roaming range, and for harder fare, my mate Jimmy (of Pablo Velasquez Shoeboarding fame) lived up the road, on Ernest Street. Whatever you needed, he could supply. The majesty of Sydney Harbour was also just a short stroll away, anyway really... whichever way you headed, you were destined to run into it. The water seems to be all around you, in this part of the world.

Last month I jetted down to Australia on Vietnam Airlines, and had the opportunity to revisit some of my roots. Two days after Christmas, a somewhat overcast day, I met up with Chris Mae, my old partner in crime from Japan, and his brother Garnet, the renegade film-maker, and cruised around the lower North Shore for a while, looking for mischief. Chris had just got a new skateboard for Christmas, and he was very pleased with himself.





After a nice round of lawn bowls we went over to Cremorne to eat some Mickey D's, and then Garnet suggested we drop in to have a chat with Jimmy, who still lived in his original crib, on Ernest. Back in the day Jimmy's was the place to hang, and if you were lucky he might get out his projector and show you Bladerunner on the big screen, or something from the Star Wars saga. Unfortunately Jimmy was out, but he told us to hang tight, and wait an hour or two. We decided to go for a walk, and look for some good grub. This was Crows Nest, after all: there ought to be plenty of fine dining selections at hand! 

Mumu, a grill joint, on Alexander Street, Crows Nest (Australia, 2009)

So, we went for a walk, looking for something promising. The sun came out, birds were flapping around, and all was well with the world. We walked up the road, to Alexander Street. Church was in session, and all the faithful were dressed up for the occasion. Looking around, it seemed like every second restaurant was a grill joint. MUMU (70 Alexander Street) was a case in point, and promised "grill,  tapas and bar"... who could imagine a better combination? According to my beloved North Shore Times, this place has the largest al fresco dining space in Crows Nest. It might have been nice, but Garnet is a vegetarian, so it wasn't really appropriate. Damn!

Grill'd, another grill joint, on Willoughby Road, Crows Nest (Australia, 2009)

We moved on, to Willoughby Road, to pass another grill joint, Grill'd (49 Willoughby Road). Nobody out to eat yet; perhaps it was too early. According to Menufest: "The Grill'd concept was born when Simon Crowe, the company founder, decided to do something about the lack of a decent, healthy hamburger in the Australian market." Lamb, chicken, beef and vegie burgers are on the menu here, which should have pleased Garnet. But, for some reason, he wasn't going for it. We walked on, passing Wrapido, and a Commonwealth Bank branch. Then we stumbled upon a place which is apparently renowned in this part of town: Pino's Pizzeria. We all agreed we could do with a good pizza, so we pulled up a seat outside.

Garnet Mae prepares to dine, at Pino's Pizzeria (Australia, 2009)

Postscript: who would have thought that I would go all the way to Australia to get a dose of the runs? I have been to Vietnam six times in the last three years and even though I often dine on the streets there, I hardly ever get an upset stomach... nothing too bad anyway, maybe an overdose of fibre. I have lived in Japan for nine years and eaten raw chicken, raw horse and canned whale meat and felt none the worse for wear, accrued bad karma notwithstanding. It took returning to my native Australia to get a really intense case of diarrhea, one that lasted for nearly a week, and followed me all the way to my love nest in Ho Chi Minh City... and I believe it all started at Pino's Pizzeria. Mind you they were good pizzas that we quoffed there, me and the Mae brothers and their two halfJapanese descendents... mine were heavy on the anchovies. It was probably the anchovies that unsettled me. If I had been like Garnet and limited myself to the Vegetariana (artichokes, mushroom, onion, olives and capsicum) I would probably have been okay. Probably. Anyway, at least I have a chance to provide a really honest Sydney restaurant review, after faking it for so long. Incidentally, urbanspoon rank Pino's as one of the top restaurants in Crows Nest. Don't listen to my sad gripe; the majority can't be wrong!

altUniverse Me, Living in Strathfield, Shopping and Eating in Glebe

Why is it that all the good Australian food blogs are written by Asians? To be more precise, why is it that most of the food bloggers in Australia are Malays, or people from the Malay world? By the Malay world I'm referring to Malaysians, Singaporeans, Indonesians, Filipinos, etc, many of whom live, study or work in Australia these days. I don't know whether or not Malaysians invented food blogging but it is definitely a popular pastime for these people, and something they excel at. Just as everyone under the age of 50 in Reykjavik Iceland wants to be in a rock band, every young man or woman in Kuala Lumpur wants to be a food blogger... that is my observation at least! When I lived in Tokyo I was once bluntly informed by one of my housemates, an overweight Japanese gent named Matsumoto-san: "I liked traveling in Australia, but Anglo-Saxons don't understand food." I took that as a slur at the time but I can see where he was coming now -- Anglo-Saxons do indeed suck gastronomically. I think it boils down to our tepid tastes, and to our straitjacketed imagination. What constitutes Anglo-Saxon cuisine, anyway: meat and three veg, the veg boiled beyond blandness? Baked beans if you are English, Vegemite on toast if you are Australian? Hot dogs and hamburgers in North America, sausages on a braai in South Africa? Times may be changing, countries like Australia are supposed to be so cosmopolitan these days, you can even scoff sashimi in a shotglass, or eat wagyu beef on a burger! But I wonder: is this coming of age in a culinary sense, or is it just showing off how wealthy you've become? It's insulting for the sashimi to be served up in a glass, not only to the Japanese whose culture you have ransacked to spice up your workaday reality, but to the fish who donated its flesh and its life to help sustain yours! Show some respect, for God's sake. When I survey the dining scene in a city such as Sydney it seems to be more than a little nouveau riche to me, suggesting that people here have confused money with culture. Good cooking comes from the heart, not from the wallet, and I doubt that Aussies (along with Americans and Kiwis and South Africans and all the rest) will ever be as fanatical about their food as the Asians are about theirs. Young Australians would rather be football players than foodies, or food bloggers. Fair enough -- I will keep to the Asian blogosphere as I research places to go for my impending visit Downunder next month, and there are plenty of sites out there to be read. For example, on the topic of my home for a couple of months at the start of the year 2000, the Asian-Australian eat like a cow posse say: "It's hard to decide what to eat in Glebe - the area along Glebe Point road is full of delicious eateries. In fact, it's somehow like Paddington - but for hippies. This road strip is a melting pot of many cultures and races. One can see a seemingly endless myriad of people types - dreadlocked hippie girls, leather fetishists, even Asians in Louboutins. It's really an oasis in suburbia, lined with charmingly un-renovated old townhouses and fabulously dinghy second-hand shops..."

In an alternative universe I might be living in Strathfield, the gateway to western Sydney and home to a large Korean community (Australia, 2012)

I haven't been to Australia for a long time now (2.75 years, as of the end of the month), but when I am in Sydney, my way invariably leads to Glebe. Recently I have started thinking: had I not left Australia to live in Japan in 2000, what would have become of me? I probably would have tended to the west (not Western Australia, but western Sydney -- that's where I was working, and that's where the cheaper real estate is to be found.) In my Aussie altUniverse, Glebe Point Rd would probably be as far east as I would stray, as I never really liked the wankers in Bondi. I'd be living in a share house somewhere in the inner west, fighting over the bills, and for kicks I'd drink coffee at Cafe Otto or Clipper Cafe or Badde Manors, or dunk donuts at Dunkins (is that still open?), or trawl for vintage clothes and New Age trinkets at the Saturday markets. My center of gravity would probably be Strathfield Railway Station, gateway to western Sydney as well as to the Chinese/Korean communities of the north-west. In realUniverse my uncle Bill died in the year 2000 somewhere near Oxford Street, and the subsequent chain of events carried me off to Tokyo, where I still reside. I think I like the real universe better than the alternative one, folks know how to cook here and Michelin stars abound. I am pretty settled here, I have my own apartment, no need to share any longer... but sometimes in my dreams the timelines converge, and I find myself back in the altUniverse. Heading off to work at some job I don't like, or waiting for a train which never comes. I wake up, almost with a fright... and realize it was just a dream. But you never know... someday the timelines really will skip, and I could wake up to find myself living in Australia, and Tokyo will be just a dream? Could that ever happen.. well, yes, it could. Stranger things have happened at sea.

Food, Fashion and Fetish in Newtown, the Swinging Soul of Sydney

Every major city in the world has a neighborhood where all of the local personality and lifeforce gets channeled, concentrated laser beam style, then finally ignited into a sun which is singular and eccentric, but also radiantly representative of the metropolitan ethos as a whole. Some cities, of course, have more than one such neighborhood -- in Tokyo there are for example at least two places where the Japanness of Japan gets pushed to its logical extreme, and beyond: one is the anime antnest of Akihabara, the other the Cosplay chickland of Harajuku, by Yoyogi Park. Some cities (eg, Reykjavik, Copenhagen, Amsterdam) are so far ahead of the times it is hard to find a precinct inside them which isn't progressive or kooky cool. Sydney, the capital of the south Pacific, is endowed with only one world-class Bohemia (in my opinion), but it is a brilliant Bohemia nonetheless. The place is called Newtown, and it was recently dubbed "Sydney's most creatively well endowed suburb" by the counterculture Sydney City Hub newspaper. For as long as I can remember, it has long been one of the food, fashion and fetish focal points of the city. The amazing thing is, Newtown is not reflected on any tourist/traveler radars, as far as I can see. Then again, the places which fly under the radar are usually the best places to explore, so perhaps it is fitting that Newtown remains a dark star, known only to the locals. If your aim is to get a feel for the gritty reality of modern Australian life, don't go to Darling Harbour or the Opera House, those places don't live. Newtown is the place to visit, it has a soul, and epitomizes the Australian personality! It won't disappoint you, I promise. I'll stake my reputation on that. Unlike other famous parts of Sydney (for example Bondi Beach), the ocean exerts little influence here. Instead, as in Melbourne, people turn to the streets for their entertainment. Restaurants, shops and pubs are the principal methods of diversion. You can shop for vintage clothes, or see a hard rock band, or have hot wax poured on your nipples at an S&M haunt. All the bands in Australia have names starting with the article "the", it has become something of a cliché. I've never really understood why.

Nonetheless: one thing you have got to keep in mind is that while Newtown is by far the most Bohemian district of Sydney, it is different from Bohemian communities elsewhere in the world. This is Australia after all, and the Australian personality still shines through -- perhaps even more blindingly than out in the Burbs. Along with Darwin, this is one of the last surviving outposts of the classic Aussie larrikin. Instead of openly rebelling against the basic Australian personality, as you might expect, Newtown folks caricature it, camp it up, and basically push that personality to its logical extreme, in the process transcending it. Take the issue of fashion, for example. Australians have always been decidedly daggy dressers, and many honestly don't give a damn how they look ("it is fashionable not to be fashionable," my mate Garnet Mae once complained). In rebelling against this, you might expect the subcultures of the inner-city to go the other way, and embrace European style haute couture, to prove they have more taste than the slobs out in the suburbs. That is indeed what happens, in some quarters (like Surry Hills). The Bohemians of Newtown, however, prefer the natural look -- sans shirt, bare feet, the potency of body odor. Whatever gets you closer to Mother Earth, that's what they go for. Now in an already laid-back society, one might think this is a strange way for a supposedly contrarian subculture to express its sartorial instincts. Like the anime addicts of Akihabara, like the Cosplay chicks of Harajuku, the Newtownians knows that the really contrarian way to rebel is not to oppose diametrically, but to mimic to the point of excess. Not just to ridicule, but to take ownership of the dominant culture, and live it the way it was supposed to be lived, before it got corrupted by The Man. Like the urban tribes of Tokyo, the Bohemians of Newtown know this is how you win the culture wars, this is how the real jihad should be waged. Once you stop attacking the dominant culture and start appropriating it, with a gleam in your eye which suggests you were never against it to begin with, the rules of the game are abruptly changed. You cease being silly freaks on the margins, bereft of influence and power, and recast yourselves as true disciples, the Guardians of the Way. Your way is not the alternative but in fact the Only Way: the Tokyo way, the Japanese way, the Australian way, whatever the paradigm that you are seeking to overthrow. In short, you subvert the system from within, by becoming the system, wearing it like an old coat. Or a pair of faded board shorts, if you happen to live in Newtown.

"I have a dream": Martin Luther King tribute in Newtown (Australia, 2007)

Earlier this month I was down in Sydney for a few days, catching up with old friends, and staying with the aforementioned Garnet Mae, slumlord and director of such no-budget movies as Meat Pie (the one in which a guy with a penchant for kitchen appliances goes too far, loses his organ, and requires an urgent transplant!) I used to run with Garnet back in our uni days, and he introduced me to a lot of Sydney's prized jewels, Newtown among them. This was impressive, as we went to university at Bathurst, 200 kilometers to the west. We had plenty of breaks, however, and I used to enjoy cruising around Sydney with Garnet and his crew on spare weekends, sneaking into concerts, jumping the back fence into raves and festivals, getting into general mischief. One weekend we traveled all the way from Bathurst to Newtown to visit The Kastle, which was becoming infamous back then. I don't know why they called it The Kastle. The Dungeon would have been more apt a name. Sinister looking entrance -- just an anonymous door on a graffiti-splattered backstreet. Kind of looked like an abandoned warehouse. Enter inside and suddenly it was warm and there were tonnes of guys with thick mustaches wearing black leather, dark techno on the decks (this being the early 1990s!), and girls in latex and fishnet stockings. I was expecting it to be a nightclub, but it was more a theater... a theater of cruelty to be precise. Name your vice, it was here: bondage, submission, punishment, BDSM. We were there with our Bathurst bro Stu Ridley and his girlfriend Fiona, and possibly our flatmate Katja, who had accompanied us on the long ride in the car, over the mountains. We were there mostly out of curiosity, but I suspected Stu might have had more questionable motivations. He seemed to be in too much of a hurry to get his shirt off out on the dancefloor, waving his hands in the air, sweat flying out from his orange hair. From time to time the music stopped and a little performance was put on by the staff, a tableau in our midst: there was a shirtless man strapped to a rack as a Dominatrix flexed her whip, waving its strands over his nostrils menacingly, or possibly a guy and two girls engaged in a threeway kiss. It might have been a freak show for Fiona, for Katja, and for Garnet and I, but Stu seemed to be taking an earnest interest in proceedings. He was getting into it a little too much, methought. Suddenly I realized: wasn't it his idea that we came here tonight? Somewhere in the early hours, quite a few drinks later, the music paused one last time and the curtains rose on the final act: a spot of candle wax play. This time around, they put out a call for volunteers. I dug myself back into the crowd ever so slightly, concerned someone might nominate me for the role. I needn't have worried; standing next to me, Stu stuck his hand up, and submitted gleefully for the ordeal. They strapped him up to the rig, handcuffed him, and fitted him with a blindfold. The crowd was going nuts, gay couples nodding their approval, Fiona looking a little embarrassed (or was that pride in her eyes?) A domme stepped forward, and with a theatrical flourish commenced dripping hot wax all over Stu's chest. He grimaced in pain, but there was still a smile on his lips. Where did that come from? I wondered. Who was that for? Looking back on it all, it seems obvious this moment marked a turning point in his life. The beginning of his descent, in fact. If only I could have predicted it at the time!

That was 1993, 14 years ago. I don't know if the Kastle is still around, or what Stu Ridley is doing these days. I'm walking on King Street, the spine of Newtown, whiling away some hours while Garnet is at work, hustling customers on the phone. It's a grey day; the sun is struggling to break through the clouds. At 305 King Street, I stop to admire an iconic piece of street art: the Martin Luther King mural painted by the anarchistic Unmitigated Audacity Productions in the early 1990s. Not quite Banksy, but it is as good as it gets in Sydney. I don't know if the Gothic typeface is appropriate, but it would probably make for a good tattoo. It's about lunch time, and I am feeling peckish. There is certainly no shortage of culinary choices in this vicinity, with Thai eateries, Turkish pide joints, and even an African restaurant all within spitting range. I am actually hankering for Bondi-style Portuguese chicken, which I find at Oporto, on the adjacent Enmore Road, the other side of the railway tracks. I know it's fast food, but I don't care. It's soul food to me, and you can't find anything like it in Japan. I eat a burger and chips, as the wind blows garbage around in a nearby parking lot, and diners watch sport on an in-restaurant TV. I would love to sit and chill, but I have things to do. Hunger satiated, I return to King Street, to take a walk on the wild side.

One of Sydney's entertainment icons, the Sandringham Hotel, at 387 King Street (Australia, 2007)

Newtown is packed with entertainment venues, among them the Bank Hotel, the Coopers Arms Hotel (221 King Street), the Enmore Theatre (52 Enmore Road), the Dendy Cinema, and the Sandringham Hotel (387 King Street). If you want find out what is happening in Newtown, click the Newtown Precinct Page for details. In a newspaper article quoted on the page, Pam Walker writes:

Newtown has long been home to large numbers of visual artists and writers. In the 80s it was the hub of independent music with many a band paying its dues in pubs like the Sandringham. 

Now the area has become the cradle for the performing arts, actively nurturing young playrights, actors and dancers. So exactly what is about Newtown that attracts the creatively endowed? 

The Enmore Theatre's Greg Khoury says that the suburb's artistic leanings go back a long way. In fact, Newtown has thrived since its inception as an artistic outpost to Sydney in the late 19th Century. 

It is too early in the day for a drink, so I walk on, past the pubs. Me being me, I decide to check out the herbal shops. I'm looking for a legal way to get stoned. It's been so long, and I always associate Sydney with smoking a bong. I go inside one business, and locate a pack of dubious goodies called "Tribal Trance", or something similar. The proprietor assures me it will do the trick, but I am not convinced. These synthetic marijuana products are always rubbish, in my experience. Still, I have money in my wallet from my new job in Japan, so I figure it should be worth a try! I buy a bag for AUS$20. And I think to myself: Why is everything in Australia so expensive these days?

U-Turn Recycled Fashion, at 2 Enmore Road, Newtown (Australia, 2007)

Along with herbal shops and their New Age cousins, there are plenty of fashion retailers in Newtown. Suitably enough, many of them specialize in the vintage/recycled/classic end of the market. As I discussed above: appropriate the dominant paradigm, and wear it like an old recycled frock. That's how the game should be played! Some of the boutiques to be found include Kita Vintage Clothing (Shop 2503 King Street), and the local outlet of U-Turn Recycled Fashion (2 Enmore Road).

Exclusive Vintage Clothing, at 383 King Street, Newtown (Australia, 2007)

Just a U-turn around the corner from U-Turn, back on King Street, sits one of the landmarks of the Sydney vintage clothing scene: Exclusive Vintage Clothing (383 King Street). As the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported in 2004: 

Sydney's hunger for vintage and secondhand clothes has fuelled a 15 per cent profit surge for the Salvation Army's retail stores in the last 12 months. 

The workers hit the clearing house floor, sorting the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of clothing that arrive each year. 

The best clothes are sent to the Salvation Army's inner city stores - in Darlinghurst, Glebe and Bondi Junction - where prices and turnover are higher.

Meanwhile each morning, between 20 and 30 wholesale buyers wait for up to an hour outside the Salvation Army's Minchinbury and St Peters factories. They buy damaged or stained clothes which are then cleaned up and sold at marked-up prices at the Paddington, Glebe and Bondi markets or in commercial second-hand stores in Surry Hills and Newtown...

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