Caddies Restaurant

Elliot Street Whalf to Cockatoo Island

Darling Street Whalf

White Bay Hotel

Cricketers Arm Hotel

Before the monkeys moved into the Monkey Bar the hotel on the corner of Ford & Darling Street was know as the Cricketers Arms Hotel. It was a working mans pub and late in the afternoon the male employees from the wharfs, Balmain hospital and various local tradesmen would meet at the bar to drink. Often they would spill out onto the pavement in a noisy commotion of foul language and ribald comments made to passing pedestrians. Drinking and smoking it made for a rough and tumble environment after 6pm most evenings and young women and schoolgirls would choose to cross the street instead of passing its doors. Of cause this all changed when the high heels, smokey glass windows, Armani suits, polished floorboards and sliding glass doors moved in when the pub changed its name to the Monkey bar.

Berlin Cafe

The Berlin Cafe was the first Cafe to open in Balmain in the 1970s on Darling St just up form Gladstone Park and is still operating today. It was always a very cool place to hang out at and many young students would meet there on Saturdays before or after visiting Balmai Markets. It was always a bit dark and basic and had a bit of a grunge feel about it until it was renovated in the 1990's.

Castle Cafe

Peppermento Starbucks to the Hill of Content

Town Hall Hotel

Balmain Squash Courts

Loyality Square

The War Memorial at Loyalty Square was a sad and lonely site in the 1970's and 80's. It stood in the middle of Darling St, isolated by traffic the occupants of cars, buses and trucks would pass it without a second thought to its history or meaning. It was covered in exhaust fumes, the light on its mast was broken and it was chipped from the occasional bump by a passing car. No one seemed to worry about it except for once a year a small band of old men would appear early on the morning of ANZAC day and march from the RSL club in Darling St, near Elliot St, to the Memorial accompanied by the sound of a beating drum. There they would lay a number of wreaths on the old forgotten stones, a bugler would play the last post and then they would wander across the road to the Cricketers Arms Hotel to have a drink and tell story's of previous wars. Every year their numbers dwindled, their RSL club was sold and even the ritual Anzac day march down Darling Street was abandoned. It wasn't until the early 1990's that the old forgotten monument sitting like an abandoned island in the middle of Darling Street was discovered again and council and the local residences decided to move it, renovate it, and build a small surrounding square that would become know as Loyalty Square.

Dorothy & Friends

Tin Shed Cafe

Garages of Darling Street

Bijou Theatre

The Bijou Theatre was located in Roundtree street, just off Darling Street. It was the last of the old 1920 inner city theatres that was still operating in the late 1970's. It was in the style of the Valhalla theatre in Glebe and showed art house movies. In the early 1980's it closed due to lack of patrons and was boarded up for may years until it was redeveloped into office space and a restaurant. The Sydney University Recreational Art Team (RAT) organised a illegal RAT Party at this venue in the mid 1980's which turned into a huge event. I remember seeing Michael Hutchinson, Peter Philips, John Hargraves and other Sydney celebrities there. Late into Sunday morning as the party continued on and a odd collection of punks, drag queens, mods and new romantics started to wander down Darling Street the police from Balmain Station turned up but because of the sheer number of young people at the event just asked the organisers to modified the music rather then closing the event.

Rozelle Under the Anzac Bridge

Rozelle Under the Anzac Bridge was another quaint expression that the residences of Rozelle used to describe their geographical location. I am not sure where the area began or ended but it was south of Evans St, in and around Mansfield St and along the White Bay area.

Rozelle On Pensinsula or Rozelle Wrong Side

With the gentrification of the Pensinsula came a tongue in cheek snob factor. I think it must have started when Real Estate Agents stated to refer to Rozelle, which is split down the middle by Victoria Rd, as either "Rozelle on the Pensisula" or "Rozelle the wrong side of Victoria Rd". Soon anything West of Victoria Road was being referered to as Wrong Side and locals in Rozelle would pick up on the expression introducing themsleves as living "on Pensiula" or "Wrong Side".

Corner of King, Darling & Birchgrove Road

The corner of King, Darling and Birchgrove Road is one of the first junction intersections on the peninsula. A small and unassuming intersection but one that has a character in keeping with the suburb. On the corner facing Darling St is an old wooden shopfront. When originally built I imagine it must have been a general store but in my memory it was someones house, then an antique shop, a design shop and now a wedding dress store. Opposite it in King Street is a modern building with a spire that has an Indonesian restaurant on the ground and accommodation at the rear. When I first visited Balmain this was a busy garage the serviced the cars of the local community. Where the current Bakehouse is, once stood a interesting cafe called Relics a that was only open Saturday morning but did a roaring trade during the week when the local workmen and builders would descend on the cafe for takeaway lunches. The inside of the shop was decorated in old newspaper and magazine articles about the local area, old pieces of machinery and pictures of old rowing and swim teams. The atmosphere was dusty, the menu limited and the service slow but everyone knew the Asian lady who ran the cafe and you where always assured to meet one of your neighbours when sitting at the tables in the front of the cafe when having a coffee and reading the Sydney Morning Herald on a Saturday morning.

Elkington Park

Elkington Park in the 1970's was a tired old forgotten suburban park in what was a forgotten suburb on a dirty harbour in a big sprawling city. Morton bay fig trees lined White Street planted in a straight line by some forgotten bearded Councilor in the 1880's startng from the top of Glassop Street streching to the harbours edge. The out stretched arms of these ancient trees stretched across White St and embrassed the open air like an old familiar friend. Sometimes in a thunder storm or high winds one of the branches of these ancient trees fall and crash into a parked car below as if just to remind the locals that they where here long before any of us.

In the middle of the park was an old forgotten bandstand built of a federation brick base, a wooden frame and a dusty red federation tiled roof. Once an elegant structure where bands played and the names of the fallen from the Great War were engraved on the foundation stone, now a dirty little building in a park where the grass was parched or overgrown and dog shit was littered across its its unkempt grounds from one end to the other.

Northshore

Many people will tell you that Balmain began in the the 1880's when it was a major port in the harbour of Sydney, NSW and the Painters and Dockers union run the tiny peninsula like a small mafisa. Other will tell you it began earlier as a subdivision of William Balmain's land grant that would grow into Sydney's first suburb with the city of City of Sydney on its right and the vast open farm lands of western Sydney on it left and other will tell you it began much earlier in pre-history when the original Aboriginal owners walked the foreshores and fished the harbour for their daily catch of snapper, whiting and bream, but for me my beginnings of Balmain began as a teenage boy riding my bicycle through its small and narrow back streets. In the 1970's the Balmain peninsula was not at heavily populated as it is today and the majority of Balmain foreshores was crowded with heavy industry and ports. On the weekend the workforce would retreat to the outer suburbs of Sydney, Darling Street businesses would close sharp on Saturday afternoons at 12.30pm and a young boy on a bike could spend a leisurely Sunday exploring the narrow residential streets cluttered with old rundown wooden cottages, venture under wire fences or squeeze through a padlocked gates to explore abandoned docklands and industrial sites all over the peninsula. What a boys own adventure wonderland this territory offered up to the adventurous and young.

Starting on the northern side of the peninsula I would ride across the Iron Cove bridge via the narrow pedestrian walkway with cars, trucks and buses rushing passed me, spewing exhaust fumes over my head, shoulders and arms. Up Victoria Road and left into Terry Street. On the left was the old Balmain Power Station that stood like a giant colossus on the harbour foreshore site with four huge chimney stacks that looked like the funnels of a great ocean liner of the 1930's. Steel gates guarded the abandoned power station site but if you turned left at Margaret St you could progress down its side boundary and view the old buildings in all their glorious dust, dirt and grim. The old power station had closed in the mid seventies when the State Government build bigger coal fired power stations in the Hunter Valley, the source of NSW's major coal streams, but for me to slip under the gates and explore the old building down to the foreshores and ride my bike over the hard ashpalt ground was a huge adventure. Next to the power station site was Unilever another fortified industrial site full of abandon buildings with peeling paint, cracked concrete, steel and entered by a gate house build of blond bricks from the 1950's. Sometimes patrolled barbed wired this was a harder property to explore. Both sites are now gone and in their place are the respectable residential addresses of Balmain Shores and Balmain Cove. Riding past Balmain High School I would call in and do a lap or two of the top oval sometimes venturing into the lower bowels of the school block then back to the upper levels and on my way. School vandalism was not a serious problem so the majority of school properties grounds were left open or unattended on weekends or after hours and Balmain being a very trusting community at the time, I never remember once being questioned as to who I was or what I was doing there. I would turn left at Elliot St and continue past the Nutrimetics site on my left and the Housing Commission unit block on the right. At the bottom was Elliot Street Wharf. In those day Elliot Street Wharf consisted of a small rickety wharf construction with a tuck shop on its approach where the workers could purchase their lunches in the morning before setting off to the island for a days work. After the closure of Cockatoo docks in the early 1980's the tuck shop would expand and become know to locals as Pellegrini's Seafood Restaurant a small and interment restaurant with great harbour views, run by the orginal Greek family that ran the tuck shop and known only to locals as a place to eat that was off Darling St and away from the encroaching tourist crowd of the 1980's and 90's.

At the bottom of Elliot St Wharf I would stop, pause and rest in the park on the small stretch of ground in front of the unit block watching the parade of cruisers, yachts and sailing boats pass me by on this small section of harbour overlooking Spectacle Island with Birkenhead on the left.