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.