Wentworth Park

Wentworth Park isn't a suburb it's just a park. Nevertheless it apparently rates its own light rail station. To be fair its a pretty decent sized park.  There are cricketing nets, playing fields, a greyhound track and a large expanse of open grassland where people can come and picnic on warm days, ie when the temperature is several degrees lower than it was on the day I visited.  The light rail actually crosses the park on one of those brick viaducts that reduce local historians to damp pantied ecstasy and, more practically, provide impromptu urinals for people going home from the pub and places to sleep for the local homeless.  The park reaches almost to the waters edge but fortunately there is a series of buildings so that picnickers, sportspeople and the homeless aren't irritated by those pesky harbour views that the people who live in the surrounding flats just have to put up with.

Until recently the park was also the home ground of the Balmain Tigers Football Club.  The club's colours were black and gold as is traditional for sporting teams from the Balmain area.  The club's mascot was the tiger as is also traditional for sporting teams from the Balmain area.  There seems to have been a certain lack of imagination displayed here as is traditional for sporting teams etc etc. The football club's traditions stretch all the way back to 1986 when a British expat noticed the lack of a football team in his area and decided to start one without giving any consideration as to why Balmain had managed to survive over a century of existence without one.  Despite a pretty impressive winning tradition in the lower divisions of the Sydney competition (Sydney has a football competition with actual divisions?) the club was told in 2019 that's its presence was no longer required and that British expats should go back to getting drunk on Bondi Beach where they belong.  Despite the yawning gap left by the absence of the Balmain Tigers Wentworth Park seems to be flourishing on cricket practice and running undernourished dogs in circles.  It is actually an impressively large piece of open ground only a mile from the city.  So large in fact that I decided to leave it and find somewhere smaller. 

The light rail station is surrounded by a thin band of trees and a thick band of apartment complexes that seem to have been designed to prove that high density living can be done with style and taste if the builders think that those purchasing the apartments are likely to be wealthy.  The trees are apparently provided by a volunteer group whose motto is "returning the bush to the city".  They do this by apparently sticking a tree on every piece of open space capable of holding one.  Where there isn't room for a tree they dump a shopping trolley instead.  Although it is possible that these two activities are undertaken by different groups.

I strolled past the trees and shopping trolleys enjoying the interplay of light and shade in the area.  The light is provided by the sun currently clawing its way through a haze of smoke particles so thick that I didn't notice it until I put out my cigarette and realised that the air quality, if anything, got worse.  The shade is provided by vast quantities of concrete twining the area in a Daliesque fashion. The reason for that is because this is where several of the impressive motorways that connect the region are grafted onto Sydney City's nineteenth century streetscape.  This has worked about as well as surgically attaching an octopus tentacle to a person's torso.  You probably get marks for simply achieving it at all.

Past the tortured concrete and handsome apartment blocks with names like Harbour Mill and Private Property - Residents Only one comes to what is either the back end of Ultimo or the front end of Pyrmont and the far more manageably sized Fig Lane Park which has a small open space, some trees and the appropriate sign telling you not to behave in a socially irresponsible manner and to give thanks to the city council for not allowing property developers to build on absolutely every inch of available space.  I burnt some incense and sacrificed a white bull to the genius of the council and moved on to an even more modest park about a block down the road.  There was another sign demanding homage to the council but I had run out of bulls.

The road I was moving down, incidentally was Jones Street.  I was familiar with the other end of this street because my father used to work there for what was at the time the city's most prestigious newspaper (and is now a wretched adjunct to a second rate television station) but this end was new to me.  Once I got away from immediate proximity to the harbour the classy looking apartment blocks petered out to be replaced by older blocks of flats (not apartments, flats) and even some old terrace houses, relics of Sydney's heritage, which for some unaccountable reason hadn't been demolished.  The buildings may be old but I'm sure the prices are right up to date.  I could have gone further but the day was very hot, I was lathered in sweat and also I couldn't be bothered.  So I went back to the light rail station past more randomly installed trees and abandoned shopping trolleys and made my way to somewhere I could get coffee.