Travelling Pathetically - Coffee Edition

 If you couldn't be bothered reading the rest of this blog entry here's the one sentence synopsis.  "I went out for coffee."

I have now pretty much scraped a hole through the bottom of the barrel and started to dig.  I had been casting around frantically looking for somewhere to walk to and simultaneously had run out of ground coffee without which life is simply not worth living.

"I have it!" I announced in triumph.

"Well don't give it to us," replied my platypus as he and the puffin backed nervously away.  The plague doctor on the other hand produced a disturbingly lethal looking piece of equipment and asked if I'd like him to remove it.  I did a little nervous backing away myself at that point.

"I shall travel into the city and walk back to the cafe which provides me with coffee thus gaining the elixir of life and material for a blog entry along the way."

"You really are getting desperate aren't you?" asked the puffin.

I hung my head.

"So freaking desperate."

Well it seemed like a good idea at the time.  No, actually it seemed like a rather lousy idea but as my puffin had noted I was getting desperate.  I equipped myself with mask and camera,  hopped onto the bus and rode in the direction of the city.  I would get out at Broadway and make my way back through quiet surburban streets to the cafe in Newtown.  I could simply have walked up the main road but where's the fun in that.

Getting out at Broadway was the easy part.  In fact it might have been difficult to get any further because the place was swarming with police.  I had apparently decided to travel into the city on a day when the authorities were preparing for a protest from pro-disease advocates.  The result of which was that most of the people failing to observe social distancing were actually police officers.  I could have taken a photo but I didn't.  The start of my walk didn't seem like a good place to lose my camera.

I left the main road and headed down a promising looking side street.  I did have a rough idea of the route I would take and I credit google maps with the fact that I only got lost twice in a city I have lived in for thirty years.

An example of a side street.  Don't worry the rest of the photos are equally exciting

The moment I stepped off the main road I was in unfamiliar territory.  I don't drive which means that my journeys tend to be along main transit routes with a definite destination in view.  Literally a hundred metres either side of these routes and I'm in unfamiliar territory.  I gazed about with what I fondly imagined was well simulated interest at the collection of crisp inner city apartment blocks, the occasional more elderly left over of a somewhat more industrial past and absolutely empty streets.  I like being alone in the bush but to my mind cities are supposed to have people, there was a post apocalyptic hint to the entire scene although, given the quality of the buildings, a well organised and distinctly tidy apocalypse.  Along the way I saw a church surrounded by larger, more modern buildings.  I took a photo more for something to do than anything else.

At least I think this is a church

I was wandering through Chippendale which is apparently a bit of an artists hub with galleries and a methadone clinic.  Inner city living at its finest.  I have to admit the flats looked nice, certainly better than I would have expected a struggling artist to afford but maybe they commute from horrible squats elsewhere to display their work in all the galleries I didn't notice as I was walking along.

I tried to avoid main streets and for the most part was successful although I had to venture on to them occasionally if I wanted to reach my destination.  My destination incidentally was Wilson street which runs alongside the railway line from Redfern to Newtown.  All I had to do was navigate myself successfully from Chippendale to Redfern (it's literally the next suburb).  I wandered past a pair of cats sitting on the pavement who didn't even bother to acknowledge my presence as I strode by confident in my sense of direction and navigational skill.

The house they belonged to was being renovated. They were waiting patiently until the workmen were finished.

So I did get a little lost but fortunately a chance encounter with one of the aforementioned main streets managed to get me on the path to Redfern after which it would be an easy stroll with no need for confusing turns left or right which seem to leave me more than appropriately disorientated.  

Redfern is part trendy inner city living and part grotty warehouses.  Due to a certain amount of building repurposing it is sometimes difficult to tell which bit is which.  I was on the right track now and stepped out with a confidence and sense of purpose somewhat alien to my normal way of life.  Terrace houses, nicely renovated crowded the streets and the occasional warehouse (or possibly trendy inner city flats) bulked with a certain impressive dilapidation.

This might be a warehouse, an apartment block, an office building or a crack den; or indeed all four

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I strolled past a rather handsome building set in its own grounds with trees and other green stuff in the garden (I think it was a railway building of some sort).  I glanced at it vaguely but kept on walking. The need for coffee was overwhelming any aesthetic pleasure I might have taken in a handsome colonial era building.  However a ferocious rustling in one of the trees did catch my attention.  Looking up I noticed that one of the branches was thrashing around as if in a storm while the rest of the tree stayed still.  Intrigued (and by this stage more than a little desperate for something to pad out this blog entry) I peered as closely as I could through the iron railing fence to see if I could identify what it is that was apparently attempting to separate this particular branch from its parent tree.

To my utter astonishment it was an ibis.  Seeing an ibis in Sydney is nothing unusual.  The avian bin rats are everywhere but I had never actually seen one in a tree before.  I took a photo and, just to be sure, took several more.  Subsequently an acquaintance pointed out that ibis are birds and where the hell else did I expect them to live.  To be honest I thought they slept under sheets of cardboard below bridges and motorway overpasses. Frankly if the ibis kept brutalising the branch at its current rate it wouldn't be in the tree for long.

An ibis in a tree

Still blinking in surprise I hurried away from what seemed like a distinctly unnatural sight and pushed on towards my destination.  Along the way I went to the farmers market.  The farmers market was a bit of a surprise because a) it was still open despite the COVID ravaging our state and b) I didn't realise it existed in the first place.  The farmers market is at CarriageWorks which is (according to wikipedia) a multi-arts urban cultural precinct.  It used to be a railway workshop.  Now it isn't.  One of the urban cultural multi-arts that the place plays host to is a farmers market.  More people than I had seen on my entire walk were cautiously moving about attempting to buy quite small amounts of highly specific agricultural produce.  No, that isn't a euphemism for drugs (although it's possible that it might be).

I didn't so much go to the farmers market as not turn aside when doing so would have enabled me to avoid it.  I spent five minutes wandering past small stalls selling small amounts of things I didn't want and out the other end.  To my left were the historic brick buildings of CarriageWorks, to my right were houses but most importantly, directly ahead and getting closer by the second was coffee.

I paused in a park for a few minutes along the way.  I don't know why but possibly because it was the first time on my entire walk that I had seen a patch of grass and more than one tree at a time.  There was a handsome house parked on the other side so I justified my presence by taking a photo of it.  Then I took another photo and finally left before the owners complained.

The only thing that surprises me more than the fact you're still reading this is the fact that I'm still writing it

 

 

 

With my inner city journey behind me my Mecca awaited.  With mounting excitement I covered the last couple of hundred metres.  A slight moan of ecstasy escaped my lips as I saw the sign which certainly creeped the hell out of a woman walking her dog past me at the time.  I didn't care, my mask was in place so she certainly couldn't describe me to the police.  Finally, triumphantly I arrived at my destination where coffee could be obtained and salvation assured.

The Holy Grail

Once my coffee was grinding I asked permission to take a few photos.  Since that was by far the least unusual request I've made in this place the owner agreed with something close to relief.

Somewhere in here there are chairs and tables

My condiments to the chef.  I can't believe I just made that joke

With coffee in hand and sanity, or at least stability, assured for another week I caught the bus home.