Old Sydney Town

It was a Friday with legs.. the kind of long, busy legs that take you places.. the same kind of sheer-stocking, urgent, bustling legs that rushed past us at Central Station’s thoroughfare intersection. We huddled, laughing upon a concrete hub amongst a crowd of business people, each of them running too late to notice our offers of a breakfast red.

Simon and I were in hot pursuit of a research assignment; Old Sydney Town, the Colonial Sydney based attraction several hours north of the city. It had closed down ten years prior due to a confounding lack of interest from kids, whose Schools carted them there to see unenthused, out-of-work actors feigning farm skills.

We had brought Joel, a hairy affirmation of natural selection’s quirky side, whose opinionated conversational style paradoxically assisted his considerable charm. And Ben, a tall bald beacon of weird, whose ability to confound the general public with his amputee sentences was unrivaled.

We were acutely aware that to do this thing correctly, we needed somebody to transport us, in the tradition of our convict forefathers. All four of us have driver’s licenses, and the only rational way to encourage a stranger to drive us seemed to be by getting very drunk very early, and such was our necessity for the delightful Cab Sav.

To add an old timey feel to the proceedings, we’d be needing tobacco pipes, so we continued to Saul’s Tobacconist on George Street and had our faces fitted with old Briars. And so, puffing away we settled into a beer at the Great Southern Hotel, where Joel began the search for a willing driver.

While we sunk into a local down-and-outer’s indictment of ‘The Man’, Joel wove tales of adventure and grandeur around the pedestrians, hoping to entice them into the driver’s seat of my ’94 Daihatsu Applause. No-one was biting, and as the hours wore on I wondered (thoughtfully puffing my morning pipe) if we had pushed this idea too far?

Suddenly… “Another Tact!” announced Simon standing loudly, clearly disappointed with our disintegrating resolve. And with no better option on the table, we stood in unison and followed Simon’s defiantly pointed finger in the direction of a youth hostel.

One-by-one, with wild smiles and jumbled explanations, Ben and Joel asked the travellers if “adventure [was] their shoe”. The travellers, each quietly dealing with a compound hangover, looked at us pitifully before turning their attention to the security guard who was already making his way over.

Moments later we were kicked out into the street along with a young German guy who couldn’t escape the deaf plough of the guard. The German was a curious looking kid with a flexfit hat and fizzy hair who was initially against our offer to drive. However, after repackaging our request with a healthy $50 bonus, Stefan (as we would come to know the German) agreed to drive us to Old Sydney Town.

And after picking up my car and strapping the German to the wheel, we set our sights on supplies. We had forgotten to quiz our new chauffeur on his driving skills, but as we tore off down the wrong side of Bourke Street, it quickly became irrelevant (it was discovered that the 19 year old had only scarcely driven, even in Germany, although he did possess a license).

The German pulled up at the East Village Hotel in Darlinghurst, and after twenty-five minutes of running the streets I found a place that would sell booze to a drunk man in an overcoat, bowtie and a sailor’s cap at midday on a Friday.

With a driver and booze to match, we were off – and quickly reached the roundabout at the end of Crown Street; which the German charged around in the wrong direction. We all began instructing him loudly on his errors by screaming in fear and, accompanied by an orchestra of horns, Stefan simply ignored us all (to a halted truck driver’s amazement). This was already resembling a bad decision.

We didn’t hit the highway until some time after 3 and, knowing our light was fleeting, we urged Stefan to ignore the speed limit. We tore up through the North Shore and onto the Pacific Highway , a sleek channel of road that carves straight though the high hills. The radio blared above our drunken yawping and as FBi crackled out of sight, we tuned the radio in to some Central Coast Jazz station which, combined with our odd attire, seemed to make our German uncomfortable.

We were making great time on the road and good distance with the booze, and as we sliced across the Mooney Mooney bridge Simon slapped me on the back, “It’s happening ol’ boy,” erupting into a barbaric belly laugh.

Over Mount White, past Peats Ridge and the our exit (Sydney Reptile Park) made a prompt appearance, sending a nervous Stefan (we had remembered his name by now) flying up the exit ramp.

Our map, being on an envelope, watermarked with pinot noir and rather abstract – didn’t prepare us for the sea of industrial complexes that erupted from the highway. In the absence of the colonial welcome we were expecting, we ordered Stefan to pull into a warehouse car yard and we continued on foot.

Following our noses across the concrete drains and tractors for half an hour left us stumped and, resting on a boom gate we quietly felt defeated. After ten minutes of glum frustration we noticed, peaking out the top of the bush, a Windmill sat not 200 metres from us.

Assessing the Windmill’s dilapidated appearance from afar, we remembered the old school excursions to Old Sydney Town, the working windmill dancing in our memories. And so, with hope renewed, we ran through the bush, jumped a fence and we began to explore.

We first climbed up into the roof of the Windmill, Simon’s notepad began filling with notes on construction techniques and other points of interest. Next, we investigated the gallows, the houses, the school, and finally the gaol. It was insane to see… a 17th century replica of Sydney, intact, abandoned and overgrown – not more than a few hours north the of real thing.

In our drunken excitement we spread out over the town, and as the sun waned and the rains came over the hills, I heard the others running from security – I bravely followed.

Once we re-grouped and compared artifacts (Joel had found an original, 17th century price gun), we decided it was time to go. Giddy in the dark, we wobbled back to the car.

Anxious to get back to the more recent Sydney Town, we charged back down the Freeway. The trip was more or less uneventful aside from the odd bit of marching through traffic jams singing, Tequila deciding that Simon should get naked, the police pulling Stefan over (for racing down the Dee Why waterfront) and our uncomfortable entry to a friend’s dinner party (while it’s customary to show up drunk to these things, it’s not advised to bring strange Germans).

Curling back into Bourke Street we dropped a burnt-out Simon on a bed, before taking Stefan out on Oxford Street to repay his attempts at driving with booze. My memories of the expedition are non-existent but Simon recounts me arriving back at four in the morning… taking two steps into the apartment… and falling like a redwood onto the floor (where I would awake horribly some time later).

Like any good amusement park, there’s lots we didn’t get to do – you can’t see it all in (two drunken hours of) one day. Never fear though – we’ll go back… As the commercial said:

“I wanna go back to early times, go back in history,
I wanna go back to Old Sydney Town, to find out why I’m Me.
I wanna go back to Old Sydney Town, I’m an Australian,
I wanna go back to old Sydney Town, to where it all began.”

Tom.