NAKED CITY – OPEN AND SHUT SYDNEY

It’s a once in a year chance for the general public to sticky beak inside some of the more intriguing and often downright quirky structures that have helped define the Emerald City. As their blurb states “Sydney Open invites the curious and intrepid to see inside the heritage treasures that trace the city’s beginnings and the architectural wonders that are shaping its present and future”.

On November 4 and 5 there’s a unique opportunity to visit the top of the old AMP Building in Circular Quay, once the tallest building in Sydney or take a happy snap in the politically rambunctious bear pit of Macquarie Street’s Parliament House. That’s just a taste of the seldom seen spaces and over forty historic buildings that are throwing open their doors to let Joe and Josephine public in – along with the kids of course.

There is however another darker side of Sydney that’s unlikely to be encompassed by such a family friendly tour and maybe needs to be explored in the interest of revisiting some of our more notorious and sinister buildings. What better place to start than the old Darlinghurst Police Station near Taylor Square where in the 1970s the Yellow Pages were more likely to be used as an instrument of interrogation than finding a phone number.

It was here in the late 70s that the shamefully corrupt and homophobic NSW Police frequently bashed gay men and anybody else they disliked, well behind locked doors and any public scrutiny. They enthusiastically embraced a tradition of brutality that dated right back to the 1800s where just up the road at the Darlinghurst Gaol, public hangings often drew crowds in their thousands. Any tour of this facility, now the National Art School, would best be conducted at night to see if the ghosts of the executed still inhabited the convict built sandstone walls.

Not far away in Kings Cross a walking tour could trace the last hours of Juanita Nielsen from her tiny terrace in Victoria Street to the backroom of the old Les Girls in Darlinghurst Road. The tour could also take in KC strip clubs Porkys and Dreamgirls, soon to be converted into an office building, although apparently some of the neons will remain. There’s not much else left in the Cross that bears historical interest unless some kind of archaeological dig is instigated. Who knows what or whom may lie beneath the rows of vacant shops, el cheapo backpackers and battling businesses.

Meanwhile in Sydney’s new party central, Newtown, the old Hub Cinema would be an essential stopover on the seedy city tour. As our slice of New York’s 42nd Street, in the 1980s it was home to nonstop screenings of such arthouse gems as Behind The Green Door and The Little French Maid, complete with ‘erotic’ live acts, shuttled from the Oxford Street ‘Sinema’. Only a few shop facades remain from the old blood and guts days of Newtown in the 70s although the site of the much loved Elizabethan Theatre (which burned down or was torched) back in 1980 would certainly be worth a visit.

There’s obviously much, much more that could be incorporated into a ‘sinister’ Sydney tour and it’s certainly a project that could be looked at. In the meantime you’ll just have to do a quick tally when you visit the bear pit in State Parliament House as to how many former members are currently residing at her majesties pleasure.