Sydney places
VISITING Sydney this time, I was struck by resemblances or connections with London, the city where my family on both sides lived. Given that the weather could hardly be more different, how does Sydney keep London going, by words among other things?
Placenames
There’s another Woolwich, more dignified than the London one, and a Greenwich which is less so. The two King’s Crosses look more alike. Hyde Park tries hard. Sydney has a whole lot more London suburb or streetnames, but then, what city in the Englishspeaking world doesn’t? Even Dunedin, for all its Edinburgh names and connections, has a Kew and a
Highgate. The urge to name new things after old ones goes deep, whether there’s any resemblance or none . . .
Aboriginal
. . . which, on reflection, is strange. There’s no shortage of names, and every one of these suburbs or townships must have had an indigenous name. In Sydney itself, such names don’t abound. At least glorious
Woolloomooloo tells you you aren’t in London or the home counties. Also Taronga, Narrabeen, Parramatta.
Suburbia
The trouble with visiting any great city is that you visit its centre and best bits: its vast suburbia can be ignored. I never wanted to follow my forebears and work in London because I’d seen them spend so many hours (years!) commuting by train. They either had their friendships in the same suburb, or undertook vast journeys at the weekends to change suburbs, or met in central London; or didn’t meet. Sydney is smaller, but I did get a whiff of London’s grey anonymity once when I took suburban trains to Windsor. It was pancakeflat, and grey, like the East End approaches — Stepney with gum trees.
Cockneys
There’s a kind of Cockneydom there too; small people who speak quickly, and with variable wit. Long ago I was in the central post office, trying to find the right place to post. I asked a bystander. He looked just like Sid James, that ‘‘wrinkled prune’’ of Hancock’s Half Hour, with a fag stuck to his lower lip. He told me: ‘‘Just put it in that lousy box there’’. An older Sydney saying was the simile, As flash as a rat with a gold tooth.
The water
Loafing around on the waterfront like everyone else, I thought Sydney did some London things even better. Boats of all kinds zipped around; almost colliding, never quite. It’s a pleasure to sail somewhere, anywhere really: it reminded me of the ride from Westminster to Greenwich. Because Sydney doesn’t have as many bridges, you notice the boats. Busily bustling in all directions, they make the harbour more exciting and friendly than London.
Sydney
Where Sydney surpasses London is its natural setting, the endless lovely inlets and beaches, the strong rocks, the reaches of water everywhere, so that even the tall buildings of the CBD don’t dominate it. The Harbour Bridge and the Opera House ensure that.
Sydneysiders
Lastly in this holiday rhapsody, why is a denizen of Sydney called a Sydneysider?
One informant said it came from a time when Sydney was regarded as comprising the south side of the harbour: from a north shore perspective, those over there were on the ‘‘Sydney side’’. It may seem odd to accept someone else’s name for them; but odder things have happened to language. Maybe the official city boundary stopped at the water then moved?