Summary
‘ I came to Sydney from Melbourne in 1978 and immediately fell in love with its history, the sandstone buildings, the gorgeous harbour, the bridge, the Opera House, its ad hoc streets and its denizens.’
In Sydney, acclaimed playwright and author Louis Nowra – author of Kings Cross and Woolloomooloo – expands his gaze to explore the energy, beauty, vulgarity, dynamism and pulsating sense of self-importance of his adopted city. This big, bustling portrait of Sydney is told through profiles of people, high and low, with a cast of criminals and premiers, ordinary folk, entertainers, artists, thieves and visionaries.
Along with its people, Nowra surveys the city’ s architecture and its global identity. And as Sydney’ s history unfolds throughout the twentieth century and beyond, Nowra revels in its neon lighting, music, skyscrapers and sense of optimism.
Author Biography
Louis Nowra is an acclaimed author, essayist, screenwriter and playwright. His plays include The Golden Age, Inside the Island, Summer of the Aliens, The Boyce Trilogy, Radiance and Così (the latter two were made into successful films for which he wrote the screenplays). His novels include The Misery of Beauty, Abaza and Ice, Into That Forest and Prince of Afghanistan. He co-edited an anthology of writing about Kings Cross (with Mandy Sayer), In the Gutter ... Looking at the Stars and is the author of Kings Cross: A biography and Woolloomooloo: A biography.
Table of Contents
Author’ s note
Prologue
The Dispossession
Albion
The Distance of Your Heart
The Builders: Francis Greenway
Here She Comes!
Hunter’ s Era
The Cult of the Body
The French are Here
Old Sydney Town
The Army Steps In
The Watery Heart of Sydney
Town Takes Shape
Privileged Pursuits
The Shame of Clontarf
Sydney Becomes a City
The End of Transportation
The Dunbar
Sydney’ s Self-Creation
This is How a Dynasty Ends: The Fairfaxes
Hyde Park North
The World Comes to Sydney
The Divided City
A Young Woman’ s World in the 1890s
A Little Slice of America
The Domain, the First World War and Drink
A Day in Concord
Suburban Visions
On the Beach
The Golden Twenties
The Dreamweavers
1930s
The Coathanger
The War Comes to Sydney
Rats, The Bubonic Plague And Murderous Women
The 1950s
The Push
Flat Life
The Askin Era of the 1960s
Red Lights
Undercurrents
The builders: Harry Seidler
The Sydney Packers
Hyde Park South
A Taste of the 80s
This Small Block of Darlinghurst
A Global City
Now