out and about

An old man and a tiny schoolgirl step off the bus at Spit Junction. He leans down and lifts an admonishing finger, which she ignores.

A small girl with a big pink backpack climbs to the top of the bus. She squeaks as her small mother hauls her close. The girl turns round, both hands clutching the seat-back, and smiles through her lashes at the woman behind.

Her eyes wander, her tongue pokes out the side, she closes her mouth and uses her tongue to stretch and distort the curve beneath her mouth.

There’s so much you can do with a face.

An older woman strides past the cafe window, and with every step her white hair jumps for joy.

Across the mezzanine at Dymocks Cafe, two women browse a bookcase labelled Best Sellers. One pulls down a book called Stay Awake and flicks through it. Three titles away, some Girl has found another dangerous vantage point.

On the Saturday morning bus to Manly, two girls slouch in consecutive window seats and scroll their phones. Heads down. Faces blank. Cushioned in their solitude, unknown to each other.

Then one turns round and they talk, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. As if they’re on the same journey.

Weird.

A woman hurries in and asks for coffee. She has sturdy legs, a short black dress and a big black bag. The man who doesn’t serve draws her into his corner. He talks and talks and his hands weave. The woman blinks. She gives little nods and says Yeah. Yeah. Her coffee is ready but still he talks. Finally, with a laugh, she turns and heads for the door. Not smiling.

A boy cycles behind his father on the footpath, with eyes only for his dad until a motorbike roars past. The boy’s head swings around to follow and he gazes after it, looking and looking, riding blind.

Near Dymocks on George Street, two little girls disappear into the crowd with excited squeals, as the vehicle-crossing-footpath alarm starts up. Two women lunge after them, sweeping strangers aside and screaming “Stop! Stop!”

A girl nearby, hand in a parent’s hand, looks back with concern.

At Warringah Mall bus stop, a schoolgirl cocks her hip and gazes into the distance, looking smug. A boy is talking to her.

Walking through Dee Why, a woman struggles to contain a plastic bag as big as herself, filled with helium balloons. Its surface whips and ripples in the wind.

A man with a Harley Davidson t-shirt attaches his face-mask and, inadvertently, his empty green shopping bag as well.

An older man struggles down from the B1 and limps along to the lights, very slowly. “Wreaking Havoc since the Middle Ages,” says the pullover round his waist. All that time is catching up with him.

Stencilled on a concrete gutter in Sydney’s leafy St Ives: “Take that, Society!”

An imposing man stands very still at the entrance to Three Beans, gazing across the square. He’s tall, with black suit pants, white shirt and tie, and a dastār that makes him look taller still. His bearing suggests skulduggery in the distance, and he’s got his eye on it.

Bark Bark: graffiti sprayed large on a small brick structure.

On the platform at Milsons Point Station, a Supreme Court Justice lifts his sun-bespectacled eyes to the morning and adjusts his wig.

On the other hand, this may be a man with a fluffy white jumper on his head.

Big, white, webbing sacks of soil, soldiers from a doomed campaign, surrender to the rollicking weeds near Redfern Station.

Beside the train tracks in Newtown is a sandstone church with the most beautiful red doors.

A small, plump woman and a huge, heavy man pass the square in Dee Why. She wears dark, discreet clothing. He wears high-vis and a hard hat. They don’t speak. They don’t look at each other.

They’re on a mission.

On the grass verge outside Warringah Mall, a tiny yellow excavator swaps one small accessory for another.

Two men talk long over short black coffees. One man, in a suit and tie, has serious, watchful eyes that constantly scan his surroundings. The other, with his back to me, wears shorts and a singlet. They leave together, one with a stroll and one with a swagger, but stop to talk again at the edge of George Street.

A vast man, occupying one and a half seats on the bus, is squeezed into his allocated space by a small Asian girl. You can tell she’s a badass, cause she wears her Stussy cap backwards.

Outside Wynyard Station on York Street, a small boy swoops on a footpath treasure. His mother confiscates it, resisting his entreaties, and cunningly flicks it away behind her back.

It lands on the footpath, lying in wait for the next little boy.

A dangerously manicured woman works on a laptop nearby, talon-typing.

A dark-skinned woman and a grey-haired Caucasian man share a cafe table in Ashfield. The woman talks. And talks. Every so often she leans in close, and whispers.