out and about
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The storage place at Brookvale has a deep blue field enclosed by thick yellow diagonals, but the rest of the wall is white. At a glance, in the glare of morning, it presents as one big gable.
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Two dogs trot past crystal water filled with their reflections.
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At Central Station, shimmering colours draw the eye to a figure kneeling with her back to the train. Sunlight has found her thousand glittering sequins.
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At Brookvale Depot a woman stumbles across the driveway with a stroller, reaching and bending to catch a small boy running free. A small girl is splayed across the stroller’s front, as if to be drawn and quartered.
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Four elderly women sit round a table at the bread shop, their attention given to one knee out of eight that is swathed in bandages.
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Maisy’s cafe in Neutral Bay. Two men discuss music and Dominicans, and one breaks mid-sentence into Gregorian song.
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When the train doesn’t stop at the places in between, itโs a long trip from Newtown to Ashfield.
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A man works on a telegraph pole, his cherry picker hidden by the trees.
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The old railway workshops at Redfern, up and down the gables, all the way along, are neatly labelled โSleazeโ.
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A woman boards the train dressed as a khaki cuttlefish, hat pulled low and face mask tapering to the middle of her chest.
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Two friends cross the road at Spit Junction with the ease and grace that youth has granted them. A weathered old woman hurries past with a shopping trolley.
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Five powerful young men in dark blue singlets swagger across Military Road. They go into MacDonalds.
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A man walks into a tiny yard on Spit Road, Mosman, mops his face on a towel on the washing line, and goes inside.
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Sydney Observatory is a copper green pimple on the casino’s face.
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A girl on the bus struggles to disentangle a cord from her hair. Tightening it at last, she flicks rivers of glorious hair into the space behind, where a young man is trying to read a book.
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Four people cross Pittwater Road under their own steam. A man tears past them on a mobility scooter.
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A girl with friends at the back of the bus: “If I fall asleep tomorrow, can you please not draw on me?”
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A woman in a face mask stands waiting to cross at Spit Junction. She turns and looks over her shoulder with that slow, dawning certainty that a zombie horde is coming.
I get that.
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A flock of orange shirts has landed near the Warringah Freeway, and clings to the scaffolding. Beyond them, the harbour is blue.
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A girl walks between tables in the sun, clenching a strip of biltong in her teeth. She rips it apart.
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A couple in their 30s sits in a space they’ve made their own, on the cross-seats at the front of the bus. She wears a straw hat over her blonde hair, and when she takes off her sunglasses her eyes are clear crystals with a hint of green. He wears a cap. They look at her phone together. She smiles at him, as if nothing could ever come between them.
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A salt-water crocodile leaps from the footpath as the bus pulls in. Oh. It’s a shopping trolley camouflaged for the tropics. An old woman wrestles it aboard.
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The profile of platform shoes appears to be on the rise.
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Man at a cafe: “Oh yes. Some of them are all: ‘I’m the organist! Don’t you touch it!'”
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A cloud of perfume boards at Dee Why, with black workout pants and a black t-shirt saying “Harry”. The shoes are absolute gym boots from the 60s.