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.