A woman boards the train dressed as a khaki cuttlefish, hat pulled low and face mask tapering to the middle of her chest.

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.

Two dragonflies are circling in the car park heat, multiplied by their shadows. A lizard climbs to the top of a terracotta fragment, scans the horizon, then hurries down to cross the hot white surface in a run of darts and dashes.

Five powerful young men in dark blue singlets swagger across Military Road. They go into MacDonalds.

A man walks into a tiny yard on Spit Road, Mosman, mops his face on a towel on the washing line, and goes inside.

Sydney Observatory is a copper green pimple on the casino’s face.

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.

Four people cross Pittwater Road under their own steam. A man tears past them on a mobility scooter.

A girl with friends at the back of the bus: “If I fall asleep tomorrow, can you please not draw on me?”

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.

A flock of orange shirts has landed near the Warringah Freeway, and clings to the scaffolding. Beyond them, the harbour is blue.

A girl walks between tables in the sun, clenching a strip of biltong in her teeth. She rips it apart.

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.

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.

The profile of platform shoes appears to be on the rise.

Man at a cafe: “Oh yes. Some of them are all: ‘I’m the organist! Don’t you touch it!'”

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.

At Collaroy a motor scooter burbles almost to a stop in the bus lane, then accelerates as the lights change. Its rider leans forward on the handlebars.

A teenager slouches aboard with no pretence of paying. The driver glares, and the boy slumps into a seat. He has acne.

A curly-haired cocker spaniel and a bulldog trade angry words in the middle of the market. Embarrassed humans lead them in opposite directions, but the cocker spaniel turns back suddenly and lunges in a flurry of barks and snarls. Two steps later it tries again.

That bulldog has really got under its fur.

A woman with short grey hair limps past on a walking stick. She wears baggy jeans and a big, loose shirt of red and black squares. Stopping, she wheels round slowly, steadies, then continues on her new course into the book stall. She removes her glasses.

Manly Markets. A stroller goes past with dolls and toys piled inside. Somewhere underneath, a baby squeals.

Distraught girl from the animal rescue stall at Manly Markets: “At Shelly Brach there’s a shark eating a dolphin! The whole beach is closed!”

A man pushes just the low, storage section of a pram through the markets. A bulldog sits inside it, breathing heavily.