The other night I went to a Christmas party with a company my work supplies to. I walked around some areas that now have changed a lot in the past five years especially. I remembered the housing commissions that my late Dad’s friend lived in when I was seven years old. That whole block was now gone. Some parts remain like the park that had a handball wall with a 70s era mural one side and graffiti on the other. 

Now they had painted the back of the wall beige and a kind of slap dash street art wall was on the street side. There were apartments walling the park in and I felt it was lucky I recorded some of the graffiti over ten years ago. Nearly every video I have made now is a relic of a world long gone. All of my photos and video stills that I rummaged over look like they are ancient now.

I will dream sometimes of places like bachelor pads with small messy rooms and my Dad is in one of them but he never seems to be around. Last night on my way home I took a bus that goes through old haunts and housing commissions. That night I had dreams about hiding from cops in state housing. Going in one entry and coming out another in what seems like a labyrinth of open doors.

I took photos at the party and they seemed to be ominous with a sky full of dread. Dark twists of cloud highlighted here and there. It was the steel grey of the clouds and the industrial landscape of Botany. Someone was saying it was all going to be developed into a state of the art harbour. Maybe that was why the sky seemed so sinister. It was simply watching over the potential destruction and reimagined ports and gasworks.

This all could be mundane but lit up with a promise for a world with great disparity. It’s hard to imagine this new harbour without a lot of money because the landmass is bigger than some new developments that have been unfinished for almost a decade. The building we were in was left unfinished for a few years after the first builder went broke. A lot of developments have stalled or at least remain mostly built. It is tough out there.