The Story of Colley

This eerie and antiquated vista is of Johnstone's Bay, Sydney, and looks towards the Anzac Bridge.

Behind this scene is a whole different world - Pyrmont, a place where the relentless mushrooming of high-rise dwellings shows litlle fiscal, social or architechtural sense. The wizened pylons that are being plucked from the sea are going to make way for some of the trappings that go along with frenetically turbo-charged housing development - in this case, pulling down the historic jetty-top train line that used to serve the industrial wharves of the area, and like magic swapping it with a harbour-side PROMANADE! so the locals can stretch their legs outside their 26th story abode.

This is a pattern that is followed all round the world when developers sweep a locality clean of it's history and trade it in for stunning wads of the folding stuff. The high rises go up, the promanades and parks are built, and the developers move on. And for the first few years, they might be kinda nice - 'cause they are new - and clean, and well... there. But in a few years, after the ghetto rot has started to set in - I'd say this former jetty train would be a good place to head if you don't mind risky company, and are in the market for some very affordable drugs of dubious manufacture.

- - - -

After I took this photo, and thought about the old train, and the old jetty, I Googled Johnstone's Bay, and returned 6 pertinent leads. Most were of niche interest - such as council boudaries and sewerage outfall pipe plans - however, there was one nugget that glowed so very, very sadly out of an era forgotten close to one and a half centuries ago. A notice, placed in Sydney's daily newspaper on Saturday March the 30th, Eighteen Hundred and Sixty One. To wit;


FOUND DROWNED - At about ten o'clock on Saturday night a little boy, named William COLLEY, aged five years and eight months, son of Mr George COLLEY, blacksmith of Pyrmont, was found floating in the water at Johnstone's Bay, Pyrmont. He had been missed from him since five o'clock on the same evening. On search being made, his body was found, as described, by his mother. An inquest on the body will be held immediately.


I wonder how long it has been since someone has thought of little William? This photo is dedicated to the Colley's