Hometown

I walk amongst it, through it so often, its presence so diverse, I literally walked within it today. Sydney — until this prompt 'Setting as Character', and coincidentally, a random lock screen on the same day — did I realise that I've just walked and still live within the reaches of one of the biggest characters on earth.

This character has been a part of my life since I was ten or younger, longer even than my hometown, where I grew up. I first came here as a kid, and a little one at that — maybe I wasn't ten, maybe earlier. He'd walk us everywhere! Even now, in his late seventies, our locations have reversed: he is in my hometown, and I am here. He visits me here, holidaying and walking.

This city, this character revealed to me, gave me the nearest sea-going experience I would ever achieve before becoming a submariner: a trip on the Manly ferry in rough seas. It was great. I'd come back in my Navy days and live at Watsons Bay, on South Head — a view up the harbour, fifty-cent schooners, weekend surfing at Bondi, the Bondi life some would say.

My second stint was a posting to HMAS Perth, dry-docked in the inner city. Gone were the million-dollar views up the harbour and out to sea, and here were daytime views of the inner harbour, whilst living on the lower side of Kings Cross — at that time, the seedier side of life, some would say.

Not that it is necessarily that now. I lived there for a time in the Olims Hotel, on the lower side of Darlinghurst Road, the main drag, as it were, of the Cross. At seventeen, a sailor in the middle of the Cross, the darker side of life revealed itself to me. When the main way in and out of your suburb involved walking past strip clubs and pubs at that age, it was interesting.

I left it behind me for a bit, off to sea I went, sailing the southern seas, only to return to start my life as a submariner — this time living over near Maroubra, cycling across the city, the Harbour Bridge and down into HMAS Platypus over Milsons Point way. Again, this time was different: although still in the Navy, not in the Ritz of South Head, or the bustle of the Cross, this was a more routine way of living.

It was at this time that cycling was a thing, and not unheard of for me to ride from Hornsby Heights across the city to Maroubra, even Watsons Bay, as I again stayed out there for a stint — curtailed, even, as I believe there was a short hospital stay. Then I went to sea in the west again.

I'm sure I'm mixing this up a bit as I think about my stays in the Harbour City — it's been a long time. I eventually left the Navy and went away for several years, only to be mountain biking my way along the east coast before landing a post-graduate job as an office worker in Sydney again.

This time was the last return to Sydney, as it's become my home now. Twenty years of travelling into the CBD every day, and now, after several years of not doing that, I find myself with my lovely wife travelling into the city for outings — Sydney City is now a destination I find myself going to more and more often, an endless, forevermore destination.