A walk to Darlinghurst

This morning I went down into Darling Harbour as usual. Underneath the Western Distributor two trucks were moving, one forward heading in the direction of Haymarket and the other reversing at the same time in the same direction behind it. I headed up the stairs that lead to Bathurst Street and passed by the office building that supports the pedestrian walkway. It leads to a bridge that passes by one of the western exits of the Cross City Tunnel.

At the lights at the bottom of the stairs a number of people waited for the walk signal. When the signal turned green a portly man in late middle age with short orange hair walked toward me. Further up Bathurst Street there was a pair of brown underpants discarded on the pavement, and a few steps further along there was a black T-shirt that had been treated in the same way. Up near Elizabeth Street I saw a huge crowd of people walking in a group down the street on the opposite side. When I got to Elizabeth Street I saw that they had crossed from Hyde Park. There were men in Army fatigues and Navy fatigues as well as people wearing hard hats. Another group of people was still in the park. I even saw a man in Navy fatigues wearing a hard hat.

In the park a crowd of people were walking down the stairs out of the War Memorial. A man with a pink lollipop sign was facing them, standing on the path. I headed up to College Street and crossed at the lights, then walked up Oxford Street. I crossed to the southern side of Oxford Street further up and headed for the kebab shop at Taylors Square. I ordered my food and when it was ready I sat down to eat it at a table at the back of the restaurant under a television set which had half of its display occupied by a crazy tartan of horizontal and vertical lines. A cooking show was on and the waitress stood half facing the front door with her head on the side, watching the screen. She then removed some hot pides from the oven located at the back of the shop.

When I had finished eating I headed down Bourke Street and turned right into Campbell Street, then left into Crown Street. A woman was standing at the door of a donut shop talking to a man standing on the footpath. "I feel like a steak," I heard her say to him. I continued along Crown Street until I got to Foveaux Street. A pub near the corner advertised "proper sandwiches" on its facade. I turned down the hill toward Central Station.

As the hill flattened out I passed by a restaurant with a sign in its window spelling out "Greek Street Food" in neon letters. Next door to it was a sushi train restaurant. The Greek place had long communal tables and all of the spaces appeared to be occupied by diners. There were crowds of people waiting to cross Elizabeth Street, on the other side of which a busker sat on the pavement behind two prone dogs; I had seen the same busker from time to time near Market City in Haymarket. I walked under the train tracks through the tunnel and along Eddy Avenue to Pitt Street, where I turned left. I crossed Lee Street with a crowd of people and then walked west along Broadway to the shopping centre.

I turned right into Bay Street and headed north down to the park. There was a huge group of schoolchildren in the park that moved en-masse toward Wentworth Park Road and crossed at the traffic lights. I headed home, picking up a cup of coffee on the way. It hadn't rained although I had carried my umbrella with me and I was glad to get inside and sit down.