Archive 1:
Ray, interviewed November 25 2006, Redfern Department of Housing:
I have lived in Redfern for 15 years when I was first moved into this Department of Housing apartment in James Cook Building (of all places). When I first saw the name I thought, well I am going to change that, but I found out that all these building here are heritage and because they originally started out with the navy they all have naval names of some sort.
… I don’t mix much, I just tend to be here working or I am out of the place, but it’s reasonably quiet, the sirens go every now and then and we call that the Redfern lullaby… but it doesn’t bother me, it’s a neighbourhood that’s vibrant, we have our crime but then so do other places, we have an over zealous police force but then so do other places, I love living here, thirteen flights up, I only wish I was higher…
The changes will destroy us, they are not only out to remove the Black face out of Redfern/Waterloo they want to move the Department of Housing out too, they want to move the poor out, for such an area as this to be on such valuable land and its been subsidized so the poor can live here goes against any patterns of what the government understand’s as the bottom-line. This place is valuable, very, very, valuable and they want to make money out of it. Their first push, of course, is to get The Block, but that is going to be a fight and a half, and I don’t they are going to win on that, I think it will be a compromise, but it will be loss for us nonetheless. The Block remaining in Aboriginal hands is the only way we will see it. What Mickie Mundine wants to do there with the housing company, personally I don’t fully agree with, but it is much preferable to what the government wants to do with it.
Now when it comes to removing the Department of Housing, which covers a huge area, again they are going to have a very large scale fight on their hands. One of the humorous stories, if there is humor in these situations, is that we have a large contingent of Russians here – what is termed the White Russians – and they have been here since the Department of Housing took the units over in the late ‘70s and they have told Frank Sartor and the respective ministers “you leave us alone, we must die here and then you can do what you want with the buildings”. Now that is solidarity for you! They are all ancient mate, they are bloody ancient, and they are not going to last long. So we are here by the grace of their ghosts! But there is a grit and a determination – bugger it we will not be moved. We will stay here, they can blow the place up around us.
…I would like to put more resources into the neighborhood. They start good they put in a tennis court but when the nets start to rot that’s it, they never maintain it. They say that the community should maintain it – but this is Department of Housing, its poor, the community can’t maintain it. Welfare these days is really a welfare, welfare, its people with mental health issues, addictions, all that sort of stuff. There needs to be a lot more done. I would also like to change how cliquey this place can be – these days there is more emphasis on privacy than community. We had one person in the unit opposite there who was dead for five weeks and nobody found him! Later when people were talking about it they said they hadn’t seen him for a while…
There also needs to be something here for the teenagers to do. I was saying before that they put in the tennis court and the teenagers all went there and played touch football etc but the people above the tennis court complained to the Department of Housing that the kids were swearing so they stopped them from using it. So it sat there for months unused and now the net is rotten.
I like to think we will still be here in ten years, better managed and better self managed. I certainly hope that we have a better class of copper, ‘cause the police are brutal here.
Redfern Station, 2006 .
Lily, interviewed November 25 2006, The Block:
I lived in Redfern from 1981 to 1984, and I now work here at the Performance Space. I like that I know lots of people here, that you can walk through The Block and talk to people and there are Black fellas from all over Australia - its like an extended family. I have my great niece here with me today and she is playing in the park and now she has wandered across the road and I don’t have to worry because she is talking to an uncle and aunty. I couldn’t do that is I was in the city, it would be too dangerous.
After the disbandment of the missions and reserves a lot of people were coming to Sydney for work, it was after the depression too, and everyone seemed to congregate here in The Block. They were squatting in the old houses, it’s a meeting place, a gathering ground.
The changes that they want to bring in… they may as well round us back up and put us on the missions, if its going to go ahead like that. They may as well relocate people again, ‘cause that is what is happening, people are being relocated to other areas, like when they relocated people to Mount Druitt where I have been working for the last 15 years, they relocated everyone here straight to Bidwell in Mount Druitt. There are 11 suburbs that constitute Mount Druitt and Bidwell has to be the worst and lots of Aboriginal and Islander peoples end up there. It fragments the community, you break down family relationships, some have been on a hard journey to find their families and then they break apart again. And that’s grief, and we are already born with 218 years of inherited grief, and they are just adding to it. This will affect not just Aboriginal people on The Block, but Aboriginal Australia. This place is the Black heart of Australia.
…I like the Pemmuway project, I think you have to tap into tourism, it’s a gold mine for our community. I know my kids are talented, I know they have all these deadly skills and they understand politics from a really young age and I just want to support them and give them a voice. Our kids were not raised with the racism that we were raised with, they are on the ball and able to act. I think we have some deadly leaders coming through. We need a tourist centre here, some shops, artworks, it could resource the community.
Cecil, interviewed November 25 2006, TNT Towers:
I have lived in Redfern 48 years, I was born here and have lived here my whole life. It was great growing up here, I know so many people, I went to school in Redfern, all my family and my brother and sisters are here on The Block. If I could change anything I think that a big thing is that we need to get off the gear, its gotten pretty bad over the last 15 years, we need to help people that it’s a problem for, this would be a major improvement for the community as a whole.
Redfern Court House, December 2006.
Phuong, interviewed January 13, 2007, Vine St Redfern:
I have lived in Redfern since August last year. What is there not to like about living here? I have been speaking to a fair few of the neighbours around where I live I go over to their houses and hang out with them and developed a few new friendships in the area. There are different pockets of community around – it’s the interactions between the people who live within the spaces and the relations they create with each other. In Redfern itself, in my street, there is a sense of community dynamic - little rifts between neighbours and that sort of thing. And you learn little things about neighbourhood gossip. When I cycle to a different part of Redfern to visit friends I often cycle through The Block and there are certain people I see there all the time and I wave and they say hello back and I guess this makes a fleeting space of interaction. I am not sure if I would call all of this community, however, because sometimes it can be quite insular, we are just talking to people we know and not engaging with people on a broader scale.
I know about the proposed changes because I have friends who are actively involved in finding about what Frank Sartor and the RWA are up to. Also I previously lived in near to McDonaldtown Station and there was a proposal for stabling yards there and lots of the local residents were very concerned about increased noise and other issues. Also I know about the changes through my university as I am studying architecture at Sydney University and one of the projects we had last year was helping redesign The Block in collaboration with The Aboriginal Housing Company and so I got quite interested in finding out what was happening with the redevelopment. Subsequently I ended up helping the REDWATCH, the community group which is making sure that the RWA is doing the right thing by the residents.
I am concerned finding out about the redevelopment and more particularly the goals of the redevelopment, I want to know if it is a visible process which the proper community consultation and the outcomes are there to benefit the community rather than developers and wealthy people who want to live close to the city. As a cyclist I am also wary of projects such as the Eveleigh Railways yards which is a concern because it encourages increased motorized traffic along Wilson Street which is one of Sydney’s most trafficked bicycle routes – more cars on Wilson street makes it more dangerous for cyclists.
If you want to create a sense f community and improve the local area I would probably be looking at closing off some of the traffic routes and reworking traffic in the area in order to have more concentrated pedestrian areas and open spaces for people to walk through without cars.
Andy, interviewed January 12 2007, Cope St:
I have lived in Redfern four/five months. I like its proximity to the city, I like all the creative stuff that goes on around here, and that’s about it really. I am having a bit of a re-evaluation about the place at the moment actually as I was mugged just before Christmas, as I was coming home from the office Christmas party - two guys punched me in the face until I gave them all my stuff and they ran off. I feel annoyed too at all the people who walk past screaming and yelling at each other and fighting all the time.
I am not really aware of the changes that are proposed. I am not a fan of high density living, there are public housing right near here and it doesn’t seem to be working all that successfully, there is a whole critique of low income housing and people who don’t have enough support and council facilities etc and I think bringing more of that into the area will just make more trouble really.
If I could change things I would make Redfern more cycle friendly, Sydney’s roads are appalling especially Regent Street. I would probably also have more parks and pools. I would do something about the architecture of the public housing, they should make public housing less high density and designed using more sustainable practices and make it look nicer. I am not sure there is a strong sense of community here, I actually liked the other suburbs to the north of here a bit better, I felt more at home in the Newtown area.
Ross, interviewed January 14, 2007, Regent St:
I have lived in this area for close on 40 years now. For the last 13 years in the same place, but a few decades in the area as a whole. I like that it is central and handy to a lot of things and it had a very strong community, and there are still traces of that here now. Community means that people say hello to each other, that they have a degree of concern for each other, if someone is having a hard time you give them a hand, it might even be as simple as if the old lady down the road can’t pull her shopping trolly up the hill you stop and help her …
The proposed changes will be the last in possibly a long series of moves by the government in this area and may be the one that finally destroys this community. It will force the existing residents to move out, they will be displaced and short term residents will move in who are not bonded to a community. If you read any academic papers they will tell you that it takes at least five years for a person to start to develop ties when they move into an area, and if you take the state wide average people are moving every seven years, the changes here will make it a darn site sooner than that. It will displace a strong community and prevent new ones from emerging.
If I could change things here I would shoot the social engineers, all the academics, all the town planers, all the government planners, all the architects, all ivory tower dwellers who do not have any concept of what the people want and need. They just get bright ideas and then go and inflict them on the people - oh they claim to consult, to go through due process but in reality they don’t. If you go back in history you find Professor Tony Vincent started his career in this area, he is now very famous and he now recognizes that this area has been over consulted and studied. Leave us alone, let this place heal, go play social games somewhere else.
In ten years time I foresee that this place will be a vertical slum. All the last vestiges of the community will be gone, displaced by gentrification, the old buildings will be gone, it will all be high rise apartment blocks, that have become impersonal with no sense of ownership for the people occupying them and no social fabric courtesy of their structure. What starts as an expensive block of apartments over time becomes owned by absentee landlords and the state of the building becomes run down and the price of the rent goes down and you have a decline into a physical and mental slum.
