I moved to Sydney in April 1990. I was a girl from a small town who had never know anything like Kings Cross (the closest I came was Nightmoves in Launceston where the worst thing that nearly happened was I nearly got busted for underage drinking.. Or maybe that was Hot Gossip.. But I digress).
My overall point is I hadn’t grown up in Sydney or experienced anywhere like the Cross EVER, but I never once felt unsafe. My girlfriends and I used to go out every weekend, dance the night away at Studebakers, continue to party all night, and rock into the Bourbon and Beefsteak at 6am for breakfast before the walk home (to Paddington, we’d usually spent all our money out, and the walk home was only about 20 minutes). We knew to steer clear of seedy alley ways – that’s just using common sense. We’d wave to the bikies, who used to line the streets, and spend their nights “keeping an eye on the place (amongst other things I am sure), and if we were up for a longer walk, stop down a Harry’s Café De Wheels for a pie. The unwritten rule was that if you stayed out of trouble then trouble wouldn’t find you (refer to previous sentence about common sense).
In an extract about the cross (reference: http://bit.ly/Sxad2b))
"You find it ugly, I find it lovely", wrote poet and journalist Kenneth Slessor in his 1933 book Darlinghurst Nights. These days, though, visitors to Kings Cross and Darlinghurst are more likely to find it more pleasant and unassuming than seedy and sleazy. Kings Cross in the 1930s was the closest thing Australia had to an urban bohemia, a Montmartre or Amsterdam red light district. It was the place to come for sly grog, titillation and sex. In the 1970s it was a welcoming home to Sydney's hippies and the place where American soldiers on leave from the Vietnam War came for sex and recreation. In the 90s it became a centre for the heroin trade and the city's homeless. Alongside the sex and drugs, though, the Cross has always been a fertile breeding ground for the arts. It was the scene of Australia's first cross-dressing cabaret Les Girls, the musical Hair was staged in a Kings Cross theatre and has been home to many of Australia's artistic royalty, from poets Slessor, Mary Gilmour and Robert Balas to painters William Dobell, Donald Friend, John Olsen and writer Frank Moorhouse.
Fast forward to 2012 and the tragic death of Tom Kelly. Combine his death with the other stories you hear and this much is true; I still go out in the Cross, as do many people, there are loads of great restaurants, but these days I am a heck of a lot more alert.
The vibe is not what it was in and I don’t think we will ever recapture that. Which is sad because once upon a time, it truly was an eclectic melting pot of people from all walks of life,
Kings Cross – where glam fights sleaze:
I hope they catch the heartless thugs who killed Tom.
love reading your musings....
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