It is also a fierce, borderline and dangerous city. Dawn in the winter here is an arson that pours gasoline on the horizon and ignites it while, below, the sharks gather and feed and the jellyfish cluster in large flowers that sting our limbs … I will not forget the moment a blue bottle floated in my mouth as I turned my head to breathe; I thought my teeth would fall out of my head in pain.
Nicole Kidman played Helen Davey in David Williamson’s Emerald City in 1989. Credit: Fairfax Media
As these creatures crawl, crawl, mate, hide, slide, wave, and search our ocean floor, we walk up the perimeters, working, playing, anguishing, laughing, making love, breaking- being, saddened, delighted, being human. And we draw strength from these waters in ways that we could barely articulate or understand. As well as inspiration. Like May Gibbs, who weeded her garden in Neutral Bay with a book and a pencil in her pocket, stopping to write down drawings of banksia men and rubber babies named Cuddlepot and Snugglepie.
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Charmian Clift wrote his glorious columns with a view of the harbor from his Mosman houses, at a time when those shores of the harbor housed a bohemian and creative center, thanks to its beauty and its incredibly affordable rents. Brett Whiteley painted in a house that rises above Lavender Bay, and commemorated that bay and pier, panoramic views of palm trees, yachts, fig trees, and crumbling water. His neighbor Peter Kingston painted passing ferries … punching his lights in front of them at night like golden fists.
Today I am concerned that the Bohemians have been expelled from our expensive city centers. I am also concerned about the state of our oceans, how much needs to be done to protect them. But my fervent hope is that the more we seek their wonders, the more we will fight to preserve them.
Very few of us have ever explored every corner of this city. There is always more to discover …
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But what I like is that only one corner can contain whole worlds: my corner, Cabbage Tree Bay, changes daily and amazes me constantly. Today I swam over a gray-fed shark, following yellow fish like the ladies of the company. Then it was the morning I swam in the Black Sea under a black sky at 5am with a light stuck to the back of my glasses so the kayaks wouldn’t hit me, only to find my neon blue glowing limbs in a bioluminescence flower. . It was a truly shocking moment of joy.
I don’t really see it as an emerald city. If it were a gem, it would surely be diamonds … the brightness of the sun scattered across the harbor fabric, the sparkles of phosphorescence seen by kayakers at Bobbin Head, fishermen at Hawkesbury, swimmers at Curl Curl, the flash. of iridescent fish … it is a hard, resistant and beautiful jewel that contains fire and water, infinite worlds.
The poet Kenneth Slessor beautifully described the waves in the harbor almost a century ago, when he wrote about the waves with “diamond combs and light combs” that “arched their mackerel backs and made a sandblast.”
Sydney is a city of dreamers, dangers, dark whales and “diamond pins” … And I love it.