Mural 4: A Balcony View 1882–1982

Artists’ statement

After John Palmer’s farm and house ‘Woollamoola’ was established, Governor Darling granted land for the establishment of “a high-status area ... which would serve as both example and chastisement to the debased populace of Sydney town”.

The ‘debasement’ of Woolloomooloo followed soon after, as grand homes were converted into boarding houses and housing for workers was built for emerging industries around the wharf.

Popular newspaper accounts and cartoons of Woolloomooloo’s vibrant street life in the late 19th and early 20th century were populated with a theatrical cast of colourful characters. These included the larrikins of the Plunkett Street Push and notorious razor gangs of the 1920s and 30s.

Woolloomooloo’s partial survival as a working-class suburb remains characterised by both the social solidarity and conflicts of neighbourhood life, and by social interaction on streets where cars are now banished.

Beside the Housing Commission’s support for low-income families, the Matthew Talbot Hostel provides shelter and support services for homeless men, boarding houses provide short term accommodation, and renovated private terraces and apartments attract a mobile middle class. In contrast with the deserted spaces of outlying suburbs, the sense of community that survives in the public housing area is the result of resident activism and collaborative town planning between government agencies.

The top section of the mural is a street scene and composite social portrait drawn from the cartoons by Phil May for The Bulletin (1886–1889). The lower section combines images drawn from contemporary life with a corner of street life from the film Kidstakes, set in Woolloomooloo on the even of the Depression.