Annandale / Stanmore

North Annandale Hotel on the corner of Johnston & Booth Street on top of the hill...

Johnston St corner with Booth St looking South to Parramatta Rd - 1888.

Northern main sewer, White's Creek Aqueduct in Annandale between 1898 & 1910. 

Johnston's Creek Heritage listed Aqueduct, Annandale. Built in 1898 to connect the Western Suburbs to the main sewer line. Those aqueducts were the first reinforced concrete structure in Australia. 

The 'Olympia Milk Bar', on Parramatta Road, Stanmore; frozen in time since 1939. Its original name was 'Olympia Talkies'.

Ben Summers took this photo in 2019. 

Olympia de Luxe Theatre showing MGM's 'The merry widow' with Jeanette MacDonald in 1934 or 1935.

Sydney, November 2017 - April 2018

I have visited Sydney, Australia recently after an absence of almost 20 years. I stayed in the city for 4 months from 16 November 2017 through to 3 April 2018. I found the city much changed especially the upgrading of its streets, footpaths, parks and public transportation. There's a lot of new buildings etc.

But what surprised me most is the musical side. Sydney is a very musical city. I hadn't noticed it when I lived there in the 80s and 90s. But now I'd hear music in the background everywhere I went.

I spent a lot of time rummaging through stuff at Vinnies, Salvos & Anglicare thrifty shops always listening to whatever radio station or sound system they had on. 

Most of the time their sound system was connected to 'odies but goodies' programmes and it didn't take me long to realize most of the repertoire is from the 1980s.

Here are some of the songs I happened to hear most while driving in cars and utes with friends... or going through shopping malls, supermarkets, thrifty shops etc. 

Psychedelic Furs' 1982 'Love my way' would play almost all the time. Then through the Internet I learned that 'Love my way' was back in fashion due to being in the sound-track of Luca Guadagnino's 'Call me by your name', a coming-of-age drama film based on a 2007 novel by André Aciman. The flick was first shown on 22 January 2017 at Sundance Festival and released in the USA on 24 November 2017, exactly when I started listening to it at shops and shopping centres in Sydney.

As I stayed at my friend Evan's house in Kingsford, I used to go out with him in his ute to help him in a few jobs he did for a real-estate agent. Evan's radio would be on 95.7 FM station and I could not help but notice they played a song I thought it was new but when I searched for its title in the Net I had the shock of my life to realize 'Teardrops' by Womack & Womack is actuallty a 1988 hit song I had never heard because I was in South America then.

..., Linda Womack & Dashiell Rae. 

Linda Cooke Womack sings 'Teardrops'.

Australia's own hard-rock or pub-band Choirboys' 1987 'Run to paradise' would pop up anywhere at any time. One would think it were 1987 all over again.

The Choirboys as they looked in 1979; Ian Hulme (bass-player) says: photo taken outside our 1st rehearsal room in Roseville circa 1979. It was an old boarded-up shop next to the servo at the top of the Roseville Bridge. Mark (Gable, vocalist) is looking a little like a 70s porn star. The rest of us  (Brad Carr, lead guitarrist and drummer Lindsay Tebutt) look like deadbeats, thong wearing, northern beach inbreds!