A TV news report showing the rundown state of the Hornsby Public Hospital , Sydney, surprised this writer . Over many decades I have been associated with Hornsby , seeing it change from a pleasant, leafy suburb on the North Shore railway line to one overrun by cars, jammed with dreary units . My contact with Hornsby included covering bushfires as a reporter half a century ago, transitting to and from beautiful Bobbin Head on the Hawkesbury River as a weekend worker at Halvorsen’s boatshed , selling and buying books and oddities , visiting my half - brother and his family who lived there in a quiet cul- de - sac and gaining insights into the development and economic health of the state and the nation.
On one trip from Adelaide to Sydney for an auction , I had a haircut at Hornsby and the young woman who ran the salon said she was shutting down and moving to Melbourne because rents – commercial and residential- were high , rising all the time , alternative premises hard to find . Sydney, she said, was now a place where it was extremely difficult for a person with limited capital , prepared to work hard, to survive. Other friends were being driven out of Sydney by the relentless economic pressures.
At the time, empty shop after shop was visible along main corridors in various parts of the city, the sites bought up for redevelopment . As a result,numerous small businesses , providing a wide range of goods and services,had been turfed out. On subsequent trips back to Sydney, increasing numbers of monotonous office blocks had risen in their place. Even my grandmother’s humble terrace house with its brave Australian Christmas Bush had disappeared beneath a concrete pile , the ground floor boasting market research .
From time to time now you read or hear people say they are leaving Darwin because it has become too expensive a place in which to live. It is hard to get off the gravy train which eventually grinds our bones into dust.
On one trip from Adelaide to Sydney for an auction , I had a haircut at Hornsby and the young woman who ran the salon said she was shutting down and moving to Melbourne because rents – commercial and residential- were high , rising all the time , alternative premises hard to find . Sydney, she said, was now a place where it was extremely difficult for a person with limited capital , prepared to work hard, to survive. Other friends were being driven out of Sydney by the relentless economic pressures.
At the time, empty shop after shop was visible along main corridors in various parts of the city, the sites bought up for redevelopment . As a result,numerous small businesses , providing a wide range of goods and services,had been turfed out. On subsequent trips back to Sydney, increasing numbers of monotonous office blocks had risen in their place. Even my grandmother’s humble terrace house with its brave Australian Christmas Bush had disappeared beneath a concrete pile , the ground floor boasting market research .
From time to time now you read or hear people say they are leaving Darwin because it has become too expensive a place in which to live. It is hard to get off the gravy train which eventually grinds our bones into dust.
