walking home late last night along paramatta road, i watched as the seagulls lined up along the roof of a warehouse next to stanmore mcdonalds, waiting for an opportune moment to swoop down for a stray chip, or crumbs of mayo-soaked bread. this mcdonalds has recently undergone a renovation, with the aim of looking more like the kind of modern, dimly-lit café that the discerning diner might like to visit. the gaudy, plasticy reds and yellows of the eighties fast food aesthetic has been replaced with square lines, wooden beams and chrome signage. i guess the hope is that any reservations that people may have about mcdonalds are soothed by the gentle, sophisticated, hip model of the future. for me, though, who only ever walks past the carpark and exhaust fans from the kitchen, the overwhelming sensory experience of the place is the sound of gulls and the smell of pig fat.
when i first moved to stanmore and noticed the seagulls – which apart from on friday nights when the carpark is an ad hoc nightclub and pick-up joint, are the most regular presence – i was disoriented, wondering where they come from. stanmore seems so neatly knitted into the inner west that you can easily forget that there is water close by. the annandale canals, which run off from glebe point, are just to the north, and the harbour curves around almost half of an imagined three-sixty degree circle around the suburb. thinking of the other suburbs i’ve lived in, there is more or less the same sense that there is water everywhere: the central network of port jackson, botany bay to the south, and, of course, the ocean to the east. each network is so complex that it is often difficult to locate yourself when at the edge of the water. i remember one night a couple of years ago, nick and i drove down to balmain late at night in heavy fog and walked around the foreshore. after about fifteen minutes, we realised that we had lost our point of reference – the harbour bridge – and we no longer knew which direction the small scalloped inlet we were following was facing.
as i passed mcdonalds last night, i realised that most of the cars parked in the lot had people in them, mostly on their own, silently eating their food. as though the design of the space, with the tacked-on drive thru, was not alienating enough, people choose to eat their food from inside their cars, lights out and windows up. i imagined that this sort of practice would displease the gulls greatly, who were still lined up on the warehouse, ready to brawl for flotsam. further down bridge road, a woman in jogging gear got out of her car and ran to the wheelie bins of an apartment block to throw her bag of rubbish away. the bag was sizable, no doubt filled with the cheap mess of plastic and waxy paper. she jogged back to her car and drove off. i could still smell the pig fat as i turned into albany road.
* a note on the map
after thinking about this, i wanted to see if i could draw a map of the waters that surround each of the houses i’ve lived in. the map is obviously not conclusive, nor particularly accurate, but was done mainly from memory and include any part of water that i have a connection to, or experiential knowledge of. i referred to a sydway street directory to clarify names in some cases.
