Redfern is downtown Sydney – one of Australia’s oldest suburbs, the historic urban home of Australia’s Aboriginal population, and Sydney’s last inner-city lower income zone, directly south of the CBD (central business district). While parts of the place could certainly do with constructive beautification, the locals are currently fighting aggressive takeover moves by the developer-friendly State Government of NSW (New South Wales to you foreigners). The government sees this quarter as a wasted resource that needs gentrification with ritzy highrises and raised rents… current plans include tearing down two housing commission highrise apartment blocks full of elderly invalids and ‘relocating’ the residents somewhere out of town.

In a sprawling city like Sydney, people from one side often never visit the other, and Redfern has a reputation as a violent ghetto that far exceeds the reality. In fact, for all its shabbiness it’s a far more community-minded place than the leafy affluent areas in the north where I grew up – and if you get robbed here it’s likely to be your handbag or the change bowl from beside your open door, not the entire household contents leaving in a truck.
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As good a day as any to begin a blog, especially in Sydney, where the national holiday commemorating the landing of the First Fleet – traditionally called Australia Day – is celebrated with picnics and yacht races, and marks the end of the long summer holiday season that begins back in the lazy crazy lead-up to Christmas.

Fairy lights and tinsel are coming down now; kids go back to school next week and the last little restaurants are reopening. People turn again to the rigours of the rat race, fat and brown and full of prawns. The Harbour Bridge still wears the fancy lighting that makes it look a lot like the Luna Park entrance, but the Sydney Festival is winding up.

Drew and I, we’re going down to Redfern Park to take in a bit of Yabun – the Aboriginal commemoration of Invasion, involving (like most commemorations) music, dance, food and fiery speeches. After that, still in typical inner-Sydney mode, we’ll bike up to the local Olympic pool, do a few laps, and cycle home to change for opening night of Opus Cactus, a dance performance by contemporary Canadian company Momix. As an ex-ballerina now dance-writer-about-town, I get free tickets to lots of cool shows. If I get around to it, I’ll put up some brief reviews of shows I’ve seen.