THE NAKED CITY
WARM NIGHTS ON A SLOW MOVING TRAIN
With Coffin Ed In a new Australian movie Night Train To Lithgow, two homeless people in their late 60s strike up a conversation, alone in the so called ‘quite carriage’.The man and woman are on the 12.18am train from Central to Lithgow, returning to Sydney at 6.00am. For the $2.50 pensioner concession, it’s a cheap, relatively safe and warm place to sleep, although the seats are not exactly designed for dozing. Halfway through the journey they discover they were once childhood friends and the dialogue expands to how they have both fallen on hard times and now spend their nights sleeping on the inter city trains. The movie is just a concept but the reality is happening every night, here in one of the most affluent cities on the planet. As the nights get colder, and the homeless are moved on from sleeping around Central Station, the late night inter city trains are at least one option to impending hypothermia. The round trip to Lithgow takes about six hours and with few passengers on the train there is plenty of room to stretch out. It’s also relatively safe – as safe as it can be for anybody travelling on a late night train with no security cameras and the guard locked away in their own compartment. There is however an emergency button in each carriage, something you don’t get when you are sleeping under the railway bridge in Woolloomooloo. There is no law against sleeping on trains, plenty of tired commuters do it everyday, but transport minister Andrew Constance has expressed his disdain at the increasing number of rough sleeping passengers.The State Government has now asked
welfare groups not to provide food for the homeless at Central Station as supposedly a way of keeping them off the trains. The situation is of course nothing new and the homeless have been sleeping on late night trains for years. It’s interesting to look at the reaction of other passengers with a number of posts on Railpage under the heading “Should The Homeless Be Allowed To Sleep On Trains?” One commuter writes: “I’ve read on the forums that the interurbans that leave sinny (sic) after midnight (particularly the 12:10 to lithgow) are used as a “hotel on wheels” of sorts for the homeless, particularly on cold nights. Do you think they should be allowed to be on a train for the express purpose of a nights sleep? Personally, as long as they have a valid ticket, and don’t bother other pax (not that there are many others on these services usually) i don’t see the problem... the transits seem to be pretty sympathetic to their cause...” Whist another complains: “If they have had to have paid for a ticket for the express purpose of turning a seating carriage into one huge sleeping compartment, then they could have saved themselves the cash that they had spent, and gone and slept in a free bed provided by the Salvo’s at a shelter.And the money saved used to buy themselves a meal and a shower.” It would appear that the public are somewhat split on the matter and all the State Government is doing is shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic. If the homeless are hunted from Central Station, they aren’t just going to disappear. They will soon find a new hub to gravitate to and the welfare providers will follow them. In the meantime the late train to Lithgow sure beats sleeping in Tom Uren Square in Woolloomooloo.
Mary Shelley
creates out of her deepest pain and hardest times, something so impressive and grim it hasn’t been seen before. Always following her heart, Mary runs off with the love of her life, young charming poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Booth). By the age of 18, her life has been full of pain and loss, but would that life have been full of love, joy and this intense creativity had Mary chosen the conventional way? Awesome actors and an incredible story based on Mary’s true life tell the story of a woman with intellect and bravery who changed many attitudes towards women’s genius in the early 19th century. Focusing on the love affair between Percy and Mary this movie is a great choice if you’re seeking a romantic drama. (LSe)
Mary Shelley tells the story of an incredible, strong woman and her extraordinary relationship. Being punished by many misfortunes Mary Wolllenstonecraft Goodwin (Elle Fanning)
WWWW
REVIEW: Charles Freyberg Dining AT The Edge
Like Kenneth Slessor before him, poet Charles Freyberg thrives on the contrasts and unconformity of Kings Cross, and after some 20 years of observation and participation has produced Dining At The Edge, a book of poems at once fascinating for their unsentimentality and wonderful for its clarity of language. Sometimes Freyberg is the observer and at other times such as in his powerful Car Job he puts himself into the first person as a ‘lost boy’ working the infamous Darlinghurst Wall, something I am sure he never did. Anyone familiar with the Cross will recognise landmarks such as the Piccolo Bar and the Goldfish Bowl but it is through
Freybergs’s voice that these come alive, not through our own recollections. In Michael On Darlinghurst Road Freyeberg gives a nod to Michael Dransfield, a poet seldom mentioned today despite writing a wealth of work and leaving life in the appropriate manner of the 70s. Unlike Slessor, who loathed the countryside, Freyberg becomes positively pastoral when he leaves the confines of Potts Point and ventures into Terrania Creek and Govetts Leap as real places, not just some relocation of the mind. Throughout the book’s 29 poems Freyberg gives just enough of himself to engage the reader emphatically before he has you in the back of his
cab and is taking you on a journey that you did not know that you wanted to take. Read and enjoy. (JMo) Book Launch July 15. El Rocco, 22/154 Brougham St, Potts Point.
REVIEW: Vandal Gallery’s Breathing Colours
Breathing Colours encourages visitors to celebrate colours by experiencing them anew. Although we see colours all day every day, we rarely take the time to truly appreciate their vibrancy, which is what the Breathing Colours exhibition is designed to change. Art Pharmacy has put on another exhibition at Vandal Gallery, this time to showcase the work of three artists: Micke Lindebergh, Nuha Saad, and Elefteria Vlavianos. Each of the featured artists are experts in exciting colours and aspire to allow colours to breathe through their pieces. Mr Lindebergh specialises in choosing chromatically lush materials and draws his inspiration largely from retro Scandinavian children’s books, Japanese comics and Sydney’s summertime. Ms Saad focuses on how colour can influence our thoughts and behaviour. She has spent a considerable amount of time exploring the visceral responses, sometimes immediate, intense and irrational, that colour can produce in people. Ms Vlavianos mainly uses acrylic paint and raw pigments to discover how the materiality of paint and conventions in the tradition of Armenian medieval gospel painting can regenerate what has been lost, misplaced or denied.
Artist Micke Lindebergh with his installation works. Photo: Art Pharmacy_Vandal
While the gallery itself is rather small, the works are quite interesting and creatively stimulating. The collection includes a variety of paintings as well as multiple three-dimensional pieces. Each piece of art explodes with bright hues of colour. Although it is not large, the Breathing Colours exhibition at Vandal Gallery is a quick, fun trip to liven up any evening. (EE) Until July 20. Vandal Gallery, 16-30 Vine St, Redfern. Info: www.facebook.com/ events/251142252101497
Show Dogs
Loners become family and strangers from different worlds become friends in a world where animals can talk to each other. Meet Max, an ambitious macho but cool and lonely Rottweiler police dog on a crazy mission in Las Vegas. Accompanied by Frank the loner FBI agent, he needs to save the adorable baby panda Ling-Li who’s been stolen from a Zoo in China to be sold for millions. But it isn’t just Ling-Li’s life that’s in danger. Undercover as a primped show dog with his trainer the unlikely team needs to stop cruel animal-smuggling which uses the prestigious dog show as a front. Some weird stunts tended to seem pretty unreal and could have been better animated.
Slightly funny dialogues as well as many allusions which partially didn’t work made the movie a little insipid in some parts, but cute animals and an adventurous story affected the film positively and made it definitely watchable. (LSe) WW1/2 city hub 12 JULY 2017
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