Darling Street in 1999, outside the Institute Arcade, by Philip Gostelow, from the State Library of NSW

Balmain has been our home in Sydney since we arrived here shortly before Christmas in 2021. Physically, our life has revolved around Darling Street. It is a nice feeling to be locally anchored for a peripatetic family like ourselves.

Close to where we live, a short walk west on the Bay Run, lies Callan Park, a 60-hectare open green space with several heritage listed buildings on it. We have walked and cycled here often in our three and a half years in Sydney. With a rich and complicated past, the future of this central green space is all but certain.

Callan Park, view towards Bay Run

A slow-motion trainwreck has been unfolding on our doorstep here in Balmain, Sydney. We live about a kilometer as the crow flies from one of the world’s biggest infrastructure developments, the WestConnex and its newly opened Rozelle Interchange. WestConnex is a huge underground road network built and operated as a public private partnership (PPP) that has been under planning and construction since the early 2010s.

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I listened in to this presentation today, organized by The Australia Institute, a progressive think-tank. It featured financial commentator Alan Kohler introducing and taking questions on his recent piece in the Australian Quarterly Essay.

While I still have to lay my hand on the issue, today’s talk along with this Guardian extract gives you the gist of what Kohler’s arguments are. I wanted to jot down some notes from the talk, and add some of my thoughts that have been accumulating over the past two years. Continue reading →

It’s almost been a year that we have moved down under from Thailand. Moving countries doesn’t get easier the more one does it (I find, at least), but now it seems more and more to me that we’ve “arrived” here. Continue reading →