Audi 2008 Annual Report Download - page 134

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
thought of her despair that tightens my chest, even after all the years. I know I
have to find her.
Sydney is a city of ancient unmarked pathways that became dusty tracks lined
with canvas and jute and soon a confusion of lanes and alleys, passages and
courtyards, easements and rights of way. But that was a long time ago. Govern-
ment and commerce have taken every chance to align the city, to fill in its
voids. Now instead of poky alleys we have great plazas and squares; instead of
trenches, fountains; instead of darkness, air and light. I hurry from block to
stretching block and pass only a handful of stubby lanes ending with skips and air
conditioners. It’s only in the oldest part of the city that the skyscrapers run out,
you suddenly feel taller. Here are tiny terrace houses in brick and local sandstone,
old churches and even older pubs. There are blind alleys between and behind the
buildings, narrow lanes zagging through the stone. In the northwest corner of
the headland, shadowed from the late-morning sun, is an empty park with swings
and a slide.
Aggie and I used to explore this part of the city together, looking for places
we didn’t know, even though we’d lived here all our lives. The worn stone steps
leading down to the old finger wharfs, the back rooms and cellars of the city’s
first hotels, even the cast-iron public conveniences used to delight us back then.
We were married too young, and then we were divorced too young. We were hop-
ing against all wisdom that two wrongs could make a right.
There’s nobody here in the leeward side: not my ex-wife, not anyone. And so
I turn and climb the observatory hill, I look up to the city’s towers and down to its
mighty foundations, and I descend towards its possible, its hopeful heart. The
old lanes and alleys weren’t really destroyed, they were sunk below the streets.
Many of the towers and the underground stations are connected by tunnels that
stretch for kilometres, north to south, east to west, lined with tiny shops of the
kind that used to crowd the surface. Tobacconists and barbers, shoe shiners and
key cutters, seamstresses and thread merchants and hawkers.
Aggie and I would meet down here for lunch, long ago; we were working in
law offices at opposite ends of the tunnels, and it was always a thrill to take the
lift to the basement and meet her in some hidden café halfway between our
buildings. We were often the only ones there, we’d sit on mismatched chairs and
stay much longer than our lunch hours.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Sydney
7