Darlinghurst 1963: An Overture
Distinctly I remember the bleakest of days in December, 1963. Darlinghurst, Australia. The world was teetering on the cusp of change. Like the prehistoric beasts that walked the earth millennia before us, we were blissful in ignorance of what was to come. With each breath, and each step, and each misdeed, we undertook the slow march straight into the outstretched and grasping arms of our own extinction. What’s more, we did so with smiles on our faces.
This was not the Sixties as the history books would go on to depict them. Those four mop-tops who would one day represent the decade of free love, had barely left the dark dank of the Cavern Club. Flower Power was but a twinkle in the eye of a stoned San Francisco panhandler, and Charles Manson was just beginning to yearn for a sense of family.
This was when moral poverty still casually sauntered through the streets, before it had been forced out of the light, and cast into the shadows. These were the final days of the Golden Age of Crime as we called it, back when
“crime” itself wasn’t the dirty word it came to be. It was just earning a living. Among certain circles it was just the done thing. And indeed, everyone was doing it. Never had the thin blurred line between law and chaos been quite so unclear. Back then, badness wore polished brogues, it doffed its cap to those it passed, and slipped its hand so deep into their pockets that it latched on to their very souls. Though new ideas of morality, fairness, and justice were
quietly bubbling away, they had not yet gained the kind of traction required to kick-start the social revolution. The lessons learned during WWII had long since been forgotten. Principles were at a premium and righteousness was near bankruptcy. The common man had more money in his pocket than ever before and some people liked to take advantage of that. They ensured that the demand for depravity followed the seemingly endless supply. I know. I was one of those people. I took the oldest of sins, and I commodified them.
While the black and white tv adverts were selling washing powder and instant dinners to housewives across the country; we were putting our grubby little fingers into their husbands’ swollen wallets. We provided girls, drink, drugs and gambling. If they’d pay for it, we’d provide it. We were relentless. I once sold a flea-riddled old goat to a particularly seedy Kings Cross peepshow. I didn’t ask what they wanted it for.
Sydney was fast becoming one of the richest cities in the world. It was a melting pot of people, and a petri dish of criminality. If Sydney was the inferno, then the suburbs of Darlinghurst and Kings Cross were the shadowy frozen lake that made up the ninth circle. They were filled with the worst of people, whose presence, conversely, seemed to attract the richest and most powerful to the very same place. If you had money in your pocket, there was nothing you couldn’t buy. We’d show you a time that made the debauchery of Caligula’s Rome look like Sunday roast at your grandma’s. We’d make sure you went home spent, skint and full of utter self-loathing.
Drink? We ran the pubs, and the clubs. We owned the breweries and the distilleries. We owned the copper bathtubs that local bootleggers used to make the cheapest and most foul-tasting gin imaginable.
Drugs? You name it, we sold it. Uppers, downers, smilers, frowners, they were all yours for a price. Our dealers were on every street corner, and they were in every establishment. At one point we put our distribution in the hands of the coppers walking the beat. We were paying them off anyway, so why not get our money’s worth? That soon stopped when we realised the corrupt bastards were robbing us blind.
Girl? That was easy. More and more came in off the buses and the ships in the harbour every day. Blonde, brunette, red head, brown eyes, green eyes, blue eyes, old girl, young girl, white girl, black girl, yellow girl, brown girl, front door, back door, just want a cuddle? It was your money. It was no one’s business but your own.
Boy? Well, you’d have to go down the street for that, it wasn’t my thing. Ten shillings? Did you just say ten shillings? Where on earth did you get ten shillings? You could have had my bloody dad for ten bob. My old mum would have shaved his face, packed his lunch, straightened his tie, and sent him on his merry way to the jolly good buggering that awaited him in your bed.
Money was the zeitgeist. It was the god we prayed to. Business boomed because sin was in. Us criminals earnt a good deal, and we spent a great deal more. Oh, how we frittered our money. Suits, girls, three-legged horses, cocaine, champagne, and expensive divorces. We couldn’t remember what happened yesterday, and we didn’t plan for tomorrow. We slept all day and we danced all night. We got plenty of practice for that final dance; the waltz we’d do with the devil when our time ran out. In those days murder kept us young, so to speak. None of us died old, in his bed, surrounded by loved ones. We died on the street, or in the pub. That was life back then. Or rather, that was death back then.
The handsome, philandering man tasked with leading the free world into the future, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, had been gunned down not a week before. I couldn’t have cared less. Although, truth be told, I did have a certain respect for his old man, Joe. He was one of us.
That night, I stepped out of the front door of my little old derelict house, I lit a cigar, and I cast a cursory glance up and down the dark street. It was a nightly ritual of mine, all in the name of self-preservation. It was silent, and so I counted my blessings. One night it would not be quite so quiet. One night, the gun weighing down my overcoat would be the difference between life and death. If I got to it in time. I’d been sailing too close to the wind for far too long. It wasn’t my enemies that scared me, it was my friends. My friendships were endured, and never enjoyed. My friends feared me. People living in fear act foolishly. They’re quick to cock the hammer, pull the trigger, and flee into the darkness.
The sky was black that night. A shade of darkness that has since been lost to our world. Plumes of white smoke and grey soot drifted from the chimneys of the industrious factories and satanic mills nearby. That strange modern brew rose through the night’s sky and broke up the suffocating tenebrosity that blanketed the city. That toxic concoction settled over our heads like a poisonous shroud, nightly. It left a cold clammy hand resting around the throat of the city’s inhabitants. It took years off our lives.
The street I lived upon was like any other Darlinghurst backstreet. A row of terraced housing, built in uniformed Edwardian style, with filigree finishing that celebrated the native flora of Terra Australis. Later these streets would come to represent the gentrification of our cities. But back then, the crumbling stucco exteriors and soot-stained walls could only hint at the ungodly slum conditions inside. To put it in perspective, that street shared one outdoor toilet for over a hundred inhabitants. No one wanted to sneak down in the black of the night wearing their pyjamas, and we did wear pyjamas back then; not like the ungodly generations that followed. People’s hesitance to make the trip to the shared facilities meant anyone crossing those cobbles had to dodge the urine that rained and the shite that hailed down from bedroom windows above.
As I put the sole of my expensive Italian shoes to the well soiled asphalt, a groaning dirge lingered in the gloom before me. Across the street, a man lay there in the gutter amongst the rats, their slime-slicked backs glinting in the moonlight. No one had told this man that the 1960’s were a time for hope. No one told him of the new and exciting world that lay ahead. Had they, I don’t think he’d have cared. He lay there convulsing in the sour discharge that seeped from the sewer grates. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, revealing the bloodshot veins breaking up the yellow of his sclera. His lips, they were blue. There was no belying the nature of his condition. I’d seen it before. It was confirmed to me by the needle sticking from his arm. Too late, too late will be the cry, when you’re standing on God’s doorstep begging for more time. He was about to meet the formerly benevolent Maker who had abandoned us some years before. The all-powerful, entirely apathetic being that had allowed this wretch’s life to rot away to the point where it could be snatched from him at the pointy end of a syringe. Death is a deeply personal and private matter, and so I moved on.
As I walked along the road, hints of what lay ahead washed over me in the breeze that carried dirty, muggy air onto my grubby, sticky skin. A few notes of piano music here, the shattering of a glass smashing there. As I walked closer, it grew louder. Then it became the instantly recognizable din of Darlinghurst Road; a cacophony of excess telling, to my well-trained ears, the tale of each of the deadly sins. I was in no rush; I took my time, drinking the atmosphere down like wine. I’d grown up in a town smaller than the street I was walking upon; it had caused ennui, an existential boredom so paralysing that, at times, death had felt like a welcome solution. Darlinghurst Road was anything but boring. Entering Sydney’s red-light district, for me, felt like the steps a gladiator took, walking into the shadow of the Colosseum. Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive. But to be criminal was very heaven.
The city’s centre of sin was humming. At first glance you’d have been forgiven for thinking it was just good, clean, Christian fun. Your eyes take a moment to adjust to those blinding neon lights. But as they did adjust, the mindless, shameless debauchery came into focus. Revellers were crammed into the street’s pubs, clubs and brothels. Queues formed along the pavement and spilled onto the road. Those who were turned away from the street’s dens of iniquity took their wanton party to the cobbles. Bottles of spirits were passed around, downed, and dropped. Cocaine was snorted. Sex was had. The floor was awash with broken glass, lost booze, blood, piss and semen. It gave the place a strange sickly-sweet smell, something like that of jasmine. Somewhat enticing, but wholly stomach turning.
The air that night, was thick with the sound of drunken boorishness. Over the rambunctious racket of the street, music burst from every establishment. In 1963, it was the sound of the would-be crooners. Tuxedo-wearing grease- balls, the lot of them. They were nobodies who’d climb upon those stages desperate to forget their unremarkable country town upbringings. Hoping a misguided hope that, just for one night, they could be Sinatra or Martin. They spent their week working in post office sorting rooms, cleaning streets or handling rubbish. Then, as if by magic, they suddenly became someone at the weekend. Con artists, the lot of them. None of the old standards were safe; they were all butchered upon the stages of Darlinghurst Road.
The sound of an argument sprang forth nearby. A fight broke out. It started small, as they do, but within minutes it had rippled through the crowd and engulfed the entire street. Punches were thrown; kicks were kicked, bites were bitten, bones were broken, and flesh was torn from bone. In a Darlinghurst street fight, the only thing scarier than men were the women. They clawed and bit, they scratched and spat. They were ruthless. The Styx, it seemed, had flooded. Its waters had gushed over the flood plains, into our sewers and spewed into our gutters, and onto our paving stones. Hell was empty. All the devils were here.
In the midst of what would now be considered a riot. Two uniformed policemen walked straight out of a club, stuffing envelopes filled with dirty money into their jackets. They exchanged a troubled glance, each silently nudging the other into action. They stepped over the punctured body of a severely beaten man, and onto the pavement. The cowards reached for their truncheons, they swung them wildly and blindly, and they made their escape through a tornado of clenched fists and flying teeth.
“Officers... Will you do nothing to stop this ungodly mess?” A foolish old priest questioned. How he got there, I cannot be sure. Never since a Christian missionary stumbled across the village of famed chieftain Tuifeai had a man been more out of place, and in more certain jeopardy.
“They’re bloody animals,” came a rushed answer from one of the scrambling bobbies. Before the holy man could implore them to help, the peelers were gone. They vanished into the night, taking with them any hope this bible-bashing, choir-boy-bothering fool had for a peaceful resolution to the dire outbreak. The priest cautiously watched, unsure how to proceed in such a situation. He was deeply afraid, just as he ought to have been, of the mindless rage on show. A woman scrapped with another on the floor: she put her foe’s ring finger right in her mouth, violently prising the jewellery off with her teeth. A man’s cheek began to stretch and tear as he was fish-hooked by a filthy calloused finger. Blood hit the cobblestones. Some big bastard took one to the chin and stumbled back, accidentally stepping on my new shoes; I put him down with a vicious head-butt that shattered something. Perhaps his cheekbone, his nose or his jaw. I straightened up, checked my forehead for errant teeth embedded in my skull. It’s been known to happen. As I did, I caught the eye of the priest. He looked at me with a deep, judgemental shame framing his aging eyes.
I watched as he walked down the street with his bible clutched to his chest. The poor bastard looked ill with worry. He stumbled, and upon looking down to see what he’d tripped over, he saw two pairs of legs. Two pairs of legs entwined, leading straight into the shadows of an alleyway where a pair of sinners copulated madly.
It was commonplace, men with women, men with men, and women with women. If you’d looked down one of the backstreets on any given day or night, you’d have come across some really weird happenings. Nasty sexual stuff that would turn your gut inside out. That scene was like a Blake etching of Hell, yet the priest spoke with a voice that suggested he should have been at home eating crumpets and drinking tea, “England is full of the wicked, the blasphemous and the damned. Terra Australis, this untouched and new land in the south, is our second chance for righteousness.”
No one paid him any attention until a pair of scabby- looking streetwalkers approached him; all in the name of a giggle. They brushed up against him and blew kisses towards him provocatively, “See something you like, guv’nor?”
The man of God visibly flinched as one of the girls lifted her dress to reveal her exposed cunt. She couldn’t help but push it up against his thigh. Just the thinnest layer of cloth lay between the chaste and holy, and the diseased and filthy. The poor old thing could barely speak, “The Lord preserves all who love him, but the wicked he will punish.”
“Want to hear my confession, father? I’ve been a real bad girl.”
“Then the Lord rained down burning sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah. From the Lord out of the heavens.” The women just laughed in his face as they walked off, looking to sell their wares in the night.
The priest grew more and more desperate. He became less and less rational, “Can you not see the error in your ways? Can you not accept the word of God into your heart?” The people on the street either looked at him in apathy or didn’t look at him at all. “This is wrong... This is not why the good Lord has given us a second chance at righteousness, will none of you repent?” I’m not too sure what the old fella was expecting, you don’t walk into the kinkiest of kinky sex parties going on in the deepest, darkest dungeon to ask if they want to stop their depraved activities for a nice cathartic spot of confession, do you?
“None of you?”
Quick as a flash, a fist flew through the air and cut the
fella short. It landed square on the poor preacher’s temple. The bloke stumbled, tripped on the gutter and fell face first into a wall. His nose smashed, his lip bust, his brow split, and his teeth cracked and fell out. The only righteous man on Darlinghurst Road that night slid down the wall, coming to a rest on the pavement next to the shoes of a man snorting a bump of cocaine off his thumbnail as he urinated loudly. The piss splashed over the cobbles and soaked the old fella’s bible. The street howled with laughter.
A couple of well-to-do types, who I can only assume were lost, or doing some manner of sociological research, saw the priest on the ground and assumed him to be a drunken tramp. They tossed a couple of coins on his prostrate form and walked on. Half an hour later, he’d take those coins, he’d go into the nearest grog shop, and he would break a lifetime of sobriety. Ten minutes on The Cross, that’s all it took to break a man. Weeks later, he’d suck on a rusty old spoonful of heroin like he was sucking on his mother’s tit. Six months later he’d be found dead in a bedsit nearby. That’s what the 1960s were like in our little corner of the world. Not so much a circle of life, more an on-going spiral of death.
Cursing my scuffed shoes, I stepped through the crowd, past a queue, shook hands with a doorman and walked into the debauchery inside. The club was a picture of lurid excess, champagne sprayed through the cigar smoke that filled the heavily perfumed air. Expensive suits surrounded me, rare jewellery shimmered in the dim, with a choice bit of nakedness here and there. I moved through the rows of tables and chairs surrounded by expensive suits and gowns, my eyes wandered at the exquisite flesh on show, more specifically, at the exquisite jewels that sat upon it. I went through the drinking, and past the fun; I was there for business.
Through a door I went, and in a gloomy kitchen I was. It had shut for the night some time earlier; the lights had been switched off and the staff had gone home. It wasn’t empty, though. No business in Darlinghurst really closed for the night. Venues just transformed into places of unholy worship. Places where flesh, fluids and powders became religious experiences. Barbershops, greengrocers, tobacconists, they all welcomed risqué business and ill- gotten gains after nightfall. In the kitchen in question, a Jane Russell type with curves that would have convinced the Pope to forsake God, sprawled onto her back over the benchtop. Her dress was pulled up, her white knuckled fists were full of a man’s greasy hair as he cunnilingued her like it was their last night on earth. A keen eye for detail would reveal that she wore a wedding ring, while he did not. Marital vows never meant so little as they did while nearing an illicit orgasm. Near them, a group of patrons were doing their best to snort from the stainless-steel surface a mountain of dust nearing Himalayan proportions. Cocaine. Likely the Chinese batch that had come in through Darling Harbour not a week before.
I knew that because I’d imported it. An associate of mine over in Peking ran opium dens, she’d happened upon several kilos of incredibly potent cocaine. It seemed the Chinese preferred golden brown to snow white so she shipped it over inside priceless artefacts. Objects that I took great pleasure in smashing to get my hands upon the nefarious cargo. It would be a white Christmas in Sydney that year.
Leaving the kitchen, I continued my journey by climbing a luxurious staircase. The banister and wall were carpeted in a deep red velvet. The stairs were finished with well- polished brass. It looked opulent, but it fooled no one.
Those who ascended that staircase were conversely descending into depravity. On the stairs, a man lay there passed out, utterly drunk and lying in a pool of his own warm vomit. Another man, a shady looking individual resembled a hoarding squirrel in the last days before winter, rifling through his pockets. As I approached, the sneak- thief scarpered up the crimson climb like a priest’s hand up a choir boy’s gown. I walked on, leaving the prostrate man behind, the Good Samaritan I was not. A life lesson I will gladly give you for free. If you can’t handle your drink or your drugs, don’t try. It might sound like common sense but many a man, far better and much wiser than I, has fallen afoul by not heeding that sage advice.
At the top, I knocked on a door of dark polished oak. A compartment slid away to reveal the menacing eyes of a doorman who I assumed was broader than the doorway he guarded. “Password?”
“Let me in before I cut your bollocks off and give them to your wife as earrings.” That shadowy set of eyes looked me up and down. The sliding panel shut, the door swung open, and I was in the middle of a gawdy brothel. The flashiness of the place did little to hide its grubbiness.
Women separated by their individual aesthetic qualities were brought together by their shared motives as they paraded the hallways in lingerie you could have flossed your teeth with. They flirted coyly with potential customers, to the seedy men’s faces they were honey dripping sweetness, but behind their backs they cringed and did the only thing that would help them through the night; they snorted their wraps of cocaine like it was a cure for a nasty case of the clap. Don’t think me judgemental of the ethics of the practice, after all it’s a business transaction between two consenting adults. When operated the right way, prostitution can give women a decent standard of life.
It’s the biology of the thing that turns my stomach. I passed a fat, balding man as he slapped the perky arse of a wily operator who led him into a tackily furnished bedroom. With a little money in their pockets, these disgusting, ageing men could roll back the years and sleep with beautiful girls as young as their daughters. What kind of sordid pastime was that?
When I imagined all the sets of musty-smelling, crusty bedsheets under that roof, I almost vomited on the spot. When I pictured the gallons of virus-riddled, milky discharge that flowed from the bloated pigs frequenting this kind of desperate place, I practically ran for the door at the end of the corridor. I had a strong stomach for drugs, blood and crime, but brothels made me feel ill. I guess growing up in a similar establishment, with my mother, had sickened me of them for life. Still, it had put shoes on my feet and food in my stomach, when many of my peers wandered barefoot and empty-bellied. The old girl wasn’t all bad.
Having stepped through the door, I gasped at the fresh air on the other side. That cesspit of human filth was behind me. I’d made my way to a less sickening environment. I’d found myself in another stairwell. This was no customer staircase, gone were the lavish touches and the palatial finishes. This staircase was the rotting bowel of the building. It was a termite-addled, mould-infested, damp, blighted passage that smelled not unlike death. Paint peeled from the walls, lights flickered overhead, dirty water dripped from the roof and gathered on the floor in a pool of rusty, rank-smelling liquid. Still, it was a damn sight more palatable than what lay behind me. At least this was truthful. It looked every bit as putrid as it was. This set of stairs led me to my final destination, a doss house.
The corridor that met me upon arrival was in complete disrepair. I knocked upon a door I’d stood at countless times before. Within seconds, a malnourished addict peered out at me through a crack in the door. He was jumpy, in clear discomfort, and itching at his pallid, track- marked skin. He stuck an emaciated limb through the door and offered me an envelope. His hand shook violently; he was, as we say in the business, bugging out. I returned the favour with a wrap of newspaper that he snatched up before retreating into his hovel. So eager for his fix, was he, that he forgot to shut the door. I watched the rotten little junkie rattling around, desperately searching for the paraphernalia he needed to take that medicine of his. So fraught that he clumsily knocked over his furniture while he frustratedly looked for the last of his clean syringes. If he didn’t find it, no matter. What’s a bit of shared blood amongst addicts?
From the doorway, I counted. Another life lesson for you, heroin addicts are not to be trusted. The envelope in my hand was short. He’d been short before. He’d been warned. The tourniquet was already wrapped around his arm. I had to act quickly, before he spiked his vein, plunged his thumb, and before that serene look washed over his face.
What came next was ugly. I won’t go into details. They’re incriminating after all. This was as far removed from the fun and games of downstairs as could be. This life ran on misery, profited in pain, and made hurt both a business plan and an art form.
I calmly stepped back over his writhing, crying body, and walked back out the door. The sounds he made when I took his tonic from him were quite grotesque. The only thing I’ve ever heard that sounds quite like a clucking addict is the sound of rutting foxes.
At the end of the corridor lay my contingency plan, or rather it lay sprawled semi-conscious somewhere behind the peeling red door that stood there. Behind that door, lived another customer of mine. A different kind of junkie. A trustworthy and reliable sort of addict, or as close to such a thing as you could find. I knocked and listened intently, for this trip through Darlinghurst’s putrid bowels would not have been wasted if Detective Constable James Harris of New South Wales Police was at home, at 103b Brewery Lane.
I couldn’t see it then but I’d seen it countless times before, behind the closed door was a dimly lit, sparsely decorated bedsit. The floor was mouldy, and the ceiling cracked, the sink in the kitchenette leaked with an incessant dripping. It was a shithole. One wall was covered by mismatching bookshelves full of old titles far beyond my intellectual or philosophical level. We didn’t really speak of it, but Harris was a fan of the English poets, German philosophers, and French novelists. Many of our peers labelled him homosexual as a result, I just thought he was strange; I guess time spent in the cauldron of war will do that to a man. Tucked behind a mirror above a sink was a small and faded, black and white picture of an army platoon in the desert of North Africa during WWII.
In one corner of the room, several guns were stacked into a menacing pile. Laws in Australia might have fluctuated in their leniency towards gun ownership throughout the 20th century, but at no time would that arsenal have been considered acceptable. In another corner of the room was a pile of cash, the size of which would defy the belief of any working man.
The scene was slightly different this time, sitting on a window ledge was DC Harris. He was quite unconscious. A sleeve rolled up, a needle sticking out the track-marked flesh of his forearm. His eyes open but vacant; his skin a blueish grey colour. He was overdosing. He was dangerously close to death. I was yards away, the other side of the door, and I had no idea. I could do nothing to assist my most valued customer.
How I know just what was beyond that closed door is an excellent question which the more critical amongst you may well be asking yourselves. I won’t get into it right now, but trust me when I say in all that comes next, I know what was behind each closed door, what was spoken in my absence, what went unspoken in my presence. Think of me as omnipresent in all that follows. And if it’s an explanation of this phenomena you’re looking for, well that comes later.
To say I knew him would be a lie. I had a certain amount of respect for the man, and I like to think it was mutual. Had I known he was drifting towards the big sleep that ends as a full stop for all of us; I’d have broken the door down and done what I could to help him. Or at the very least, I’d have robbed him blind. But I had no idea at the time. After a moment of silence, I headed back the way I’d come, cursing my luck, my scuffed shoes, and my grazed knuckles. I began the descent through the building’s many sordid levels thinking my trip had been a waste of time.
But that’s quite enough from me for the time being. I might be telling this story, but it’s not mine. I play a walk- on part, only here and there. At the time, I kept my distance from the epic shit storm that you’re about to get into. And for good reason. I warn you, this is not a fairy tale. There are no heroes in this story. There will be no happy ending. There will be no redemption. At times it will be hard to read, and harder again to stomach. This is the story of the broken men who, from their place of desolation, tried to bring an end to the Devil in the red dirt.
Speaking of broken men. James Harris, who has joint top- billing in this sinister saga, he didn’t move. He couldn’t. His eyes had glazed over and his strong granite jaw unclenched. Relief hit his body. Heroin had transported him to that ethereal place that lies somewhere between life and death. This is perhaps the only moment I will describe to you that comes close to a moment of happiness. And it’s synthetic.
After what seemed an eternity in that state of suspended animation, he came to with a gasp. Once awake, he looked down at his arm and slapped the needle hanging limply from his punctured vein. He tried his best to fight through the state of shock that had engulfed his entire body. He did so expertly. One. He controlled his breathing with deep, steady breaths. Two. He slapped his pallid cheek with a large hand, over and over. Three. He stood up slowly. Four. He began to take laps of the room, leaning against the wall at first, then trusting his long muscular legs to do the work. Five. He sat down to a cigarette and chuckled as he thought back to an old friend of his. Lord George Gordon Byron. For those who question their very existence, it truly is the ultimate objective to feel sensation, for in our pain, to
have our existence be confirmed.
Sitting back down on that windowsill, wide-eyed and
shell-shocked, he pondered exactly how close he’d come to death. For the past few years he’d been purposefully inching closer and closer to that fatal overdose. He had toyed with doses. He had flirted with death. If he knew what his future had in store for him... I think he’d have quit the foreplay and got right down to the business of fucking.
