Nostalgia

It has been three years since I first started my daily voyages down the North Shore train line, over the Harbour Bridge and into the heart of the city of Sydney, then back-tracking over the stone footpaths to the low-rise oasis of harbour views, colonial pubs and maniacal tourist prices known as The Rocks. Three years and ten days to be precise, and tomorrow will be the last.

Many come to The Rocks to glimpse the remains of the country’s first white settlement 220 years ago. They can spend at least a few hours admiring our small collection of cobblestone alleys, oldest (that’s 200 yrs old) sandstone buildings and eerie ruins telling of a time when the dirty, degraded and discarded, cast off by the mother country, huddled together against a hostile landscape and proceeded to carve out a nation that would one day return to maraud English sporting teams and take root in the British hearts of soap opera fans for generations. These days visitors browse the delights of stuffed koalas, didgeridoos, akubra hats, macadamia nuts, opals and merino products, washing their Rocks experience down with a German beer, a Danish ice-cream or a sushi roll. Then they can snap a few thousand unique photos of our renowned Opera House and Harbour Bridge before retiring to a grassy knoll with their Lonely Planets to bask in the sunshine and watch the ferries come in.

Others prefer to emerge after dark to crowd into the many old hotels. There they can flirt with fellow backpackers, enjoy a bit of bad dancing to a terrible cover band and hopefully get drunk enough to be ejected from at least two pubs before giving up on the taxi situation and drifting down into the heart of the city, lured there by the seedy glowing light of the Golden Arches, joining the other dregs of the evening in some Big Macs and perhaps a brawl or two on a street corner. Or so I've heard. I wouldn't know myself. Oh no. Not me.

For Andrew, Michelle, Anna, Gyllian and me, the pilgrimage into the rustic muddle of streets and alleys has had a different purpose. For us, The Rocks experience means escaping the pin-striped frenzy of the CBD to nestle at our sunny desks, with circular quay the serene backdrop to our daily toils. We’ve enjoyed a luxurious proximity to a rich choice of pub lunches, art galleries, fairy-lit leafy avenues, priceless lunch break panoramas and the BEST COFFEE IN SYDNEY, all at a safe but doable distance from the city proper, leaving our members to jostle and swarm amid the roar of buses and belch of cars echoing up between the skyscrapers.

But now, it’s time to go. We’ve found a new home across the harbour in Milsons Point - a northern counterpart to our current waterside vantage by Sydney’s famous bridge. This week our offices are showing as much order and decorum as a Kate Moss love interest, but amid the flotsam and jetsam of the drifting half packed papers, the soft clouds of disturbed dust, the boulder-like stacks of moving boxes and the gentle rain of anxious sweat from Andrew’s brow (as he juggles removalists and phone companies), I took a few minutes to relay to our London office this nostalgic tribute in images to our time at Suite 14, 88 Cumberland St, The Rocks.

Nostalgic tribute in images to our time at Suite 14, 88 Cumberland St, The Rocks

Behold! The building that has housed us for many years, overheating us, overcooling us and over exposing us to the grim hygienic habits of dozens of other men and women:

From Cumberland St: our old building (left), the scene of much client servicing and our nearest neighbour, the Glenmore Hotel (right), the scene of the occasional team lunch. The Gloucester Walk runs parallel to Cumberland St on the other side of our old building and from here you can see my old window, partly obstructed by the lamp post:

Our team meetings and conference calls have us sitting around this table in the boardroom, slumped over and drooling onto our pages of intricate doodles:

But I mostly sat here:

And looked out my window at this:

But of course, a workplace is more than just a building. In fact, beyond the standard of furnishings and natural light, a workplace is probably better characterised by what you do when you get out of the building.

At between 9:30am and 10am each day, one heroic team member will take up arms (cardboard tray) and alms (about AUD 3.5 pp) and venture forth

embarking upon a mercy mission to the Golden Font of Caffeinated Bliss:

There they will run the gauntlet, ordering from the camera shy Bossy French Woman who guards the Cabinet of Unholy Earthly Pleasures:

before proceeding up the stairs where the very handsome and talented Sydney’s Best Barista and Sydney’s Second Best Barista (with camouflage cap) will weave their magic and bestow upon the pilgrim a blessing that can not be matched anywhere in Sydney, the Daily Elixir of Life.

It is this we will miss most in our new premises. Our members must brace themselves for the anguished wailings of an ECA team being yanked brutally from its contented suckling at the loving bosom of The Renaissance Café. Michelle is already developing a peaky rash in reaction to her agitated anxieties about our unknown coffee future in the north.

As the working day advances, when I can tear myself briefly away from the daily churn and excitement at ECA on sunny days, I’ve been in the habit of bringing sandwich and book to this little spot:

to sit in the shade and try not to let the comings and goings of the harbour distract me from my reading.

Lastly, my trip home has begun at Wynyard where over the last three years I have honed my strategies for securing one of the remaining seats (or at least a standing spot) ahead of my fellow passengers. But come Monday, I’ll no longer be crossing the Harbour Bridge on my journey home and no longer in with a chance of getting one of the last seats on my train. Instead I’ll be sucking in fresh air on Milsons Point Station and crossing all available appendages that the next train will have a spare inch or two of standing room, in which I can balance while the doors slide closed over my weary… um, bones.