I'm back from Sydney! I had to go and have a look at my little unit at McMahons Point
which was supposed to have been vandalised by its last tenant who had to be
evicted. I first first ran into him in 1985 when I lived for a few months at McMahons
Point and occasionally frequented the Blue's Point Hotel.
He had been a permanent fixture at the hotel already then. Twenty years later,
the hotel has a new owner and a new interior but he still sits there, like an anachronism
from another age, quaffing his drinks. However, he did change
position: he is now strategically placed next to the Men's Room so as
not to waste too much time between drinks! Other patrons simply walk
around him as though he was just another piece of furniture. What a
sorry sight! What a wasted life! And what a waste of taxpayers' money
as that is what he lives on: Government benefits!
I endured the five hours aboard the bus from Batemans Bay to Sydney and the train journey
from Central Station to North Sydney. Passing a Thai restaurant named THAI-TANIC
as I walked down Blues Point Road towards the unit, I thought what a fitting description it was of my
own feelings, having lost many weeks of rent and facing huge repair bills.
I let myself into the unit which had been recarpeted and repainted only two years earlier.
It now had cigarette burns and stains from numerous spillages in the carpets, nicotine-stained walls,
and everywhere, on the windows, the venetian blinds, the benchtops and bathroom fittings, was the
accumulated grime of two years' dirty living. The stove and oven were relatively unmarked which perhaps proves
that there's a steak in every bottle as this hard-drinking alcoholic hadn't wasted any time with cooking.
The unit was not habitally and I took a room for two nights at the Blue's Point Hotel down the road. The room was simple but comfortable and, of course, who should I see in the Public Bar downstairs? The tenant from hell, of course - who else? Living testimony to what the human liver can endure!
Best wishes and
from us all!
Peter & Padma & Malty
& Rover
riverbend@batemansbay.com
24 June 2006
P.S. How did Blues Point get its name?