Transcript
As spoken by Solly

This transcript is drawn from an audio recording. It has been lightly edited for clarity and readability while preserving the participant’s original voice and meaning.

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We’re sitting amongst these tall Angophora Costata trees, these gnarled, twisted branches, sitting on a big sandstone boulder amongst grass trees and bracken fern and basket grass Lomandra. It all feels very Sydney, and it feels very familiar to me. All across the Sydney Sandstone region, you get this same kind of ecology. I think it’s very beautiful.

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The bush in general is very central to my life. I’ve always been a keen bushwalker, but in the last few years I’ve gotten really into plants and learning more about native plants.

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During lockdown, it was a pretty pivotal time for me in terms of my passion for this kind of landscape and the ecology because I was able to go to the same place every day and just see these micro changes in the landscape, watching an orchid go from these two leaves to a bud, to a flower, to a fruit, and then dying, you know.

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I started a queer bushwalking club called Power Botany, which is a very exciting thing for me. I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s been this way of cultivating community outside of nightlife spaces, but also an elaborate Ponzi scheme I invented to meet my husband. But that bit’s secret.

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I mean, this area doesn’t feel that queer anymore, but if you look at books and even websites from the early 2000s that talk about different cruising spaces, there’s a lot of cruising spaces on the North Shore around Cammeray and North Sydney. They were once very busy. I’ve heard that the Tunks Park public toilets used to be a really, really busy cruising space. And obviously there are other spaces like Obelisk Beach, but it feels like a remnant of the past that doesn’t exist in the same way since dating apps.

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But also a kind of important part of the urban architecture that’s still there. These public toilets are often 50 years old. You can see phone numbers engraved into the cubicles.

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Being here today, I feel relaxed. As soon as I get here, there’s a sense of calm that comes over me, a sense of familiarity. I immediately find myself looking at the ground, seeing what kinds of fungi and native orchids are starting to bloom. There’s been a bit of rain, so I was expecting a few more fungi.

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Sometimes I do feel a little disconnected from the queer community as we sort of understand it in Sydney, which revolves around the inner city. But I’m never very far away. I also like the opportunity to retreat, to tap out of the intensity of the inner city.

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My house does feel like a refuge from the buzz of the inner city.

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