Stepping out — Local Paddo

Five o’clock is golden hour in Paddington. As the wind that rushes up the hill from the harbour fades and the day’s final tendrils of sunlight dapple through the trees, the temperature hits that perfect midpoint between hot and cold. It is the ideal time of day for a stroll.

Like many during this ceaseless lockdown, I have found sanctuary in walking. As the calendar marches towards spring and the days get longer and warmer, I sometimes walk in the early morning to Centennial Park, where the dog can sprint around joyfully on the grass, or down to Marta to pick up some glorious Roman bakery treats.

Or if the morning gets away, there’s time — plenty of time — to amble to get coffee closer to home, or to take my son to the park. But it’s that most charming period just before dusk that lures me out the most. Time to walk. An hour on the street offers the opportunity to breathe, to clear the head of the day’s clutter, and to seek inspiration in the neighbourhood. It’s my sanity hour.

I have always been a walker.

Some people like gyms or dance classes or tennis or golf. Some like swimming, in pools, or the ocean. Some jog or cycle. I can see the attraction of most of these pursuits, they look great on other people. Try as I might, they have not been for me.

I detest being cold (swimming), cannot tolerate being out of breath (jogging), have an aversion to humanity (gyms) and absolutely no coordination (dance classes). I have neither the time, nor the patience, nor the ability for organised sport (golf, tennis, squash, netball).

For me, exercise has always meant walking.

It was, I realise now, a habit forged when I was at university. Leaving my rural home at 18 for the big city, I washed up in a share house a neat 30-minute trot from the campus. As a cash-strapped student, there was no money for the bus fare. So walking to class became part of a daily routine central to the functioning of my young life, and I liked it.

Treading the streets afforded a ground-level knowledge of the city. The walk was quick and fuss free. The sun seemed to shine a lot (I can’t remember any rainy days) and the exercise probably kept me mentally and physically stronger than I understood. After uni, I stopped walking; there was no need. I bought a car and drove it to work.

Then, one day, a dog came along. And getting out on to the streets once again became a part of the fabric of my every day. When I moved cities, leading my excellent four-legged companion through unfamiliar streets helped us both develop a mind map of our new home.

Exploring unknown paths was an adventure, and slowly the unfamiliar became recognisable, reassuring. Favourite routes emerged — the long walk, the quickie, the middie, with beautiful houses or gothic apartments or a particular blooming tree the milestones at which we would turn back for home. Places and faces became known. People began to say hi.

As the years passed, that beautiful dog began her slow decline, and when we moved to Paddington, our soirees together gradually wound down to ever-shorter meanders in the street, and eventually, to a simple, painful daily descent down the front steps of the terrace to the verge for a solitary sniff. The remainder of the day was for satisfying naps in sunny spots.

That was some years ago now. Once she left us, there wasn’t any particular need to roam the suburb on my own, and I took up yoga for fitness. Of course there were trips on foot to the shops and school, but the radius was always a mere 500m from home.

Even the arrival of a new dog hardly encouraged a return to the footpath. The new dog, smaller than the old one, preferred the park to walking on a lead and quite often we would simply drive to Centennial Park for off-leash romps.

That was until lockdown.

In these recent oppressive days, there have been so many hours to fill with so little. The family all being trapped at home, the days together have dragged remorselessly.

The sense of monotony builds.

Escaping the house for solitary periods on the footpath is now not only attractive but necessary. Activewear and sneakers have become the dress code for a ticket to fresh air and inner peace.

Every day since lockdown began I have pounded the pavements of Paddington. I head out the door, dog on lead, and each day seek a new direction. At first there are familiar streets, known barking dog houses to avoid, but we work outwards on the hunt for something unusual, not yet seen.

Sometimes if the breeze is up, the gunmetal freshness of the harbour bathes the streets; on the park side, the scent of grass clippings and evening dew mingles with the pungency of horseflesh. Snatches of other people’s conversations come into focus, and fade out; a vaccination theory here, a relationship bust up there. A window into people's lives.

For all its familiarity, there is still much to discover in the glorious patchwork quilt of urbanity that is our suburb. When you have the time to look closely, there’s an abundance to be found. Sumptuous terraces abound, of course, each one magical in its own way. But it’s the quirkier elements of Paddington that now do it for me.

I have fallen in love with brightly painted houses (canary yellow is a particular favourite) covered with creeping bougainvillea; with bold, contemporary trophy homes tucked down shabby side streets; with blooming magnolias squeezing between leaning wooden fences; with converted laneway factories whose fresh paint jobs surely conceal hidden pasts.

Look more closely to catch glimpses of convict-hewn sandstone blocks in rambling backyards, an angular row of chimney tops, a disused church, grand Italianate villas standing in plain sight you might never have noticed before, a maze, a corner store-turned-art gallery, an enormous derelict mansion with shuttered windows, a lemon tree bursting with late winter’s fruit, a tiny poem written on a wall, a shop with a replenished window display revealing the creativity of its owner, the tiles on a back-street pub.

None of it is hidden or secret. It’s the living, moveable feast that is our neighbourhood. All you have to do to find it is head out the door. Especially in that pre-dusk splendour, it is a joy just to walk, freely, aimlessly, yet with purpose, to really see, to exhale and to simply exist for an hour or so.

It replenishes the soul for fresh battles and stokes the imagination for the return to confinement. And it’s free.