Ghost Town

After we visited Mum in hospital yesterday we went to Cronulla for lunch. Neither of us had been there for eight years; our visits to Mum are usually hit-and-runs, over the bridge into the Shire, straight to Mum’s place, and back.

It’s odd what the brain retains. Even though I hadn’t driven on some of the roads since 1996 the spatial memories were still there: at one set of lights I noticed that I didn’t have to think about positioning the car properly for the best approach to the corner because I had done it thousands of times.

We left the car in the parking station behind Cronulla Street and went for a walk. Some of the beloved shops that I knew back in the ’70s were gone: Jolly Roger’s, the bookshop, the Monthien Thai. Other old friends were still there: Green’s Shoes, Lowes, and the post office. Malouf’s Chemist is now Blooms the Chemist, without Mrs Hopton, who well into the ’90s insisted on calling me Mr Kemmis even though she had known me since before I was born. The Cronulla Cinema had been converted into a multiplex in the late ’90s, after we left town. None of the original interior fabric remains from 1928 (art deco) or its renovation in 1974-5 (mission brown) – it was completely gutted and rebuilt, in multiplex-blechhh style.

I noticed that my brain took in visual cues– the shape of a window frame, the angle of a wall – familiar things that allowed me to place the buildings. But the contents of the window, the signage, even the kind of business, were not what I expected. It was like seeing something out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned to look, it was not there. Maybe that’s how people see ghosts.

Lunch was a couple of small pizzas in The Point, an upmarket pizzeria near where the aquarium used to be, but I couldn’t work out what it replaced. We were served by a young woman of Middle Eastern origin wearing a headscarf: that was a change from the Cronulla I knew. Megan was facing the street, and she commented that it was a very Cronulla sight – everybody strolling past (and there were many, even on a cold, windy, overcast day) was Caucasian. I laughed, but when we left the restaurant I saw what she meant: everyone was Caucasian. And it jarred. I’m not a Shire boy anymore.