Food, Wind, Dreams and Books

One late afternoon in early summer I went to the launching of Helen Arbib’s Looking at Cooking (Helen Arbib Publications, $3.50, 80 pp) in a beautifully restored and reanimated old house in the Rocks area of Sydney. On the way to Lower Fort Street I’d indulged in one of my favourite meanderings past sentimental landmarks. Among these is a section of Windmill Street, and the Hero of Waterloo Hotel.

Once, at dusk, long before the Hero became a fashionable hostelry, I stopped to listen to an old sailor … he must have been that: his arms were so brown against his striped shirt and he had a veritable peg leg turned from wood and looked like a survivor if not of the battle, at least of the time of Waterloo. Standing in the stone doorway he squeezed an ancient concertina and sang sea chanties. I’ve never seen him again and don’t expect to now, but most of my landmarks are of that order.