I met my grandmother in her home on Iris Street, Paddington. I was about one and a half years old. I’m sure she knew of me before then. The house was then and still is a small terrace house. It has been gutted and refurbished inside and is now devoid of character. Back then, it had two upstairs bedrooms and a dining room, kitchen and lounge room all downstairs. The bathroom and laundry were in the backyard, which had no grass, and the toilet was as far away from the house as physically possible. It was a pull chain cistern.
Ethel Louise Esler was married to Dominic Antonio Condemi who was Italian. Ethel was always known as ‘Bunny’ to everyone who knew her including her husband. She never told me where or how that nickname came to be. I surmised that because she was small and brown she could have been a cute baby and maybe that is how the name came about, but I’ll never know and that makes me sad.
My grandmother was a good looking woman in her youth and when I knew her. She left Sydney sometime in the 1930s and went to be a cook on the banana plantations in far north Queensland. It was there she met her future husband and they married in 1939. However, in 1925, Nan had a child who happened to be my mother — there was no father listed on mum’s birth certificate so we will never know the circumstances surrounding my mother’s arrival into the world. The thing was, mum was already 14 years old when Nan left her to make money in Queensland. My mother stayed with relatives in the Domain. The old Boatshed was owned or rented by Big Jack Davis and his wife, Edie and their daughter, Jean and son, Siddy. Siddy had special needs, but lived, worked and drank in the Domain until he died in about 1999 — but I can’t be sure of the dates.
Nan was one of five children born into poverty in 1904. She was born at Crown Street Women’s Hospital and attended Plunkett Street School in Woolloomooloo. There were no pictures of her as a child, or any of her other siblings for that matter. I believe Nan was the oldest girl in the family; she had three brothers and one sister. We did not find out my grandmother had two other siblings until about four years ago. It was a shock for me to discover Nan had another brother and sister.
Her father was a boxer who’s name was Joe Esler and left my great grandmother to fight on the circuit around Australia. I think that was way before Jimmy Sharman’s Boxing Troupe; Joe would have been fighting around 1895 or 1900. I called my grandmother ‘Nanny’ and she was my babysitter, my carer, my teacher and loved me unconditionally. Her Italian husband was of large stature and I always remember him having grey hair. He wore his good brown suit when we went shopping. I suppose I couldn’t pronounce grandad so my name for him was Dar.
His English was not good so I did not bond to him right away. I seem to remember him not being there all the time, but maybe he arrived later. I was a bit scared of him because he was a big man and could pick me up in one swoop of his arms. I don’t remember him being around during the day because Nan looked after me while Mum worked at David Jones, in town. I was there a lot. At that time Dar drove a green ute with an open back and parked in front of their house. The hidden laneway was not accessible to the street and of course there was no parking back there. It was called Bartlett Lane.
We shopped on Oxford Street, walking to the green grocer, the butcher, the delicatessen and maybe the cake shop if I was good… I was always good when I was with my nan. Victoria Barracks were to the right when we would walk up Iris Street and down the hill was a rarely used lane with the teachers college to the left. The Rose Shamrock and Thistle pub is still there today and still operating. It was built in 1939 before World War II in a sort of art deco design with round windows and outside verandahs. Of course, Nan didn’t drink and would never have considered going into the separate ‘women’s lounge’ that was popular within most of the pubs in Sydney at that time. I would become scared as we walked past the pub and there were always drinkers around, spilling into the street.
We walked along Greens Road to Combers Street and shopped on Oxford Street. The most significant smell I remember from those wonderful days when I was a little girl, was the big tattoo shop that smelled like black texta marker pen due to the inking happening inside. It reeked and I hated walking past the shop. There was a picture of a man with tatts on his back and a dragon on him or around him. Of course the tattoo shop has gone and all the shops look different, but Oxford Street is still Oxford Street and Paddington is still ‘Paddo’.
People said hello to my grandmother in every shop and she new the names of everyone as well. I will forever cherish the time I spent with her.