Darlington and Florence!

More than 30 years later, the same street in Darlington maintains its mostly residential status, but the rusty, tin-roofed worker’s cottage – where Flo raised four kids through the conservative post-war era, and where the 90 year-old still resides – now shares the pavement with a boutique construction fit-out company and a block of apartments with tasteful wrought iron trimmings.

And still Flo, our Old Lady of Darlington – a historical body of this changed and changing landscape – says “no pictures”, and “no”, she will not talk to us.

Just when I’m thinking, mad old bird, we’ve made it too late, she hands me an A4 piece of paper with some notes typed under the header, ‘Redfern/Chippendale’. They read:

“Famous people / Cardinal Gilroy / Kathy Gorran – Ballerina / George Wallace – Tivoli theatre / Phillis McDonald – Opera / Vaughn Hanley – Violin. Plumbers / Crane-Read.

“More people here now, less of everything / Transport badly needed, eg The old 300 Bus / The Picture Show was called the Lawson (TNT towers) / The hotel was the Burdichon.

“The two Butchers were called “Chenery” and “Elvy” / The wine bar/Eatery was normally Tom McCotters Office, Panel Beater/Truck bodies.

“Newsagent on Cleaveland st / General store near Edward St / “Bakers” shop on Cleaveland St, opposite the Britannia Hotel / Small Supermarket on corner, Abercrombie st / Ever a Saddler / Needed now a good Butcher, Cake shop, Fish shop, Hairdresser and Hardware / ‘Chemist’ has been added as an afterthought in pen.

“Open up the back gate to Station to let the ‘Mob’ through so local people can walk Lawson St in comfort.”

This is an historical document. In the white space around these words there are a thousand stories, but Flo won’t tell us any, only names of other old Darlington residents who “know more”. The more names she mentions, the more evident it becomes that Flo’s tight jaw and camera shyness is less about the police and more about her feelings that nothing she could tell us is “newsworthy”. The last thing she wants to become is fodder on the pages of the local rag.

But Flo, didn’t you get pinched? Fingerprints taken up at the station when the SP bookies operating out of her backyard got done. “The boys paid the fine,” she says. “I was just the front.” She makes it sound like nothing.

It sounds like it was a very different time back then … “We survived,” Flo says.

John, her youngest son and now her carer, translates. There were seven of them in the cottage – his mum and dad, three siblings and later a cousin. While it was a tight squeeze, the doors were open and the kids spilled out onto the streets. You left your money out the front for the milkman, and there was nothing sinister about a man standing at your door offering to sharpen your scissors and knives.

Wartimes were tough. At work, meat pies were wrapped around light globes to warm them up for lunch. And it was nearly impossible to get a job. After the grocery store they ran on Abercrombie Street, Flo’s husband was a wharfie, a lift attendant, and he spent time in the railyards. Flo was a seamstress in the city, “a stitch out of place and we had to unpick it all,” she says.

“They raced greyhounds for a while too,” says John. “You made do and everyone helped,” says Flo.

As tough as it was, Flo says there was harmony – apart from the four women beating a cab driver to death with their shoes!

The 70s saw bars go up and houses close, a response to the crime associated with the arrival of smack and other drugs to the area. “We are one of the only places on the street that hasn’t been broken into,” John says.

It was also around this time that the greening of Darlington began; marking a return to the area’s namesake, The Darlington Nursery, planted by botanist William Shepard, and of which the street names Ivy, Rose, Pine and Myrtle are a legacy.

For the working class, green was a colour of luxury. “We used to be able to see the Central clock tower from the backyard,” says John.

Of the ‘pocket parks’ that Clover Moore is busy opening, Flo says, “She’s doing all the fancy work, what about the infrastructure?” With the loss of local amenities, the lack of public transport has made it difficult for the elderly to live in the area. “The new residents are all drivers,” Flo says.

And just as Flo starts to open up a little, flashing what could be defined as a glint in the eye, she tells us she has to be somewhere at 2.30, “nowish”. Interview over.

Photo: Ali Blogg - Caption: John and Florence