Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip, from the television miniseries Poor Man’s Orange, shows Mrs Darcy (Anne Phelan) and her friend Mrs Campion (Lois Ramsey) pushing a pram through the streets of Surry Hills in inner-city Sydney, around the mid-1950s. They encounter a family out on the footpath who are distressed after receiving an eviction notice. As the two women walk away Mrs Campion wryly comments on how the parrots and black swans that once inhabited Surry Hills have been replaced by rats and bedbugs.

Educational value points

• This clip is set in Surry Hills, an inner Sydney suburb, probably around the mid-1950s, and reflects the serious shortage of real estate, in particular rental housing, that followed the Second World War. As a result many families moved into rental properties that, due to overcrowding and neglect by landlords, deteriorated into slums. By the mid-1950s gentrification had begun in Surry Hills, which also forced out low-income people.

• In the 1940s the newly created New South Wales Housing Commission identified inner-city suburbs in Sydney such as Surry Hills and Redfern as slums and began to demolish substandard housing and build high-density dwellings such as the Devonshire Street Flats in Surry Hills, which opened in 1949.

• In this clip a family are distraught at having received an eviction notice and being forced to move to a suburban housing estate. In 1950s Sydney, politicians promoted high-rise flats as a solution to the problem of the slums. Some residents in the new housing estates felt isolated and missed the sense of community apparent in this clip, although the new flats provided modern amenities that were lacking in the slum dwellings.

• A woman in the clip mentions that her family is being moved to Hargrave Park, a wartime establishment that had been taken over by the Housing Commission to provide emergency housing. Military huts were converted into temporary dwellings that became renowned for their inadequacy. They were later cleared and Hargrave Park was developed as a permanent Housing Commission estate.

• The television miniseries Poor Man’s Orange, adapted from the novel by Ruth Park, shifted the timeframe of the story to the 1950s and aspects of the social history of the time were faithfully represented. They can be seen in the street scene, the facades of the houses, the women’s clothes, the hairstyles and in items such as the pram and the Gladstone bag.

• Park’s 1949 novel described life in the Surry Hills slums. Poverty and substandard housing in Australian inner-city areas became major issues during the Great Depression (1929–32) and led to public campaigns for slum clearance and improved public housing. The Depression and the Second World War had halted construction of housing; estimates of the national housing shortage grew from 120,000 dwellings needed before the War to 300,000 by 1945.

• The move in the 1940s for the Australian Government to fund public housing, the commercial and industrial possibilities of the inner city and the push for suburban housing marked Surry Hills, as described by Ruth Park in Poor Man’s Orange, as being ripe for slum clearance. Although some of Surry Hills was cleared by property developers to make way for factories and light industry, most of it was left intact and the suburb has since been gentrified.

Mrs Darcy and Mrs Campion are pushing a pram through the streets of Surry Hills in inner-city Sydney, around the mid-1950s.
Mrs Campion Well, I reckon if they’re in love, they should be allowed to get married.
Mrs Darcy Yes, they should just run away together, elope, you know?
Mrs Campion Ooh, I don’t know, really. A bit hard with someone as well-known as Princess Margaret to elope.
Mrs Darcy Seems such a nice man, Mr Townsend.
Mrs Campion Group Captain. Divorced, though.
Mrs Darcy Still, it’s not like they’re Catholics.
Mrs Campion Oh, but them broad Anglicans, they’re the next best thing to being Catholic. Hello.
A group of people are gathered on the footpath, including a crying old woman.
Old lady I’m too old.
Mrs Campion What’s going on?
Old lady I’ve been here for over 40 years!
Two men are carrying furniture out of a house.
Young lady 1 Yeah, my curtains won’t fit any other windows.
Mrs Campion Got your notice, have you, love?
Young lady 2 Yeah. Hargrave Park for us, in a month.
Old lady Where am I going to hang my canary in my new kitchen, Mrs Campion?
Mrs Campion They reckon they’re making worse slums out there than they’re pulling down here. How are you, Mr Caseman?
He looks upset and walks away.
Young lady 1 Poor old bloke. Terrified he might end up in them little army huts, he was telling me.
Old lady People fighting and screaming and banging on the walls all hours of the day and night. It killed the old man.
Young lady 2 They reckon this was all farms and orchards once. And along (inaudible) Street was a swamp where the parrots and black swans nested.
Mrs Campion God.
Mrs Darcy Tata.
She kisses the old lady on the forehead before continuing down the street.
Mrs Campion Bye-bye. Parrots and black swans, hey? Now we’ve got rats and bed bugs.