Curio

State Library of New South Wales

Island bar, Kings Cross, 1970–71

Silver gelatin photoprint

PXE 858/4

A428004

A totally integrated community

By Rennie Ellis

It irritates me that in the hundreds of thousands of words written about Kings Cross there is nearly always an attempt to distinguish the ‘permanent residents who quietly go about their business’ from the transient population which is ‘not really a part of Kings Cross’. To try to divide the Cross into the stable and the unstable, the real and the unreal is to miss the whole point of Kings Cross as the ultimate melting pot syndrome for, despite all its disparate values and influences, it continues to exist as a totally integrated community.

Rennie Ellis and Wesley Stacey Kings Cross Sydney: A personal look at the Cross 1971 pg 6