An idyllic scene, this shipping hub

          on the city's western edge

paddle wheel steamers, single-masted rowing boats

          not a hint of overseas trade, or yellow flags.

Yet, the harbour was a highway, for colonists, and rats

boarding from Hawaii, New Caledonia, the East

          in the warm, wet Sydney autumn

ferrying their contagion across the water.

•                     *

At Millers Point and Darling Harbour

they were pulling dead vermin from privies.

Each rodent-corpse fetched sixpence

          delivered to the Bathurst St. furnace.

Whaling crews scoured The Rocksfor rum and sex

while their foul-smelling ships were in port

sulphur burning to flush out the rats

          bodies dumped on the foreshores.

•                     *

Hammers peck away

at Sydney’s sandstone, its finger-wharves

the profile of a broken comb.

You walk past glassed-in

waterfront apartments, Three-Hat oyster bars

heritage pubs, galleries

          of Aboriginal artefacts

to pull the tourist trade.

Where mirage of quarantine

          and fumigation filters through

black rats still roam the city.

- after View of Miller's Point and Darling Harbour, c.1870, artist unknown

© Margaret Bradstock