It wasn’t always a picnic at The Rocks

          the infamy of convicts

cats cradle rigging on tall ships

a melee of sailors, prostitutes and crims

          and the cut where cuts were swift and deep

the Push was on to clear the joint even then

At Susannah place brick privies and open drains

          Sydney’s Suez Canal

where resident rats ran the maze

and fleas wantonly shared plague

          until barricaded, fumigated, disinfected

It was no picnic when mass clearances began

to beautify a gateway to the bridge

          the reprieve was war in Europe

an unlikely saviour slowed the demolition

          the focus elsewhere, a distant battle line

But nothing’s set in sandstone

          those idle picnickers on the hill

hadn’t heard of the paradox – green bans in ‘52

or Jack Mundy and the BLF

          who had a different kind of cut-through

For some it’s still no picnic at the Rocks

          there’s creeping decay

and a new race for new-gen gentrification

the old toffs moved out long, long ago

          the fleas fled too

but now a new lot are itching to move in

- after Picnic at the Rocks, 1952, Roland Shakespeare Wakelin

© Sheryl Persson