There are landscapes of urban memory built up via the oral histories of Newtown. Other landscapes appear in personal photographs, press photographs, and in the Government Printing Office collection. Some come from official records, press reports, police and court records and even shopping lists. There is another, very useful way of looking at the changing texture of Australia Street: the Sands' Directory.

The Sands' Directory lists houses, industries, schools, courts, institutions etc, space by space, listing the main occupant. Not everybody is included, and some individuals and whole groups are hidden behind names and social formations. Even so, look closer. Here is Australia Street in 1894, in 1910, in 1916. Here is a seamstress, a ladies school, a hearse builder, a monumental mason; here is the policeman, a servants registry and - see - in this house the names change year by year, as it is a boarding house. The proprietor's name changed too: there was a man's name, now here is a woman's name. We can't be sure, but it looks as though this woman took over the business when her husband died (moved on? moved out? became an invalid?).

What could seem like a list of numbers and houses and individual names is much more than that. Occupations are often included, as are the names of functionaries in public institutions like the Court. Although street numbers change over time, cross streets and lanes are included, so buildings can be identified relationally.

Consider the range of occupations in Australia Street - in 1885 there was Henry Cook, plasterer; Mrs Moon, dressmaker; Andrew McGregor, ironmoulder; John Fitzgerald, Solicitor; Miss Sarah Pierce, who ran a ladies' school; George Wilson, photographer and Robert Fowler, potter and brick manufacturer.

In 1895 Miss Raucland was the mistress of the Public Kindergarten on Australia Street, and in the same street there was Shirley James, hairdresser, Joseph Jolly, painter; Thomas McNamara, senior sergeant of police; the Rev E Masterman, Minister of the Primitive Methodist Church, and D G Comerford, grindery store.

In 1915, on Australia Street, David T Bloomfield was the District Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths; Miss J Rofe was a teacher of music; Ernest Andrews and Co, were hearse builders, undertakers and joiners, and Mrs E Bolton had a boardinghouse.

There are also many possible interpretations and social and cultural profiles imbedded in seemingly mundane documents like council Development Applications. These are records not only of the built environment, but also of imagined environments: things that might have happened, things that were completed, developments that were never approved.

Australia Street Infants School
Camperdown Cemetery
Cranbrook/Fowler
The Hub Theatre
Industry
Sands' Directory, 1885
Sands' Directory, 1886
Sands' Directory, 1888
Sands' Directory, 1889
Sands' Directory, 1890
Sands' Directory, 1891
Sands' Directory, 1892
Sands' Directory, 1914 - 1916
Development Applications - Australia Street Camperdown, 1941 - 1967