The Battle for Victoria Street by Gabiann Marin

Author:Gabiann Marin [Marin, Gabiann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781761522826
Publisher: Scholastic Australia
Published: 2024-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

3 AUGUST 1973

This morning I saw inside Miss Jane’s house. I expected it to be like a palace or a mansion or something, but it was pretty much exactly the same as all the other houses on Victoria Street big and old and packed with people, mostly musicians, artists and students. All of them were busy running around or painting big banners or answering the cream-coloured phone that rang constantly in the hallway.

Miss Jane introduced us to a woman with a pretty, round face and dark hair whose name was Wanda, and a man called Johnny who brought us into a room piled high with stacks of flyers, all bundled into what looked like skyscrapers of paper.

I was worried we were expected to deliver all of the piles and piles of papers, but Johnny said that most of them were for a protest they were doing up in The Rocks the following weekend.

The Rocks is a place on the other side of the harbour and they are having the same problems with landlords trying to throw them out and bulldoze their houses, just like here. Only their landlords are the government, not Mr Carson.

I wasn’t sure why people from the Victoria Street Action Group were going all the way over to the other side of the city when they should be focusing on the problems here.

When I asked Miss Jane, she asked me why Mick’s friends from down at the docks came up to help Mick get his flat back from the thugs.

I wasn’t quite so sure about that answer, but I reckoned it was because Mick and Mrs Fowler needed help and there was no-one else to help them.

‘That’s right, Billie. Just like when you saw Mrs Fowler on the street all alone and you helped her. Because you knew she needed it and you didn’t know if anyone else was coming to help.’

I nodded. None of the other neighbours helped Mrs Fowler at all, except for Lucy who wasn’t even a real resident, just a squatter, so I can kind of see what Miss Jane means. The people in The Rocks are like Mrs Fowler—they need help and so it’s the right thing to do to help them.

That made me feel a bit bad about taking money for helping Miss Jane, but she just laughed and said that was okay because we were helping each other.

Then she gave us all our twenty cents, even though we hadn’t delivered the flyers yet. It felt good to be trusted like that and we are not going to let Miss Jane down—we are going to spend all day tomorrow delivering the flyers to every letterbox in Darlinghurst!

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