Sydney overnight

12 am - midnight, Sunday morning. Woke in bed after a short sleep.

Traffic outside steady, busy, sometimes loud. Various rackets going on up and down the street.

Over the radio comes news from the Vatican. Pope John-Paul II is sliding toward death, but is still conscious.

1:10 AM

I got up to write. Fired up the pc, made coffee.

1:30 AM

Went online. Updated Google desktop search, installed new plug ins.

2:05 AM

The morning was busy outside and the weather was warm. Decided to stay up for a while.

2:15 AM

Garbage truck with a loud variably revving engine, stop starting, grinding, clanking, smashing.

2:20 AM

Calm of a sort is noticeable. Footsteps, fitful conversations and singing interspersed by short spells of relative calm. Most sounds become tolerable after a while.

2:23 AM

Car door slams close by. The sound rattles the windows.

A fire engine siren goes off to the south west, down in the city, but tails away, must be heading away for a change. The streak of red sound falls in volume until it sinks into the greyer infrasonics of the city.

2:25 AM

A few blokes walk up the street south toward the Cross, talking in medium to loud voices.

2:28 AM

Made more coffee.

Every so often a car comes off Macleay St, down Hughes along Victoria St and left up Orwell St to Macleay St.

The biggest cleanest block is up Challis Avenue, right into Macleay St, right (down) into Orwell St, right into (down) Victoria St.

2:30 AM

A steady trickle of people walking home, north on Victoria St, mostly on the other side of the street, the east side.

Clubbers leaving the Soho bar and the Peppermint Lounge walk past my wide front windows.

2:31 AM

A group of people meet up at their car beneath the windows, talking loudly, slamming doors, starting engines, revving up then driving away.

More doors slam in cars up the street.

2:40 AM

Background traffic, the odd vocal punter on his or her way home, random footfalls can be heard.

2:41 AM

The usual assortment of noises continue in gentle decline, car horns, raised voices, running steps, the crash or bang of a bin being kicked over or the echoing splinters of smashing glass.

2:55 AM

On talk back radio, someone is discussing Tesla.

2:57 AM

Loud sandal steps in the street.


2:58 AM

A vocal street reunion of Piccadilly Hotel pub patrons. Voices and footsteps, backpacker accents.

2:59 AM

A group walks over to a car parked right outside as a tourist bus drives noisily down Orwell St.

3:00 AM

A drunk tries to call for a taxi in a loud voice. Other conversation around him, a house or two up toward the Cross, boys and girls, backpacker accents, swearing, women choral singing “I love you baby, and if it’s quite alright, o pretty baby.” Claps and footsteps.

3:04 AM

Hard footsteps southward down Vic St.

3:12 AM

Unsteady clatter of high heels tapping in the street

3:15 AM

Backpacker blokes arguing gruffly

Fire engine siren somewhere to the mid south west, a red streak of noise rises out of the background.

4:00 AM

A drab but penetrating security alarm goes off in Surry Hills. A southerly breeze brings the persistent high pitched waver this way. A car alarm from the same vicinity can be heard, rising and falling in accompaniment, then the wind changes and all fades.

In the street below can be heard multiple conversations. Homeward journeys waiting for taxis with backpacker accents. So far there has been little noticeable violence or aggression. Just the usual amount of unsubtle clattering of garbage bins, celebratory clowning, the clatter of high heels and hard soles on pavement. Not everyone seems drunk, but most seem very lively for the time of morning.

4:15 AM

There is still traffic in the street. Every so often a deep throbbing engine passes right outside, often accompanied by resoundingly body slamming doof d00f music.

4:16 AM

Relative silence in patches, sometimes for up to five seconds at a time. Cars, a clanking object in the street.

4:18 AM

Later model cars have quieter engines and the muffled rain-softened tire sounds are louder.

4:20 AM

A talkative mixed bunch of homeward bounders. Voices and footsteps.

4:22 AM

More gaps of silence now, like cotton wool in my ears. Punctuated by the revving engines of souped up cars circulating around the two blocks described above. The hardcore nightclub crowd.

4:23 AM

Car horn toots twice in quick succession somewhere around Earl Place up near the station.

4:24 AM

Homeward bounders going down Victoria Street on my side shuffle and scythe their legs through swathes of fallen leaves on the pavement as they pass, making slithery papery rustling sounds.

4:29 AM

Mixed bunch go up to the Cross on this side. Hard heels on the pavement, a loud guy on a mobile phone.

4:30 AM

Latest Drudge report says Pope gravely ill, losing consciousness.

The death of the Pope is being played by the Vatican almost as a reality show. The canonisation starts. JP II has chosen to die publicly, according to the Vatican. And so we wait and watch as the drama unfolds.

4:39 AM



Backpacker accents, mixed bunch of drunk funsters become vocal in a brief exchange on their way to the Cross

4:36 AM

Loud car door slam. Revving engine toward the Cross.

4:43

Brief flurry of medium noisy cars, to and fro.

5:00 AM

High fever, but the Pope is still responding to people around him.

5:56 AM

Rosy glow in the eastern sky.

News Radio announces first reports of the Pope having died.

In the hours prior to that, he had been responding correctly to household staff despite a high fever.

6:00 AM

Confirmation of the death of Il Papa, 265th Pope, at 21:37 local time - 2 April 2005. Condolences. Obituaries. Media tributes.