Free The Refuge by Kenneth Mackenzie

semicircle of high chimneys spiking the horizon is never absent from the exterior and interior surfaces of the cramped and hideous Victorian buildings which scowl above the hopelessly overcrowded traffic lanes. Macquarie and his ex-convict architect Greenway had all too short a term together in their intention to make the town as beautiful as its site must once have been. When they were gone, no other inspired mind followed them with authority to pursue their quest for grace and space; the town became a city irresistibly and without plan, and from the south and west the dirt settled upon it. The men of the good Queen’s era built their mean buildings behind grotesque and hypocritical façades, and the ownership of street frontages passed securely and unalterably from one generation to the next, so that today it is impossible to walk in comfort on the street sidewalks, or travel in comfort on the roadways—or, indeed, to be comfortable and at ease anywhere at all in the public places. Greed, more potent and less patent than even the sincerest show of civic pride, has kept the main streets to a mediaeval narrowness across which office boys can throw paper darts from window to window, and typists and their employers can observe other typists’ clothes and
maquillage
with unstrained critical eyes. And over all, indoors and out, lies the dark and metallic film of unconquerable grime.
    Nevertheless, from the mighty bosom of the harbour the skyline to the south and west is mildly fascinating. With unrestricted ground space it has no cause to tower like the incredible aerial skyline of New York. The clouds may lie low over it without obscuring it, and on mornings such as this, when the wind is fresh from the ocean outside the Heads, the blue haze is gone from the narrow ravines of the streets, and the whole scene has the accurate unreality of a detailed stage backdrop. As I looked at it over the heads of the new arrivals crowding the port rail, the weak August sun rose above a seaward bank of heavy cloud and veiled it in an illusory mist of gold, chilly and pale, and in our wake the grey water coldly sparkled under the following wind.
    The
Empire Queen
’s purser, busy and harassed, with four interpreters adding to the confusion of his last half-hour before the ship berthed, yet made time to go hurriedly through my passenger list with me. After the brisk air of the open deck, the atmosphere below was thick and stale and still, tepid as used bath-water. While I made notes of half a dozen names of possible interest, a melodious gong sounded through the broadcasting system the call to the second breakfast sitting, and the crowd round the gilded grille of the purser’s office thinned somewhat. At such moments, when the journey’s end is near, meals are subtly reassuring to the traveller who feels a strange and alien world at hand beyond the ship’s rail. It was now I, watching the faces and listening to the excited greetings of those who were making their way to their familiar seats in the saloons, who felt like a stranger among the powerful and evanescent friendships of that long voyage into the unknown. The imminence of final separation, after the closed and intimate and unworldly life on board, and the strong community of their alien origins regardless of nationalities, were for the last time uniting them as though, like an army on the eve of invasion, they were wholly of one mind in a simple and desperate purpose. There was about them, in their eyes and speech, a kind of gay defiance of whatever fate awaited them in the crude, traditionless, uncultured country of their choice. I did not doubt they sat down with good appetite.
    Ten minutes after that tuneful gong had sounded through the amplifiers, the lower decks had an air of emptiness and desertion as positive as the whole ship would have when, lying at her berth in the still and torpid water of the inner harbour, she was finally emptied of her human freight. Without any