Paddington is a coagulation of older terrace houses, pubs, folly shops and Australia's oldest working Army barracks. It is ten minutes by bus from the city's central shopping emporia and a pleasant stroll's distance from King's Cross. Stand in Oxford Street, at the crest of the Paddington slope any hot Saturday, and the slipstream of the traffic will carry you out to Bondi in about the time it takes to sketch a girl in a bikini, wrote Robert Burns in his article Pushing Paddington' published in Nation
Paddington is also regarded by many people as Sydney's equivalent to London's Chelsea, the Left Bank in Paris, and New York's Greenwich Village, and in this book we see some of the people and activities that have earned Paddington this reputation.
Rob Hillier takes us on a photo- graphic tour of a place called Padding- ton', We see'way-out' shops and shop- owners, art galleries, restaurants, a film studio, beautifully restored terrace houses (and some sadly in need of repair), buildings of historic interest, sightseers, bookshops, typical street scenes and parties, antique and bric-a-brac shops and sport. We met artists, sculptors, authors, designers, an architect, actors, a musician, playwrights, a puppeteer, art gallery owners, a weaver and a theatre group.
In his photographs Rob Hillier has captured Paddington's unique personality and atmosphere; and Jannie Southan, publisher of the Paddington Journal, has contributed an introduction in which she traces the history of Paddington from its early days'a kind of heath, poor, sandy and full of swamps'-to the present -a swinging, creative area, full of 'nostalgic charm and grace'.
