Woolloomooloo has to be one of the best location names, it invokes a sense of fun and curiosity as to what the suburb may actually be like. Sadly there is some debate as to what the name actually means with two differing theories concluding in either a place of plenty or young black kangaroo.
This Sydney suburb is just a short distance away from the city centre and traditionally was a poorer working class district. Today, whilst there continues to be housing commission properties, it is also home to the rich and famous with Russell Crow for example owning a $14m penthouse apartment on Finger Wharf. The same wharf is the largest wooden structure in the world at 400 metres long and 63 metres wide and stands on 3,600 piles.
Woolloomooloo is also home to a great Sydney institution, a institution so popular and of world standing that people such as Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, Marelene Dietrich, Kerry Packer, Richard Branson, Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner, Brook Shields, Pat Rafter, Olivia Newton-John, Jerry Lewis, Billy Crystal and Pamela Anderson have all visited. What is this institution – a theatre or government building maybe? No, a pie shop!
Harry's Cafe De Wheels
Since 1938 (with a break during the war years), Wolloomooloo has been home to the Harry’s Cafe de wheels pie shop. The name Café de Wheels’ came about as the city council of the day insisted that mobile food caravans move a minimum of 12 inches a day. Harry dutifully obeyed and thus the name was expanded to Harry’s Café de Wheels. Before the councils ruling, the caravan was known simply as ‘Harry’s’.
Apparently, when Harry sold his Caf to the current owners (a few years ago now), they discovered that he’d been “borrowing” power from the Navy for over 20 years – he had somehow managed to snake a very long extension cord into Garden Island.
When in Woolloomooloo you have to think of this song:
Woolloomooloo Lair
On the day that I was born, it was a cold & a frosty morn,
In the famous suburb known as Woolloomooloo.
It was down in Riley Street my folks first heard me bleat
‘Cause at the time I’d nothing else to do.
Oh me mother died of fright when she saw me in the light
And my father thought he’d send me to the zoo,
But I owe a lot to him, ’cause he taught me how to swim,
When he heaved me off the pier at Woolloomooloo
cho: Oh my name it is McCarty & I’m a rorty party
I’m rough & tough as an old man kangaroo
Some people say I’m crazy, I don’t work because I’m lazy
And I tag along in the boozing throng, the Push from Woolloomooloo.
And when I was just a lad I went straight’way to the bad
A larrikin so hard, you’d strike me blue
But the government was kind and they didn’t seem to mind
And in Darlinghurst I spent a night or two.
Now the judge gave me a stare and he said, “You’re a lair”
They heaved me into Darlinghurst gaol – you understand
They gave me clothes, they cut my hair, I didn’t seem to care
And every night you’d find me in the van.
And I spent some years in gaol till I began to quail
I resolved to live upon a different lay
And enlisted in the ranks of the Salvation Army ‘cranks’
You can bet I made the bloody business pay!
Well hallelujah! I’m a lout I knows me way about
I kids the mugs that I’m converted too
All the lassies there I mash and I’m never short of cash
‘Cause I beats me drum all over Woolloomooloo.