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North Sydney Oval, located at the top of Miller Street, about 10 or 15 minutes walk from the railway station was, even before its renovation in the 1980s, one of Sydney's more picturesque sporting fields. Set within the green expanse of St. Leonard's Park, with its iconic Moreton Bay fig tree and the green roofs of its stands with their cupolas and pinnacles, it is one of those grounds that English author Geoffrey Moorhouse suggested “encourage you to have a relationship with them”. Here I participated in the annual winter ritual of watching and talking about the game of rugby league and, beyond the spectacle, discovered that it met a deeper need, reinforcing what Moorhouse, once again, explained as an “expression of who I am and where I come from”. On match day, as the shadows lengthened beneath a watery sun, a drama of human emotions, of hope and despair, victory and defeat would play itself out on the field, in the stands and on the hill. Every bit as moving and powerful as anything I might encounter across the road at the Independent Theatre, such winter afternoons anchored me to my north harbour roots. |