Bob Flood, High Street
Brim, flathead, mackerel, leatherjacket: Bob Flood has fished them all from the wharves at Millers Point, and says they make "beautiful eating".
The fourth-generation resident has "never been crook", despite warnings about fishing in Sydney Harbour. "You just cut them behind the spine, take their head off and skin them and bring them home. Mum used to cook them up … sensational," he says.
As well as pulling the odd meal from the harbour, Bob, 64, has also drawn a livelihood from it. His teenage years were spent pressing wool into bales, ready for loading onto ships for export. As a tugboat worker, he helped haul oil barges up Parramatta River to the Clyde refinery; then he became a painter and docker on the wharves."I worked casual at all sorts of places. When the ships came in, you had a quid. When they weren't here, you did it tough," he said.
Bob remembers his childhood fondly and says he has become "part of the furniture" in Millers Point.
"[The neighbourhood kids] all got on together and looked after one another. You could borrow off each other, swap things. We weren't well dressed or anything like that, [but] we … were happy with what we had," he says.
"Millers Point was really something to us, just being brought up here. It's just sad, what's going to happen, really sad.
The feeling of the place [is] inside me and it's never going to leave me. Never."
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