From a gloomy place, good things grew

Bev Sutton, Argyle Place

"I belong to this place," Bev Sutton says, looking out over the flourishing back garden she has tended for 37 years. The third generation of her family to live at Millers Point, Bev calls the area her "spirit home".


"There's just something about the place that keeps you here. It will be hard to leave. And I don't think I'll ever feel the same way again about anywhere else."

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Bev, a semi-retired bookkeeper, does not qualify for public housing and pays close to market rent for her home, one of the oldest in Millers Point.


It once ran as a boarding house where guests, mostly pensioners, were often down on their luck. Bev, 73, found it a "sad place" when she took over the lease.


"Some of them had drinking problems, others had mild mental problems ... it took me quite a few years to get rid of that sadness," she says.


"After many years, when I had looked after it, painted it and put lots of nice colourful things in, it was almost like one day the house decided that, ‘OK, I'm now going to warm towards you'."


Through a gap in her backyard fence, she keeps tabs on her 81-year-old neighbour, Flo. The two pop in and out of each other's yards - Bev to make occasional use of Flo's clothesline, and Flo to put food scraps in the compost that feeds Bev's garden.


"We've known each other all of our lives. The community [of Millers Point] is the really important thing, and that's going to be broken up," Bev says.


"The sad part about it is, unless you've lived in a close community, people don't understand it."