While this book is a work of fiction set in Kings Cross in March 1932, the story is underpinned by historical research. For an historic overview of Kings Cross I found Louis Nowra’s Kings Cross: A biography (NewSouth Publishing, 2013) an excellent introduction as well as Anne-Maree Whitaker’s Pictorial History: Kings Cross (Kingsclear Books, 2012). Another short but well-footnoted overview is Mark Dunn’s 2011 entry for the Dictionary of Sydney at https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/kings_cross. Rich online sources of historic images include the public Facebook group ‘Woolloomooloo and Kings Cross Memories’, and the Facebook page ‘Stations of the X’. A more unusual source of imagery was the 1927 black-and-white silent film about Fatty Finn called The Kid Stakes, set in Woolloomooloo and Potts Point, directed by Tal Ordell and remastered by the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA).
The lavishly illustrated Homes in the Sky by Charles Pickett and Caroline Butler-Bowden (Melbourne University Press, 2007) documents the rise of the apartment block in Sydney in the 1920s and 1930s. Olympia and Gordon’s penthouse in the apartment block Kingsmere is a fictional amalgam of Kingsclere, Greenknowe Avenue, Potts Point (completed 1912) with elements of the Macleay Regis (completed 1939). Bomora is a fictional version of Bomera, a colonial villa on Wylde Street built by William McQuade in 1856 and later converted into a boarding house.
Robin Dalton’s Aunts Up the Cross (Macmillan, 1980) is a delightful memoir of 1920–30s Kings Cross. Capturing the characters and atmosphere of the Cross in the early 1930s, Darlinghurst Nights with poems by Kenneth Slessor and illustrations by Virgil Reilly is essential reading (Frank Johnson, 1933; reprinted by ETT Imprint, 2015). Vivid impressions of period Sydney are found in Lydia Gill’s My Town: Sydney in the 1930’s (State Library of NSW Press, 2000) and the ballads of Colin Wills with illustrations by ‘Wep’ (W.E. Pidgeon) in Rhymes of Sydney (first published Frank Johnson, 1933; reprinted by Pylon Press, 1982).
Excellent first-hand accounts of bohemian life of the period include Jack Lindsay’s memoir The Roaring Twenties: Literary life in Sydney, New South Wales in the years 1921–26’ (Bodley Head, 1960) and The Queen of Bohemia: The autobiography of Dulcie Deamer (being: The Golden Decade, edited with an introduction by Peter Kirkpatrick; University of Queensland Press, 1998). The character of Bernice Becker shares some biographical elements with Dulcie Deamer, including her costume at the 1923 artists’ ball, her role in the bohemian club I Felici, Letterati, Conoscenti e Lunatici—shortened to ‘the Evil Itchy’—and her successful career as a playwright and journalist.
For a sense of the atmosphere of intellectual and political life in Sydney in the 1920s, I reread Christina Stead’s brilliant Seven Poor Men of Sydney (Melbourne University Press, 2015). The most useful and detailed scholarly account of Sydney bohemian life is Peter Kirkpatrick’s The Sea Coast of Bohemia: Literary life in Sydney’s Roaring Twenties (University of Queensland Press, 1992) with a more generalised account of the period in Tony Moore’s Dancing With Empty Pockets: Australia’s bohemians (Murdoch Books, 2012).
Elizabeth Bay House (EBH) was divided into artist squats from 1931 to 1935 and into bedsits in the 1940s (see ‘Artists in the House’ and ‘Ballrooms to Bedsitters’ panels at EBH and Scott Carlin’s online catalogue essay for the 2003 exhibition Kings Cross: Bohemian life in Sydney, published in Insites, Spring 2003). The raucous party scene on the staircase is inspired by a Donald Friend sketch from July 1942. The brilliant sculptor Rayner Hoff makes a guest appearance at this party (Deborah Beck, Rayner Hoff: The life of a sculptor, NewSouth Books, 2017).
To acquaint myself with the Depression, I read Wendy Lowenstein’s Weevils in the Flour: An oral record of the 1930s Depression in Australia (Scribe, 1978), Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South (Penguin, 2009), relevant chapters in Thomas Keneally’s Australians: Flappers to Vietnam (Allen & Unwin, 2014) and Gerald Stone’s 1932: A hell of a year (Pan Macmillan, 2006) among other sources. A different perspective is found in Drew Cottle’s article ‘The Rich in the Depression (Domestic service in Woollahra during the Depression years, 1928–1934)’ in Bowyang 1 (1), 1979 and 1 (2), 1979.
To understand the legacy of World War I for returned veterans and their families, I was fortunate to discover Marina Larsson’s moving Shattered Anzacs: Living with the scars of war (UNSW Press, 2009). For the activities and culture of the Australian Communist Party—which Hugh Evans joins early—I read relevant chapters in Stuart Macintyre’s The Reds (Allen & Unwin, 1998). Joan admires the charismatic communist speaker and writer Jean Devanny. I read Carole Ferrier’s excellent biography Jean Devanny: Romantic revolutionary (MUP, 1999) and Devanny’s out-of-print (and banned) Kings Cross novel The Virtuous Courtesan (Macaulay, 1935).
For background on the New Guard, I read Andrew Moore’s Secret Army and the Premier: Conservative paramilitary organisations in New South Wales 1930–32 (UNSW Press, 1989) and Keith Amos’s The New Guard Movement 1931–1935 (MUP, 1976). A more recent challenge to Moore’s views is offered in Richard Evans’s article ‘A Menace to This Realm: The New Guard and the New South Wales police, 1931–32’ in History Australia 5 (3), 2008.
For background on the razor wars, particularly Phil ‘the Jew’ Jeffs, a shadowy, menacing figure in my story, I read Larry Writer’s Razor: A true story of slashers, gangsters, prostitutes and sly grog (Pan Macmillan, 2002) and Alfred W. McCoy’s Drug Traffic: Narcotics and organized crime in Australia (Harper & Row, 1980). Leigh Straw’s The Worst Woman in Sydney: The life and crimes of Kate Leigh (NewSouth Books, 2016) also proved entertaining and informative.
To immerse myself in the criminal class of 1920s and 1930s Sydney, I spent hours studying the haunting photos and reading the stories in Peter Doyle’s City of Shadows: Sydney police photographs 1912–1948 (with Caleb Williams, Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 2005) and Crooks Like Us (Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 2009). I also visited the exhibition Underworld: Mugshots from the Roaring Twenties, curated by Nadia Campbell at the Museum of Sydney in July 2018.
As a basis for my real-life character Special Sergeant Lillian Armfield, I enjoyed Leigh Straw’s lively Lillian Armfield (Hachette Australia, 2018). For the treatment of women as criminals in the 1920s, I was impressed by the beautifully written The Suitcase Baby by Tanya Bretherton (Hachette Australia, 2018). For checking my manuscript for any errors in police protocols and procedures, I owe sincere thanks to recently retired Detective Senior Sergeant John McGee, who also lent me his copy of True Blue: 150 years of service and sacrifice of the NSW Police Force by Patrick Lindsay (HarperCollins, 2012).
Joan works as a subeditor for the popular weekly magazine The Australian Woman’s Mirror (the ‘Between Ourselves’ column was real) and has a friend and mentor in writer Zora Cross. I am grateful to Cathy Perkins for her article ‘Nothing is Wasted’ (Meanjin, Winter 2017), which drew my attention to Zora Cross, an ‘undeservedly forgotten’ poet, journalist and novelist and to the many profiles of women writers she wrote for the Mirror. I also read Perkins’s MA thesis (University of Sydney, 2016), now published as The Shelf Life of Zora Cross (Monash University Publishing, 2019). To browse TROVE’s digitised full collection of the Mirror (1924–1961), visit https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-389050376; Zora’s profiles were written under the pseudonym Bernice May. For another view of the challenges of women writers’ lives, I read Ann-Marie Priest’s A Free Flame: Australian women writers and vocation in the twentieth century (University of Western Australia Publishing, 2018) with case studies of Gwen Harwood, Dorothy Hewett, Christina Stead and Ruth Park.
Hannah Forsyth’s article ‘Sex, Seduction, and Sirens in Love: Norman Lindsay’s women’ (Antipodes 19 (1), June 2005) is a provocative examination of Norman Lindsay’s views of bohemian women including Zora Cross and Dulcie Deamer. Also very useful was ‘From “Girl Gladness” to “Honied Madness”: Pleasure and the girl in the poetry of Zora Cross’ by Ann Vickery (Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 22nd Conference, 2001).
On attitudes to female sexual desire in Australia in this period, articles by Dr Lisa Featherstone were criticaally important: ‘Rethinking Female Pleasure: Purity and desire in early twentieth-century Australia’ in Women’s History Review 21 (5), November 2012, with references to Zora Cross’s erotic poetry, and ‘Sex Educating the Modern Girl: The formation of new knowledge in interwar Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies 34 (4), 2010. I also read relevant chapters in Garry Wotherspoon’s Gay Sydney: A history (NewSouth Publishing, 2016). The historic figure of sex reformer and eugenicist Marion Piddington, aunt to Eleanor Dark, was drawn from Diana H. Wyndham’s PhD thesis ‘Striving for National Fitness: Eugenics in Australia 1910s to 1930s’ (University of Sydney, July 1996).
The TROVE digitised newspaper archive proved indispensable as usual, as did the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB). The Dictionary of Sydney provided insights into many subjects including artists’ balls (Deborah Beck, 2013) and Delia Falconer’s 2014 entry ‘A City of One’s Own: Women’s Sydney’.
My Ladies’ Bacchus Club scene was in part informed by scholarship into Women’s Dionysian Initiation Rites at https://www.ahomeforsoul.com/single-post/2015/01/12/Touching-Ecstasy-Dionysian-Womens-Initiation-Rites-at-Pompeii
For details of the Sydney Harbour Bridge opening ceremony, I read relevant material in Peter Spearritt’s The Sydney Harbour Bridge: A life (UNSW Press, 2007) and relied on NFSA archival footage of newsreels and photos in the State Library of NSW.
Many online resources aided research on topics as diverse as fashion, free love, street photography, Mockbell’s coffee empire, early crime writing in Australia, contraception, censorship, blackmail, ‘chocolate boys’ in cinemas, Sydney tram routes and car ferries, the Haven Valley Scenic Theatre in Castlecrag and 1920–30s slang.