Early on, Berry tells us that she is offering different images from those that typically spring to mind when we think of Sydney. Instead of the picturesque natural beauty of its famous harbour, she wants to show us ‘an alternative city, a mirror or shadow Sydney’, full of ‘ambiguities and anomalies’. This deeply idiosyncratic project offers countless surprises, as we travel across the city and its suburbs with Berry as our guide. She takes us beneath the streets of the CBD to reveal its many subterranean passages and tunnels, and introduces us to the Cave Clan, a subversive collective that explores the most inaccessible parts of Sydney’s vast underground network. Inspired by a 1906 postcard found in an antique store, Berry leads us to South Head, where she tells us of the giant camera obscura in Watsons Bay that drew tourists from across the city, and the strange fate of a South Head lighthouse keeper, who survived a shipwreck on the very stretch of coast that his lamps would later keep safe. Venturing west, we journey through the faded art-deco arcades that line Penrith’s main street, and into the crumbling Midnight Star Theatre at Homebush, ‘as solid and tragic as a ruined wedding cake’. Elsewhere, Berry shows us abandoned amusement parks, giant novelty restaurants, as well as various ‘towers, offcuts and follies’.

The book is a hybrid of the best kind, and Berry’s experimental structure pairs intimately personal reflections with broader historical findings. Part-history, part-memoir, part-travelogue, Mirror Sydney is also a record of many years of strange discoveries. Berry describes a little-known military bunker in Bankstown, for instance, with a top-secret operations centre (complete with a giant map of the South Pacific), as well as the steampunk-esque water clock in Hornsby – a truly bizarre public sculpture. There is also the tale of the circus elephant said to be buried beneath Sydney Park, and the abandoned African Lion Safari Park in Warragamba, from which both a grizzly bear and several lionesses escaped during the 1990s.

Pendulum clock, Hornsby, Sydney (Wikimedia Commons)As such details make clear, the book is above all a record of whimsical encounters with Sydney and its sprawling suburbs. Even when Berry guides us through more familiar locales – Newtown, say, or Parramatta – her keen eye for the mysterious and the strange forces us to see them anew. Inevitably, certain readers will find such a project a tad twee, particularly with its accompanying hand-drawn maps, adorned with Letraset and typewritten text. Yet this same aesthetic accounts for much of the book’s charm and approachability. Mirror Sydney is an accessible city guide for a range of audiences.

There is a real generosity in sharing these discoveries with readers, whether on her blog of the same name (where the project began), in the handmade zines in which some of this material first appeared, or in the pages of the book. In short, lively chapters, Berry divulges precisely the kinds of local knowledge and insider tips that are usually kept well-guarded. Indeed, much of the pleasure in reading Mirror Sydney lies in the anticipation of following Berry’s lead, and visiting some of the sites and suburbs described. Her account of Lansvale’s cinematically dilapidated amusement park, for instance, will make readers keen to see it for themselves, while the description of a giant, ‘post-apocalyptic’ Sphinx in North Turramurra (built by a World War I veteran in the 1920s, to honour fallen comrades) will surely inspire similar pilgrimages.

Although Berry’s prose throughout is friendly and inviting, the book isn’t particularly funny. Which is odd, given that travelogues, memoirs, and city guides are usually leavened with comic anecdotes and asides. I wasn’t expecting witticisms on every page, but I was expecting more laughs. The tragicomic dreams and longings of Sydney’s residents past and present are everywhere on display in this book. It is a shame that Berry didn’t have more fun with her material. She pays a respectful, deeply serious attention to her subjects, which is admirable, though it does miss out on the kinds of wisecracks that would have made the book an even more compelling read.

Vanessa Berry

Quibbles aside, Mirror Sydney is a fascinating and timely account of a city that is disappearing depressingly quickly, in the wake of new developments and infrastructure projects. Moreover, Berry’s enthusiasm for the ghostly relics of the city’s past is infectious. After closing the book, I found myself paying closer attention to local oddities and neighbourhood quirks, as well as various crumbling buildings and fading signs – evidence of an older city being written over by the new. These traces are everywhere in the city and its surrounds, and can be rediscovered by paying the kind of attention that Berry’s project inspires. The book’s most valuable gift is its offer of a new way of experiencing the city. By introducing us to Sydney’s countless architectural quirks, past residents, and hidden layers, Berry reveals how we might poetically reorient ourselves towards the many spaces we inhabit.