A stroll down Glebe Point Road never fails to put us in a good mood. While it’s only a stone’s throw away from the headache of Parramatta Road and the woes of university life, the tree lined street is an escape from the hustle of daily life. People seem to move at a slower pace here. They sip flat whites from window seats of cafes like Badde Manors, or meander in and out of bookshops and boutiques. Others congregate in the leafy garden outside Glebe Library, reading newspapers or simply watching the world go by. Beneath this easy facade, however, lies a history filled with stories of political, cultural, and artistic activism. Let’s take a stroll down Glebe Point Road.
Aboriginal History
What we now know as Glebe Point Road was built on Gadigal and Wangal land. While there have been efforts to showcase Glebe’s Aboriginal history in more recent years, it is challenging to find prominent documentation around the road. How we remember our city’s history is inherently Eurocentric.
Dennis Foley and Peter Read’s work What the Colonists Never Knew provides us insight into the area’s Aboriginal history. According to Foley, an academic and Gai-marigal and Wiradjuri man, “much of Glebe [is] actually built on a sacred area that also held an important ceremonial ground honouring the giant goanna… It is a totemic landscape.”
The Gadigal and Wangal peoples who lived around the area that is now Glebe Point Road were quickly dispossessed of their land following British invasion in 1788. The suburb of Glebe was claimed as the coloniser’s church ground, hence the name ‘Glebe.’
Despite the horrific injustices resulting from colonisation, the area around Glebe Point Road has remained a strong hub of Aboriginal activism. For instance, Charles Perkins lived in Catherine Street, just off Glebe Point Road. It was here that important meetings concerning the Freedom Rides took place.
Women’s Liberation House
Glebe Point Road was a hub of Sydney’s Women’s Liberation Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s. A prominent hub of this activism was number 67 Glebe Point Road. Now the Pamakon Cafe, this terrace house was once the first Women’s Liberation House in Sydney. This house was established in early 1970 by several academics and feminist activists from the University of Sydney, including historian Ann Curthoys.
Importantly, the Women’s Liberation House provided Sydney’s early Women’s Libbers with a centralised political organising space that was run by women, for women. Sydney’s feminists used this space to hold political meetings, print pamphlets and newsletters, and generate broader goals for their overall movement. The ideas generated from within this dedicated feminist space gave way to broader social change for Sydney’s women. Notably, the establishment of Australia’s first secular refuge for women and children – the Elsie Refuge – opened just up the road from this house.
Independent Bookshops
Home to the infamous Gleebooks, Glebe Point Road is a sanctuary for Sydney’s book lovers. Since its opening in 1975, Gleebooks has been a fierce advocate for independent bookshops. Throughout the 1980’s, the shop was known as a “godsend to intellectuals”, as quoted in The Canberra Times. Restrictive copyright laws made it tricky for Australians to get their hands on new international books. Gleebooks was one of the few shops where these books could be bought. The shop played an active role in the ‘Great Book Debate’ of 1989, which led to a more open book market.
A little further down the road is Sappho Books. Since its opening in 1996, the independent store has offered an expansive collection of second-hand books that is spread over six rooms and two storeys. There is something hypnotic about these labyrinthine rooms. While we may enter the shop for a “quick browse”, we will inevitably become lost in the shelves and emerge back onto the street after a few hours with an armful of books.
Valhalla Cinema
On the corner of Hereford Street sits the old Valhalla Cinema. Built in the 1930s, the Valhalla has an Art Deco elegance that offers an inviting contrast to the chaotic array of terraces that surround it. The cinema operated under various names until 1979, at which point it quickly established itself as a hub for independent films. It was touted as the “mecca” for Sydney’s cinema enthusiasts and was especially popular among the University of Sydney students who received “the best bargain around town”, according to one SMH article from 1988. For a mere $3.50, students could enjoy a feature, two cartoons, a drink, and a packet of Jaffas.
While Valhalla was known for its avant-garde inclinations, a quick glance at a 1980s program reveals it was not dismissive of the feel-good classics either. On a Tuesday night, for instance, one could see Eric Rohmer’s New Wave ‘Perceval le Gallois’ and follow it up with a double-feature of Disney’s ‘Bambi’ and ‘101 Dalmations’.
The Valhalla also offered a range of ‘unconventional’ live shows, including the drag performance ‘Cycle Sluts’ and the controversial sex revue ‘Oh! Calcutta!’. So risque was this revue that its 1971 opening night performance was flooded by police, who arrested the entire cast on indecency charges and banned the production from being performed again. Far from damaging the cinema’s reputation, however, this publicity served to make it all the more popular. Like many of Sydney’s independent cinemas that began to feel the pressures of the DVD rental boom and the growth of larger cinemas like Hoyts, the Valhalla was forced to close its doors in 2005, leaving a gaping hole in Glebe Point Road’s artistic scene that can be felt to this day.
