Living here makes no sense at all, but I can’t get enough of it

I still remember the first time I commuted to work from my new home in Sydenham, waiting to cross the road at the intersection by the station. In the few minutes I waited for the lights, I got blasted with fumes by passing buses, watched the regional XPTs rumble in and out of the neighbouring maintenance yard and witnessed an inbound international flight screeching overhead towards the airport at a frighteningly low altitude.

And in the midst of all this, among the gaggle of harried commuters anxiously hoping to make their train, I proceeded to grin like an idiot. Where else could there be such an aggressively nonsensical hive of activity?

On paper, Sydenham is an absurd place to live and makes virtually no sense at all – hemmed in on all sides by chaos. And yet that’s what makes it so appealing to me and the handful of other residents mad enough to call it home.

It’s a place where you can practically count the teeth of the passengers through the windows of the A380 roaring mere metres above your front door. Where the IKEA superstore down the road at a neighbouring suburb is rightfully considered one of our favourite local spots to eat, on par with the convivial General Gordon Hotel by the station. Where you occasionally stumble across an illegal yet welcome heavy metal gig taking place in the skate bowl, and where the murals and community art at Sydenham Green criticise that leafy park’s very existence. There’s something about the absurdity of this area I just can’t get enough of.

In truth, it’s a suburb that has been heavily defined by the transport infrastructure around and through it. Unlike many places in Sydney where locals define and riotously protect the “character” of their surroundings, staunchly opposing change, the community here in Sydenham today is founded on the very opposite – adapting to the eccentricity of the area as it is drastically reshaped by successive governments, and embracing the chaos. Or, at the very least, nonchalantly shrugging off the madness.

While it might be a different story for those who once had generational roots here, anyone who decides to live in Sydenham now and complains about the noise really only has themselves to blame. If you’re visiting, don’t bother getting pious – muse about it and move on. No one who lives here is fazed by the cacophony because it’s part of the fabric of where we live. In a funny way, our ability to accept and embrace it is almost a point of pride.

And yet, out of nowhere, it’s midnight, the traffic is gone, the airport curfew kicks in and suddenly Sydenham gets a short window to b