I'd love to have a story for you today. I could perhaps regale you with the history of this street.

Unfortunately information about North Sydney's history seems to be both rare and sparse. Unless of course you listen to Google's idiot AI which just makes up merde and passes it off as fact, dishing up lies and misinformation with an air of absolute certainty.

At one time the area was going to be called St Leonards. (To explain, Sydney itself is named after a British politician from the time of settlement; specifically one Thomas Townshend (1733-1800), a.k.a. Baron Sydney of Upton St Leonards in Gloucestershire. So, there are no prizes for guessing where the "St Leonards" name came from. Sydney was the Home Secretary from 1783-1789.)

Later, St Leonards became a suburb to the north west of here. But the original St Leonards was in a rectangle of which Miller Street was the western boundary. In other words, what is now the heart of North Sydney.

The name Victoria Cross, I can be more certain about courtesy of a plaque placed by Sydney Trains at the Metro station. (A station which has appeared in these albums previously or will do when I move the relevant images from PBase.) It doesn't have anything to do with the medal, aside from both of them referencing the same person.

Victoria Cross in North Sydney is, technically, the 3 way intersection between the multi lane Pacific Highway, the significant Miller Street that I'm standing on, and the rather smaller Mount street. That intersection is about 75 metres behind me.

When the intersection was established in the 1930s the local council held a competition to name it. Suggestions included:
Highway of Prosperity, which perhaps tries a little too hard;
Square of Fortune, which would sound a bit like a game show had TV not been over 20 years in the future for Australia back then;
North's Busy Square, which sounds like it came from someone who is a bit too literal minded;
Anzac Square, sure, that might work;
Northgate, which is a bit unimaginative; and
Henry Lawson Square after an alcoholic but talented poet (1867-1922) who lived in the area in his declining years from 1903 until his death.

However in 1939 the winner was Victoria Cross, which referenced the then-well known area of the Sydney CBD named Kings Cross (an area which has always wavered between Bohemian and just sleazy), as well as nodding to Queen Victoria who was still respected despite her death several decades earlier.

To be honest until the Metro station opened I had never heard the name Victoria Cross and had assumed that it was a reference to the medal. But no, it isn't.

North Sydney does have several heritage listed sites, and I've started compiling a list for when I'm in the office. Which I hope will be as infrequently as possible, so it may take me a while to get through them.

Today, though, I just decided to go for a walk in the temperate sunshine of the day and scope out a few buildings that I may want to grab on future shoots.

I'm so glad that I finally bit the bullet and bought this f/1.8 fisheye. I had thought that it was too much of a special purpose lens to justify the cost. However it can quite often be an excellent general purpose lens, if I do say so myself. This is an example.

I did think about cleaning up the small spots of lens flare in this, but I decided it was appropriate given the sunny "sparkly-ness" of the day.

After this, alas, it was back to the office.