Green Park

You've walked past it. Maybe through it. Down the end of Victoria Street, opposite St Vincent's Hospital-Green Park. It's picturesque by day, a little eerie by night. And it's where Warren and Edden are meeting, as a prelude to their Grindr hook up. One of them doesn't look like his photo. There's an age gap between them (but what's a decade or three?). And one is harbouring a dangerous secret. In an hour's time, both will leave the park profoundly transformed. Google Maps lists Green Park as 'Good for Kids'. But just a few decades ago, that definitely wasn't the case. For decades, the Wall opposite the park was where rent boys plied their trade for curb-crawling Johns. The public toilet was a spot for secret all-hours hook ups. When the cops dismantled it, in 1988, a cabal of drag queen nuns-the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence-built a shrine to a chunk of its urinal. These details are becoming lost to time. But in Elias Jamieson Brown's Green Park, Warren and Edden will be pushed together-and apart-by forces of Sydney's history that neither of them can comprehend.