This year, the NSW Attorney General announced the inaugural Graffiti Action Day – a sort of ‘Clean Up Australia Day’ for graffiti. I’ve always had a soft spot for graffiti and so decided to take action. My plan: to volunteer and, working from the inside, persuade my fellow cleaners to preserve an artistic piece or two.
I arrived at the nominated Redfern address at the appointed time and circled the block looking for pieces most worthy of preservation. I couldn’t see much graffiti about and, wondering what we would clean, returned to the meeting point to find a woman sitting twiddling a feather with a water bottle by her side.
“Graffiti?” I said.
“Yep, I’m waiting to clean. Name’s Daisy,” she said. “Here, come sit down.”
I sat down with Daisy.
“There’s not much graffiti around,” I said.
“There’s plenty inside,” said Daisy. “All over the hallways.”
“Inside?”
“In our block of flats,” she said. “I had a few of the other tenants lined up, but now it’s just you and me – and whoever shows up from Housing.”
We waited.
A woman wearing high-cut jeans and a bum bag arrived.
“Come sit with us,” said Daisy, but the woman paced around making calls, until someone (a senior guy from Housing, said Daisy) pulled up in a car, eating an apple.
At last, half an hour late, we received our cleaning equipment.
“There’s also plenty of fruit,” said the man, demonstrably breaking open an orange.
We broke off in pairs. Daisy directed the others to one end of the building (“the junkie end,” she told me) and we went to the other (“my end”, said Daisy).
“You drink?” she asked.
“I guess it is almost 11,” I said, and by the time we started work on our first hallway I had a water bottle filled with white wine by my side.
The cleaning liquid they gave us was strong. It stripped paint off the walls and the fire-hose boxes. The no-smoking signs also gave in and melted, running down the walls in long liquid words.
“Looks like it’s a smoker’s hallway now,” we laughed.
And my thoughts of graffiti preservation faded in the white wine and fumes as we scrubbed away the tags and mad ramblings.
“Junkies,” said Daisy. “They get off their heads and don’t know what they’re doing. I once saw a guy out here in the hallway, completely naked, humping an ironing board – doggie-style!”
“What did you do?”
“I shouted at him: ‘I think your girlfriend’s a bit flat!’.”
After two hours we made it to the top level. Daisy thought we should check on the others. “They’re paper-pushers,” she said. “They might need a hand.”
“Yeah, paper-pushers,” I said.
As we crossed the top of the building, Daisy showed me the rooftop drying area. “Sometimes we find people living up here,” she said. “It’s dry, there’s water – and pigeons to coo you to sleep.”
At the top of the opposite stairwell, we listened but heard nothing. We walked down the six levels and, sure enough, every wall was untouched. At the bottom, it became clear: they’d scrubbed a wall or two outside, then opened the door, took one look, and turned back.
We found them outside, getting into the fruit. The woman started blathering an excuse. I think she was embarrassed. The man clearly was not.
“We’ve learned something here today,” he said shaking a peeled banana at Daisy. “Next time we’ll bring the cleaners. Now, let’s get some photos.”
The woman from Housing took off. The guy (pausing between mouthfuls) took shots of Daisy and me pretending to clean. Daisy took the opportunity to show him around: the pigeons upstairs, the walls we had cleaned, the no-smoking signs gone, and the old gas-room below, where homeless people sometimes huddle, and smoke, in the winter.
He shook my hand. He kissed Daisy. And, after one last bite of an apple, he left.
Daisy and I sat in the garden, drinking white wine. And we laughed. “We even cleaned off the signs – and they didn’t do a thing!”