Place In Time Parramatta Road
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday December 15, 2003
The Flying Pieman wasn't just about fast food, writes Peter FitzSimons. His bizarre feats of endurance captured the imagination of 19th-century Sydney and earned him a place in the hearts of the people.
Five things you didn't know about girls' surfing in Sydney
The first Australian to stand up on a surfboard was 15-year-old Isabel Letham from Sydney, who surfed with Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku at Freshwater Beach in February 1915.
Five-time women's world surfing champion Layne Beachley hails from Manly and now lives in Curl Curl.
Manly Surf School, Australia's largest, estimates that up to 70 per cent of people who take lessons are female.
Between Sydney and Byron Bay there are almost 1000 surfable beaches.
The three-fin surfboard, the most widely used today, was designed by Narrabeen surfer Simon Anderson in 1981.
Surf's Up: The Girl's Guide to Surfing by Louise Southerden (Allen & Unwin), $29.95.
Five other books you should read this month
Bel Canto
by Ann Patchett
HarperCollins, $22.95
A bungled hostage situation in Latin America features opera, love and more than a touch of Fawlty Towers. An insight into the desire to find a personal paradise.
Recommended by Janet Heyward of the Balmain Book Group.
The Return of the Dancing Master
by Henning Mankell
Vintage, $29.95
This fabulous crime thriller is set in Sweden, this time in the forests of the north. A retired police officer meets a lonely death and the investigation reveals a network of evil. It has an edge-of-the-seat plot with mountains of local colour.
Recommended by Maxine Ryan of Berkelouw Books.
North of Capricorn: The Untold Story of Australia's North
by Henry Reynolds
Allen & Unwin, $49.95
Leading historian Henry Reynolds brings to life the little-known story of the multi-racial towns of northern Australia, from Broome to Mackay, and how they were changed forever by the White Australia policy in 1901.
Recommended by David Hall of Abbey's Bookshop.
The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
Vintage, $32.95
A funny, moving and utterly original love story from this first-time novelist. This delightfully romantic book tells the story of Clare and Henry's passionate marriage. Niffenegger's deft handling of the structure and nature of time is what makes it special.
Recommended by Karen Ferris of Better Read Than Dead.
Loving Che
by Ana Menendez
Headline, $29.95
Loving Che centres on a woman's infatuation with Che Guevara's image, including his politics and physicality. A small, luscious hardback from Ana Menendez, the author of In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd.
Recommended by Rita Nash from Martin Smith's Bookshop.
"Faster than the Flying Pieman ..."
Old Australian expression, which still endures in some parts of country NSW.
Next time you're in the hustle and bustle of the Hume Highway, going south through downtown Liverpool, look to the Pioneer Park Cemetery, just 50 metres away on your left. Can you see all those stunted gravestones marking the last resting place of Sydneysiders long gone? One of them belongs to William Francis King, who was born in London in 1807 and died in Sydney in 1873. 'Cept no one knew him by that name, of course. To all he was "the Flying Pieman".
The first of Sydney's great sporting larrikins, there is no use waiting for a moonlit night to look for his spirit in the small patch of grass that is the cemetery. I fancy, instead, the best spot to catch him would be somewhere along Parramatta Road, perhaps at that point just after the expressway starts, curving off to the right towards Penrith.
With me now? Nigh on 3am, with the modern road taking the freight, Parramatta Road is again just a little like it once was when our Pieman used to tear along here, back and forth. Already known around Sydney for selling "Pies! Hot pies!", this slightly "touched" eccentric always had a top hat with coloured streamers trailing behind, a blue jacket, open white shirt, red breeches, white stockings and sturdy shoes, as well as a staff decorated with further streamers. He was so athletic, legend has it he would sell pies to people getting onto steam boats heading to Parramatta and then hightail it there so quickly on foot that he would sell more to the same passengers at the other end.
As his fame grew, so did his ambition to accomplish ever more fantastic feats, winning bets when he did so. He twice beat the mail coach from Sydney to Windsor; he carried a 30-kilogram dog from Campbelltown to Sydney between midnight and 9am; he ran 2.4 kilometres in 12 minutes with a 40-kilogram goat on his back; and - see him now in the moonlight - he walked from Martin Place to Church Street, Parramatta and back, twice a day for six days in a row!
The feats became more bizarre. On April 28, 1855, the Sydney Illustrated News reported what he planned in Hyde Park: "We understand on Whit Monday [the Flying Pieman] will perform the extraordinary task of picking up a hundred live cats, placed one yard apart, a hundred live rats and the same number of mice, at the same distance. We anticipate a crowded assemblage to witness such a curiosity."
So you see, such a spirit could surely never leave us. Vale, Flying Pieman, wherever you are.
Do you have a historical anecdote about a place in Sydney?
© 2003 Sydney Morning Herald