Welcome to Kings Cross

First published on 17 Aug 2009. Updated on 27 Aug 2009.

The Cross. The mere mention of it sets Sydney aquiver with fear, excitement and desire. Thoughts turn to neon streaks and blurred visions, thrilling elixirs and fleshy feasts for the eyes and belly, cafés and clubs filled with riotously colourful identities and strange memories that slide in and out of truth like shadows in a Darlinghurst Road doorway.

In rural folklore, the intersection of two roads was often regarded as a black magic site. So it is with Kings Cross, Australia's most densely populated suburb - 20,000 people in 1.4km - but also our most notorious and mysterious. Today, true Sydneysiders know that "heading to the Cross" is code for a fork in the road that says: Go hard. Or go home.

It has always been so. The Gadigal knew the land Kings Cross inhabits as ‘Walla Mulla', which variously translates as ‘place of blood' and ‘place of plenty'. So true. Those labyrinthine lanes and alleys have been battlefield and bohemia for an extraordinary collection of cops and crims, artists and actors, lovers and sinners... and oddballs.

Only in The Cross could the city's biggest illegal casino operate yards from Darlinghurst Police Station. Only in The Cross could William Street - the Gadigal walking track once intended to be Sydney's Champs Elysées - become the city's dirtiest half-mile. Only in The Cross could ‘Chk-chk-boom' become a bogan byword for Sydney as Sin City.

Today, Kings Cross is much more than a red-light hotbed of bohemia and glorious vice. The Cross has cleaned up its act. Streets have widened, trees have been planted, poetry has been carved into the pavement. All the bad seeds sown and blood spilled in the old days has bloomed to create a thriving cosmopolitan nexus where art and anarchy, food and fashion, hot sex and high society can meet... and maybe even share a kneetrembler. AF