100 Mount Street, North Sydney

You know you're getting old when the pub where you had your first schooner of "Old" and a pub lunch in has been pulled down not once, but twice!

Sydney rarely gets a true fog but we do sometimes get a heavy mist.  It's usually gone well before lunch.  Today we had a fog but, as usual, it was not there for long.  It just happened to be my one day in the office this week too.  I was hoping for one of those dramatic shots of the harbour bridge floating on the mist, but not today.

This is a shot of 100 Mount Street and the far more interesting looking 1 Denison Street - both about 30 something levels above street level.  The sun was just about to come over 100 Mount.  I had to take it through glass of course but I still kind of like it.

100 Mount Street now occupies the site where I had my first pub lunch: Bangers (sausages), mash (potato) and peas for $1 in 1977, washed down with a couple of schooners of "Old" (dark beer) at the Albert Hotel.  Those were the days!  Mildly intoxicated at lunchtime (most lunchtimes) and an ashtray on your desk.  I still can't believe the world was ever like that!

The "Albert" was the closest thing I've ever had to a "local" (even though I never lived anywhere near it).  To cut a long story short, it was pulled down in the mid 1980s and "Albert's Tavern" was built in its place.  Not the same of course, in fact I only went there once or twice.  No beer garden, no pool table, no pinball machine, no juke box - pathetic.

The most sobering thing about looking at this building now (excuse the pun) is that the wine bar has now also been demolished.  Yikes!