The other day, I decided to make my way to a new cafe to do some work and made my way to Redfern. I was walking down the road and came across a man walking his little terrier. His name was Tommy and her name was Mini.
Tommy has a habit of naming his pets after brands of cars. He used to have a cat named Porsche and now has another named Alfie (after Alfa Romeo). When he was younger, he used to have a collection of well over 300 of Matchbox and Hotwheel cars. He really loved his old car, a Gran Turismo Hawk 62.
He then showed me some of the photos that he took of himself and his pets on his phone:
"I take heaps of them. That was me yesterday. I cut my hair last Tuesday. This hair colour I bought it around a month ago but I just put it on now. It says dark brown but it looks blue to me."
He told me about his family, about watching his nieces and nephews grow up on Facebook, about how his older brother passed away from a liver condition and also about a car he acquired when he was younger:
"I used to have a Hillman Gazelle. I got that probably 88.. 89? It was probably a 68 model or something. Beautiful, big chrome square grille. It looked a lot older for the era. It looked old when it was brand new. This one had the fins and bubbly guards and everything and it looked totally out of date. The girl I got it off it started having engine problems so she got a new car and gave it to me for nothing! Got it from Newcastle. She used to live over at Newcastle and I lived at Raymond Terrace, so I drove it back to Raymond Terrace, there was smoke going out of it. The crank in the engine was broken. I never got around to fixing it so I stored it in my Dad's yard and when they were selling the house so he sold it to someone in the Helmet club so that was pretty neat."
Thank you Tommy for taking part in the project!