50. At the crossroad

Traffic is incessant, with a never ending procession of buses streaming up the rise from the Haymarket, shuddering to a stop at the QVB stands, before crawling to their destination down at the Quay. The corner of George and Park, one of the busiest, and most complex in Sydney, has Woolworths and The Galleries Victoria to the east, and the Town Hall and the Queen Victoria Building to the west.

The belching engines of the ageing Mercedes buses combust with the agitated pedal-pumping of taxi drivers, focussed on long-distance fares and the need for continual turnover. The incessant din from cranes and jackhammers on overarching construction sites competes with the amplified tirade from the lone christian on a crate spruiking his personal vision of Armageddon and the continual horn-honking of irate car drivers exasperated and awash in a torrent of trade.

Her fresh, attentive face is oblivious to her surrounds.