Coalcliff Days

Coalcliff is a suburb of Wollongong, about an hour south of Sydney by train and a little to the north of Thirroul, where DH Lawrence spent some time in the early 1920s. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, a semi-derelict house perched near the edge of a cliff became a kind of semi-official squat lived in by the writers Ken Bolton and Sal Brereton, followed by Alan Jefferies. The building has since been bulldozed, but for that brief period it was a centre of activity for both poetry and the visual arts. Apart from those mentioned above the building hosted many poets and artists including Kurt Brereton, Pam Brown, Denis Gallagher, Micky Allen, Anna Couani, Erica Callan, and myself among many others. The Wollongong City Gallery is presenting an exhibition covering that period early in 2011. Connected with the exhibition there’s a blog The Coalcliff Days, to which I shall be contributing.