Stories of places and people…
Not your usual cafe
It was in the May of 2017 that I last visited Harry’s Cafe de Wheels. Sydney’s weather was at its autumn best that day, warm, a cloudless sky of blue reflected in the harbour’s rippling waters.
I can’t remember why I was wandering around the wharf. Probably just one of my random urban explorations, but maybe I was on a little pilgrimage back to a place that, even though I only lived there for a couple of years in what now seems to be ages ago, still holds a special place in my heart. Woolloomooloo wasn’t much to look at when I was living in that old terrace house on Cathedral Street — definitely on the grungy side. But it was all about the people I shared that place with. Memories like that stick with you.
So there I was, down by the harbour where Woolloomooloo meets the water and right in front of me was Harry’s Cafe de Wheels, an edible signifier of a past age persisting into modern times.
Harry started this little waterfront café way back in 1936 because there just weren’t enough late-night eateries around, maybe none at all. So he opened his caravan adjacent to the naval dockyard, serving pies to sailors, cabbies and anyone else whose work took them into the hours of darkness. Harry was invalided out of the army in 1942 and reopened his dining establishment in 1945. Powered by the folklore of previous years, the legend just kept rolling.
The name, Cafe de Wheels, came from a bizarre Sydney City Council regulation that said food trucks had to move at least 30cm every day. There’s a story about how Harry’s caravan’s wheels being stolen, leading to it becoming known as Cafe de Axle for a time.
Harry’s never served the fancy foods favoured by the gourmet class. It was all about simple, basic, working class food such as his classic meat pie topped with mashed potato, peas and gravy. Over the years Harry’s became a go-to venue for night workers and late-night revellers.
Places like Harry’s Cafe de Wheels that persist over the decades accumulate stories around them like grass seeds accumulate on socks, leading to another story that claims that over the years some notable characters dined at Harry’s including Robert Mitchum, Colonel Sanders, Elton John, Prince Harry, Frank Sinatra and Marlene Dietrich. I wondered whether this was fact or folklore, but maybe it is true.
After Harry passed away in 1979, Alex Kuronya took over and donated the original caravan to the Powerhouse Museum. Then in 1988, Michael Hannah took ownership. The Cafe de Wheels now gets its pies from Hannah’s Pies in Ultimo.
Today, Harry’s Cafe de Wheels is an important part of Sydney’s culinary and cultural landscape. With its simple, affordable fare and as a daytime and late-night meeting place for people from all walks of life, the Cafe de Wheels remains an edible celebration of the traditional egalitarian spirit of Australia, a counterbalance to the pretentious high class restaurant and the cult of the celebrity chef.
People were sitting on the nearby seats that day I came by Harry’s, gazing out over the harbour waters while they ate their pies. As I strolled towards the Domain park that warm winter day when the calm harbour waters reflected the blue of the sky, I glanced back at the Woolloomooloo waterfront and there it was — Harry’s Cafe de Wheels, still serving its traditional fare to hungry passers-by just like it always has done over the years and over the decades.
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