Brass plaques on The Strip shine at Heritage Awards

A strip of more than one hundred brass plaques telling the stories of Kings Cross received a high commendation at this week’s National Trust Heritage Awards.
The series of plaques, called ‘The Strip on the Strip’, were embedded into a granite footpath along Darlinghurst Road during 2005, and completed late last year.
The stories of art, poetry, sleaze, humour, prostitutes, drug dealers and some of the area’s upstanding residents’, impressed the judges.
“The idiosyncratic nature of the quirky stories told on the plaques . . . are a clever and contemporary way of telling the stories of people whose voices are rarely heard,” the judging panel said.
A small group of local history experts worked with the City of Sydney’s historian to design the project, which coincided with the City’s reconstruction of the pavements and contemporary upgrade of Darlinghurst Road.
“Kings Cross is full of interesting, colourful and creative stories and is one of the City’s most famous villages,” Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP said.
“The stories on the plaques are interesting to everyone, but were primarily designed to interpret Kings Cross to its residents and Sydneysiders.
“Gradually over time, people can absorb and understand more about the area simply by walking over the plaques on their daily travels,” she said.