Saturday, January 06, 2024
The Ozone Café is about three separate owners of the café and its demise through political corruption.
Hagemann delivers a vision of 1960s and ’70s life in a small NSW Central Coast town. The novel is a homage to a café of the same name and of a distinctive P&O design in her hometown of Ettalong, New South Wales. It is also about the struggle of past and present cafe owners to save the cafe from demolition. Here are my cafe owners: -
Vincenzo Polamo, a Calabrian, builds the Ozone Café with his builder-brother in 1957 in fictional Satara Bay. He meets three children, Winifred, Casey, and Nicolas, creating a seascape mural on a café wall that includes them. The café changes from Italian to Australian cuisine. However, due to long hours of hard work and Vincenzo’s wife unwilling to migrate to Australia, Vincenzo sells the café.
Joe Pendlebury suffers setbacks with too few customers, poor health and problems due to a violent storm causing structural damage close to the mural. In major scenes, Pendlebury goes missing, and Nicolas dies from muscular dystrophy, heightening Winifred’s concerns to keep the mural sacred.
Con & Dion Lasaridis experience problems with the damage. Unable to convince the Heytesbury Shire the café is sound after a rebuild, they lose ownership in a court battle; the Shire evoking a Demolition Order, 1946. The Lasaridis believe this is due to an undercurrent of well-known council corruption; Mayor Tyrone being a principal player in corrupt land and property dealings. Vincenzo (et al) removes the mural reinstating it at his home. The mural becomes a lasting memorial to Nicolas Battersby, as well as the sole surviving piece of The Ozone Café.
At the time of commencing the novel, I had very little to go on. Then half-way through I discovered a pic of the Ozone posted on Gosford's Historical Library page on FLICKR. I therefore acknowledge the library Gostalgia, and that I have been given permission to use the picture on the cover of my 2nd Edition of The Ozone Cafe. I am also grateful for the research carried out by actor Felix Willliamson (son of playwright John Williamson) in his search and playing the role of Phil (the Jew) Jeffs in Underbelly Razor - a TV mini series.
Gostalgia: local history from Gosford Library
Phil Jeff's house, with cafe beneath, Ettalong.
The above photograph was taken by Press photographer Sam Hood. It is believed to date from around November 1945, when Phil "the Jew" Jeffs died in St. Vincent's hospital in Sydney. He is buried in the Jewish section of Rookwood Cemetery, under the name "Phillip Davis". The building is of a style known as "P & O" an interwar style that reflected the architecture of a ship's bridge. Unfortunately this building has since been demolished. Aerial photographs from 1957 reveal that Phil Jeff's former house was on the corner of Beach Street and The Esplanade, Ettalong Beach, near Memorial Avenue. The house faced due south, looking straight out to Broken Bay and Lion Island.This was THE prime spot for views in the area, and the site is now the location of Mantra, Ettalong Beach. Nothing remains of Phil Jeffs house in 2011. A brief report of Phil Jeffs death can be read at:nla.gov.au/nla.news-article56436952 Another former Razor war criminal, Kate Leigh, was embroiled in an assault case at Woy Woy in 1931.Read about this case on the Trove newspaper website:trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper
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