Editors of CrossLines Kings Cross literary magazine

They actually never really meet - Johnny Stewart the Speedcar Champion and Mandy Topless Taylor who works as a stripper at the Pink Pussycat but they both haunt the Cross in 1965. Johnny drives a gold Mustang convertible which is the only car in Australia fitted with an in-built record player. One night in November 1965 Johnny Stewart is driving up William Street toward the Cross.

"Kings Cross at the top of the hill, as two dimensional as a movie set propped up with balsa struts. The neon heart pumped neon blood from the centre of the cross on map two of Robinson's Street Directory. X marks the spot. William Street, Darlinghurst Road, Bayswater Road, Victoria Street.

Drink Coca-Cola flashing above the ever-changing time on the clock......

Just above the buzz of traffic, green and white taxis driven by Nescafe addicts and hoons in hotted FJ Holdens with no mufflers, you could hear the pulse of the Cross, the hiss of gas being forced through coloured glass tubes, the signs as they flicked on and off.

The glittering mile, someone once called it. The kind of el cheapo glitter you can peel away with your thumbnail to find cardboard underneath. The plywood doorway to sin city. Take a walk down sleaze street, past pockmarked pros in Chanel suits, tough as store dummies, waiting to take suckers to room five at the Lido Motel for a five quid blow job plus tip. Strip clubs with punchy ex-boxers out front, struggling to remember what year it is."

Mandy Taylor works right inside the `plywood glitter'.

"Names in neon. The Golden Orchid, the Paradise Room, Strip Au Go-Go. The world famous Pink Pussycat where Mandy Taylor, 40-22-35, the most famous tits in town, worked all night then after breakfast of a hamburger and Coke, walked upstairs to a room lit by the BMC Every Time sign".

"At the Hasty Tasty, where Mandy has sat with boygirl Carlotta an hour before and talked about silicone breasts and Shirley Bassey, men with concrete expressions and nowhere to go stared into the same cup of coffee for an hour, watching it go cold. They could be jazz musicians, coming down off a benzedrine high, playing mental drums to Ramsey Lewis' `The In Crowd' on the juke box. They could be escaped mental patients, tapping their toes to their own personal loony tunes. Who needs records when you have a juke box inside your head? No coins required.

Kings fucking Cross, where the crazies come home to roost".

Mandy, who became famous for her breasts at the age of sixteen, is really the daughter of Chinese-Russian parents - she makes her living as a topless model and stripper.

Johnny wins every race he enters because he makes sure he is dead drunk when he gets into his car. He drives like someone who doesn't care if he lives or dies. His competition backs out.

Johnny ends up dying after slipping off a ladder on a harbour ferry where he is working. Mandy moves to America where she works in the self-improvement industry.

Although photographed together they don't remember meeting.

1965 was that sort of year at the Cross - the `el cheapo glitter' went to everyone's head.