Just around the corner from exclusive Elizabeth Bay and down the road from shady Kings Cross, Rushcutters Bay is all that separates the best from the rest.

Now it’s back in the news after former prime ministerial aspirant Andrew Peacock ran his Merc into a light pole while drink driving on the weekend. In a strange twist of fate, Rushcutters Bay was also the place where Peacock’s ex-wife Susan Renouf rear-ended a car with her BMW convertible ten years ago, fleeing from the scene and only reporting to police the next day.

But the peculiarities don’t stop there. Rushcutters Bay is a funny place. Since the expressways went in it’s lost a great deal of interesting architecture and much of its character, but it was, at one time, a lively spot and home to the famous RB Stadium where boxing, wrestling and subsequently entertainment was staged.

Johnny Ray, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Betty Hutton et al all performed there, the stage being the boxing ring where in 1908 Tommy Burns (born Noah Brusso in Canada) slugged it out with the notorious Jack Johnson for the world heavyweight title. It was one of the legendary fights with Burns losing the title to Johnson, the first black man ever to hold it. There’s a lot of history buried under all that concrete and asphalt.

The Ruschcutter’s Bay Motel was a notorious shagging spot. Handy to the Cross, it’s where people went for furtive liaisons, which was probably what former Liberal Party leader Billy Snedden was doing when he died in one of the motel’s rooms. Having been given a post-modern makeover, it has now been reincarnated as the Vibe Hotel.

And the spot where Peacock was nabbed is a notorious speed trap, with police poised to book motorists who come flying out of the tunnel. It’s where they park their booze buses to nail shickered motorists heading home to Point Piper.

Rushcutters Bay Park was also once, and may still be, a gay cruising spot with shadowy figures doing it in the dark under the trees. There were even a couple of nasty murders in the toilets there in the early 90s, with signs suggesting they were gay hate crimes.

Despite its sometimes colourful history, the Bay is most famous as the home of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, which was formed in 1944 and instigated the annual Sydney Hobart Yacht Race when a planned cruise to Hobart in 1945 quickly turned into a heated competition.