Hell Razor: On the set of Underbelly’s latest

For the fourth series of Underbelly, we’re taken back to the mean streets of the 1920-30s when Darlinghurst was nicknamed ‘Razorhurst’ and two women ruled the streets. Colin Delaney steps back in time.

It wasn’t too hard to make Sydney’s Eveleigh St. terraces and Redfern’s infamous ‘block’ look run down and dilapidated. But build a couple of extra facades, roll in some beautiful old cars, bring in a few kids with grubby faces plus a few loitering, rugged old chaps and you’re thrown back to Darlinghurst in the hell-raising ‘20s. Gentrification has taken a turn for the worse: this is Underbelly: Razor.

This new Underbelly series is the true story set in the 1920s and ‘30s when madams Kate Leigh (Danielle Cormack) and Tilly Divine (Chelsie Preston Crayford) were bitter rivals and running all types of the vice on the streets of Sydney.

Encore was invited to the set to watch all hell break loose, for the scene when Leigh and Divine’s henchmen face off in the infamous Kellett Street fight. Clubs, bats and old chair legs swung and clashed against limbs of brown tweed and close-shave haircuts while broken whisky bottles and ocker profanity filled the air.