The Well Connected Cafe in Glebe was never going to win any awards. It was never going to appear in tourist guidebooks or on lists of trendsetters. It was never going to be immortalised in songs like Hard Rock Cafe or Scenes From an Italian Restaurant.

But it will be honoured here, in print, if it's the last thing I do.

WellCo, as it was universally known, commanded pride of place on Glebe Point Road for many years. It opened in 1995 and was Sydney's first internet cafe, so the Herald's archives say. But its exact origins are a moot point - to me, it had always been there, and I thought it always would.

The Well Connected Cafe on Glebe Point Road. Credit:Barry Chapman

When I was a fresh-faced student at the nearby University of Sydney, WellCo was an exciting lunch destination during a long break between classes. Later, it became an off-campus ground zero for all manner of plots and schemes. We fooled ourselves into thinking its walls afforded us secrecy. In its upstairs sanctuary we plotted student elections, planned to edit Honi Soit and wrote lurid revues.