coburg lake reserve in d4 'standover'

David Clendinning, Amber Mae Cecil and of course Gerard Kennedy in a great end-of-episode chase sequence that takes us from Pentridge to the Coburg Lake Reserve. The episode is 'Standover', from 15 August 1973. This episode also has Norman Yemm in it but not enough Norman Yemm, as if there could ever be enough Norman Yemm!

 

coburg trash and treasure

Wow, ct&t was at its lowest ever this morning. What happened to all the stuff that people were supposedly rinsing out of their lives during the pandemic? Has it all resettled in other crevices? There were about half as many stalls as usual when I was there this morning and what was on display was pretty uniformly horrible. The only thing that I found mildly interesting was this artefact, which was more strange than anything:

I'd just never seen it before. But as I stood around with it in my hand briefly thinking maybe this is an item of interest, looking at the vendor retrieve a Val Doonican album that a potential customer's trolley wheel had dragged away from its propping place to be under another potential customer's shoe, I thought, fuck this... even if it is rare or unusual I don't want it in my house. So I put it back. I looked it up on discogs and no, it's not even slightly rare or unusual, except in my experience. 

I did some other shopping then went to Savers Preston which was also a great disappointment. A couple of good shirts with stains that just looked insurmountable. A keyboard behind the 'jewellery' counter which I waited to have a look at but after counting to 100 (a common way to restore equilibrium while figuring out how long I should reasonably wait) nobody came to show it to me so screw that, too. 

Perhaps the poor showing (of vendors) at CT&T is down to the weather; the papers are talking about a 'cold tongue' from Antarctica, and it was raining lightly this morning at various times. I can never tell whether a long weekend means more people looking for mindless leisure such as is offered by CT&T, or less. But I suppose to be honest when it comes down to it I mainly enjoy looking at stuff and I was not unhappy that I didn't have a bunch of crap in my hands when I got back home. 

in the pudding

Correcting proofs is such a big fat plastic hassle. It is the kind of thing where you're called to account for all the dumb decisions you've ever made. I thought I had totally ironed out all the creases in my DeGaris book by reading the entire thing out loud to myself over a couple of days, but no. It's still, as I discovered looking at it in cold hard layout, imperfect. 

I guess I like writing because it's a challenge, and it keeps me on my toes, but seriously, it is tough. Then there are those other weird unexpected almost indescribable problems that slowly bubble to the surface:

Poor Ernie Bye is depicted in this photograph from Table Talk with the most unusual variety of genital. I noticed this immediately when I clipped the picture but I decided it was a printer glitch but now, seeing it about to go into my beautiful book, I feel like it's a bit of a blight or at very least a distraction. I have asked whether it can be photoshopped out. I should have done that myself, a year ago. 

I wonder what happened to Ernie. He would have been the perfect age for WW2 but doesn't seem to have served, and I can't find any mention of him at all in newspapers. In 1950 there were at least three, maybe four Ernest Byes living in Melbourne; two (Ernest H. and Ernest M.) were living 2.5 km away from each other in Coburg and the other, without a middle initial, lived in Maribyrnong (the fourth is probably the business address, in the city, of one of them). An Ernest Bye died in Melbourne in 2000 but who knows if it's this one, there were clearly heaps. 

You're probably wondering what happened to Jean Wenborn of Brighton. Jean clearly adored weddings, as she went to another one in March 1938, when Phyllis Dunn married Alan Sundberg at St Cuthberts, Middle Brighton. There, Jean was one of the bride's attendants, alongside her cousin, Audrey Leggatt. This was such a freakin' mad trip she went to another in 1940, her sister Moira's, to Gillon Ronald Griffith of Riversdale Road, Hawthorn East. According to the Age 12 August 1940 p. 3, Jean wore a parma violet taffetas* frock and jacket. You'll never believe it but Moira ended up living in Marriage Road!!! That's right, 16 Marriage Road, Brighton. 

By 1956, according to a classified relating to her mother's will, Jean had apparently enjoyed weddings so much she'd up and married a man called Pim (history does not relate whether that was his only name).  She died in 2008. 

* sic, I don't know if this is a typo or taffetas was a thing not taffeta

walking tour

I took students (and anyone they wished to invite along - even a couple of former students showed up!) to a walking tour of Coburg this afternoon. It was informal. I had worked out the route in advance the week before but I was still doing research up to an hour before it started. I stopped them every 10 mins or so at key spots and gave them a spiel - combination of site-specifics and general tie-ins to the planning scene. I thought it went pretty well, the only real bummer was I had planned for us to all have coffee at the Victoria St Mall in Coburg at the end and when we got there it was not the thriving place it had been the previous week - it was mainly closed and empty. But the students didn't mind much, I gather they all went off to the pub en masse. I think on the whole it went well.

Another good thing was my right foot, which has been giving me gyp for the last couple of weeks seems finally on the mend. It got a bit tetchy late in the walk but it feels fine now.

walk along elizabeth st coburg yesterday evening

It's not sequential. Well it is, but not necessarily in the order I saw it.