community

I've wondered this before, and I probably won't do it because names take on a life of their own. but since my move to City Gardens there is more of a case than ever before for me changing the title of this blog. I haven't lived in Lorraine Crescent since 2013, I mean that's close to ten years. We finally did the property settlement a few months ago and the house is now Mia's. I really enjoyed my early years in that house as is probably evident from what I wrote back then (and from the fact that I named the blog after it). I still feel a considerable connection to the area, it's the first place I really felt vested in as an adult. So it's oddly still a bit of a wrench. I don't know if I can have the same kind of feeling for North Melbourne as I did for Jacana/Broadmeadows, I think NM is a bit too big and harsh and complicated. That said I was out with the grabber yesterday and a woman with a fluffy dog in a pram asked me where I got the grabber from, and for a second I felt like well this is kind of a community-styled conversation. 

big day out

 

My story begins at the Broadmeadows Shopping Centre though of course like all stories there is a preface of I guess not only millions of years of life on Earth but also God's infinite existence, but let's start where my story begins, at the Broadmeadows Shopping Centre. Faffing around like an old fool at JB trying to get the cheapest easiest earbuds (ugh I hate that term) for my phone, which means actually buying an adaptor and then getting cheap 'n' nasty old-school product. I didn't want bluetooth nothing (yes I do have bluetooth things somewhere, but where are they? Answer me that and then we don't have to have a terse exchange). I knew I would be doing a fair bit of walking today and I wanted to listen to podcasts or whatever. (I say whatever, but all I ended up listening to was podcasts.) So here I am wandering through the BSC after buying something for that purpose, also, some dog biscuits. I had about 25c in 5c pieces jangling away in my pocket for the guide dog dog into whose head you put money. It's good luck I know 25c isn't much but it adds up if you do it every time for fear of having bad luck. Next slide please.

This is the argument I was having at the same time. I always try to have an argument with some drone from Optus every day, it keeps them on their toes and keeps my bile up. 

I took Barry and Ferdie out for a little walk, and as is now my wont I let them go into the water. It was quite a warm day (it got warmer, this is only midday) but Barry did not want to go into the water, just potter around the edge. They were panting quickly though and they both drank deep from their water bowl when they got back. 

I decided after this to walk to Glenroy which means first of all crossing Jacana Reserve (this picture is a bit of an illusion, there's a big drop between the green grass and the yellowed bit which is much further away, I saw that and can't unsee it but I am not sure how it looks to you, just imagine the second tree from the right is absolutely on the edge of a steep hill, and when I say imagine, it's not a lie. 

Emu Parade shops, a late 1950s Housing Commission construction which has never really been a jumpin' joint in my experience, though someone there was smart enough to register the name Broady Pizza and that was, well, smart. Hard to conceive of this now but whereas Jacana is the very southernmost tip of the City of Hume today and for many Hume is really two major centres - Sunbury and Broadmeadows - the old Broadmeadows council went much further south. It unnecessarily irritates me that the true fact is often stated that, until Hume set up the Broadmeadows library there was no library at Broadmeadows. And there wasn't! But Broadmeadows CC ran at least two libraries - at Fawkner and Glenroy - because Broadmeadows wasn't really where the population was. OK enough defending Broadmeadows CC for now. Don't really know what this landscaping etc is about (in the top picture) but seriously, that vacant land on the right which I think was once a petrol station (never in my Jacana experience, so more than 15 years) has been vacant too long. It should be a groovy vegan cafe and record shop, shouldn't it. 

So many great brick HCV houses in Jacana, it was probably one of the last bastions of brick HCV before they went concrete (as they did over the railway line within years). This one has a name, 'Jallen'. 

This is not a house but a tree with a really nice view. I have probably mentioned this before, I don't know what happened here, it was a weatherboard house probably from the 1920s that burned down about a decade ago. Surely foul play of some sort. I met a man there, when the house was still standing, who claimed to be the owner, he told me that there was an old saying in Greek that you needed three things in life, friends, cunt and money, which was not as far as I'm concerned the sort of thing you say to a stranger, probably not even a friend, and certainly not the kind of thing you write on a blog for anyone to see. He was complaining that he was not being enabled by council to pull down the house and build something else on it, and now the house is not there, but I don't see anyone trying to build anything on it, so what's that about? 

As you probably know when the Bolte government considered ways to get people to and from the new Tullamarine Jetport, dedicated 1959, a significant amount of land was reserved from the Broadmeadows line just south of Jacana station (which actually opened that year) to the airport. Presumably most of it was sold yonks ago, but this little patch was only developed a few years ago and currently looks like this. It is called something ridiculous like Coupling Lane which sounds a bit, hmm, not heteronormative but at least relationshiponormative. It should have been called Friends, Cunt and Money Avenue. Why? Well, it has a tree in it, that makes it an avenue. Avenue been told that's what makes an avenue? 

So I crossed the railway line. This is in the yard of the house in Glenroy where these people live: 

Glenroy has a lot of good weatherboard houses like for instance this one:

I know what you're going to say but I kind of like the idea of these flats, too, in Pascoe Vale Road:

Then I went to the two Glenroy op shops. I hope never to see this film. I only photographed it in case I was ever challenged at a dinner party to provide an example to counter the claim that 'everyone who ever wrote the text on the front of a DVD never made a mistake in punctuation'. 

I didn't buy this either though I probably should have. 

What the hell was being implied by the shapes formed by the song titles? Also, who is more objectified by this, the woman or the mop? Assuming neither of them is actually Ken Griffin. OK, next slide please. 

Look I now can't remember what this cafe used to be called, I have remarked about it en blog in temps passe and it will probably come to me. But calling it "21 Days Later" seems zany, I mean why not just go the whole hog and name it after a real dystopian horror film? 'Meet you at Night of the Living Dead!' I didn't go in, it looked a little sad in there but I think that's covid trading, not any reflection on the current owners. 

Glenroy underpass, which everyone loves. I suspect its days are numbered however as there is presently a skyrail solution to the very real shithouseness of the Glenroy level crossing. What worries me more is what this means for... 

The Rotary Centre, a pretty decent op shop for a long time now, is no longer trading. I have a sense that this building is actually pretty old, though I concede it doesn't necessarily look it. I have a feeling it hasn't got long. I wish I could remember something I got there when it was an op shop that sparked joy but to be honest, nah. It had a certain something though. 

Behind you! 

So we shall see where this ends up. Meanwhile, over the road from this sign/site, the weird phenomenon of the other big Glenroy supermarket that was a kind of bizarro world 'how does it make money' place, presently I suspect fixing to die (it's certainly not trading any more):

Kept walking down towards Oak Park, stopping in at the beach for a relax. 

Travelled all the way to Kensington on the train, during which time I heard from a lovely girl who just wants to be friends: 

Apparently she lives in Bendigo now but she was originally from Narrogin in WA, which is about an hour's drive north of Katanning, where I have been, but I don't think I've been to Narrogin. I wonder why she wants to be my friend and what she has just for me. Sadly I have too many friends so I had to decline. 

I wish this story had a good solid ending, maybe you're just happy it has any kind of ending whatever it is. I went to Cheaper Buy Miles and KFL Kensington (no relation at all, as far as I'm aware, to KFL Glenroy) and then I got the tram back because my feet hurt and my shopping bag was heavy. Curiously, just as I got back to Parkville I saw an instagram post from the national archives showing the cast of Aunty Jack, which I recently found out something interesting about (and put on the Aunty Jack wikipedia page). Did you know that the first Aunty Jack outing on Australian (naturally) TV was on the same night that Monty Python was first shown on Australian TV? Well, anyway... 

That's not a good ending to my story of my day out, but it'll have to do you. 

vacant block

This block has been vacant in our street as long as we have lived here. Vaguely in my memory I seem to recall at the beginning I thought, the house that was there has only recently been demolished, but it has been vacant at least since 2004. It is pretty extraordinary to think that someone has been 'sitting on' this empty block for close to 7 years now, if not longer, even if it's the Office of Housing. The stop-start construction of four units on a similarly sized block is going on just up the road, though actually come to think of it it's more stop than start. I have no more to say about this presently.

home pride

In Jacana, some people kind of let their gardens go,

and some totally overcompensate

did leo sayer have a song about a train and was it called 'train'?

(Writ yesterday) Spent a bit of time at the SLV this evening looking at RAIA files, I went through the press cuttings from 1936-37 which had a lot of great stuff about the inauguration of the Slum Abolition Council, a group which – unless I’m thoroughly mistaken – served its purpose and was wound up very quickly when a lot of its members, the ones for whom slum abolition was a core concern, were co-opted into a government committee for the same then reformulated as the Housing Commission of Victoria.

Also, looking at bungalow courts/ maisonette stuff and generally chipping away at the important process of eventually understanding the world and everything in it. Now I am listening to the Black Kids on the train and typing to you.

I did a bit of random blog searching recently and it is amazing to me how many people start blogs and don’t, you know, continue them beyond a certain point. Wow, who do they think they are? A blog is not just a whim you know, it’s an ongoing living thing like sourdough or sad songs. Though it’s hard to tell on the whole whether some of those people are actually setting out to do a blog (and stopping after a couple) or whether they’re really more concerned with having an identity on blogger. That’s probably a big part of it.

I like this Black Kids record though at the moment I like the singles and the other bits are like the cushioning muscle round the vertebrae or, perhaps, one-entry blogs. Well, I will persist and I bet I get to love one or two songs more. They remind me a bit of the… no, I won’t say, you’ll just think I’m a prat.

Man, spend a bit of time looking at architecturally-themed press clippings and then take a train to Broadmeadows viewing as you go the houses lining the railway line. I dare you. The line was electrified in the early 1920s and while there are a few Victorian buildings at (say) Essendon and Moonee Ponds, it’s basically housing from Federation up to pre-WWII, pretty nice a lot of it. In the late 1930s there was hubbub because 85% of buildings weren’t architecturally designed – it’s less now, isn’t it, Shane?

It’s funny looking at those clippings, to my more-trained-than-most-but-still-untrained-nonetheless-eye, a lot of those 1930s houses look like remodelled Victorian houses. I am not sure if they are (and the accompanying text is just not saying so), or whether Melbourne architects of the 1930s were sticking to the form they knew and making the outsides look cool. Both, perhaps, the key being whether the newspaper columns on new buildings – basically industry puff – would dig very deep or see renovation/refurbishment of a façade as a good thing.

Anyway, I loved looking at those clippings. Then I was looking at some individual files, and checked out Charles Heath’s irate letter to the RVIA responding to their stuffy letter criticising him and asking for an explanation because he sent out a slightly self-publicising pamphlet – really, just a folded over piece of paper – featuring his latest (and as far as I’m aware, greatest) building, the Coburg Town Hall which, by the way, you can still see anytime you wanna, in Bell Street. Check it out, cool dome. Then I got into other files which I won’t go into detail about in case someone does a lazy search on them and sees me being flippant about them and thinks I’m not a serious scholar. Am I paranoid?

I left the heritage reading room and I was the last to leave, leaving the lady behind the desk to do whatever crazy thing she might get up to when there’s no-one around to see. I wonder. I kind of envied her having at least an hour just staffing the HRR without having to answer any dumb question (though let’s face it those SLV librarians make things more difficult for themselves). Then I thought, no, I’d just get bored hanging out there with nothing to do and no-one to do it for/with/at.

Then I got to the station and had a few frantic minutes as I had two minutes to buy a ticket and get on the train – just made it otherwise I’d probably still be sitting there on the platform being annoyed and thinking ‘that train’s probably at Glenbervie now,’ or ‘I bet it’s at Oak Park now, damn it.’ And hoping it crashes and blows up and burns to pieces, so that my missing it turns out to be a good thing, and then thinking, what if that actually happens to the one I am about to get on? That’s how it goes peeps don’t say you don’t do the same.

Now I am at Jacana station, which has got to be (I’ve dwelt on this before) the most poorly situated, inaccessible, ugly station in Melbourne, now that Mobiltown’s gone, anyway. Did I ever tell you about the time some bikies circled me at Mobiltown? It was I guess 1978. I was a railway buff of sorts though I wanted to cultivate my own take on railways and I did. And it got me nowhere. Oh, I suppose it got me interested in planning and the built environment and the like, probably, now I come to think of it.

march of progress

Everyone's demolishing or rebuilding their houses in Jacana these days.

walking dogs once more

I am notoriously oversensitive to all criticism real or implied, so I have to report that, a few months ago when I came across a casual comment somewhere on the internet that my blog was full of me bleating about a lost kitten, I stewed over it for quite some time, and indeed, continue to stew. It has been a long time since I lost a kitten, certainly long before I started this blogging enterprise, but I suppose the person who accused me of promulgating such content was alluding to the furkids element herein. I guess I have to wear that.*

This afternoon Millie and Charlie and I went for a walk around our lake. I have discussed this kind of thing before and I suppose there isn’t too much new to add. There was no spectacular birdlife (we did upset some plovers when we first got to the water, don’t know what their problem was) and in fact no people in particular either, which was more unusual.
It occurred to me for the first time ever that the landform at the edge of the creek was undoubtedly man-made, perhaps dating back in some regard to early settlement (this area was first farmed in the mid-19th century) but probably more likely to the major works undertaken in the early 1970s, when a few small tributary watercourses were put underground and so on. It’s funny how when you live in the city you don’t develop the ability to read the landscape at all really, you just take it as it comes (or I do, anyway).

We found evidence of some kind of car theft or damage, a taillight I think, though there was nothing but this (Charlie found it interesting).

It is strange to think that 6 months ago it looked like Millie was going to have to retire – in fact, it looked that way even before she had that horrible accident in April – but now she seems to have a new lease of life, even if she now really does look old. Nevertheless, she maintains her irritating habit of falling behind in the walk and, basically, asking to be called.

When we got to the isthmus between the creek and the lake, Charlie did an odd and rather quaint thing of sniffing all the yellow flowers on either side of the path. (This picture is not intended to show that exact act.) She seemed to get lost a bit in each one. I was reminded of something I hadn’t thought of for years and years. When my sister Nicola was about three, she and our father and I were doing something at their house (I can’t remember what we were doing) which involved going in and out of their shed on a few occasions. Each time she passed through the doorway, Nicola would make a little fist (the only kind she could make at that age) around a nail which was in the doorframe sticking out quite far but half way out pointing down at a right angle. After she did this a few times my father asked her what she was doing. ‘I’m getting a drink’, she said. Well, far be it for me to anthropomorphise Charlie any more than I already do – i.e. totally – I suppose she wasn’t playing with the flowers at all, more likely they had brushed on an animal/ some animals which she had to check up on. Anyway, it was kind of sweet, if you like Charlie, which I suppose it’s time to admit I do.

Other news. There is a good new café locally here in the Pearcedale Precinct (I don’t know what the café is called or what the people who run it are called or nothing). It is cheap and cheerful and they are threatening to name my breakfast from this morning after me (I asked for mushrooms and spinach on a muffin). The coffee is excellent and they get the papers in and this morning we were treated to a radio station that was constantly saying ‘we’re playing two hours of Australian jazz’, which was exactly what I wanted to hear at that moment (those words and the music they heralded). So now there are two great cafes in this general proximity – that one, unnamed, and Silver Sage. You should come and visit.

Tonight I am babysitting April. I saw her and Nicole yesterday in one of those grouse April vignettes thus: I was driving up Lorraine Crescent and came across an unusual impasse a little like a sacred cow reputedly can cause in India, wherein a man had been backing his car out of the drive and he somehow came to appreciate that a white cat was sitting in the road absolutely unconcerned about a vehicle coming backwards towards it. So I had to stop, he was in the road shooing the cat away though the cat had absolutely no interest in moving, and April and Nicole were on the pathway watching. April looked like this scene was one of the highlights of her short life which, though it has been a short life, is hard to believe. But it’s the thought that counts.

This morning in Niddrie Salvos I bought a light beige Pierre Cardin suit.

Currently listening to: Hoodoo Gurus, Denim Owl, Red House Painters, Wa Wa Nee

* I am also of the opinion that if you ‘put yourself out there’, i.e. make public pronouncements, on whatever minor level, you shouldn’t complain about what people say about you or how they typify you. At the same time, of course, it does come as a bit of a jolt.

there's been a death - in the opposite house

Well up the street actually.

dry as a dead dingo's donger

That's what Charlie, Millie and I were all thinking as we traversed Jacana 'wet'lands this morning. I wouldn't say it was the first piss stop for them but an important one - the posts holding up the orange plastic netting around the latest instalment on the new bike path on-ramp near our place.

I had the heel of an old loaf of bread for the ducks but it, too, was dry as a dead dingo's donger (which is pretty dry) so I didn't bother trying to break it up - just threw it in the creek for the ducks. It caused some interest (this is a picture of a duck in a creek sniffing round a big bit of bread, not a picture of a dead pigeon on concrete with a rock) but the jury was out. I imagine it has been eaten by now however.

I may have said this to you before but I am sure there must once have been a house or some kind of building here, at the edge of the lake. There seems to be earthworks and just the tree configuration suggests it. By the same token the grass is quite green here suggesting some dampness so maybe it's just a natural depression/ quirk.

There are a lot of larger birds around, including on this array of stones which currently serve as stepping stones right across the lake but which are normally invisible. I don't know what bird this is. A python?

Parts of the lake bed are, as you can see, very dry. It is in an unusual state with some patches of soft, damp soil but mainly crusted mud.

I suppose the grass growing in it is kind of hopeful (not for the grass in question, if the water ever comes back which presumably it will in winter).

Until the recent dry, this concrete structure tended to be submerged to the grille on top. Which should give you a good indication of how depleted the water is. I think that bird is just trying to look like a vulture.

This is how dirty Charlie got in the mud. About 1/3 dirty. Good result, in her opinion.


Some comparisons can be made with the same region 18+ months ago, here.

the rot sets in

Our area is about the only one in Melbourne to have increased in value over the last six months, where everything else is in decline (this means little in real terms - it had a lot of catching up to do). Anyway, this is the kind of crap we have to look forward to as land values rise. These are big blocks. If these horrors get built, the vendor will do well (financially) but will go to hell.

bulk mint progress

These are pixs I took while walking to the station a few days ago, of the new developments. One is the notice of application for a planning permit for some townhouses adjoining the shopping centre. Good idea, I say, though I would rather live in an iron maiden than a townhouse, myself. It will be good for the shops and overall will create an ambience not entirely unlike the short-lived police/soap soap, Above the Law. Remember that? In which various yuppies lived in an apartment complex which had a police station at the ground floor. Also, it will be not unlike Number 96 with a dash of Richmond Hill. Cool. In the middle, the uberrenovation to which I may have alluded previously, whereby an entirely new house has been stuck on the front of an old house in a somewhat incredible display. Congratulations! The last is the vacant lot where one of the oldest houses in the area stood until it burnt down about five or six months ago. I met a man in the street last year who claimed to be the owner of this house and also claimed that no-one had lived in it since the 1960s and also that you need three things in this life, friends money and a third thing which I suppose you don't need me to boldly hit you in the eye with, a word beginning with c and ending in t and aren't I coy. He wasn't though. I am not sure how those three things would all have worked synchronously to get him what he wanted, which was I think not the house tenanted, but planning permission to build units. Since the house burnt down, nothing more has happened to the block, unless you are a piece of vegetation, in which case, it has been great news for vegetation.