pin oak ct

So of course the trip to Blue Flame and James Freud's house was just in the right place for another wondrous icon, which is Pin Oak Ct, the street where external scenes for Neighbours have been shot for 39 years. 

Actually, I had not intended to go there at all, or even thought about it, but once I was in the general area of Blue Flame it occurred to me that it was around somewhere and in fact it was devilishly close so it would have been rude not to visit. 

I had been there before - at least twice - once was with someone from the UK who wanted their picture taken there but who was it?! Anyway... it is much, much smaller than I'd remembered. 

It's also very nondescript. There was no-one around. I got some lemons off the lemon tree (and also picked a few up from one of the lawns where I assumed they had fallen). 

Then weirdly driving around and getting lost and finding it impossible to go particular ways because of the appalling traffic on main roads, I took what turned out to be one of those right wrong turns, because though I had not intended to I ended up driving past the old Channel 10 studio which is now basically where they film the interiors for Neighbours. I had been there before, at least once, maybe more. Anyway it was all closed up (it was Sunday) but what I hadn't realised was the building doubles for Erinsborough High. Hence the sign. 

There was a tram out the back too. I don't know why but if you do, please tell me. 

slacks

Today is going to be a much better temperature although admittedly still a little too hot for comfort (30). When it cooled down last night it was grouse. I am on a tram in Sydney Road and I am once again the unwilling eavesdropper into a very public telephone conversation about some idiot’s legal case which is obviously of concern to him therefore he has to make a really loud performance of it in public to make him feel better about ‘he’s gonna come off in court like a real bully which is what they’re accusing me of being, right?’ and lots of confirmations of meetings and where he has to be at particular times i.e. showing how in control he is of his appointments diary. Now he is talking about the trousers he can get to wear in court, he’s just I think repeated the word ‘slacks’ like he’s never heard it before. He probably feels it’s a little too much of a laidback term for something to do with acting really straight.

Melbourne’s history surrounds one on the Sydney road tram. A few minutes ago we stopped and I looked up and I was looking straight at a lawyer’s office with the surname Cilauro, obviously Santo Cilauro’s father and I think the same office used as the lawyer’s office in The Castle. Then we stopped again (dickhead got off by the way – I mean he got off the tram) to see the Brunswick Mechanics Institute, where local people met one auspicious night in the 1870s I can’t remember exactly when to demand the government build the Outer Circle line or was it just that the government build a rail line in the northern suburbs (there was one two minutes’ walk from the Mechanics Inst by the end of the century) I can’t remember. That’s the problem with history, it’s everywhere but you have to remember it or otherwise know it. Right now I can see the Sarah Sands Hotel of which I know little except geez it’s old, or some of it is. Geez.

this morning

I walked to the tram through Gowanbrae. This takes about 1 hour 10 mins. I noted along the way that there is a bus system through Gowanbrae now that requires you to call 15 mins in advance if you want it to come to a particular stop. Actually it's a pretty good idea, though it seems more suited to a little Turkish village than a big grown-up suburb in the most suburban nation in the world. If it works for the Gowanbraeans, it works for me (I must catch it some time - said the cat). Then my knee was sore when I got off the tram. Oh boy!

No pictures. You wouldn't cope.