river valley

This afternoon Perry and I did what we always said we were going to do and looked at the housing estate on the other side of the Maribyrnong from where we've been walking lately. It's pretty remarkable really. It's called River Valley. It's remarkably steep. 

This wall is something else. Incredible. I don't know what else to say. There seemed to be music coming out of it, which I think might actually in some weird way have been being projected from the apartments on the street above, but not sure. 

I'm pretty sure that the car you see here was barely able to take the steep hill here. It certainly slowed down a lot but didn't quite roll backwards. 

This is the path that mapsonmyphone suggested we take to get back to the river. However, we got distracted by another option...

...which ended up with us in a weird kind of area that had tracks on it from either a previous or future path. 

When we got back to the river we found this island. 

Then essentially we basically as it were went back to the car and drove home. Perry was pleased with how it all went. 

I'd love to go back another time, I wonder if Perry would like to explore more. 

rem the venetian room

Rem the Venetian Room? I say 'rem' because I am still entranced by something I read over a decade ago from a woman I went to school with who wrote about her recollections of schooldays by saying 'I rem...' this and that. Meaning she remembered it. At the time I thought, she's probably using some hot new terminology where people say they 'rem' things instead of that they 'remember' things. But I have never seen it used again. 

Anyway, do you rem the Venetian Room? It was actually a really great venue, and it was in this building. From the newspapers I get the strong sense that it opened on the 2 October 1982. The first few bands that played there were solid indie bands for the time. Dorian Gray, 5:15, New Five, Little Murders. 

There was an article by Rebecca Batties, Matthew Stevens and Matthew Bolton called 'And the people wore blue shirts and the band played on', in the Weekender 24 June 1983. It had this in it:

It lasted about three years, and why did it die? Well, one possible reason is that the Hotel Australia also had a Venetian Room, and while the two coexisted in 1985 apparently unproblematically, perhaps ultimately it got too much for the Hotel Australia. 

fabulous house in coburg

 You can't disagree. 

those roy grounds flats - still very burned

I am sure I have discussed these small, incinerated apartments in Harrison St, Hawthorn, the most northwestern tip of Hawthorn, previously but I can't find the post. It wasn't that long ago. Well, they were set alight one night and nothing has happened much since, certainly there's nothing to be done to save them, I would say. Perry and I visited them/their corpses today.

another visit to the yrnong

This morning Laura and I went to Monstalvat. I can't believe I'd never been! It's pretty extraordinary. Anyway I'll tell you about that properly later on. This afternoon Perry and I had a quick walk between Footscray Road and Kensington Banks on the Maribyrnong in bright sunlight and we didn't really see anyone, it was interesting, though we did see Pam the bird. 

Just want to mention, they had to cut this huge door in this building (below), did the people who made the cut seek any guidance on the fate of making an incision into the building's business name or did they just do it? I guess either way, they just did it. 

We'll still be finding Pams around Melbourne in 50 years. 

mobiltown

I don't know if I ever showed you this picture I took about 50 years ago of Mobiltown station. I remember going there to see it because it was in the Gregory's (street directory) and I was just intrigued. I have mentioned this to you previously but I don't think you have seen the picture. So, what this tells me, piecing it together like Guy Pearce in Memento, is that I was the kind of kid who was entirely happy to wander out into the world on my own and take trains to obscure industrial parts of Melbourne, and I had film in the camera and I got there and I was like, 'I have to record this place, no-one will ever believe me otherwise', and did so, and kept the photograph, loose, for almost half a century. I found it a few days ago and I don't know that there's really any point in keeping it for anything, although I might consider putting it on Wikipedia. 

Although there is one thing I do legitimately remember. As I told you in 2010, I really did get surrounded by bikies on the station platform, or rather, they rode their bikes around me but they didn't stop or say anything to me. I guess they were riding in a group down Kororoit Creek Road and they saw a kid on the station platform and decided amongst themselves but wordlessly to terrorise him a bit so it was just kind of, mildly threatening behaviour but I guess they didn't know where to take it. Then they left, and after a while a train came, I got on it and went back to the city and then I suppose I went home. 

It was a nothing station. It didn't have any buildings on it or anything. It was just, as you see, an asphalt platform (on the left you can see one fuel storage structure, I don't know what they're called). It's weird that the train even stopped there every time. I have tended to assume, there being no date on the photograph, that it was 1978 that I went there, but I can't be certain about that. That date is just arrived at through knowing that 12 (1977) is too young for me to be travelling around by myself and by 14 (1979) I just wasn't so into this kind of foray. The Wikipedia entry I linked to above mentions that VicRail or whomsoever was responsible for this, had expressed its intention to close the station down in 1977, which I don't remember being aware of when I went there but it's possible. If there had been an announcement in the newspaper, I probably would have seen it. As far as I can tell, there was really only one mention of Mobiltown in any article in the Age in the 1970s, and it was a non sequitur in this article about people who'd been relocated from Darwin to the Wiltona hostel after Cyclone Tracey: 

The article is by John Larkin and without any further information I can only assume that this 'Mobiltown?' is a call for common sense along the lines of 'There's a Mobiltown!? Wtf is Mobiltown?'* 

My sense is not that I went there because I thought 'I have to record Mobiltown station quickly because they're about to close it!' more like, 'I have to experience what on earth exists at Mobiltown station because my imagination just doesn't stretch to comprehending what on earth could possibly be there.' 

I note that the photograph has a weird, I'm going to call it a stain, on it, that looks a little bit like a sack tied with a drawstring. Pretty sure that is something on the surface of the print, not part of the image captured by the camera. I cannot imagine what might have made that stain but I guess it could be any one of a massive range of things, as I said, this photograph has been floating around, loose, in my stuff, for many decades. It's extraordinary it still exists, espectially considering what doesn't, anymore. There are a few surface abrasions on it. Down the bottom right hand corner, there is a bit of glare from me taking a photograph of the photograph with my phone a few days ago. 

If I took more than one photograph, I don't seem to have any others anywhere, but then I would have said I didn't have any at all before I came across this one. 

*John Larkin, '"Little Darwin" of the south' Melbourne Age 12 February 1975 p. 9

book city

OK so I can't find confirmation of this but I am 100% certain from experience that the building on the north-west corner of Rathdown and Victoria Sts, which has been derelict for a long time, was once a branch of Chris Randle's Book City. In fact, I am pretty certain I even went in there more than once. That said, I was surprised that Book City went under in 1984, I thought it was much later than that. Here's an article from the Age 30 April 1984 p. 5 if you want some background:

It was a shortlived project but seemed to have been very successful until it wasn't. There's another article in the same paper, from 23 October 1982, which says that Randle's policy is if staff talk to customers about a book, they will get fired. 

Anyway, it didn't work. I don't know if Randle built this building, probably not, it was used for other things after 1984 anyway. Here is is today:

I'm guessing it doesn't have much longer to go.