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. 

back at the yrnong

That's what you call the Maribyrnong, isn't it? When you feel casual affection for it? the Yrnong? Well anyway boring as we are, Perry and I went back to the same place as we had gone the day before, that is, yesterday to ramble across a little more of the general area. It was just for fun. 

It was raining, that's part of my umbrella above, but it wasn't heavy and we were fine. I am intrigued by these flats which I might have mused on previously, I suspect yes I have. I haven't seen them from the street access side and should go and look sometime. They dominate here but I am sure they are pretty nice to live in, or at least, to look out from. 

Explain this to me please:

A big boy is allowed to walk without the lead on if he promises to be good (even if he doesn't, even if he isn't). He didn't, but he was. 

Big houses looking out over the Yrnong from the north side. 

It stopped raining while we were walking, I lost something - the clip-on treat dispenser. I lose these periodically, it's not like car keys. 

dick smith's forbidden ideas

Once upon a time, something like this was so OUT THERE that I kept it as proof of a strange madness that no-one would believe if I told them. 

nobody home

Perry and I went to Avondale Heights again this morning, same as the other day but no loss of car key, mainly because I wanted to see if that dog was there again, but no. 

Perry certainly remembered the place and was hopeful once we got there but as I said - no.

I let Perry off the lead briefly and was interested to note that, when he's on the lead he wants to charge ahead of me, or at least, lead the way but when he's not, he wants to walk a considerable distance behind. I wonder if this is his herding instinct. 

When I lost the car key last week and had to walk to Tottenham Station, I had checked with mapsonmyphone how to get across the river and it did not tell me there was a crossing actually very close to where we were - it just told me about two reasonably distant footbridges. Well, I don't blame mapsonmyphone, there's probably a lawsuit just waiting to happen when dodderers try to get across the river by these means, though I would have done it. 

This was a good place for Perry to get a drink from the refreshing waters of the Maribyrnong and then we went back. It will be hot day today and it was already warming up at 8ish. 

helmi reborn

I wish I understood what had changed about Helmi's life that she went one day from being the kind of cat who hides in small spaces for 24 hours at a time, to the kind of cat who lives her life entirely in public, as far as I'm aware never hiding from anyone or anything and being completely visible. I am reminded of an elderly man (well he seemed elderly thirty years ago, perhaps he was the age I am now) who seemed entirely delightful to all and sundry but I had it on good authority from a few sources that before his stroke he was an aggressive, hostile jerk. Helmi is still that to Nancy and Perry, but even then, she is perfectly happy to be in their presence and only lashes out (not literally) when one of them gets in her face or sniffs her back,* something by the way she is always doing to them. What does it mean? What if one day she just gets sick of fame and goes back under the bed forever more? 

She also will quite often sit next to me and purr for no reason (aside from what I assume is the reason, that she is sitting next to me). 

*I mean, sniffs her back. I mean, sniffs the back of her. 

tree bag