blackburn

Today Perry and I walked around various parts of Blackburn/North Blackburn. A year ago I mused on Ronald and Charmain Biggs' house in Hibiscus Road,* and finally got around to actually visiting it today. It's nothing special and perhaps that was the point (I mean, not horrible looking houses, but basically an identical row of them I think, or certainly built at the same time, though there have been various remodelling treatments since). I wonder if the Biggs were the first residents in their Hibiscus Road property - the first mention of the whole street in the papers is 1966, could it really be that new? 

Houses in Hibiscus Road:

This (above) is 52. 

We also went to Dixons' Blackburn store, to JB Hi Fi to get a small bluetooth speaker,** and to Blackburn lake. 

Where Dixons' was at. 

The lake.

*I note in that post from last year I say 54 Hibiscus - not sure what my source was for that as it seems to have been 52. 

** Weirdest part of that was going through the front doors of the shopping centre and hearing a mid-teen boy saying to his cronies 'Let's go upstairs and look at the barbecues!' 

22 glenard dve eaglemont

Yeah I don't really know what point I'm trying to make here I was just interested in this vacant lot, which has only been vacant for about five years it would seem. Perry and I went there on Friday. Saw kangaroos across the back fence. 

 

amc

OK, I was able to upload this by dragging it into the post rather than uploading it from file (exhausting tech talk I know). 

It's a lot of fluff yeah particularly the first few paragraphs but there's some interesting detail both in direct relation to her, and also, sign of the times stuff. It's from the SMH 22 April 1974 p. 25. How cool do the Victor Borge LP Show and that ep of The Waltons sound? That's right, negative to the power of fucktillion cool. 

(sigh)

I probably mentioned in the past that I was pray to a kind of nervous twitch that involved always spending half a minute every day or so updating my Neko Atsume game which basically just meant topping up the cats in the yard's food. Ridiculous but maybe calming? I don't know. Anyway, the game is now glitchy and I can't actually buy any more food with the gold fish I have. This is not a major issue in a world gone completely to shit, I know that. But Laura noted, correctly, that's how it goes with these kind of online things, they start to crumble, it's interesting. (The cats don't starve and die, by the way, like tamagotchis - they just don't come to the yard anymore). 

Anyway, quite a few times now blogger has refused to upload pictures to my blog, and in fact during the course of my last post it refused to upload a news clipping about Amber Mae Cecil. So, maybe there's an end of an era coming here too. We shall see. 

amber mae cecil and bill hunter in cop shop

 5 & 8 June 1978 

can't stop it

I was pleased to get my copy of the vinyl reissue of Can't Stop It in the mail today. I have played side 3 and side 4 (I had nothing to do with side 4, except insofar as Guy asked me if there was anything I thought should go on it and I said no, or perhaps I said yes the Chocolate Grinders but they're not on there). I wrote a sleevenote of sorts which is printed so tiny that my poor eyes can barely pick out the words but whatever that's fine. I am not unhappy with the collection, I think it holds up as they say. Or do they say 'stands up' anyway, it works. 

As I say in the sleeve notes, when Guy and I put this thing together 25 years ago, it was a genre people tended not to regard very fondly, and you could still get a lot of the records - particularly ones by people who didn't go on to be in the charts, etc - very cheap, it was a real IYKYK situation. It seemed like a weird thing to like. As I also say in the sleeve notes now you can go to the supermarket and hear 'post punk' music playing like it's something most people remember, but trust me, most people were listening to 'Old Time Rock 'n' Roll' and, god, I can't even remember, awful things. Most people loved awful things then. Most people also concurrently hated good things. Yes, I haven't forgotten. 

15 years ago a work colleague made me laugh by referring, somewhat but not entirely self-parodically, to her 'awesome taste in music', which I still find funny, but it would be as funny if I said it, because I don't have an awesome taste in anything, except perhaps close associates. But I am not unproud of being a part of this, as tiny an effort as it took. 

Pictured is a special Amoeba Records pressing in the US - I nabbed this photo from https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1112578207580551&set=a.620750710096639&comment_id=1088393409823998&notif_id=1749528796197367&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic&ref=notif
 

sunshine yesterday

 

Various things seen. Last picture is my first meeting with my 9th or 11th niecephew, Hetty, b. late April. 

walkway to the hotham hub children's centre

 

cop shop episode 42

IMDB doesn't say anything about Bud Tingwell being in these eps of Cop Shop (41 & 42, I think) but it has the most unusual storyline about Tingwell's character Keith York, a high-up in the police, who's being blackmailed by crooks who have tapes of his psychiatric sessions wherein he somehow does or does not confess (?) to being homosexual, or actually I think just having urges in that direction which he has not and most definitely will never act on. There is a most peculiar sequence in which, for no obvious reason, he and his wife (played by Cecily Polson) have spectacular sex and then talk about it (the sex). The situation is not solved, which is to say he presumably continues to be gay, though the blackmail materials are recovered. But the Yorks seem very happy. 

I don't really know what was going on here. It was like a script written by AI where AI was told that gayness was a dose of nits. 

SMH 'Monday Guide' 22 May 1978 p. 5

yarraville to tottenham along stony creek

Perry and I decided to take a walk from Yarraville to Tottenham today. Actually, we decided we would walk to Sunshine but my foot hurt too much (don't ask) and I abbreviated the operation. Perry didn't mind. He was at the stop and sniff everything stage of the walk anyway. 

As so often happens when I uploaded the photos here they all came out in the reverse order I took them, but whatever, doesn't matter does it. Here are a few pictures from the Tott end, a bunch of houses I like to imagine are Anders Hansen homes from the late 20s-early 30s but I don't really know that, except he was the main builder in that area and these houses are all more or less the same dimensions and same age. This boarded-up one is interesting...

I love this brick 'n' weatherboard creation it's rad as:

This 'is what it is'... 

I'm in a guessing mood (after about 3/4 hour of fruitless research) so I'm going to say this could once have been the premises of Riverside Manufacturers. It was apparently a big concern in Paramount Rd, Tottenham, in the middle of last century. 

I like to document Pam the Bird wherever/whenever. 

I have a very soft spot (as Rowena Wallace's character on Cop Shop, Pamela, said to George Mallaby as Glenn in an episode I just watched - 'in the head' - for late period Housing Commission homes, which is what I think these might be, in a dead end street in Yarraville. They're nice.

A-a-a-a-anyway, it was a decent enough walk, Perry was extremely well-behaved, it was too hot and glary, which is just life going forward I suppose, I mentioned the bit about the sore foot, fuck that,