Hey man, now you're really living

A bit of the Beethoven Frieze

I’VE got a newfound admiration for Klimt. When I was younger I found him too ornate and preferred the contortions of his self-loathing protégé Schiele, or the emotional collywobbles of Munch. Now that my consumption of amphetamines has dropped off, I’m happier admiring one of Gustav’s hectic frocks. His golden Beethoven Frieze, on display here at the National Gallery of Victoria, is well worth and ooh and an aah.

Schiele self-portrait.

The interior design of this era still looks playfully modern and daring…

Get me these.

…and the typography of the colour lithographs must be giving secret boners to all the sulky graphic designers mooching around the gallery.

I’d write more, but I get told off for typing into my phone, presumably in case I rush home and forge my own Beethoven Frieze. Someone ought to direct these security bozos to the section on sexual repression.

Keeper? Am inspired to seek out a course in lithographing. I’m also itching to turn someone into a Klimt sketch.

ON our way to an afternoon of gospel music and soul food, Elle talks excitedly of her long-held desire to visit Al Green’s church in Memphis. I’ve an inkling that today’s event in South Melbourne may not live up to her expectations, but I keep quiet.

Perhaps because I’m all wrapped up in a Codral cuddle, this choir lull rather than inspire. Their account of Jesus watching you through the eyes of a sparrow just puts macabre images in my head.

I have to mentally slap myself on the wrist a few times for wondering if white people just don’t have any soul, but later it transpires Elle and Natalie were wondering the same thing. And besides, there are Blacks Without Soul, too.

Keeper? I was sadly unmoved, but I did hanker to be singing up there myself. Doing that, we all agreed, would add that much needed dimension.

NOSE my way into this historical water tower in Suffolk.

Is now an estate agent’s, complete with whiteboard diagram on top floor about targeting the youth market via Facebook.

That’s it, really.

Keeper? Yes. I’ll not let this particular experience thwart me.

You had to be there, clearly.

I CAN hear the falls the whole time, but if Bucket the dog didn’t glow white in moonlight, I’d never be able to find them.

She leads the way, and after a 10-minute hike we’re awarded with a spectacular view of a two-pronged falls. The bush pirate gives me 20 cents to make a wish, then we climb the fence and pick our way down rocks to sit at the bottom, for a more refreshing experience.

Keeper? Yes. Exploring’s more fun at night.

THE Screen Worlds exhibition at Melbourne’s ACMI is free, and tells the ‘story of film, television & digital culture’. A bit.

It was the Australiana I found most interesting.

The Bush: Through harsh, bleeding colour and the unforgiving calls of kookaburras and crows, filmmakers have long loved making the endless Australian bush seem claustrophobic – and sinister. Always sinister. Classic including Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Proposition and Wolf Creek are profiled here. Wake In Fright should definitely have been in there, in all its sunstroked, hungover hellishness, but I won’t quibble.

The Australian Accent: A video installation with clips from satirists like The Chaser and Chris Lilley, plus clips from The Castle, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, and various ocker types from sketch shows of yore.

The Mad Max Interceptor: Yep! It’s there! Complete with fingerprints from people who’ve leaned over the barricade to cop a feel.

Tracey Moffatt: The macabre, Brisbane-born artist’s various installations included a clip (above left) of an Aboriginal woman caring for her dying white mother – with barely constrained violence.

Keeper? Been now.

I’VE got a day of exhibitions and plays on the agenda, plucked from the bill of the Castlemaine State Festival (Castlemaine’s silly hat count has just increased tenfold) – which has got me musing furiously on the meaning of art.

Like, you know those placards you get next to a piece of artwork, explaining the concept behind it?

I’m skeptical.

When I see a work of art, I can’t help suspecting it took its current form partly because it’s aesthetically pleasing, partly because it’s a happy accident, and partly because it tapped into some primal impulse the artist themselves can’t really put their finger on. (Unless it’s an installation, in which case the chin stroking came first.)

So when the accompanying bumf scrapes the barrels of philosophy, mythology, sociology and psychology; weaving in metaphors, totem animals, ancient symbolism, Latin phrases, conditions of the human psyche, pearls of wisdom from obscure intellectuals and other nonsensical guff; I always envisage the artist two days before opening night, sweating and riffling through reference books and print-outs with charcoaled, calloused fingers, desperately trying to embroider multiple layers of intellectualism into their handiwork – rather than “I did this.” In fact, I might indulge on a side-mission to find the ultimate placard of abstract art bunkum. A ‘Shit My Dad Says’ compendium for the art punter. Print it a cute size, display it by the bookshop till, and I’ll make a packet!

But no, look, artists are great, even those ultra-conceptual ones. In the olden days we’d dunk them in the river and make them wear a hurty hat, but we’re much more progressive in 2011.

The play in the evening is good. Held in the old Wattle Gully Mine near Fryerstown, Precipice combines the way bridges like the Westgate and the Tasman are stamped in the Australian consciousness, with a story of loss, loneliness and vertigo. The use of additional actors to portray the inner worlds of the main characters pushes my principles, but if today has taught me anything, it’s that observing with an abstract mind is a skill in itself.

The play was held here. Don't you just want to climb it?

Keeper? Will attempt to keep winching open that mind.

Yon mountain mist.

A WOMBAT waddles ahead of the ute on our way up Mount Barrow in north-east Tassie. It’s past midnight and we’ve been mostly dodging pademelons – pronounced ‘paddy melons’ – for the past hour. Pademelons are small round wombats, and they’re so prolific around here that they’ve shat all over every inch of Old Dog’s property.

(Country folk come up with curious names for each other like ‘Old Dog’; names with backstories that are as ancient as the hills.)

This is a pademelon.

Mount Barrow is 1413m high and awash with rockfalls that cascade down it like rivers. Right at the top there’s a weather station that looks like an evil lair. Where we park, there’s an abandoned stone cabin that some jokers have built Blair Witch-style stone sculptures around, and as the mists rolls in it’s proper spooky.

The evil lair.

It’s my birthday. Old Dog sets up a laptop on the ute tray, throws down a doona, sticks in Wild at Heart and opens some Doritos. Voila – mountaintop cinema. I fall asleep three minutes in.

Moon, venus, sun.

Next morning the clouds have settled beneath us, so we’re piping hot and afforded the sort of sunrise you usually only see from an aeroplane – unbroken stripes of colour. There must be a lack of oxygen, because when Old Dog suggests I climb up to the peak (unaccompanied), I agree automatically and set off in my party hat. The hat’s still up there, if you ever happen to be passing by.

I'm that speck at the top.

Keeper? Yes.

The latest incarnation. (These things have a habit of burning down.)

WHEN the Theatre Royal first opened in 1858, Castlemaine had a population of 20,000 to Melbourne’s 22,000; and bawdy folk would flock in for a knees-up and a knuckle sandwich from all over the Goldfields.

A second hey-day followed in the early 1900s when cinema hit its stride, but ever since then attendance has dwindled. Seven years back, the community (now population 8000) voted to turn it into a cooperative, but the money wasn’t stumped up and plans fell by the wayside.

David Stretch and Sarah Burdekin made the move from Melbourne to take the theatre over, against initial consternation from locals. They’ve faced a relentless battle to keep the place shipshape in the face of a water-logged roof, shoddy refurbs of the past and shabby paraphernalia bursting out of every nook, but by fitting a kitchen and PA, they’ve turned it into a cafe, cinema, b&b and venue.

Personally, I wonder what more you could want from a joint. I’ve been to a Mental As Anything disco, screenings of Razorback and Wake in Fright, and shows by Tex Perkins and hillbilly Charlie Parr. Today there’s a workshop for small business owners with Sunrise’s Kochie, and coming up there’s a ukulele extravaganza. Just last month, Cat Power played, with the temperamental artist ringing ahead and requesting that a puppy be on hand for her to pet. It was almost a throwback to the diva-ish behaviour of syphilitic showgirl Lola Montez, who graced the stage in the 1850s. Known for wearing no undies, her routine provoked a fight amongst the diggers, some of whom were questioning her honour, and some of whom were defending it, and by all accounts, there was a punch-on of epic proportions.

Lola’s immortalised by a mural in the courtyard and her presence haunts the guest house bathroom in the form of a painting above the bath tub (and something keeps turning the basin taps on and off).

When I enquire about the ghosts the theatre’s known for, David brushes me off as though it’s nothing, but he gets a haunted look on a number of occasions (most markedly when describing the period in the 1970s when the stalls were ripped out and the theatre was turned into a disco, with the ceiling plastered with egg cartons and the walls painted black. There was still blood under the carpet when David ripped it up).

Eventually, he gives in and gives me the paranormal tour. Popular legend has it that some time in the 1800s, a pickled Aboriginal chap galloped up the stairs to the dress circle on his horse and plummeted over the balcony to his death, which must have been all shades of gruesome. A few years back, Channel 31 brought a team of ghostbusters to the theatre, with a medium in tow. As the spods set up their infrared cameras, heat detectors and mics, the medium – who had not been informed of where he was being taken – spoke of long-gone landscapes that were painted on the walls, and described an auctioneer banging a gavel, harking back to the earliest days when the theatre doubled as an auction room.

A banging was heard from the stage as the medium was identifying a ‘hotspot’ in the dressing-room, and a motley crew of ghosts were spotted “enjoying the entertainment” up in the gallery… but the most unnerving moment came when the crew came across ‘Annie’s room’. As we approach, David tells me he never goes there alone any more – then promptly disappears to get the key, leaving me to scan the gallery uneasily.

‘Annie’s room’ turns out to be a box room these days, and I’m thankful that there are no rocking chairs or mirrors to start doing sinister things. “She’s locked in and she’s screaming she’s going to die in here,” the medium had said, before grabbing David’s arm. “You’re all right, mate,” he said, “she’s just in you at the moment.” David had tears streaming down his face, and he hadn’t even realised.

By now, I’ve got goosebumps and my own eyes start pricking… oh stop it, you big girls blouse. “I wasn’t a believer in the supernatural, but it did give me a new appreciation,” says David, shutting the door. Same here.

Keeper? David and family are selling up soon. I’m torn between encouraging people to buy this with me or The Big Lobster, which is apparently also for sale.

Lola Montez in the bathroom.

The 35mm projectors.