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DAY 71: Learning about the local Sudanese community

10 Nov

I’VE been really enjoying hurling myself into the local community lately. Okay, I suppose it’s less a hurl than a dipped toe, what with the ukulele classes and lawn-mowing and whatnot, but I have great plans afoot (geddit) for chat warbling, bird watching, wood chopping and steam railways – you’ll see. Hell, I’m even getting a white ute.

There’s also a healthy Sudanese contingent in Castlemaine that hasn’t been anywhere near my toe, and I’ve been curious as to how a community came to be established in this little town in particular. The screening of No One Eats Alone, directed by a local resident, tells the stories of Sudanese women who have settled in Victoria, and it’s stacked with personable characters. The unanimous hit with the audience at the Theatre Royal seems to be when the thigh-slappingly jovial Anghere unapologetically describes herself as the “white dot” of the family — the Sudanese equivalent of a black sheep.

Keeper? Yep, I’m enjoying pretty much everything I’ve seen posted on a local noticeboard so far. Onwards to the Rotary Club!

DAY 70: Taking the Melbourne Town Hall tour

9 Nov

I’VE just spent the past hour Google imaging John Batman, after finding out on the Melbourne Town Hall tour that he was a “syphilitic, whoring alcoholic” with half his face eaten away by the sexy disease. Unfortch, he’s always depicted from the side for this very reason, so no joy. Don’t Google image “syphilis” while you’re eating lunch at your desk, by the way.

On an entirely separate note, here's former Moomba King Molly Meldrum.

Our tour guide’s a lovely old chap who lingers particularly long at the Town Hall pipe organ, behind which we explore three floors and endless rooms full of springs, pipes and whirligigs. Agatha Christie could have plotted an excellent death within the machinations of a pipe organ.

Our guide tears up when he concludes that it’s Melbourne’s most wondrous trophy… yet most people don’t even know it’s here.

Synthy bits of the organ.

Keeper? Done this one!

DAY 69: Walking around a cemetery before work

8 Nov

IT’S eight o’clock and a beautiful morning, so I take the tram to St Kilda Cemetery for a browse. This is a pretty cool Art Deco grave — I wouldn’t mind mine looking like this, for future reference. You can even call me Ralph.


It’s pretty unfathomable (for me) to see headstones bearing the names of whole families, children included, then finished off with “God’s Will Be Done”. You’d have to grit your teeth when requesting that line from the stonemason, wouldn’t you?

Keeper? Yes, will have a saunter around the cemetery in Carlton next time.

DAY 63: Learning about immigration

2 Nov

 

All stand.

NEXT time I need a dose of “you think you’ve got it bad” I’ll come back to the Melbourne Museum of Immigration. The ceaseless sound loops of wails, gunfire and wet farts (I shit you not) that illustrate migrational misery should put things into perspective. And then I’ll walk back to work at Southbank and remind myself that it’s Southbank in AUSTRALIA and not Southbank in London. Hooray!

Keeper? Yes.

DAY 40: Examining Perth’s penal system

10 Oct

LAST time I came to Perth I had to completely deviate from my path when I spotted some strapping plainclothes cops with guns stuck into their jeans and was moved to trail them.

This time ’round, the evening news is filled with footage of strapping cops mercilessly tasering a remand prisoner 13 times as he writhes on the floor. Another bubble burst, eh?

I decide to pay the old Fremantle Prison a visit for a taste of penal history stretching from 1855 to 1991. And it seems precious little changed in that period, if our authentically dead-behind-the-eyes tour guide is to be believed. He repeats bad jokes about death row, hangings and floggings till we ‘get them’ – that is, we laugh politely. Talk about gallows humour.

Keeper: Will do the tunnel tour next time.

Cell art. I can hear the waves crashing.

DAY TWELVE: Camberwell Market

12 Sep

THIS entry is not very exciting, but look – I’ve never been, and I did get this fantastic lighter, even though I’m about to quit.

DAY SEVEN: A Eureka moment

7 Sep

A TRIP up the Eureka Skydeck in Melbourne’s Southbank may sound pointless – and it is – but I felt it was righteously symbolic of my new quest. Being a dyed-in-the-wool navel gazer, I’ve come to realise that I need to develop a helicopter view of the world.

You can take that literally – for example, I am forever missing the bunnies and roos of Castlemaine as I meander around thinking about pashing (“Look there’s another one,” locals cry in frustration when something hops past after I’ve denied its existence) – or philosophically. My new manifesto? To see. To really see.

Today was a very bright day, allowing me to see once and for all that the Spirit of Tasmania is nowhere near St Kilda.

Keeper: Mayhaps. I manged to get absolutely no takers for this one and it was a bit lonely pointing out the West Gate Bridge to myself.

DAY SIX: A walk down Port Phillip Bay pier

6 Sep

No starfish today, but a nice view.

Keeper: Hell yeah!

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