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The White Hat Melbourne NewsletterArchived Newsletter No.45 - 10 April 2003Contents
FestivalsThis weekend there is a Cambodian Festival in Springvale, and just when you thought all the new years festivals were finished, there is a Sri Lankan New Years Festival at Dandenong. In the country there is the spectacular sight of massed hot air balloons at Mansfield, The Man from Snowy River Festival in the high country, a youth BMX and skate festival in Ballarat and a classic film festival in Camperdown to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the cinema. Just make sure you check the details or you could end up trying to catch the colt from Old Regret on your BMX. Details at Festivals in Melbourne.
Melbourne & the environmentIndulgent ramble - I would advise that you jump to the next section.I was walking down the Elizabeth Street today when I was approached by a young man clasping a a clipboard and a bottle of imported water who asked me if I cared about the environment. It was a rhetorical question - I was wearing a suit at the time, so he knew that I didn't. However it showed a change in style from the girl in the moth eaten animal suit with the donations bucket. (She was known by the buskers as "Clamidia - The Wilderness Koala"). We could find little common ground on sustainable management of the environment, so he left without his sales commission and I left with the word "green" ringing in my ears. We live in a wide brown land on the driest continent on earth. I have always regarded the adopting of the term "green" to indicate environmentally responsible as particularly mindless. In many parts of Australia where you see large areas of green, you know that it is probably the result of unsustainable practices. Melbourne prides itself on being a liveable city, but much of our parks, gardens and leafy suburbs are based on water guzzling vegetation from another climate. Our trams are a highly polluting form of transport, but we can ignore that because the pollution is out of sight in the Latrobe Valley. Our leafy suburbs were usually based on the traditional quarter acre block. The reason that this size was decided upon was because it was regarded as the minimum size on which an average family could be self sustaining. Grow vegetables, run chooks, maybe a cow. You won't find too many chooks or cows in Camberwell or Kew nowadays, but we still feel it would be wrong to allow the more environmentally sustainable medium density housing to encroach on the leafy suburbs with its energy inefficient bungalows, terraces and Federation houses. We have come a long way since the state owned monopolies would not allow us to install a rain water tank in the city or generate our own electricity and pump it back into the grid. But there is still a long way to go and much of the progress is being blocked by well meaning but mindless tokenism. Remind me to give you some examples at another time.
MusicThere are some varied musical performances in the next week. Bach's St John Passion at St Pats (unfortunately a bit cavernous for this work), Bartok given a jazz treatment in Prahran, and a Charlie Chaplin classic with live music accompaniment at ACMI. Details at Classical Music in Melbourne. If you are interested in classical music, then I have picked up many $2 classical CDs at JB HiFi which vary from excellent through average to the occasional dud. But at $2 you can always use them as drink coasters. Many come without program notes, but remind me to tell you how to get program notes on the internet. You can also find excellent performances of music from other cultures. These are often hidden in the section labelled "World Music" which usually denotes international music that has been dumbed down to fit the limited rhythms and harmonies of western popular music or to fit the limitations of the performers. You will need to search a bit to find the real stuff.
Did you know?The most common error when people subscribe to this newsletter is for them to give their hotmail address as hotmail.com.au instead of hotmail.com We provide these snippets of information as a community service so that you will not be stuck for interesting conversation at your next dinner party.
TreesIf you have a big interest in trees, there is a photography exhibition of Victoria's significant trees at the Gold Street Gallery in Collingwood. If you have only a little interest in trees there is a bonsai exhibition in Rosebud at Easter. And for those of you who feel that the best thing to do with a tree is to chop it down and turn it into stuff, there is a woodturning festival at Manningham Gallery where you can watch wood being turned into stuff together with all the fun of the fair. Details at Trees in Melbourne.
Middle EastTwo exhibitions in Melbourne present us with another perspective on the Middle East. Feasts of Old Baghdad takes us back to the 1950s where it was still possible for Jews to live happily next to Muslims in Baghdad. Then the exhibition of Arabic calligraphy at the Ian Potter Museum at Melbourne Uni is entitled The pen is mightier than the sword. That leaves us to ponder whether the pen is also mightier than the Abrams Tank. Details at Exhibitions in Melbourne.
Market watchCameron Russell (the mushroom man at the bottom of Shed I at the Vic Market) tells me that tomatoes have more taste when there is less water around, such as this year. Then again, he tells me lots of things - are all those Doncaster tomatoes really grown in Doncaster? Anyway, Cameron will tell you all you want to know about vegetables, along with a fair bit that you didn't want to know. Just tell him that White Hat said to pester him for information. However if you are serious about tomatoes and pasta sauce, now is the time to make your way out to some of those bulk tomato processing plants in the northern suburbs. Many have processed their first load of tomatoes for the season and have another one coming in this weekend. You know you are dealing with the real thing when you see elderly Italian gentlemen arriving with trailers (I kid you not) to stock up on pureed tomatoes. Information at Food Stores in Melbourne. For the past 6 months I have watched the solar panels being installed at glacial speed on the roof of the Vic Market. The other day it was switched on just in time for winter. Every time I walked past the large display board for the last 2 days the output has been zero because there was no sun. One piece of information that caught my eye - this is the largest urban solar installation in the Southern Hemisphere and it creates enough electricity to power only 65 homes. It seems that solar technology still has a long way to go, particularly in temperate climates. However this is a very visible gesture and will do its small bit to reducing greenhouse gases. One advantage of the cooler weather is that the seriously bad pong from the drains at the market is dissipating - the usual method of flushing the drains with water has been suspended for obvious reasons.
Circus performersIf you are thinking of dropping out of your nuclear physics course, you can always get a tertiary qualification in circus performing with the National Institute of Circus Arts. They are holding their first performance at the stunning BMW Edge at Fed Square starting this weekend. (Did you know that under Fed Square is a large energy saving device known as The Labyrith? Remind me to tell you about that. Are you taking notes?) I have watched part of their rehearsals and decided to go back to nuclear physics - it's easier. Now if George Wallace was still alive they could present him with an honorary doctorate in pratfalls.
Easter & school holiday eventsWe will attempt to make time to send a newsletter early next week with a comprehensive list of events at Easter and during the school holidays. If you have kids, you will probably want to regularly visit our Children's events page. For instance, next week the Arts Centre has a number of theatre based activities for kids called Chookahs. That's a strange name for activities that are not particularly to do with dance, but I suppose the organisers thought that parents would be hesitant to send their kids to a "Break A Leg Festival". Wonderful cheap places to stay in Melbourne Melbourne's Hidden GemsRemarkable early examples of sustainable designIn the first 150 years of European settlement of Melbourne there were numbers of fine examples of sustainable environmental design. Many continue to outperform current "demonstration sites" in terms of their energy efficiency and sustainability, but many people walk past them every day without giving them a second thought. Here is a guide to a few of them.
Green & purpleQuestion: What do you get when you mix green and purple? Answer: The St Kilda Global Garden Party at Blessington Gardens. There you will find numbers of presentations on conservation and environmental issues together with new age and alternative solutions for all manner of problems. You can also learn all about North facing windows and other passive design features to the sounds of World Music. I will be there along with numbers of other people who care about Melbourne and the environment. We might not all agree about the solutions, but we do agree there is a problem that requires action. I wonder if I will meet the young man who approached me in Elizabeth Street?
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