The following is the text of the newsletter sent on the date
below. The links were current at the time of publication, but may no longer be appropriate.
|
The White Hat Melbourne Newsletter
Archived
Newsletter No.46 - 2 March 2003
Contents
This weekend is the Glenferrie Road Hawthorn festival - wear your Richmond scarf. There is also the start of the Dandenong Festival of Music and Art for Youth. There is a cider festival at Kellybrook winery where you can learn to make your own cider, and there is a family festival at Yarrambat Park with a great array of model aeroplanes ("Put down the radio controls - if it loves you it will come back to you"). Details at Festivals in Melbourne.
Are you having trouble knowing what to do with all the correspondence and memos building up in your intray? We have the solution - origami classes at Horti Hall.
This weekend there is a film festival at Buninyong and a number of food and wine festivals celebrating the end of the harvest. Chestnuts at Kalorama, Apples and wine at Gladysdale, and Swiss/Italian food at Hepburn Springs There is also a Gourmet Food & Wine Festival at Halls Gap in the Grampians involving some strange rituals. Let me quote from the brochure - "AND GIRLS ... there is a special day out for you. Join us on Sunday to partake in a variety of lifestyle and product promotions. Meet up with friends at our onsite enclosure for exciting fashions, latest product demonstrations, fabulous giveaways ..." I will stick to the shiraz outside - there are some parts of women's business that should definitely remain secret. Details on all these festivals at Events in Victoria.
The leaves are changing colour and the next few weeks is the best time to see some of our parks and countryside at its most spectacular. In the city it's hard to beat the autumn colours of the Fitzroy Gardens. In the country there is of course the Dandenongs. There are also Autumn festivals at Bright and Beechworth where the scenery can be superb. Details at Events in Victoria. Melbourne's changing weather is very confusing for trees. Some are bewildered about whether it's Autumn or not. Others get so stressed about it they whither away and die. Some horticulturists believe that certain trees don't change colour at the right time because they aren't very bright or are just badly behaved. I believe the problem is really TADD (tree attention defect disorder) and there is a real gap in the market out there for tree psychiatrists to assist trees that are having trouble coping. (Bonsais, for instance, have particular problems with their self image.) I said in a previous newsletter I would mention some of my favourite Melbourne trees. At the base of Punt Road hill opposite the Yarra is one of them. Thousands of cars pass it every day, but most never notice it. See if any of you can tell me what type of tree it is.
Throughout this month the ABC have a number of free lunchtime concerts. Also the Melbourne Autumn Music Festival (not free) starts next week. Details at Classical Music in Melbourne.
Melbourne's Hidden Gardens
| Please note: This section of the newsletter has been
removed as it forms part of a forthcoming publication or because it
is forms part of our
Questing activities. If you find yourself on a tour where the
guide is White Hat Accredited they are likely to know the answer to
many questions you may have in this area. All guides on
White Hat Tours are White Hat
Accredited. |
There are two Shakespeare festivals this weekend. The inaugural Melbourne Shakespeare Festival in South Yarra and a longer established one at Stratford on Avon - that's right, Victoria has a town called Stratford on the Avon river in Gippsland. The Stratford festival contains a Medieval Fair. I'm not sure why you would use a Medieval fair to celebrate a Renaissance writer, but I suppose in Australia, anything before colour television is "the olden times". You have the choice of whether you prefer your Shakespeare performed in South Yarra with "most finely city manners" or by "hard handed men of Sale here". Details on both festivals at Theatre in Melbourne.
That's what the headlines could have read in the nineteenth century. You see, most people forget that much of Melbourne's infrastructure was set up privately. There was a time when you paid your toll to the Princes Bridge Company to cross the bridge they had built, travelled down the road a bit to the tollgates and paid the St Kilda Road Company to use the road they had built and so on. There was no use waiting for the government to do it. By the late 1880s we had the most advanced cable tram system in the world - all privately built and operated and charging very low fares. Yet at the same time the government still hadn't installed sewerage in Melbourne. Much of Melbourne's utilities - gas, electricity, telephone, water etc. were initially set up privately. Then with premiers like Tommy Bent the line between private and government became somewhat blurred anyway. The story of government takeover of these utilities forms an important thread of Melbourne's history. In particular, the bitterness from tramways employees when the government took over and reduced wages and conditions still has implications playing through in our own time. The grand government engineering achievements of the 1890s - sewerage and the Swanston Docks - were to shift the balance. It is a pity that these projects remain mainly out of sight unless you are a member of either the MUA or the Cave Clan. Meanwhile we request that you don't forward this newsletter to Steve Bracks - we don't want him getting new funding ideas.
All contents are Copyright © White Hat 1995 -
2008
Feel free to
forward this newsletter to a friend but please forward it in full so as not to violate copyright.
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions about this newsletter can be
found at Newsletter
FAQs
Listings
To submit an event or attraction for listing on our web site (and thus
possible mention in this newsletter) go to Event
Listing.
|
| 
