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The White Hat Melbourne Newsletter
Archived
Newsletter No.53 - 27 June 2003
Contents
School holidays and lots of activities for kids. Details at Children in Melbourne.
I have decided that this is the week to improve your conversational skills. By the end of the week you will be able to hold your own at the little club up the back lane or at your next dinner party. No raving tonight because we’ve got an early start in the morning.
Get up early and don some crisply ironed jeans and off to the Kew Farmers A wonderful village green atmosphere, Time to improve your conversation skills. Try to pick up a few foreign food names and listen to the proper Kew pronunciation of them. That will prove impressive at your next social gathering. Sit on a hay bale and have a buffalo burger (having checked that the buffalo was free rangr. The man on the buffalo stall knows you can sell people anything on a Saturday morning if you have the smell of frying onions wafting out into the crisp cold air. Maybe that’s how Bunnings started out. Details on the market at Farmers' Markets in Victoria.
Anyway, time to gather up our organic vegetables straight from the grower and head to the city. You could offer others a lift, but I don’t think there will be too many wanting to go straight from the Kew market to the Big Red Book Fair at the Trades Hall. Great bargains if you get there soon after opening time. The Trades Hall is a wonderful building and if you bump into Paddy, he might tell you some of its history. By the way, don’t argue with Paddy. He was a member of the Painters and Dockers (the union not the band). You can meet some marvellous old-timers there, and you don’t have to remember any names. Just call everybody ‘comrade’. It is also a good time to pick up on the nuances of language. The old timers often refer to themselves as ‘radicals’ because they want to put things back the way they were, while it is the ‘conservatives’ who want to change things at the core, If you run into some of the younger brigade (such as the buildings manager) they will certainly educate you on the history of ‘the movement’ and the appropriate language to use. Time to have some lunch - maybe some chicken pie. By now we know that it’s not enough for the chicken to be free range, it must also have had freedom to express itself and freedom of association. Details at Fairs & Fetes in Melbourne.
But now you have got to prepare yourself for three different pub tours Time to dress for the historic pubs walk. This will be good for you. Two hours walking the streets of North Melbourne finding out about where pubs used to be. Better dress warmly though - dress code is likely to be woolly hat and anorak. Lots of history. Details at Forums & Workshops in Melbourne.
Well, that’s been a solid day. Time for a relaxing tea. Off to the Moroccan Soup Shop in North Fitzroy. Lay on a couch, read a magazine. The menu is delivered verbally intertwined with social theory. Time to learn some new phrases and a whole new set of things to feel guilty about. Wonderful fresh tastes, reasonable price and Social Politics 101 thrown in for free. Details at North African Food Stores.
Monday evening. A bit different from the last pub tour. This time you get to go inside the pubs and have a cleansing ale (or two) and chat with some of the locals. Just as much history, more stories, poetry and theatre associated with the pubs and maybe a few new friends by the end of the evening. Just follow the guide in the white hat. Details at Melbourne's Famous Pubs.
You’re feeling pleasantly warm and friendly at the end of the last tour, but now it’s time to experience a real pub-crawl. Required dress is baseball cap worn backwards and now it’s time to memorise a few soccer chants. Board the double decker bus and the night begins. You will meet numbers of new friends who are doing what is called in the trade the “C&F” tour of Australia. If this is your sort of tour, just look on the noticeboard of most backpacker hostels for details.
Tuesday. Take a sickie. Tonight you’re off to the meeting of the Existentialist Society where you can ponder the important questions of life like “Where did I end up last night?” and “Where did this tattoo come from?” If you listen carefully you will also pick up lots of conversations starters and even learn how to pronounce “ennui”. Details at Forums in Melbourne.
At this stage you may be a little confused as to whether you are un unreconstructed Marxist existentialist or a historico-social imbiber, so best to stick to what you know. Off to ACMI to be a lounge critic discussing the X-Files. You can discuss at which point this series “jumped the shark”. (If you don’t know what this means, then ask at your next 30 something gathering.)
Details at ACMI.
I have attempted to broaden your range of conversational skills, but if you find it all a little confusing, never mind. Rather than try to grasp the concepts of a large important subject, it is currently much more fashionable to choose an unimportant and ephemeral subject and learn how discuss its details with a certain earnestness. That should be enough to get you by at dinner parties, but if you want to make a career out of such things you need to learn how to couch it in postmodernist intellectual jargon. Fortunately, we have just the solution. If you go to the link below, you will find it generates meaningless essays that will get you well on the way to a PhD and celebrity. Give the postmodernist generator a try.
This weekend there is the Kilmore Celtic Festival, the Warburton Winterfest and the Warrnambool Kid’s Festival. Details at Events in Victoria.
The Mechanics Institute movement
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removed as it forms part of a forthcoming publication or because it
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Questing activities. If you find yourself on a tour where the
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The first weekend of July sees the Tibetan Film Festival and Red Cliff Folk festival. Details in the next newsletter.
Gary writes in reference to our previous mention of bike paths: “I lived in Sydney (a two car family) and I would not dream of riding my bike to work due to the lack of bike paths and the danger of motorist and the place is a 24hr traffic jam. In Melbourne (now a one car family) I found it to be a breath of fresh air and I now ride my bike to work on a daily basis rain, hail or shine. So I would thank the government for its efforts and newly painted paths and it would be good if we could find a way to force, inner city, people to use other forms of transport (preferably non polluting) as they are doing in places around the globe. So keep looking out that window and when Melbourne heats up they will come, we hope.” “Hi there, just want to say Congratulations on such a great web site and newsletter. It is wonderful to see you promoting Melbourne and 'Being a tourist in my hometown' is one of my favourite things to do, you make it so much easier. I would like to suggest you do an article on the array of Childrens Farms we have here so close to the city and easy to get to by public transport. Bundoora Park Coopers Settlement is an urban farm, wildlife refuge (kangaroos and emus in the suburbs) and Heritage village A great day out for the family. Tram no. 86 starts at Docklands, 1st stop after Latrobe University.
Others are: Collingwood Children's Farm Allendale Children's Farm, Eltham. Ceres environmental centre/farm/market/vege restaurant. I am sure there are more.
Regards Denise”
Thank you Denise, and we will certainly include this information on our website. “Thanks for your newsy & entertaining newsletter as usual. However, I'm wondering how recently you've been to the Supreme Court. I was able to visit the library (the most stunning library I've ever seen) with no problems at all. What, is there some construction going on at the moment? I'd be interested to hear.
Kind Regards & thanks for the chuckles”
Mandy
Thanks Mandy. Yes the library is now open to the public even though they would not want that widely known to the “ordinary person”. However, readers of this newsletter are not “ordinary persons” (or if they are they soon unsubscribe). Did you know we have remarkably few unsubscriptions. People like to forward it on and say “have you ever seen such nonsense?”
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