The White Hat Melbourne Newsletter

Archived Newsletter No.119 - 10 March 2005

Contents

For the kids
Airshow
Reader feedback
Free ballet at the bowl
Festivals
Music
The Eight Hours Movement
Theatre & comedy
Country Victoria
White Hat Rewards

For the kids

This weekend there is a night run on the Diamond Valley Miniature Railway (near Eltham) with a range of family entertainment. Details at Children’s & Family Activities in Melbourne. Alternatively there are tons of family festivals in the country (see below)

Airshow

Next week is the airshow at Avalon. Those of you travelling Jetstar from Avalon may hear the announcement “This is your captain speaking. We will be climbing to eight thousand feet, then descending straight down to two hundred feet, then climb through a barrel roll to one thousand feet before performing a starburst and proceeding on a northerly route to Sydney. We hope to have you on the tarmac eighty minutes from now. Sit back and enjoy your flight.” Details at: Major Events in Melbourne.

Reader feedback

“Your newsletter is a joy each week, always several paragraphs provide a laugh and the Jazz and history info is wonderful.
Thanks, Anne”

“Dear White Hat Love you to bits! I'm on the other side of the world, in New Mexico's High Desert country, but am going back to Melbourne for three weeks soon, starting Easter Saturday. Can't wait! Will read White Hat avidly to make sure I don't miss out any 'must do' events while I'm home.
Love and best Nancy”

“Dear White Hat, Last week there was an error in your newsletter regarding the venue for the Backpacker's Expo. You stated that it was on at Jeff's Shed, but actually it was at the Exhibition Building near the Museum. I know that these venues are easily mixed up because of their names, and this apparently happened to you. How are we, as Melburnians going to fix this problem? Should we get council help to formerly change the Exhibition Centre's name to Jeff's Shed? This would solve any future misunderstandings. Regards, Jan.”

Jan – sorry about the error. With hundreds of listings each week on our website the occasional error will creep in. Yes it would be easier if places were just referred to by their popular names. For the sake of those of you new to Melbourne it might be worth explaining – the exhibition centre is called Jeff’s Shed because last century we had a shy little premier called Jeff and – well that might take a bit long. Maybe it’s easier to explain why the large Robert Gordon Menzies building at Monash University is called the Ming Wing. You see, prime minister Menzies was in office for a long time – no, hang on, that gets a little complicated. It would be easier to start with the inner suburb of Footersnam. It got its name because of South East Asian migration and a Mediterranean gentleman who advertised his furniture on television. It’s quite simple really once you’ve learned the local language.

“You guys are hilarious! Loved the INBOX story about the romance. Also loved your suggestion for Knox - You're Dreaming. Advance Australia Fair, the list goes on... Who is the comic genius behind all this? I thought this newsletter was written by old farts for old farts, I've been getting it for months but never really read it properly before. What a xxxxhead am I!
Lisa”

“Luvly ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ah ah ah ooops ! sorry i just wet myself. luv ya werk
H”

Charming!

“As always, an interesting newsletter - Thanks. This week got me thinking. Being a fairly new subscriber with you i feel that outside of Nicholson Street, a Moroccan soup haunt and a Lebanese Pizza shop, i (as i guess others) have missed out on countless other gems in and around this fair City. Do you have a "White Hat's guide of gastronomy" Or perhaps a link where one can track down these hidden treasures? As we do searching for Gardens or markets. Kind regards
K”

K, thanks for the feedback. We plan to clear up the messy food and dining section of our website and start again. Prices change, places change hands, elegant places get grunged down to make them groovy and attract more customers, some places contract the exciting menu that was on offer for the first few months to ‘parma & chips’, some places are gentrified so that the prices can be doubled and the undesirables (ie locals) can be driven out, some are given a wild makeover to make them the latest ‘in’ place, some get closed down by the health department, some remove their grunge because the groovy customers were buying one cup of soy latte and making it last all night, some create a muted candlelit environment and accompany it with loud hip-hop music, some start with strong authentic tastes but are forced to dumb them down to suit the rudest customers, some remove the wild makeover because ‘we’re sooo over that’, some gentrified pubs after several months of dwindling trade hang out a sign saying ‘your friendly local’, and some places have great dishes that are available only to valued regulars (which annoys the hell out of the ‘we want it now and we’re prepared to pay’ crowd). You know you have become a valued regular when the chef spots you and comes out and says “I’ve got this special dish but it’s not on the menu”.

Eating places change all the time which makes it difficult to create a good online guide. However we’ll be making an attempt RSN. (RSN is a unit of time measurement. It stands for Real Soon Now and its duration is somewhere between several hours and several years.)

Free ballet at the bowl

There is free ballet at the Music Bowl tomorrow night (Friday). It is funded by Telstra and we are happy to mention sponsors names when they are making possible events like this. The gates open at 4 pm and close when the venue is full so only those with plenty of elevation in their grand jette will then be able to make it over the fence after that. It is BYO but no drinking glasses, seats or hard sided containers will be admitted. That is because you might sit on your esky and block someone else’s view. Those of you out there with big moombas have the advantage of sitting several centimetres higher.

Those interested in dance may also be interested in the dance conference at Darebin next week. Details of both events at Dance in Melbourne.

Festivals

This weekend there is a Global Garden Party at St Kilda Gardens, and a community festival at Templestowe Village. Details at Community Festivals.

Next week also sees the start of Seniors Week where many events are cheap or free for seniors. Details at Seniors in Melbourne.

The Food and Wine Festival is also with us. You can go along to the Hawkers Bazaar at the Vic Market and have much of the same food that was available a week or two before except it’s double the price so that you don’t have to mix with the sort of undesirables you find at the night market. There is a spice bazaar at Docklands featuring Middle Eastern food. Details at: Food & Wine Festivals.

The Fashion Festival is also with us and the trainee beauty therapists in Elizabeth Street are so excited that they’ve doubled their chewing gum consumption. Details at Fashion Events in Melbourne.

There is an exhibition of all things Swedish at Fed Square this weekend called Swedish Style. I’m hoping it includes the original 100 Swedish monkeys with 100 Swedish typewriters who create the product names for Ikea. Details at Fed Square.

Music

Tomorrow night (Friday) there is a free performance by Luka Bloom  in Hawthorn. There is the Folk Festival at Port Fairy, but if you haven’t booked six months in advance you’re unlikely to get in. Details of both these at Folk & World Music. There are jazz festivals at Inverloch and Moe. Details at Jazz in Melbourne & Victoria. and country music at Moyston. See Country Music in Melbourne & Victoria.

The Eight Hour Movement

The conditions in Melbourne which led to the rise of the Eight Hour Movement and the strange transition of the Eight Hours Procession on Eight Hour Day to Moomba on Labour Day.

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.

Theatre & comedy

There is still time to catch HMS Pinafore at Monash. See Theatre in Melbourne And there is improvised theatre and comedy at The Impro Couch. Details at: Comedy in Melbourne.

Country Victoria

With a long weekend there are festivals all over the state, so get off your moomba and out to the country. There are community festivals at Benalla, Edenhope and San Remo, the Harcourt Applefest, the Mansfield Harvest Festival, the Portland Dahlia Festival, the Wedderburn Gold Festival, a beekeeping and honey festival at Diggers Rest, raft racing at Seymour, Tobacco Hops & Timber at Myrtleford, the Pyrenees Pink Lamb and Purple Shiraz Festival and the Shepparton Arts Festival. There is the Chill Out Festival at Daylesford (have you ever noticed that the people who tell you to "take it easy’" are never in danger of exhaustion from overwork themselves), and the one you have been building up to all year – the Ballarat Begonia Festival.

Starting next week is the Barwon Heads Festival of the Sea where you can pretend you’re on the set of Seachange.

Details of all these at Country Victoria.

White Hat Rewards

From time to time White Hat receives tickets and other products which we pass on to our loyal subscribers. Last week we received seven tickets to Saturday afternoon’s performance of Mamma Mia and only had a few hours to get them distributed because we were flying to Launceston on an affair of the heart. We allocated the tickets to Denise (a regular contributor over several years), Kerry (who has bullied numbers of people in her workplace into becoming subscribers and contributed last week’s piece on the American Express advertisement), and subscribers from the Melbourne Museum (seeing we are not always polite about the current style of their institution and they as staff have to bear wear the [gentle] flak). Here is what Kerry thought:

“Dear White Hat, Thank you so much for the tickets to Mama Mia. My friend and I really loved it, both Abba fans anyway, we certainly weren't disappointed by the combination of the original songs with a new story. I think the performers sang the songs even better than the originals. A quirky modern story, bright costumes, very original dancing (never seen tap dance moves in wetsuits and flippers before) and brilliant performances, it was a great afternoon, certainly better than being hypnotised into a stupor by cars racing around and around and around the streets of Melbourne. Once again Thank you very much.
Kerry.”

Details on Mamma Mia can be found at Her Majestys Theatre..

What constitutes a valued subscriber? Stamina for one thing – it takes a slightly twisted person to read this newsletter regularly for four years and more. We also value useful feedback about places and events. Sometimes there are promotional offers where the provider provides a free product or experience hoping that you will be impressed and return as a paying customer in the future. In this case the provider usually specifies they be made available only to those who have been known to pay for things in the past (such as making purchases through our website). When we need a quick response it is our experience that hotmail addresses are often only checked once a day or less, so work email addresses usually entail much less effort at our end. Then there is the information you have provided. If when you subscribed to this newsletter you gave your name as “none of your business” then we can hardly have tickets held at the box office in that name. “But, you didn’t tell us” I hear you say. I know – anyone can pretend to be civil if they think there may be a reward. If a reward does come your way

Just think of it as the chef coming out and saying to you “I’ve got this special dish but it’s not on the menu”.