The White Hat Melbourne Newsletter

Archived Newsletter No.165 - 10 March 2006

Contents

Short newsletter
Commonwealth Games
Melbourne’s Hidden Gems – bars & clubs
Festivals
Steam
Melbourne’s ‘Private’ Hidden Gems
Film
Country Victoria
The White Hat Quiz

Short newsletter

This is a short newsletter today because early next week we will send you a special newsletter covering the games period.

Commonwealth Games

You don’t need us to tell you they’re on, but you may not be aware of the accompanying festival. There is a host of free entertainment including lots of stuff for kids. You will find full details at: http://www.melbourne2006.com.au/Festival+Melbourne2006/

There are numbers of free concerts at the Music Bowl and you will find information on much else on our daily calendar of events, although we are find it heavy going translating the over-hyped teen marketing speak of the promotional material into the plain intelligent English that our website users and newsletters subscribers expect.

Melbourne's Hidden Gems

Bars & clubs

Those who have travelled in South East Asia are probably familiar with the sort of improvised eating places that use any available space where there is passing trade. For instance if you take a (driverless) train in KL to one of the outer suburbs you often stumble across such places near the station. In the morning they are a thriving breakfast bar. As commuters arrive in their cars, the tables are systematically removed enabling the area to become a carpark during the day. Come evening and the cycle is reversed. The tables quickly occupy the space vacated by the departing cars, steaming bowls of laksa are ferried from a kitchen of whose hygiene you do not wish to enquire too closely, people relax after a day’s work and talk to their neighbours on the table (even if you are the only anglo present), the twilight fades, the lanterns on the grid above start to create a different and magical atmosphere, and after sampling some of the delicacies ordered by your new friends you have forgotten that when you arrived this was an ugly industrial carpark.

In Melbourne, some venues spend many thousands of dollars on interior design in order to ‘create an atmosphere’. Others spend little money – they just create an atmosphere out of what they have. For instance, there is Section 8 (those who have watched MASH will know what Section 8 refers to) in Tattersalls Lane in Chinatown. It consists of two contains plonked on a small vacant lot. One container is the bar and kitchen, the other is the toilet block. There is a chicken wire fence, a number of movable pallets for seating, moderately priced food, and – as the twilight fades – you gradually become aware of the lanterns strung in a grid over this industrial block up a back alley. Come about 10 o’clock the crowds start to filter in, and one crowded bar is like any other crowded bar. However, earlier in the day or evening, don’t be surprised if you encounter a strange person in a white hat sitting on a pallet, sipping on a Tiger beer and singing quietly to himself “Take me somewhere east of Suez . . “

Festivals

Much of Melbourne’s regular festivals and activities have ground to a halt rather than compete with the Comm Games. However there is a kite festival in Rosebud on Sunday and a Bright and Sandy Food Festival in Sandy. And on Monday there is still a Moomba Parade. You may need to explain to our Commonwealth Cousins that we are having this parade because the 8 hours movement was initiated in Melbourne in 1884 so we later had an 8 hours day which later became a labour day (which is spelt with a ‘u’ but the party isn’t) which later became Moomba weekend which was named after an indelicate part of the anatomy and that the lord mayor of the city that was hosting the games wasn’t even going to be allowed a speech at the games so we had a Moomba parade with a speech instead to show that its not just Spring Street and Canberra who are putting on these games. Melbourne is a strange place, but after a while you start to understand it. Details of these festivals at Festivals in Melbourne.

Steam

This weekend there is a steamfest in Scoresby with lots of machines that generate steam and smells and do all the sorts of blokey things you can do with steam except for ironing. There is also a night running of the miniature railway at Diamond Valley which is an ideal cheap outing for the kids. Details at Steam Trains in Melbourne.

Melbourne's Hidden 'Private' Gems

The architect Harry Seidler died this week. Some of you will have taken the unique opportunity to visit examples of the suburban houses he designed during the open day we told you about in this newsletter a year or two ago. However Harry Seidler is possibly best known in Melbourne as the architect of Shell House on the corner of Spring and Flinders Streets.

Mr Hoddle’s rectangular grid of Melbourne led to a century and more of architecture using the basic shape of a rectangular prism. (The currently acceptable term for rectangle is “Square” because it is unfair to discriminate against a shape just because of its dimensions) One way to get up the nose of traditional Melbournians is to deviate from the rectangular prism. In the 90s some architects deviated from the god-given principles of horizontals and verticals and introduced DIAGONALS at place like Jeff’s Shed, Melbourne Museum and the ‘gateway’ on the Tullamarine Freeway. This architectural heresy was soon exposed for what it really represented – the Nazi salute to the government of the day. In the 80s Harry Seidler had introduced another heresy into Hoddle’s rectangular grid – CURVES. Again, the decadence of the curves was soon exposed for what they really represented – SYDNEY. Sydney has a street pattern that often follows the ridges and gulleys of the terrain and the curved streets result in many curved buildings. If Melbourne was to get curved buildings it would be the start of the slippery slide and soon it would be indistinguishable from Sin City.

Harry Seidler was born 1923 in Vienna but with the arrival of the Nazis left there in 1938. After attending school in England he went to Harvard where he received his strong American accent. He spent much of his working life in Australia but returned to Vienna to work on major projects. So how should a man of this varied background be labelled? For Middle Melbourne and the local ABC there was no choice. For the man who had designed a curved building in Melbourne was reserved the extreme epithet – “SYDNEY architect, Harry Seidler”.

The National Trust has a book of significant architecture in Melbourne CBD called Walking Melbourne. Shell House does not rate. (There is a recently published edition which may mention it – I must find out) An eponymous website (which I think has nothing to do with the National Trust) describes Shell House in the following terns:

“Sydney architect Harry Seidlers only Melbourne office building so far is without a doubt the ugliest horror constructed in the city. It is abject to all of Melbournes standards of taste, presents sheer blank concrete walls, throws blatant curves on the sacred grid and pollutes the streetscape with awful eighties abstract sculpture in an uninspiring and unwanted corner plaza. The building uses sunshades and a variety of other features including an exposed service core which make it an aesthetic abomination from all angles. This building belongs in Sydney or Brisbane, and should be demolished without reservation as it is an insult to and a scar and scurge (sic) on the skyline of the city of Melbourne. This building is so bad that even its builders, Shell, have abandoned their headquarters. Why it was awarded an RAIA medal for design is beyond any rational person.”

(source http://www.walkingmelbourne.com/building502.html)

It is therefore with some trepidation that we mention that White Hat finds Shell House to be one of the quiet private hidden gems of Melbourne – we are obviously out of step here, but it wouldn’t be the first time. We have rambled on for too long, so next week let us fill you in on why we appreciate Harry’s major contribution to Melbourne and give you some pointers as to what we see when we look at this building and its surrounds.

Film

This weekend is the ‘In the Realm of the Senses’ Film & Music Festival in Fairfield Park. Details at Film Festivals in Melbourne.

Country Victoria

It is a little-known fact that in the 1950s, Shell had intended to set up their head office in Ballarat rather than Melbourne. They commissioned a building, but when the executives arrived to inspect Shell House it wasn’t exactly what they had in mind. Thousands of shells set in concrete together with pieces of broken bottles and china and other sparkly bits and pieces formed into the decorative and artistic shapes. The executives thanked the builder very much but said that they had decided to move to Melbourne. And that, boys and girls, is how Harry Seidler was commissioned to design the new Shell House in Melbourne. And I swear on the memory of Ern Malley that every word of that is true.

Meanwhile, if you are at the Begonia Festival in Ballarat, you might want to take time out from counting begonias to travel to the original Shell House (I believe it is still open to the public) where you can count shells, and then make your way to the Festival of Quilts or the stamp fair. And young people think there is no excitement in the country.

Also this weekend there are jazz festivals at Inverloch and Moe, country music at Moyston, folk music at Port Fairy, arts festivals at Shepparton and Cobden, and a gay & lesbian Chill Out Day in Daylesford. For foodies there’s a harvest festival in Mansfield, a beekeepers and honey festival at Diggers Rest, a Pink Lamb and Purple Shiraz Festival and the Thorpdale Potato Festival. There is a dahlia festival in Portland, a rafting festival in Seymour and a Tobacco, Hops & Timber Festival. For details of all these go to our home page and select the appropriate weekend from the drop-down menu of events in country Victoria.

The White Hat Quiz

How well do you know Melbourne?

Melbourne and shapes

1. What shape is the City Circle?
2. What shape is the City Square?
3. The façade of Federation Square is constructed from what repeated shape?
4. The Arts Centre (Gallery, Concert Hall and Spire) was designed around three simple solid shapes. Which ones? (Note, - the spire was later redesigned to save money and so is not quite the shape what was originally designed)
5. How many points do the stars on the Australia flag have and why?

No prizes for correct – just glory and a warm inner glow.