The White Hat Melbourne Newsletter

Archived Newsletter No.166 - 17 March 2006

Contents

Commonwealth Games
Advice to visitors
Harmony Gathering
Festivals
Reader feedback
One-off farmers’ market
Classical music
Last chance
From the White Hat Inbox
New ferry and bus service
Shell House
Country Victoria
The White Hat Quiz

Commonwealth Games

Details of all Commonwealth Games events are readily available in all the mainstream media so we won’t go into any details here. However we should mention the distance races which wind through the inner suburbs and spectators can line the route free of charge. On Sunday is the marathon Monday is the 20K men’s & women’s walks and on Friday is the 50 K walk. If you live in the western suburbs, why not take the family, catch the new ferry service from Williamstown (see below) and show the kids that there are people out there who can walk more than 50m without complaining that it’s “too far”.

There are lots of quality entertainments running throughout the games, many of them centred around the Alexandra Gardens and the music bowl as part of the free cultural festival associated with the games. And for those who may be put off by the word ‘cultural’ – don’t worry. The emphasis is firmly on youth and pop culture rather than high culture. There are also lots of children’s activities, so make the most of it while you can. Full details can be found by date at our Calendar of Events in Melbourne.

Advice to vistors

For those who are visiting for the Commonwealth Games we offer a few pointers to help you blend in with the locals. Firstly, they are not the Commonwealth Games – they’re the Comm Games; and you don’t meet your friends at Federation Square – it’s Fed Square. Here in Australia we abbreviate everything which frees up lots of time for doing important things like laying on the beach. Even the MCG is too long – to the locals it’s the “G”. Once you have mastered that you find that there are certain words you have to lengthen. For instance John becomes Johnno. This is a simple courtesy meaning “I know that John is a boring name and that Johns are boring people, but I don’t think you’re quite as dull as many of them so I will favour you with a more interesting name”. Finally, once you have mastered the correct abbreviations, you have to learn to say them without opening your mouth – if you open your mouth the flies get in.

That should help get you started with blending in with the locals.

Welcome to Melbourne.

Harmony Gathering

HARMONY GATHERING This weekend there is a free concert in the amphitheatre in Fairfield Park with African and Indigenous musicians and a wide range of foods promoting racial tolerance and called Black Harmony Gathering. For those who are not from Melbourne you find that after living here for a while we’re all the same underneath. We’re all Greek.

Festivals

This weekend there are community festivals in Noble Park, Mordialloc, Templestowe, Whittlesea, and Brimbank.

Community festivals come in a number of flavours. The is the Do-It-For-Me Festival where the local government and social workers set up the stands and do the promotion and the group for whom it is being held turn up reluctantly for a short time. At the other end of the scale are the festivals organised by enthusiastic groups only to be bugged by over-zealous officials telling them that the stall has to be shifted because it is 1.25 metres from the kerb rather than 1.3m, and that no-one on the stall can hand out brochures unless they have a Cert 4 in brochure handling (for which the only available course is the one run by his sister-in-law in a TAFE on the other side of town). Then there are the mis-matched festivals where the owner of a shop that sells up-market china figurines is asked to help fund a youth culture festival outside her door that will keep her trade away for the weekend – right now, somebody is probably planning a hip-hop festival for Maling Road Canterbury. Then there are the festivals where everything seems to come together and where the locals, the traders, the authorities and the visitors all feel that is the place to be. (This newsletter wishes to acknowledge the kind assistance of VicRoads, producers of Victorian number plates, for granting us permission to use those last four words.)

Last year we found the Mordialloc by the Bay Festival to be a good example of the last type of festival where everything seemed to work well – slightly up-market community festival with an emphasis on food and wine, Details of these and forthcoming community festivals at Community Festivals in Melbourne. There is also an Autumn Harvest Festival at the Austrian Club in Heidelberg West with all welcome. Details at Multicultural Festivals in Melbourne.

Reader Feedback

“Hi WH.
Love your newsletter and sense of humour, but as this is all about Melbourne you just HAVE to start spelling "Melburnians" correctly. I suppose you'll point out that the dropping of the "o" is incorrect if you go back far enough, but it has always been "Melburnian" (spelling and pronunciation) in my lifetime.
Keep up the good work!
Terry.”

One-off farmers' market

There will be a special Victorian Producers’ Market in the forecourt of the Melbourne Museum on Saturday. Details at Farmers' Markets in Victoria.

Classical music

This week the Cologne New Philharmonic Orchestra is performing at St Paul’s Cathedral. It is easy to spot their posters around the city. Each year they are in the plain black and red letterpress European style with a listing of the works to be played. They could always give their concert a vague title (always in lower case), put some of the younger violinists in flimsy dresses, double the ticket prices and nobody back home in Cologne need know. There are also concerts by the Macquarie Trio and two free concerts of popular classical music including the 1812 Overture with canons at the music bowl. Details at Classical Music in Melbourne.

Last chance

The last night market at the Vic Market for the summer is this coming Wednesday. Details at Twilight & Night Markets in Melbourne.

From the White Hat Inbox

“hi im maddi and i was wondering is it okay if i use some of your notes about the regent theatre ? but i put them in my own words. because i copied and pasted into microsoft word and then printed it so i can take notes off your work for my school project, so i dont have to do my work infront of the computer. because i noticed on your site it said: page protected by COPYSCAPE : DO NOT COPY, which caused me to write this email to you. also in my project we have to list what books and sites are used and i already wrote: http://www.whitehat.com.au/Melbourne/Theatres.asp so to show my teacher that your site is 1 of the places i got the information i used for my project. so thank you once again, and please note that the information i get from your site i will re word into the way i would write it, it is only for educational reasons, so please allow it. from maddi, and thanks"

New ferry and bus services

There are two new services for getting about in Melbourne. Firstly there is a regular ferry service running between Williamstown and Docklands until midnight during the games. This provides a great way to avoid the traffic snarls. The captain of this vessel is a newsletter subscriber, so let’s hope you don’t run aground while he is trying to answer the White Hat Quiz.

There is also a new free tourist bus which supplements the city circle tram route. It runs roughly in a rectangle form Southbank to Carlton and back. So I suppose we should call it the city circle bus route.

Details of both services and their stops can be found at Getting About in Melbourne.

Shell House

I was going to tell you why we find Shell House to be a hidden gem, but pressures of time and space mean we will have to hold that over. However, some of you may have noticed that in the city fireworks that were part of the opening ceremony, one building which particularly stood out with fireworks sprouting from its roof, lights on at every window and its curved façade facing Birrarung Marr and the river and providing a dignified anchor to that corner of Mr Hoddle’s grid. That was the Shell Building. Thanks Harry.

Country Victoria

This weekend in country Victoria is the Ararat Jail House Rock Festival, the Tarerer Festival in Warrnambool, a cultural festival in Bendigo, a Dahlia and Arts Festival in Eaglehawk, a Dahlia and Art Festival in Cobden without any dahlias, the Mildura-Wentworth Arts Festival, the Weerama Festival in Werribee (impress your Comm Games visitors by taking them to Werribee then go big game fishing for flathead in the bay), the Barwon Heads Festival of the Sea, an Autumn Festival in Yea and the annual Geelong Highland Gathering. It gets quite windy on the Bellarine Peninsula, so if you go to the Geelong Highland Festival you might find the answer to an age-old question about Scotsmen.

For details of all of 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?

First to last week’s quiz. We had a number of correct answers but the first came from Charles who is visiting from America.

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.

Now to this week’s quiz

Melbourne and abbreviations.

1. Where in Melbourne would you find The Espy?
2. Where in Melbourne would you find Y&Js?
3. Where in Melbourne would you find the Ming Wing?
4. Where’s Willy?
5. What gummunt department (for our visitors, gummunt is the local pronunciation of Government) is known as Shrubs & Grubs?

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