The White Hat Melbourne Newsletter

Archived Newsletter No.205 - 8 February 2007

Contents

Lectures
Music
Geelong
7 Melbourne Monuments - No.2 - Two Yarra Bookends
Sculpture
From the White Hat Inbox
Melbourne's Hidden Gems
From the White Hat Inbox
Classic Cars
Open air cinema
Free orchestral concerts
Coming events
The White Hat Quiz

Lectures

On Tuesday night there is a lecture on ‘Aboriginal Power and Survival in the 1880s’ and later in the month there is one on Governor Latrobe’s Secret Garden. Visitors to the Royal Historical Society of Victoria are reminded that, although not officially banned, the use of the Mexican Wave during lectures is discouraged.

Music

On Saturday you can attend the Good Vibrations Festival at the music bowl. Tickets are $107. On Sunday is the community day at the St Kilda Festival with bands everywhere. Sunday also has a free concert of world music at the Fairfield Amphitheatre featuring the Nubian Knights as well as Greek and Arabic Music. On Tuesday at BMW Edge is a ‘Peace and Harmony Concert’ featuring Turkish music.

Geelong

This Friday in evening is the occasional Little Malop Market and street festival. Also throughout February there are guided walks and free music in the Geelong Botanic Gardens. Detail at Geelong.

7 Melbourne Monuments

No.2 – Two Yarra Bookends

This section of the newsletter can now be found at The White Hat Guide to 7 Melbourne Monuments.

Sculpture

The sculpture exhibitions continue at Herring Island. Herring Island is an artificial island created during the re-routing of the Yarra and some seasoned subscribers may remember the origins of its name. Also this weekend, as mentioned in last weekend’s newsletter, is the twilight jazz at Dame Elizabeth Murdoch’s Cruden Farm. This is a fundraiser for the nearby McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park. Why not visit the Sculpture Park and then make your way on to Cruden Farm for a picnic?

From the White Hat Inbox

“I am writing to you as I need to find out if Australia has street names related to Algeria and Algerian culture ?. I hope you can help me as I cannot find it by internet.
Regards, Veronica, Algerian Embassy, Canberra”

If any of or reader can help Veronica, let us know and we will pass on the information.

“haha, I laughed and laughed at your discovery of Melbourne's Little Surprise! A couple of years ago, a beautiful sunny day, and I decided to take myself down to the end of Port Melbourne to take some photos. I parked the car, vaguely intrigued as to why so many other cars were parked there, and made my way through the trees towards the beach. It was hot and I was hungry. I found a nice little clearing with a bench amongst the trees and thought I'd stop and eat my packed lunch pasta salad there, escaping the midday heat and watching little birds fly about. It was peaceful, relaxing, an escape from the mad world, close to nature. A man walked past with red speedos, said hello and smiled cheekily. I wondered what was so funny. I looked down a path to my left and saw a guy see me and promptly turn around and walk the other way. As I took another bite of pasta, an older man poked his head out through the bushes, emerged and took off down a path without looking at me once. I clicked. Packed up my lunch. Walked the rest of the path to the beach. Passed the guy in the red speedos. He chuckled. I shook my head. Ah well, the beach was mine... becs “

“This story made me laugh because I live a hundred meters away from this strange little dance and my 7 year old son has asked about the area, whereby I mumbled something to the effect of "oh look at the weather, its going to be great fishing out there today. I have often joked with mates how funny it would be to buy a batch of fake CCD cameras and spread them around. As Sienfield would say "Not that there is anything wron with that" As most Aussies say "That's ok but NOT IN MY BACKYARD" Love the newsletter.
Cheers Sandridge alien zone”

“Dear Manager, Good morning! We are glad to learn about your company. We know that your company is specializing in selling the headwear, therefore, we send you this message and hope that we can serve you in some aspects with competitive price, prompt delivery service and guaranteed quality. The following is a brief introduction of our company:
South China Headwear Co.Ltd”

Classic Cars

This weekend at Docklands there is a display by the Lincoln Mercury Car Club. Details at Cars & Driving in Melbourne.

Gardens

Tuesday night sees the last of the summer evening late opening with entertainment at the Australian Garden in Cranbourne.

Melbourne's Hidden Gems

“Look at that graffiti!” said Uncle George. “They need something to keep the kids off the streets at night. Quoits! I used to play quoits. “He attempted to demonstrate but I guided his hands back onto the steering wheel. Uncle George was driving me from St Kilda back to his house in Yarraville. “Quoits would keep them off the streets and give them a discipline and a sense of purpose.” He wasn’t really my uncle but as grandma explained “after your grandfather died George was always so kind to me” so we all called him Uncle George. “We’ll go the short way” he explained as we threaded through the back streets of Port Melbourne. “I’ve always wondered what’s up there” he said as we passed a little blind turn-off to a carpark. “Nothing that you would find of interest Uncle George,” I said “but where are we heading?” “We’re going the back way to the Willy Ferry.” “Uncle George, that stopped running years ago.” “Ah yes, I keep forgetting that, but I know where to go from here.”

“Uncle George, we could always take the West Gate Bridge.” “The West Gate Bridge!” said Uncle George suddenly stopping the car. “They put a toll on that!” Uncle George usually stopped the car when he had something important to say. “But they removed that toll” I explained. At this stage I observed that a driver had felt somewhat inconvenienced by Uncle George’s sudden decision to stop. I indicated that Uncle George had lived long, experienced much, gained many skills, but not high among them was multi-tasking and as a result it was probably best for Uncle George, myself, the motorist in question and in fact the motoring world in General if Uncle George stops when he has something important to say and in fact the principle might even be spread more widely to include self-obsessed persons using mobile phones whether hands-free or not. It is sometimes difficult to encode a complex message into simple compact sign language but I think I succeeded. The swarthy driver raised his tattooed arm in a gesture that said “thank you for your responsible behaviour and I salute you for your concern for the community at large” – at least that’s what I think it meant. “I know they took the toll off” said Uncle George, “but that’s only to get you using it and lull you into a false sense of security then they’ll whack it back on again. No, I’m not getting sucked into that!”

We took the back way across the Charles Grimes Bridge and roughly followed the old path of the Yarra turning left soon after the original junction of the Yarra and the Maribyrnong. At the time of European settlement Yarraville ;ay mainly on the banks of the Yarra (hence its name), but with the re-routing of the rivers it now mainly lay on the banks of the Maribyrnong. May be it should have been renamed Maribyrnongville. “What are you thinking lad?” said Uncle George. “Oh, just about the river” I said. “Yes, it’s Jeff Kennett’s fault!” said Uncle George. “He put the toll on the West Gate Bridge you know.” There was little point discussing chronology. If I remember correctly Jeff was also responsible for the Great Depression and World War I. Uncle George had a simple world view and it worked for him. “There’s the Trugo Club” he said. “The blokes at the Newport Rail Yards invented the game using industrial offcuts.” You never knew whether to believe Uncle George or not.

Suddenly he stopped the car again. “Mouth organs!” he said. "That’s what they need to stop the graffiti in St Kilda. They don’t cost much. You can take them anywhere. The city shops call them a harmonica but that’s just a mouth organ that costs twice as much. The blokes at the Newport Railyards used to call mine a ‘tin sandwich’ but guess who was laughing when the Horrie Dargie Quintet went big. I’ve got some records at home I’ll play you. Harold next door reckons he’s a high class musician because he plays the harmonium at church but I point out it’s only a mouth organ blown with the feet." He gestured to the building beside us and I read the sign proclaiming it the home of the Yarraville Mouth Organ Band. “It’s been there nearly seventy years” he said “and I wouldn’t use this language if you grandmother was in the car, but since the formation of the Yarraville Mouth Organ Band, there hasn’t been a single teenage pregnancy in Yarraville.” I expressed my interest in this remarkable sociological phenomenon but also felt impelled to point out that we he been blocking the no-stopping lane for quite some time now and maybe we could head home and put some of the Horrie Dargie recordings on the phonograph.

Now Uncle George is someone who often beats about the bush but I am someone who gets straight to the point, so the reason I am telling you this is because the Yarraville Mouth Organ Band will be performing this weekend at the Yarraville Festival and you can find details at Harmonica While you are in the area you may wish to see if can track down the clubrooms of the Yarraville Mouth Organ Band and the impressive playing fields of the Yarraville Trugo Club.

Open Air Cinema

Open air cinema continues in the Botanic Gardens, Birrarung Marr, a city rooftop and an inner suburban junkyard.

Free orchestral concerts

This coming Wednesday night is the first of the free Sidney Myer orchestral concerts at the music bowl. I know you only like easy-listening-soul but it is Valentine’s Day and it’s free. One dose of Rachmaninov will buy you three very-late-home-from-works. If you are looking for other suggestions for Valentine’s Day try Romantic Melbourne. On Sunday, Orchestra Victoria performs a free concert at Abbotsford Convent including Handel’s Harp Concerto. It is a little-known musicological fact that Handel originally composed this work for the mouth organ but a copyist, pressed for time, transcribed the words “Concerto for Harp and Orchestra” instead of Handel’s original “Concerto for Blues Harp and Orchestra”. Mary Anderson will be playing the harp on Sunday but I’ll be taking along my mouth organ just in case. Details at Classical Music in Melbourne.

Coming events

The following weekend (17-18 Feb) there is an explosion of events in Melbourne and country Victoria. In Melbourne there is Writers at Como, Madama Butterfly at the Maj, Opera Victoria open their season with Oedipus Rex (I’m not sure if they’re planning a Mother’s Day special), a Sustainable Living Festival at Fed Square, several Chinese New Year and Tet events, Opera in the Park in Prahran and a Celebrate Yarra Festival in the Edinburgh Gardens. There are some unfortunate clashes. The annual Holland Festival is on at Sandown but numbers may be drastically reduced because it clashes with the Desperate & Dateless Ball.

In the country there is the Bruthen Blues & Arts Festival, the Hot Sauce & Fiery Foods Festival, sand sculpting and a pier swim at Rye, the Bunninyong Gold King Festival, Yarra Valley Grape Grazing Festival.

For details go to our home page and select the appropriate weekend from the drop-down calendar of events.

THE WHITE HAT QUIZ

First to last week’s quiz on Sydney-Melbourne rivalry.

Sydney-Melbourne rivalry.

Jo and Alan’s were the first two entries received and between them they found most of the answers.

Now to this week’s quiz

1. Where would you find the monument to the original junction of the Maribyrnong and Yarra mentioned above? 2. Yarraville has an impressive Art Deco picture palace? 3. Are Uncle George’s fanciful assertions about the origins of Trugo true? 4. Is a mouth organ blown or sucked or possibly even both? 5. If St Valentine is the patron saint of lovers, who is St Kilda the patron saint of?

Send your answers to quiz@whitehat.com.au

No prizes – just glory and a warm inner glow.

The White Hat Quiz

How well do you know Melbourne?

First to last week’s quiz on Sydney-Melbourne rivalry.

Sydney-Melbourne rivalry.

Jo and Alan’s were the first two entries received and between them they found most of the answers.

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

1. Where would you find the monument to the original junction of the Maribyrnong and Yarra mentioned above?
2. Yarraville has an impressive Art Deco picture palace. What is its name?
3. Are Uncle George’s fanciful assertions about the origins of Trugo true?
4. Is a mouth organ blown or sucked or possibly even both?
5. If St Valentine is the patron saint of lovers, who is St Kilda the patron saint of?

No prizes – just glory and a warm inner glow.