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24th Nov 2005
Sunny St Kilda
Thursday 24th November, 2005
The entire staff of British 4WD Drive Imports was given the day off today in honour of our visit, so that meant that Ant and Bev were going to be driver and tour guide and a bloke called Bill didn’t have to turn up. We had a fairly leisurely breakfast and then hit the road. Ant, who was driving spent the first few miles worrying about not having a specific destination but once we’d identified that Anne was keen to see an old part of Melbourne, that I’d quite like to see a bookshop and Bev needed a Post Office, we pulled into a suburb called Canterbury.
After a wander down the street I noticed an old photograph reproduced on an interpretive panel up on the wall, which showed the street behind us at the turn of the century. It was a re-photographer’s gift and so out came the camera and I spent a short time out in the middle of the road dodging the traffic.
Just along the road we passed the studio of a photographer friend of Ant’s called John Ingham and we called in on the off chance to see whether he was around.
He’d apparently just left … but as we were getting into the car out front, Bev spied him making a getaway from an alley nearby and he duly reversed back down to his lock-up and we were shown round the works.
It was an interesting discussion on the film and digital debate. John used large film right from the early 70s but has recently changed across to a Canon digital … he produces a series of large black and white calendars each year and for this purpose and reckons the printed output is indiscernible. We discussed the problems of archival storage and he seems to be putting his faith in DVDs. I was really impressed with the thirty-inch apple screen on his desk.
We didn’t keep him back long and moved on into the centre of town and parked ourselves under the Art Gallery of Victoria. The feature show there was the exhibition of British ‘art’ from the Sixties which included a mini suspended from the ceiling and the famous Keeler photograph and others which would have been interesting but it turned out that we were in the wrong venue for the Drysdales … so we crossed the river, alongside trams and passing the Melbourne Cricket Ground in the distance and found the new annex building for the gallery across Federation Square.
Unfortunately there were a load of galleries closed for refurbishment but we managed to see the Drysdales that were on show – a number of small sketches and famous images like ‘The Rabbiters’ an interesting mix of other artists work as well including works by Streeton, Mehrtens, Nolan and one or two photographers.
Had a rummage through the bookshop on the way out (in which I could have done some serious damage had we not been under a certain amount of baggage constraint already!)
Lunched at a small café-bar beside the gallery bookshop … which unfortunately served rather small lunches … however, its good for the figure and the presentation of the coffee
almost made up for it … errrr, well …. almost.
The battery on Anne’s camera had packed in and we were heading further and further into deepest and darkest Melbourne … and I was being very brave about not having a camera with me, but finally cracked when I saw another of those interpretive plaques on the wall depicting the street scene in from the early 20th Century … and so I had to go back to the car.
No particularly fixed shopping mission; bit of Christmas shopping but we wended our way back through federation Square past the huge Christmas tree and tried to equate all the tinsel and Christmas lights and cut-out Santas with the clear blue skies, the heat and the flies. In passing through Fed Square we featured on the big screen and spent a little bit of time lining ourselves up at the front of the camera in order to be able to photograph the event.
We extracted ourselves from the underground parking and took a look at Toorak in search of any sign of the large houses which I have copy photographs for from the turn of the 19th Century – as expected we saw nothing resembling … though I think its something I’ll pursue via e-mail in the future.
We then headed for St Kilda … just as a bit of a must-see for Anne and I. This is the St Kilda with the miles of beach, with the pier, with the Art Deco public conveniences and with the exciting, street-walking nightlife (which we didn’t get to see). Its also considerably hotter and more fly-infested than the real thing, but nonetheless, we dipped our toes into the bay and had a photo taken.
It was a long old haul back across town, full of short cuts and dead ends and narrow streets through leafy suburbs. Lots of terraced houses, with intricate cast iron fretwork on their balconies and verandahs.
We made a stop at Safeway’s in order to get some barbecue ingredients and then set Ant loose on the Aussie Barbie at the back of the house. He rustled up a fine spread of steak and fried potatoes which we ate sitting out on the verandah and then retired indoors as the first mossies started to home in on us.
Rolled into bed at about 11pm. Ant and Bev still had 4WD type things to catch up on in preparation for their departure tomorrow. We however, were generally wrecked after our memorable and all encompassing, ‘everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-Melbourne-but-were-afraid-to-ask’ sort of day.
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