Banyule Bloggers

Pizza down the Hurstbridge Line

2006-01-14T18:14:00.000+11:00

So it's time for my first post here on Banyule Bloggers. And unlike the other lazy bastards around here, I intend to make this a bit of a regular spot. (If only they would update the link to my personal blog and then I may be a bit nicer about the whole thing.)

Anyway......

I propose we have a bit of a Banyule Bloggers Readers Poll. Ripped off entirely from a local paper's business awards, I thought that we could all "vote" for our favorite "local" business across a range of categories, decided entirely by us.

Our awards will be entirely biased of whoever decides to go to the effort of filling out a comment and "voting."

And I suspect that I will be the only one who actually bothers to vote. So as you can see, these awards will be truly reflective of the populous of the local area.

So, on with round one.

Who is the number 1 pizza shop in Banyule? Sure, we may not have the gourmet genius that is "Crust" in Richmond. Or even the delights of the latest chain "Mojo's seriously weird pizza." But we all eat pizza. We must have somewhere good to buy it from.

Votes in comments below please.

Elijah Wood

2005-12-05T19:56:00.000+11:00

This is a true story. I was driving to work this morning and I though I recognised a guy who was walking on the footpath. I had a closer look and thought it might be the actor who plays Harry Potter, but with boofier hair. Then I realised it was Elijah Wood the main one from Lord of the Rings. I am completely sure it was him and it was odd that no-one else seemed to be taking any notice. This was in Beverley Rd near Jika St. Has anyone else seen Elijah Wood walking around?

Amazing Letterbox

2005-11-28T18:02:00.000+11:00

There is a house in Banyule which is completely mindblowing. Here's a picture of it.

The force majeur of its mindblowingness comes from the fact that its letterbox is an exact copy of the house itself. Wow! I had to hang back (sit in the car actually) to take these pictures becasue I didn't want the house owner to see me and ring the Alert / Alarmed hotline. So I couldn't get close enough to verify whether the mini-letterbox-house also has a mini cockroach-sized house in front of it, I imagine it probably does.

I have admired this letterbox from afar for many years. It deserves to be more famous.

Council still laboring after election

2005-11-28T09:46:00.000+11:00

It looks like Labor will maintain its stranglehold on Banyule council following Saturday's election.

Despite an advertising blitz, only two overtly pro-Liberal councillors - Wayne Phillips in Beale and Peter McKenna in Bakewell - got home.

Cr Phillips, a former Diamond Valley Shire councillor and shire president and the Liberal MP for Eltham from 1988-99, takes the ward vacated by former mayor Greg Ryan. McKenna takes the spot vacated by former mayor Colin Brooks.

It's good to see that despite their strong push, backed with plenty of money for signs and advertising but with little information about party connections, that the Libs did not fare too well at the election.

Tom Melican, for all intents and purposes an independent, has retained the Ibbott ward.

It appears Labor councillors Jenny Mulholland (Griffin ward, where I live), Dean Sherriff (The baby-faced assassin in Grimshaw ward) and Dale Peters (Hawdon) are all back for another term.

Another new councillor, Anthony Carbines, also has strong Labor credentials. A former journalist in his early 30s, he grew up in Banyule and worked part-time for former Jaga Jaga MP Peter Staples in the '80s.

Most recently he has worked as an advisor to Health Minister Bronwyn Pike. His stepmother Elaine Carbines is a state Labor MP down Geelong way. He takes Olympia ward, vacated by a former staffer to Ivanhoe Labor MP Craig Langdon, Sean Rawson.

Given the past few years of infighting, one could argue that a Labor-controlled council is bad news. It remains to be seen if the inclusion of Cr Carbines to the picture will be the circuit-breaker that takes the sting out of the factional fighting that occurred between Peters and Sherriff and Ryan, Brooks and Mulholland.

Banyule Elections Afterparty / Open Thread

2005-11-26T18:00:00.000+11:00

Well it's 6pm and the polling booths have closed. Thank god, no more bloody electioneering spam-on-paper. I did my bit and went & voted, a bit later on I might try to think of something purposeful to say about the whole experience. Or not.
Anyway the primary purpose of this post is to hear from readers about THEIR favourite memories of today. Anyone interrogate the candidates? Anyone eat an unhygenic fundraising sausage? Anyone throw a donkey vote? Verify the existance of Marcus McFarland?
c'mon, let's hear it.

Ibbott Ward Pre-Election Extravaganza

2005-11-24T17:35:00.000+11:00

So, the Banyule election counter in the sidebar there is busted, but no matter - we all know the great even is taking place this Saturday. I wonder how we'll find out who the winners are? Maybe we'll have to wait until Wednesday when the Heidelberg Leader comes out. I don't suppose they'll have an election night special on the ABC instead of the Bill.

I have not been able to decide whether to engage in election candidate commentary here since I don't specially want my house burned down or a bag of dog shit left on the doorstep. Also there are far too many candidates to do them all justice. On the other hand, it's my fecking democratic right to join in. It also strikes me that this is something of a historic moment since I bet you any money that by the next time we have a council election in Banyule all the candidates will have blogs of their own. So I'm going to just have a little chat about some of the guys standing in Ibbott ward (Watsonia, Rosanna, Viewbank and that), specifically about the ones whose friends thought the "NO JUNK MAIL" sign on my letterbox didn't apply to them.

Number One: Tom "The Pelican" Mellican

I have a special warm feeling about Tom because I've seen him in real life, three times! Once he made a speech at a Banyule event, another time he was digging in the garden bed behind his house, and the last time he was standing in the front yard of someone else's house holding a cordless drill. That was only a couple of weeks ago. I wish I had've had the nerve to roll down the car window and ask him where he stands on the issues - did I mention the issues? The issues are 1) the ongoing detention without charge of David Hicks and 2) animal experimentation.

Tom has a long list of things he'll do, like "promote family values", "speak out against the zone ticketing system" etc. His main point though seems to be that he doesn't have plans to try to get himself into state or federal politics, UNLIKE SOME OTHER CANDIDATES AROUND HERE - he does quite a lot of *hint hint*ing about that.

Enough about him.

NUMBER TWO: Scott "No Mates" Crawford

I have alluded before to the fact that Scott has himself a website , more about that in a moment. I understand Scott was somehow embroiled in the Melbourne University Student Union Ginormous Shitefight of days gone by: so it would seem he has a natural aptitude for politicking? Well, that's all in the past. Very much in the present is the deluge of poorly-written and foolish campaign material about Scott which has been thrust in to our long-suffering letterbox every ten days or so for the past six weeks. The scan you see there is one of four pages in this particular flyer. All featured the same annoying failure to distinguish between "commonsense", and adjective, and "common sense", a noun. He also spells "roundabout" as "round a bout" at least three times.

What I like best about the Scott Crawford Campaign Juggernaut is its utter jejune silliness, as epitomised by the photographs he's circulated of himself. I can't look at these with a straight face. For instance, see in the bottom right corner of the scan a blurry shot of Scott doing the "vision thing" for a transfixed bystander, outside the Macleod YMCA? Well, have a look at the website and see the same stance photoshopped onto a completely different location. Did he think we wouldn't notice? Well I notice everything. I even noticed that the address his leaflets give for electoral correspondence is a house which is advertised for sale at the moment.

I'm sorry to go on about him so much. Consider the ranting directly proportional to the quantities of "newsletters" he's imposed on us. Next!

NUMBER Three: Matt "Tabula Rasa" Aitken

Matt is a Man of Mystery - his key electoral strategy seems to be just giving the punters a how to vote card (printed on much nicer stock than the other cheap bastards paid for) and basically letting them project their own Fantasy Matt without impediment from any particular policies. Nice headshot too - I reckon Matt might have done some extra work at some stage, d'ye think?

Matt has a website too. And dear sweet mother of Jesus, it has a forum. Which has been going since January. With three posts. Two made by Matt himself. He says he likes animals! Cool!

Last of all -

number four: Flamin' David Mulholland

I found David's flyer, which only arrived last week, perhaps the most interesting of all. David's brilliant strategy is just to hang seven kinds of shit on everyone else, especially Scott. He has more to say about Scott than about himself, generally it is just about that MUSU thingo again. He says Scott has been served a writ for 3.4 million dollars. (Is that why the house is on the market?) I wish I had bothered to scan the thing properly so you could read it yourself. David says of himself that "politics is in his blood" - we wondered if that means he's related to Deputy Mayor Jenny Mulholland? Anyone know? The local paper gave David's age as 19 by the way. Point three on David's shit list is also rather nice - he says one of the candidates, Marcus McFarland, is "the unknown candidate" (that I agree with, no flyer from Marcus) - but he can't rest until he's wondered "if there is a Marcus McFarland out there or is it a figment of Scott's imagination."

Ooh, is one of the candidates a psychopomp?!?!

Well, there you have it. The monumental Ibbot Ward faceoff. Boy am I looking forward to Saturday. If any council candidates are reading this and would like to make a guest post, or possibly let us all know where you stand on the issues I mentioned up there somewhere, drop me a line on dorianandlaura@gmail.com.

Touched by Britney

2005-11-12T17:44:00.000+11:00

Check it out. Britney Spears touched this card.

And then someone loosed it in Burgundy St, Heidelberg. And Laura finded it.

Have you ever been touched by a famous person? Tex Perkins grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me an intense look - the freak. Tommy Emmanuel gave me a baseball cap and called me 'champ' - I nearly head-butted him for that. I once gave Shirley Bassey directions to the bathroom - true. And I told off Dave Groll from the Food Fighters (oops, didn't recognise him - but he apologised).

Well whatever. If you can guess what's written on the back of this card (which was touched by Britney), you can have it. Otherwise we might have to put it on eBay.

Poor man's Olympic torch on the way

2005-11-10T08:11:00.000+11:00

Today's Herald Sun shows the Queens Baton Relay, one of the highlights of Melbourne's Commonwealth Games, will travel through Banyule on March 14. The baton and its digitally recorded message from Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth the Second, will come through Heidelberg West, Heidelberg Heights and Heidelberg on its way to the opening ceremony the next day, as long as it makes it up Liberty Pde without being stolen, burnt or used in a bashing.

Thousands turned out five years ago when the Olympic torch came to Banyule and made a stop at the old Olympic Village. But will anybody care when the baton arrives at the same spot on March 14? The Commonwealth Games organisers have said the atmosphere fore the games would start to build when the Spring Carnival was out of the way but I don't see anything but a wave of apathy. Will anyone line the streets?

Banyule vs Nillumbik: what if?

2005-11-09T15:05:00.000+11:00

I quite liked Dorian's take (below) on Banyule vs Nillumbik, although I can only speculate as to what led him to draw this gruesome picture of the relationship.

The fact of the matter is that Banyule and Nillumbik exist in their current forms because Jeff Kennett insisted that the hippies of Eltham must have their own completely unworkable council to destroy when his government chopped 218 Victorian councils to 78 back in the 1990s.

Ten years on we have Banyule Council, impeccably managed by a strong and competent executive team but with its councillors at each other's throats, and Nillumbik, whose councillors all join hands and sup on mung beans and tofu at council meetings but whose managers couldn't manage a coherent thought if their superannuation depended on it. They are in deep debt and are increasing the rates by 10% a year.

By the next election, the present Nillumbik council, which would have its residents living in bark huts if it could, will be out and a set of equally clueless rightwing councillors who will raze the bush and build high-rise units will be in. That's the political instability Kennett wanted when he insisted pro-development bits of the northern Diamond Valley Shire were merged with peace, love and mung beans Eltham Shire.

But just imagine if the Office of Local Government had got its wish in 1994 and merged the Heidelberg, Diamond Valley and Eltham councillors into a single unit.

Dry, Christian, asset-rich, ultrawhite Ivanhoe residents still living in the 1950s, aggressive Liberal voting development types aiming to turn the green bits of Heidelberg, Ivanhoe, Greensborough, Plenty and Diamond Creek into urban slums and filthy tie-dyed fundamentalists eating nuts and berries, wearing rope shoes and demanding the council converts to solar power and bicycles (even the garbos) would all be mixing in the community and the council gallery.

Throw in a few bogans from Greensy, Hurstbridge and West Heidelberg stirring trouble along with bellies full of Bundy 'n' Coke and a couple of Somalian taxi drivers with portable barbeques sauteeing camel stakes bought fresh from a Halal butcher in The Mall and it could end up in a bloodbath, as Dorian imagined.

And that's surely what Jeff really wanted.

Should Banyule and Nillumbik and their various troubles be left to themselves or should we fulfil Jeff's fantasy, merge them and watch each camp battle for supremacy?

We'll have to leave Dale Peters and Dean Sherriff out of the war - they would only bite and scratch members of their own team.

* Ivan Hoe is a professional gambler, raconteur and man about town whose hobbies include card-counting, gun-running and decorative paving.

Bogan Women, Get Fit

2005-11-03T14:18:00.000+11:00

Like the anon commenter in the box under cdiddy's excellent post about celebrity Banyulers, I too run eagerly to the letterbox on Wednesdays to see whether the Heidelberg Leader has been delivered yet. Why? Because I do love it so.

This week's is jam-packed full of the usual local news and ads and snarky letters about tunnelling under Banyule swamp, but no matter how hard I tried to concentrate on readng my Kerrie Kulken horoscope my attention kept wandering to the back page ad for Athletique Health Club.

Famous people wot have lived in Banyule

2005-11-02T00:37:00.000+11:00

Ben Mendelson went to Heidelberg Primary and I saw him in an MTC thing last year - proof that he is both famous and well rounded. Heidelberg Primary was way cooler than my PS coz it had a pool. Who said public schools don't have perks? He was in the Big Steal with Claudia Karvan (big spunk) and is widely agreed to be better looking than Noah Taylor.

Things of Stone and Wood guy - you know that band that did 'Happy Birthday Helen' and then got spoofed by the D-Gen...not another melbourne cliche. Yeah, so anyway one of the guys lived in the street behind us. Exciting, no? ToSaW (popular enuf to have an acronym, yes!) even wrote of their love for Heidelberg in erm, 'Heidelberg.'

Joy Hester, Sunday Reed and co - well Heide is near enuf to Banyule. Surely in the old days when we had our very own arty wife swapping shenanigans Heide would have been deemed part of the Banyule electorate?

AC/DC. Okay I think my brother completely lied about that one. All research points to them having firm Sydney roots. But maybe, juuust maybe there was a time when the band members were all sitting around thinking they'd never make it in Sydney, that surely moving to the suburban hills of Banyule would be just the ticket to international rock stardom. god I was dumb.

Freeway 9 For real? yes Real, I know! Don't ask how, but I just know.

Does anyone know of any other famous Banyulers?

Eating in Rosanna

2005-10-29T11:06:00.000+10:00

Rosanna is moving up in the world of late. Have you noticed how jumpin' the vibe is around the train station / Lower Plenty Road area? It's not too much of a wild exaggeration to say that Beetham Parade truly does now have a Paris End. (as in, "the Paris end of Beetham Parade.")
Observe:

In this little strip of shops one can have ones video and sandwich needs attended to, hair cut and coloured, and go absolutely sick on party needs, like imagine what kind of wild, animalistic party you could have with everyone wearing these masks? Holy guacamole.

Dorian and I attended the Paris End last evening, as we wished to eat food. The establishment we selected was Toti's, the world-famous pizza & food restaurant (which may also be observed providing the setting for at least one of the photographs adorning Banyule Council hopeful Scott Crawford's web site [which I highly recommend you check out, right now if necessary])

A photograph of Toti's.

We went in and sat down and ordered food. After we sat for a while listening to the soothing strains of Joe Satriani's "Surfing With The Alien", and observing the other patrons of Toti's, the food arrived. Would you like to know what we ordered? I ordered a Chicken ~~Caesar~~ Ceasar Salad, and Dorian ordered a Georgio's Pizza.

As we ate, we listened to: U2, Michael Jackson, and the Pointer Sisters. The bill was $38 or thereabouts. (But there was also chips, beer, and cranberry juice included in that total.)

So there you go! Who needs France when we've got Rosanna? Rosanna may be in Zone 2, I admit, but it's only one station past zone 1, and the inspectors never get on between Heidelberg & Rosanna anyway.

Hurstbridge Line Blues

2005-10-24T21:41:00.000+10:00

Well I am a new (and hot) face on this blog, as you can see above. I'm a fan of the new title and slogan (also above)- the Hurstbridge line definitely is a huge part of my life. I remember the beautiful girl I once sat opposite until she got off the train at Heidelberg... oh and all the people I see on the train so many times and yet have never spoken to. Like the red-headed twenty-ish bloke with a huge long goatee? Anyone? And the guy who lives around the corner from me, who I sat behind today. And the girl I went to school with but who I avoid because I don't have anything to say to her.

And who can forget the busker who gets on at Rosanna and rides all the way in to the city? I've had him on my carriage quite often recently, usually right as I'm trying to finish some homework. Then he starts playing, always Lay Lady Lay first, then he gets on to Imagine, with the same two chords he played the other song with. Every song has the same mangled tune and the same chords. Well, at least he tries.

So the Hurstbridge line is a big deal. I've been quite saddened by the changing over of all the signs at stations recently. I like the old green and yellow ones. When Ivanhoe had its signs replaced I saw a girl jump on to the train with a huge dirty metre-long 'IVANHOE' under her arm. When they changed Greensborough over last Thursday, I asked if I could have a sign and they said no. Apparently Metlink have them locked up somewhere. The guy at the station said I should call Metlink to ask for them. I haven't yet, but if anyone is interested in old train station signs, try calling 131 638, or writing to

Metlink
GPO Box 4693TT
Melbourne, Victoria, 3001

Welcome Daniel!

2005-10-23T16:54:00.000+10:00

Welcome Daniel - rhymes with Banyule! I'll leave it to him to instruduce hisself, but to celebrate we've negotiated a great deal on short stacks from Pancake Parlour Northlands - just print off this (mildly obscene looking) flyer and take it along for a free short stack.

Make sure you tell them that Banyule Danyule sent yas!

Cdiddy and Ivan Hoe - Special Offer!

2005-10-22T14:38:00.000+10:00

Well there was a huge response to Laura's call for contributors to this blog. We were kind of overwhelmed actually but then we knuckled down, shortlisted the applications, held some job interviews, checked references, ran prychometric testing and finally decided that we would welcome BOTH OF THEM!

Cdiddy and Ivan Hoe will be co-hosting from now on and contributing their local knowledge and literary radiance to this mighty blog.

To celebrate we have a special offer from Yallambie McDonalds - just print off this voucher and take it to the drive-~~through~~thru for your free coke! Make sure you let them know this is the Cdiddy and Ivan Hoe Special Offer ok?

(more bloggers most welcome - just leave us a note and we'll send you an invite)

Doorbitches of Banyule

2005-10-15T10:53:00.000+10:00

Dorian and I just had a serious conference about the future of this blog. The thing is, we love Banyule and all its charms and glories, but it's hard for us to keep up with everything that's going on. Like just the other day it said in the local paper, "Naked Man At Tennis Club," there's a story that needed to be investigated, but ~~I was too slack~~ but I couldn't fit in time to go lurk in the bushes with a torch and a digital camera in case Naked Man returned.

So: would anybody else like to join our blog? The name of the blog will be changed, you will get a login of course, and a knitting pattern avatar (or whatever avatar you want, it's up to you). You can post whatever you want as long as it has something to do with Banyule. Although if it has nothing to do with Banyule it doesn't really matter. Candidates for the council elections are extra welcome. Email us at dorianandlauraATgmail.com, or leave a comment here.

We are begging you.

D & L

Cast your mind back

2005-10-04T15:18:00.000+10:00

We never finished with the Winter in Banyule festival. Guess we were just too burned out from the extreme! cultural exercise. Well, we went, we saw, we took photos and wrote stuff down, might as well post it here now eh. So:

MONTMORENCY RSL ART SHOW ABOUT WORLD WAR TWO & other wars

Oh god, this was excellent, I really sincerely mean that. It was held in an inner-sanctum type of room mostly taken up by two huge pool tables. The walls were covered in genuine wood panelling and glass cases containing war relics, like for instance an envelope full of sand from Turkey. As well as this there were heaps of paintings of all kinds of war scenes and heaps of people checking them out, including some famous people of Banyule.

Like in this picture, see the woman in the pinky purply top? THAT IS DEPUTY MAYOR CR JENNY MULHOLLAND! For real!! I know, crazy!

As you can also observe in that photograph there were some men dressed in Australian Army uniforms of days gone by. I wish I had taken some better pictures of them.

Oh well. Here is our favourite picture from the art show. It is of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

And a closeup detail:

We sometimes express confusion about Banyule "art" on this blog, but nobody who cares about painting could not have some respect for this picture. It was very imposing, and quite frightening, and totally no-bullshit. I would buy it, it would look really good in our sunken lounge.

Here endeth the story of the Banyule War painting exhibition.

oh yeah, a blog

2005-10-04T15:14:00.000+10:00

Ha, funny. I just remembered we have this blog.

Is it warm enough to change the name yet?

1 / Dorian and Laura's SPRING in Banyule

2 / Dorian and Laura's Election Time in Banyule

3 / Laura and Dorian's Banyule Through the Years (bit of foresight there.)

I sort of like #2. I have some posts a-brewing on everyone's least favourite little Ribbit Ward chipmunk, ScottCrawford. But I don't want to get my arse sued, either. Is there a Third Way??

The Heidelberg School Invades Eaglemont. Well, they can have it.

2005-08-22T14:09:00.000+10:00

Everyone who reads this blog knows everything about the old Heidelberg School artists, but have you ever wondered what the Heidelberg School artists of today do with their gifts and talents?

Well, basically they paint pictures of lovely scenes around Heidelberg, and then hang them up in the bar at Eaglemont Cellars, where you can go have a drink and see fine works of art like these:

The first picture shows a swimming hole in the Yarra. I have never seen this swimming hole, and frankly I rather doubt its existence. Does anyone (other than ducks) swim in the Yarra anymore, given what we now know about the extreme toxicity of the water? Still, it's a nice thought.

The second painting is far more grittily realistic, it shows one of those low lying parks close to the river during one of those mega-exciting floods we had some time ago (February?) I fondly recollect the Warringal Swamp area being completely under water, and everyone wandering around excitedly pointing to the big puddles and lakes covering up the football ovals. Oh, good times.

As both these pictures, and most others in the exhibition (which is called "The Four Seasons") are not of places in the Eaglemont area, I don't really understand why the artists chose to show their work in Eaglemont, at the Eaglemont Cellars wine shop no less. The Old England Hotel strikes me as being a far more suitable location, I mean Tom Roberts used to drink there! until he smashed his horse-drawn buggy one night on the road back to Melbourne. The Old England has the finest carpet in the world.

Also, I dislike Eaglemont intensely. It is Smug.

VOX POPS

Question: "Would Banyule be better off without prissy little Eaglemont Village?" Vote Now in the comments box..

Ivanhoe Photographic Society

2005-08-21T10:44:00.000+10:00

So, yesterday I went over to Warringal Plaza to check out the mighty Ivanhoe Photographic Society's display for the Winter in Banyule festival. They really know how to take pictures in that Photographic Society!

Without really thinking of it I expected the photos to be of Banyulean subjects, possibly in wintry mode. So imagine my astonishment and surprise when they turned out to be of, er, pirates, ninjas, things like that!

The top one reminds me a little bit of the work of the famous postmodernist photographer Cindy Sherman. Come to think of it, so does the bottom one.

Maybe these people are from Banyule actually. Do you recognise them?

Quiltiness

2005-08-19T21:56:00.000+10:00

Dorian lied when he said that none of his photos from the Watsonia Quilt Wander turned out good enough for this blog. I mean, come on! This one is particularly impressive, have a good look at it and make sure you observe the amazing mirror effect.

It's also a remarkable intriguing juxtaposition, with the "fresh poultry daily" and this quilt which features many CATS and CAT MOTIFS. Because cats really enjy and appreciate fresh poultry daily, the fresher the better, in fact not even dead poultry is most cats' favourite food, ever. Apart from not even dead fish, of course. Like goldfish. But you wouldn't want to hang up such a lovely quilt as this in a pet shop even for a single day, because pet shops stink, and so much work and care goes into making a quilt, that it just wouldn't be right. And I don't even know if there is a pet shop in Watsonia. Instead of a pet shop they have the barber shop that sells plaster models of dogs. Just not the same.

Anyway, the poultry / cat-quilt juxtapoz again. I think it's very apt. Here is a picture of our cat.

Heidelberg RSL

2005-08-19T21:33:00.000+10:00

So tonight we went to Heidelberg RSL for dinner for the first time. If you want to go there remember they only serve dinner on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. According to a sign that was on the pinboard there are $1 snags and $2 hamburgers on Saturday afternoon too. Here is a picture of our food, in case you've never actually seen RSL food before.

Now, maybe you're looking a that food, and thinking, "oooh, Aussie food." Well, der. Although we could also have ordered Mongolian lamb. Did Australia ever have a war against Mongolia? Don't think so. Don't think they have pokies in Mongolia, either.

After dinner (which was washed down with a pot of beer for the man and a lemon squash for the lady) we wandered through to the pokies room and put money into the machines, pressing buttons at random and wathcing the coloured lights and listening to the little squeaks and trills and kooky noises the machines make. So gratifying! All in all, an evening well spent.

Pot Exhibition in Shop Window, Rock On!!!!!!

2005-08-16T10:52:00.000+10:00

More dispatches from the front line of the Winter in Banyule festival. Today I experienced a majestic display of ceramic pots entitled "Shapely Lines." The exhibition was exhibited in the side window of a ladies clothes and earrings shop in Ivanhoe's main drag, the shopis called "Claudia-Louise Gift Gallery." (Do you think that's really somebody's name? Interesting.)

Well, here's the exhibition.

The ceramic pots are made by Lene Kuhl Jakobsen. Her website is here. I like them, as Andy Pipkin might say.

If you decide to go see this exhibition for yourself, be warned that the footpath immediately outside the shop is being dug up and isn't in a fit state to be walked upon or travelled over using a Zimmer frame, or a wheelchair.

Watsonia Hoorah

2005-08-14T11:39:00.000+10:00

When I was a young Midnight Oil fan in the mid-80s I went off to Watsonia Army Barracks with the People for Nuclear Disarmament to a protest. It was to 'stop the wok', a communications dish which would apparently guarantee that Watsonia was a key target for a nuclear missile attack once the nuclear war started. But my friend and I spent our time there watching his cousins doing monos outside their house so I'm not sure how useful it was. In any case, Watsonia is still there, as is the army base.

And as if being at the hub of a nuclear explosion wasn't enough enticement to wander around Watsonia...check it out, it's the Watsonia Quilt Wander! There are over 20 quilts hanging in the windows of shops around Watsonia and we just had to go over and check it out yesterday. Unfortunately none of my photos are worth putting up because of the angle of the sun on the windows blah blah, but hey, there really are quilts hanging in the windows. Great idea, whoever thought of it!

Now there is an op-shop there, I think it was Salvos, and don't bother going because I have now purchased all the good records:

Dirty Ditties - the "all-time great party record of dirty ditties. No bleeps - no holds barred - great stuff!!" You know, Dicky Di Do and all that. This is a truly nauseating record of aussie men singing songs about the joys of sexual harrassment and worse. Yuk! I am just looking at the cover and I can't remember what "Abdul a Bul Bul Ameer" was about, maybe that was the one about the man with the wonderfully large penis.

1983 - The Hot Ones - Billy Idol, Chris de Burgh, Toto Ceolo, Thomas Dolby, Grandmaster Flash, Dennis Waterman, Kajagoogoo and the rest. All there. It's not the more appropriately named "1981, with a Bullet!" but it's close.

Breakdance and Beat Street original motion picture soundtracks. I don't know but I've been told...these records make you lose conrol!

and

Midnight Oil, Head Injuries - a total throwback to my yoof and those heady days of impending nuclear disaster.

Also I got a money box with a picture of the coff's harbour big banana on the front. On top it says "Phone from here when'er you will, but don't forget who pays the Bill".

Well that's a bit more crap to fill the house with. Cheerio!

The Sounds of the Suburbs

2005-08-13T19:46:00.001+10:00

click here to listen

Do Ya Feel Lucky, Punk?

2005-08-13T19:46:00.000+10:00

Dorian wrote before about the fact that we sometimes get semi-junk mail addressed to people who lived in this house before us. Normally I'd just throw things like that into the bin, but this letter that came last week - well, it's just a bit weird.

It's from "Magnum Movies Yallambie" (no person's name, jsut the shop's) and it goes like this:

Mrs K----- H-----
123 Smith Lane
Banyule, VIC 3999

Dear K---- H----,

As a valued customer of Magnum MOvies Yallambie, we would like to extend a friendly reminder that our records show an amount of $20.00 remains outstanding on your membership.

It would be appreciated if you could attend to this matter at your earliest convenience and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Accounts left unattended will result in further action.

Regards,
illegibly scribbled signature
Magnum Movies Yallambie

Bear in mind, we have lived here for five years. So, will Magnum P.I. be coming round to take "further action" in pursuit of his twenty dollars (an interestingly rounded sum of money, huh?)

Sherlock Bloody Holmes

2005-08-12T22:23:00.000+10:00

The thrills of the Winter in Banyule Festival continue. We went to see Heidelberg Theatre Company do a play called The Real Sherlock Holmes and we got a free parking spot right out the front of the theatre. Now how often does that happen?

We went to ten film festival films recently so it is a real change to actually see live people performing. There were three of them in this play. I am pretty amazed that they keep coming back and doing this show, a guy got up at the start and spoke and apparently this production has been touring for six months. Isn't that amazing? Are you as amazed as I am amazed?

One scene was particularly dramatic, where Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty are fighting on a cliff in a blue mist in Switzerland, only Moriarty is also Arthur Conan Doyle, and Arthur Conan Doyle's mother runs on the stage and from memory hits them with an umbrella which seems a bit much as they were dancing a scottish jig by then. On that point, the main guy - the one playing Doyle, had a touch of the Sean Connery about his acting style, Laura was saying. Pretty high praise from her as she is a HUGE Sean Connery fan, let me tell you. Seriously all the actors were terrific and obviously dedicated to sharing the story of Doyle's life and work with people.

Now, if you are in Banyule you can go and see a great family of Jazz musicians and friends of mine playing jazz on Father's Day 4 September, 3pm at Montsalvat in Eltham - which is very very close to Banyule. Bob, Mal and Steve Sedergreen with a great band including African percussion and dance and a tap dancer. Go figure. And funnily enough, Laura and I used to live downstairs from the very same tap dancer.

Not sure what is next but there is more Winter in Banyule hi-jinks coming soon. Now go read something interesting!

Banyule Idol

2005-08-06T18:15:00.000+10:00

This morning we went to Were St. Montmorency for the launch of the Winter in Banyule arts festival: even though the festival stole the name of our blog, we are not bitter about that, and would never miss the chance to see heaps of local buskers busking away for dear life on the various footpaths and corners and doorways of Monty. (Although it's a funny sort of busking that doesn't include collecting money off the audience.) What really made this an outstandingly compelling morning's entertainment, however, was the competitive, vote-for-your-favourite-act nature of the event. Amongst all the trees and bushland surroundings, it was sort a of "duelling buskers" thing. There was even a banjo.

on the left, there. This is a group called JMN, by the way.

The idea was that a lot of local performers would stand on the street and play music or whatever, and members of the Banyule public would go round listening to them all each in turn, then head up the street to the information table located under Were St's world-famous windmill. At that point the members of the public were invited to cast their votes for Banyule's top busking star. ****POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT!**** At the end of this post, I will tell you who won the glory and honour of the People's Choice Top Busker award, and also who won the coveted Judges award.

But first you need to know who the contestants were. The aforementioned JMN did some country pickin, and there was Alysha Jackson who sang very well, and Trial And Error who played "Sweet Home Alabama" which the crowd loved,

Trial and Error outside the newsagent's

Also, Ingrid and Megan who were excellent, and sang a song that I recognised but I can't think of its name, and a pair of acrobats called Duo,

Duo. There's two of them.

and Shakere who played African drums.

Shakere. Two of them as well.

Dorian recorded all of them as they performed (except the acrobats? they didn't really make much noise) and he's made a medley. It's not very long, and it's small. You can listen to it HERE!

Shakere won the people's choice Award, and Duo got the judge's prize. Clap clap clap clap clap! Both prizes came in white envelopes so they were possibly money, or maybe a voucher for a discount off the rates. And everyone who took part got a Banyule showbag presented by Deputy Mayor Jenny Mulholland, hooray!

Dorian and I had such a sterling time that we have vowed to dedicate the next two and a bit weeks to attending many, many more Winter in Banyule festival events. And we will write about them here, so that you too may share in the cultural magic.

Great Supermarkets of Banyule - Leo's Edition

2005-07-28T16:13:00.000+10:00

Some supposedly clever Italian cultural theorist (sorry, I'm too lazy to look up his name) says that petrol stations, convenience stores, and supermarkets are the "key non-places of postmodernity". Or something like that. Well, whatever it was, the dude has obviously never been to Leo's in Heidelberg, or, to give it its full title, Leo's Fine Food and Wine. Because, Leo's believes it is most definitely not a "non-place"; in fact, it will administer a good sharp smack upside of the head to anyone who argues different. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Leo's does not sell normal ordinary food, oh my goodness no. It sells "fine" food.

You can tell it's fine food by the music, also. Some days it is the Gypsy Kings playing flamenco, which means Tapas - you know, little plates of marinated olives and stuff. Other times it is Luciano Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma. I believe this means Expensive Pasta, though it might also mean Arancini, or perhaps dolmades ("nessun dolma"??)

After you have done the rounds of the tastefully decorated and artistically illuminated aisles, perhaps pausing thoughtfully in the fresh fruit and vegie section to contemplate the Date Coconut Rolls

(while trying very hard not to think about Roy & H.G.)

you may pay for your foodstuffs, putting them into one of the free cardboard boxes stacked up near the door, because plastic bags are just so prole, and those green bags are not much better really, everyone has those.

I did not go to Leo's to do a huge load of shopping. All I really needed was some fruit and some of the hideously expensive cat food our cat will condescend to eat. This is what I bought - not much really:

But it still added up to $37.11 ....as Father Ted would say, feck.

We iz famouz.

2005-07-20T16:36:00.000+10:00

Quality journalism knows quality blogging, that's all I can say. Dorian and I made the local newspaper. The Arts section, even. Funnily enough they don't have a blog section yet, maybe they should think about getting one.

I don't have anything much of value to say about this, I just wanted to share. It's a good photo of us I feel, even if Dorian is squinting a bit. Must be the tight trousers. I told him not to wear that neck rag, also. But he said "if you're wearing that stupid wig i don't see why I shouldn't wear my cravat."

If you've actually come here because you read about us in the newspaper, thank you. You are DARLING. You RULE. Have a look around and tell us what you think by posting a comment. When you're finished here, have a wander through the links down the side there -> they all go to other Melbourne blogs & most of them are better than this one, if somewhat less Banyule-oriented in their approach to life.

Garage Sale Fodder

2005-07-16T22:18:00.000+10:00

Today we went to the Assisi Centre Huge Garage Sale but all we found was this stupid book.

There's gonna be some good decorating tips in here.

Go the laptop.

Ts, ts, ts, ts. Playboy. He, he, he.

Big banana!

How jealous are you??!?!?!!!?!

Chessboy Update

2005-07-14T20:02:00.000+10:00

Insane and obsessive-compulsive readers may recollect a recent post about a few random pages of the 1975 version of the local paper? Or not. Well, never mind. (It was logged during one of the periods when we have not been able to think of anything good to blog about. Thanks to Paul's mondo thoughtful list, we anticipate not having to scrape the barrel-bottom again for quite some time to come.)

As I was saying, we now have an update on the Ivanhoe Chess Boy, Ian Rogers. Here he is again, aged fourteen in 1975:

and here he is much more recently!

wither, mortal: I am giving you the Chess Genius Stare.

I got this photo via the "e-mail", from a reader, Murray Johnson, who introduced himself as a journalist who works for Banyule City Council (Murray also runs a very fantastic and relevant-to-the-area website about ownerbuilding, BYO House.) Murray got to work on the Ian Rogers Story and eventually chased Ian down in Germany, where he's doing his Grand Master thing and baffling many, many opponents. Murray forwarded what Ian emailed:

Yes, I'm the same person as the kid who was in the Heidelberger. The
tournament in France I went to was the 1975 World Under 17 Championships
and I finished third.
I went on to win the Australian Championship in 1980 and have been
Australia's top player since then.
I moved to Sydney in 1982 when I became a professional player. However I'm
not in Sydney very often; I spend most of my time travelling around the
world playing in tournaments, mostly in Europe or Asia.

I hope that helps.

Regards,

Ian

Here endeth the update. I hope you enjoyed it.

Happy Birthday Rooms

2005-07-14T19:14:00.000+10:00

Mallrat gave us some outstandingly kind love and a great idea on the last post. S/he says: "Wouldn't it be great if someone set up a blog based int he idea of gaining entry into houses like that , taking photos and then posting them, with the owners' consent, of course." Werd, respekt. Yes it certainly would.

Only I am not going to be the one to do it, particularly around here, mainly because of an architectural peculiarity of local homes which makes them perfect lairs for Buffalo-Bill style individuals. You see, it is quite hilly in most of Banyule so many houses are built on sloping blocks. It goes without saying also that most houses in Banyule are brick veneers and so the walls go right down to ground level. As a result there are far too many houses in the 'hood with a creepy subterranean chamber built underneath the normal suburban house.

Real estate agents try to recuperate these little dungeons by calling them "rumpus rooms." They are not rumpus rooms. A rumpus room has fake wood panelling, beanbags, and a pool table. No, the proper name for one of these is a Happy Birthday Room. Why's it called that, you may well ask. There's a reason, but i can't tell you it now.

The Happy Birthday Room symbolises the suburban home's ability to contain and conceal strange, unsavoury, antisocial, warped parodies of "normal" behaviour. What lies beneath that quiet and ordinary facade? I'd rather not know the details.

These examples are all a bit wrong, actually, because they have windows (dummy windows, probably not real). A genuine HBR has no windows. The one under our house has neither windows nor electric light, which is much more authentic.

Imagine being locked in here on your birthday.

Living the Life

2005-07-13T16:27:00.000+10:00

Long have I longed for this house, which is hidden away in a perfectly normal Viewbank street.

What were they thinking, the people who built this? I call it the 2001: A Space Odyssey house. Anyway, I want it. Pity I only have 40c. The people who live there now give every sign of appreciating their space age dwelling, worse luck, see they have a custom made letterbox that matches the actual house? Hmm there are a few of those mini-me letterboxes around here. A topic for future blogging.

Well, yeah. If I lived in this house I would happily stop trying, and instead just slide slowly backward into the land of fantasy. I would always wear clothes like this:

and entertain myself with activities like this:

cultivate these kinds of friends,

and have them over for dinner parties where we would eat foods like this.

It's still not too late. I feel that the real-estate magnificence of places like Viewbank has barely even begun to be known to the outside world. Walk around here at in the early evening, before people have shut their curtains, and you'll see just how many original orange Laminex kitchens and macrame wall hangings have yet to make their way out from unrenovated 70s houses into the op-shop economy.

Free Meal

2005-07-12T20:06:00.000+10:00

This was in the letterbox today - a free birthday meal from the Lower Plenty Hotel for someone who used to rent this house. Pretty good huh?

We are very keen to help local businesses so if you have a restaurant and would like to send us free meal vouchers we would love to show the three of four people who come here every month what they look like. None of this 'buy one get one free' rubbish either, take your cue from the Lower Plenty Hotel at 4 Main Rd Lower Plenty (9435 1722) and make it unconditional, they really know what they're doing.

Bags, Trains and Milkwater

2005-07-10T15:35:00.000+10:00

Today the tap water in our house has gone like this:

...which is disgusting. Its sad but one of the things you think of straight away is that terrorists have poisoned the water supply.

Last week on the train a guy got off and left his sportsbag sitting in the doorway. The woman opposite me didn't want to touch it, suspecting it could be full of drugs. I hadn't thought of drugs, only bombs, but I grabbed it anyway and took a look inside, and.....chips! Lots of those little party packs of potato chips. And snakes, and other lollies seemingly intended for the Alphington Junior Cricket Club.

In New York last year, Laura and I came across a huge suitcase sitting on an empty subway platform. We'd just read a story about someone who was interrogated by New York City cops (they aint so smart) for six hours after reporting an abandoned bag on the subway, so we just moved right up to the other end of the platform instead of dialling 911. Other people arrived, looked suspiciously at it and then did the same as us. When we came back there later the bag was gone and the station was intact.

We have lost our retarded 'Alert but not Alarmed' fridge magnet which is a pity because it would have been fun to prank them over the water (are they even still there?), but Laura has consulted Yarra Valley Water's website which seems to say our 'milkwater' is caused by aeration, and is not a problem. The water clears up after a couple of minutes, so I guess all is well.

Powered by Fear

2005-07-06T22:50:00.000+10:00

I think this kitchen drawing will make a fine tattoo.

Front Yard Art

2005-07-04T21:54:00.000+10:00

I really don't know what to say about these artworks which are installed in a front yard in Dover St, Lower Plenty.

They do remind me a little of two much more extreme DIY house and garden artists who I admire - Paul McLeod and Simon Rodia.

Both Rain Man and Aqua Donna have built-in hose fittings so it is nice to see function integrated with form. I guess that is only when water restrictions permit.

And Aqua Donna's nipple is showing, too. Ooerr.

Balls to Monty

2005-07-02T21:49:00.000+10:00

There is, you will agree, a certain je ne sais quoi oh so special about a firm young carrot.

Today we went searching for something - anything, really - to do in Banyule. Lunch seemed like a good idea so we headed off towards Yallambie. Why Yallambie I can't say, but we noticed a sign pointing to Montmorency which we were reasonably confident was in Banyule so we headed in that direction.

I have to say I was a bit stunned when we got to Monty Village and saw several places which look like they might actually have some decent food.

This strip we reallly just stumbled upon is just next to Montmorency station on the Hurstbridge line and there seemed to be three or four espresso machines along with people who knew how to use them. With 50s laminex tables, band posters and all, I thought I had fallen asleep and woke up in Elwood or something. Except that big gum trees line this little strip. And there's no beach of course but the beach is always a bit of a meathead-magnet anyway, right?

Actually I suspect Montmorency is where Elwood hipsters retire to to have babies. Am I dreaming or was there a bookshop??

We went to '40' for lunch and were given minestrone which was pretty good for $8 and coffees as you can see from the dodgy drawings on this post. I am tempted to go back in the morning for a Sunday breakfast. So freakin sick of Retros in the other direction; we went to another little breakfast place in fitzroy a couple of weeks ago in napier st and it was crapola.

The "let's get a mortgage" juices started flowing too when we saw in the real estate agents window that a 60s model 3-bedroom place is cheeep. Like that's gonna happen, but it would almost worth the change to zone 2 travel at that price.

We photographed some priceless front yard art on the way home which will be shared in the near future.

What else? I thought Doctor Who was a bit average tonight as was the Bill. But we managed to clamber out of the sunken lounge to leave the house and see Midnight Juggernauts at Northcote Social Club. YEAH!

Next - here is a wafer-thin sound clip to bite into...go on, it's only 157k - and less than 2 seconds long.

The Mystery of Warringal Plaza.....Mall...Village...whatever

2005-06-28T18:41:00.000+10:00

That Very Special Kid, and honorary Banyule blogging person, Jo from Freeway 9, requested a post dealing with that world-renowned Banyule landmark, Warringal Mall. "The least successful shopping centre in urban planning history", Jo called it. I wouldn't go quite that far! But we are not too proud to blog on request. That goes for everyone else who reads this as well, if there's some beautiful and famous part of Banyule you think deserves to be blogged, write to us and I will get Dorian onto it straight away. So here goes.

Attractively situated on the corner of Burgundy St and Rosanna Rd, Warringal Mall, as it appears to be called, although it also says "Warringal Plaza" on at least one sign attached to the outside, has a tremendously interesting history which very few people know anything at all about. The architects and designers who thought it up adhered to the Roger Corman school of creativity and marketing: dream up the poster design and slogan first, then make your movie (or shopping centre) to go with it. Many, many famous shopping centres have been created this way.

The first slogan the Warringal Plaza architects thought of was: if it's rocking, don't bother knocking. This was felt to capture the free-spirited, open-minded, and excitingly raunchy atmosphere of the whole Burgundy Street push in the mid 1970s. Nearby residents were notified of the proposal by a letterbox drop followed by a door-to-door survey a few weeks later. The results of this "community consultation" (one of the first of its kind ever undertaken in Greater Melbourne) were resoundingly favourable toward the slogan and the planned structure, which was basically a shopping centre in the shape of a giant Falcon panel van with no windows in the back, and a lovely sunset airbrushed on the sides.

So, construction of Warringal Mall began. But no sooner was the frame erected than one of the chief architects, while he was at the hair stylists' having his luxuriant mane of hair blow-waved, happened to see a photograph on the front page of the Moreland Leader and shock! he realised that the other world-famous shopping centre, Northcote Plaza, cleverly constructed over the top of a rubbish tip, already had the panel van / shopping centre thing all sewn up. Feck!

So with half the shopping centre built it was back to the drawing board, and everyone was really sad. But before too long they stopped feeling sorry for themselves and decided to build a shopping centre in the shape of a giant sideways windowless barrel instead!

Wow!

And that is a true story.

If you put "Warringal Mall" into an anagram server, it doesn't produce anything very interesting. But, if you type in "Warringal Mall YEAH", you get alarming weary hall, which I think is eerily appropriate.

Today Warringal Mall looks like this:

I can't show you the outside, that wouldn't be fair.

four local discoveries

2005-06-26T21:07:00.000+10:00

Idols of the 80s - The best of Uncanny X-Men, Pseudo Echo and Kids in the Kitchen distilled into one package. I think I saw all these bands in their heyday at Festival Hall or Myer Music Bowl. Well now they are coming to Watsonia RSL - yeehah.

Diamond Valley Brass Band Their newsletter is called 'Stuff You. Need to Know'. Well, something like that.

.

Here they are at the Diamond Valley Railway which must be fun for them. It is only open in school holidays.

Greensborough Plaza boasts the world's most confusing carpark. It is a truly dizzying experience and the view from Purple F3 is breathtaking.

I love this too.

this week in Banyule, in 1975

2005-06-23T14:26:00.000+10:00

We took these pictures at the Heidelberg museum last Sunday. It's like Dorian says, local news just doesn't change (although in yesterday's paper there was a ripper of a story about a car club meet in the Macleod station car park last Saturday.)

Fourteen-year-old Ian Rogers of Green St Ivanhoe, where are you now?

2005-06-20T16:13:00.000+10:00

We need more excitements in our lives it would seem. Yesterday Dorian & I went to the Heidelberg Historical Society's museum.

Who says there's nothing to do in the suburbs? Admittedly the museum is only open between 2 & 5 on Sunday afternoons, so yes, the rest of the time you have little alternative but to throw stones into the Yarra or watch sulpher-crested cockatoos being run over on Jika St. As we walked in I got the impression the Historical people were a bit surprised to see actual visitors come through the door but they recovered quick enough and kindly and enthusiastically showed us round the exhibits of old plates, old knick-knacks, old clothes, old photos and old certificates.

The olden days.

I still can't make up my mind if it was interesting or boring. There are lots of photos of main streets and so on from a hundred years ago, but all you can really do is look at them and say 'it looks different now' which gets a tiny bit stale after a while. One unusual thing that I liked was the tiny side room devoted to a display on the history of Milk.

They also have a research room out the back, with maps, plans, council minutes, and old newspapers. If you ever have the faintest bit of curiosity about Ye Olde Banyule, definitely go visit this research room, because they seem really proud of their research room and kept inviting us to go sit there and do some research. I couldn't really think of anything I wanted to research right then.

Safari Love

2005-06-19T22:02:00.000+10:00

This seems to have been around for years but I didn't notice. An amazing track by a french duo call Loo and Placido mixing Elton John with Aretha Franklin, Beatles and others. Pixies lyrics floating over the top to boot. Where is my mind? Who's Fooling Who? I want love. Because the world is round. Ohhh... go and get it from mashmix- look for Safari Love. Just trust me ok it is good.

Street Fighter 2

2005-06-19T21:07:00.000+10:00

Banyule Fish and Chippery - Greville Rd, Rosanna.

great supermarkets of Banyule: Aldi edition

2005-06-18T19:39:00.000+10:00

The first in a Today Tonight style series of special investigations into the supermarkets of Banyule.

First up is: ALDI
Bell Street, Heidelberg west.

Aldi is some sort of German supermarket chain I think. The Heidelberg one is the only one in this part of Melbourne. Their special thing is that since they just dump random boxes of stuff in piles inside, and since you have to pack your own bags, everything is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP! CHEAP!. We'll see.

So I parked the car and got out my calico bags. Annoyingness set in before I even managed to get inside, becasue the trolleys need coins and the hole is $2 coin sized, and I didn't have a $2 coin. Then a man returning his trolley said to me "you know they take 5c pieces, don't you?" so I stuck in a 5c piece, and it worked. Yay for that. 2 points me, no points Aldi.

So in I went. Next came the actual selecting of food part. I found this extremely difficult, because the other thing about Aldi is they don't stock your normal vast array of over-advertised groceries, instead they have their own home brand stuff, BUT it is disguised home brand, as in it all has some pseudo-brand name with bright colours on the label.

Also the selection seems almost entirely random, to me. Like, no orange juice, loads and loads and loads of apple juice. No rogan josh sauce, seventy thousand jars of korma sauce. No real coffee, a stomach-churning amount of Nescafe blend 43, ewwwww. As I said, everything is just piled against the wall in cardboard boxes, and the first hundred feet or so is all cakes, lollies, and biscuits, so by the time I got past all of these I was panicking slightly and began to put things in my trolley that I never usually would consider eating.

The arbitrary fake brands are actually quite amusing in their way. You can picture them just picking words out of the dictionary. Like, in the toilet paper heap you can choose between "Confidence", and "Dandy", which both express fairly sick attitudes to the bum-wiping function of the product, I think. Or maybe that says more about me than about anything else. hmmmm.

The same strangeness applies with the fresh food part, the fruit & veg and meat and dairy - it's all a bit chancy and weird. The fruit and veg is pre-bagged so you can either have sixteen potatoes or no potatoes. I chose to go with the sixteen, even though I don't much like potatoes. By this point I was just putting in anything that I recognised as edible food, because the previous aisle contained only dog kennels, inflatable dinghys, giant TVs, biographies of Hugh Grant and Brad Bitt, and rolled-up polyester shag-pile rugs. At last I thought there was enough in the trolley to keep us going for a week, and headed for the checkout.

The dude in front of me was buying bulk. He got: eight litres of tomato sauce, sixteen jars of strawberry jam, and a whole carton full of self-raising flour bags. Perhaps he was fitting out his air-raid shelter, who knows.

So the girl scanned it all and hurled it back into my trolley (you have to then take it all out of the way and pack it up yourself.) And here's the thing: that trolley full of food only cost $54. Which is less than half of what our weekly shopping usually costs. But I have a feeling that some important stuff, like tea, coffee, cat food etc, is missing, and it might really not be as cheap as it looks.

Overall rating: 7/10. Cheap is good, but weird is, well, weird.

Stuffing My Face Close to Home

2005-06-18T18:52:00.000+10:00

I love to eat but I am too lazy to cook. And I'm sick of having to drive to wacky Brunswick St and No Parking Carlton, too. So I'll be trying to find a new place to eat not far from home each week. Here's the first.

Cafe Hamar Weyne
The Mall, Bell St, West Heidelberg (aka DA GETTO according to some graffiti on Oriel Road).

Cafe Hamar Weyne is down the main walkway amongst the many op-shops. Hamar Weyne is a district of Somalia and there are a lot of Somali refugees living in the area around this cafe. Being white as errr Jack and Meg? I felt a bit weird going in there. The guy running the cafe looked at me as if he thought I might be trying to sell him something but no one really took much notice. There's no menu at Cafe Hamar Weyne, but the options were chicken or beef with rice or pasta. I went for the chicken with rice which was pretty good. Lots of food, the rice full of sultanas, corn and onion.

A good thing is the drinks are free - big jugs of homemade lemonade (actually grapefruit) going out to each table. Here's a picture...

The other customers were all Somalian and talking Somali so not much good in the eavesdropping stakes. Oh yeah - I was given a fork and spoon but all the other diners were eating with their fingers, mashing up balls of rice with meat torn off the bones. Halfway through eating the guy came over and offered me a banana so I said yeah why not? Apparently you're supposed to cut it up and eat it with the chicken. He said that westerners don't usually like it and that I could use my spoon if I wanted. Oh he added that he prefers to cut it up with his fingers. Oh well I just ripped bits off with my fingers and ate it. Wow!

There are no napkins on the tables at Cafe Hamar Weyne so when you have finished your meal you will want to go to the bathroom and wash all the rice and crap off your hands - and I noticed that when another customer headed for the bathroom the guy headed over and opened the door for him. Good service huh? And you don't have to wash banana off the door knob either I suppose.

Well it was really good and the whole lot for a fixed price of $8. I will definitely be going back, soon.

australian postcode tagging group @ Flickr

2005-06-18T14:28:00.000+10:00

Flickr is a photo hosting and sharing site where, among other things, you can add searchable tags to your pictures and link them to themed group pools. One such group pool is the australian postcode tagging group. So you can go to the group page, in theory, and search for a postcode and get a bunch of pictures taken in that area. (The tag format they are using is "pc2222", so "pc" followed by the postcode number, no spaces.) I think this is such a great idea, but since I know i'm too lazy to actually find out and add the relevant postcode tag to each and every one of my own photos, I wondered if there's actually enough content there to make it worthwhile.

pc3094 (Montmorency) yielded just one picture: this absolute pearler - a year 7 class photo from 1981.

pc3081 (H'berg west) gives us three blurry night photos of Waterdale Rd.

pc3095, north Eltham, is mostly about amateur theatre it would seem. Those arty-boho Eltham types sure know how to boogie.

pc3083, which is Bundoora, is mostly sunsets and views into the distance, which figures, when you consider what Bundoora actually looks like.

mean green chlorine machine

2005-06-15T12:39:00.000+10:00

I like swimming, a lot, and my favourite pool around here to swim in is the one in Ivanhoe off Waterdale Road. The two other pools I sometimes go to are the big outdoor one in Greensborough and the weird little one at the Heidelberg gym. The Ivanhoe pool is good to swim in because it's big, warm, fairly new, and second-most-importantly, it won't give you any weird mystery diseases. First most importantly, it is located in a street that is crammed full of retirement homes and elderly folk accomodations, so about eighty percent of the clientele is old and fat. I can't stress enough how critical it is to starting the day in a happy frame of mind that you are surrounded by people who look MUCH worse in their togs than you do. When the caps and goggles are on it's easier to ignore the fifty year age difference, and to avoid thinking about how in how much worse condition I am bound to be by the time I get to their age, etc. I only have the occasional bad moment when some 75 year old with a six-pack and a deep brown tan overtakes and passes me every three laps.

Also good for lessening the mind-numbing boredom of lap swimming is the entertainment provided by all the different ways people have invented for themselves of "swimming." Like there is the man who, from above the waterline, seems to be doing the arm-over-arm-over of normal freestyle. But from under the water you can see that he's actually walking on the bottom of the pool, and pretending to swim on the top. It's really quite a performance. I also like the man who jiggles up and down on the spot, punching the air above his head like he's Rocky, he's very cool.

Door to Door

2005-06-14T18:20:00.000+10:00

Yesterday afternoon a very strange person knocked at my front door. I looked through the peephole and saw an oldish man standing there holding a clipboard and wearing a netball bib that said "MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY." I was about to open up when I realised he was talking to himself, quite loudly. I only caught the tail end:

"....women have to wear condoms over their heads."

So, I did not open the door after that as you may imagine. What if he saw my condomless head and stabbed me with the clipboard? Later on I saw him chatting up one of the neighbours.
Not too many people come to the house out here in the suburbs; usually they are collecting for charity like this bloke supposedly was - or trying to sell something that you would see advertised on Channel 31, like gutter cleaning or re-roofing or upholstery cleaning or cheap long-distance phone calls - or else trying to convert you to their funky religion. Before we moved here we lived in St Kilda for ages, and I don't remember ever having any of these pests inflicted on me. I wonder why. Maybe moving to the suburbs is also like moving backwards in time, to the 1970s it would be in the case of my suburb.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Headband+Rockband=Rockhead?

2005-06-13T11:27:00.000+10:00

This isn't really about local life, although the Heidelberg Leader are running a win-an-ipod competition.

Really it is my attempt to top the Oakley Thump, possibly one of the most ridiculous inventions out there at the moment. The Thump incorporates a USB flash drive and headphones into the arms of a pair of sunglasses, then tries to cover the resultant bulge with some typically grotesque Oakley moulding.

The package comes to life when it is set against their models' platinum teeth and neck tattoos, but I thought more subdued listeners might want something less ostentatious to store their audio books and Radio National podcasts on.

Reasons my ipod shuffle headbands are the bomb: a) you can do all the rigourous exercise you like without having the shuffle flop about on its lanyard, b) unlike the Thump you can still wear them at night or on the dancefloor and c) they just look very very good.

For more great iPod Shuffle innovations, visit Jim Younkin's excellent shufflehacks blog.

real estate ads are weird

2005-06-11T19:00:00.000+10:00

I looove reading the glossy Property bit that comes in the free local paper, even though I'm not looking for a house to buy. The ads are just so damn strange. I almost wonder if making weird spelling and grammar mistakes is a deliberate strategy for some reals estate agents, just to get you to look at their ads.

like in this week's Heidelberg Leader there are ads for houses with:

"zappy kitchen"
"a modern palate throughout"
"light filled lounge that overflows on 2 levels"
"self contained studio or shed"
"beautifully treed up garden"
"Retro-catapulted into the 21st Century"
"views to a Dandenong's"

and that's just the first few pages. Also, somebody at one of these real estate agents found out how to change the colours in Photoshop and the power totally went to their head - some of the pictures look totally fake like they were made by a computer game designer.

Olympic Village

2005-06-11T17:42:00.000+10:00

I found these excellent old photos today of the Olympic Village in Heidelberg, from 1956. It looks like these were taken before the athletes moved in, maybe even before the buildings and grounds were completely finished.

The place really looks different without trees and fences. Maybe they didn't actually intend for there to be fences put up between the houses. But trees? I think they needed to leave some room for trees.

This one is pretty good - it's like a guardhouse or checkpoint or something. Gah. It all looks so long ago.

Same spot today:

mashupdate

2005-06-11T11:31:00.000+10:00

We plan to use a fair bit of audio on this blog, so this is mostly a test to see if it works. And partly to show off this exciting new MASHUP!!! What happens when you mix the top two downloads from allofmp3.com? Like it or not, Gorillaz vs Gwen Stefani, that's what. And maybe, hopefully, you will hear it when you click here.

Us at the Centre in Ivanhoe.

2005-06-10T16:18:00.000+10:00

Hi there. Our names are Dorian and Laura, we live in the fair City of Banyule in northeastern Melbourne. This is us standing in front of one of the many world famous landmarks around Banyule.

Welcome to our blog.