It’s true. New airconditiong’s going to cost $1 million, repairs over the next 10 years to cost $12 million.  Looking for a tenant, or a buyer. My other post about the Town Hall is here. I think we should reclaim the slums around abouts, and give it and the park we would build to Princess Mary of Denmark; lure her back to Australia.

According to the Collingwood History Trail notes prepared by the Collingwood Historical Society in 1976 for the Centenary Celebrations of the City of Collingwood,  the church was demolished in 1968 because of lack of finance to repair the deteriorated building, despite a strong request for its preservation by the Natinoal Trust. The Society goes on:

‘The vicarage was built in 1866 in the same style as the church. It is little changed on the exterior, except for the demolition of hte single-storeykitchen wing at the back and the unfortunate addition of a luandry block in the 1950’s. The interior woodwork is intactand so are some of the pressed metal ceilings. It was deesigned to look into a garde which was originally laid out by patients of the Yarra Bend Asylum.’

In the other incident, two carjackers punched a driver in the nose through the car window, but he managed to speed away with his wife and young daughter safe.

A 19 year old has been arrested.

Meanwhile, a man has been arrested after a woman was thrown from the bonnet of a moving car turning into Hoddle St from Johnston St in Abbotsford and hospitalised with head injuries on 26 February 2007. It is said they had been arguing. The man has been charged with failing to stop at an accident, failing to render assistance and handling stolen goods.

Snap! by Lauri Apple, a temporarily New Yorker and law student.

I put what success I have had in my career down to the claim on my curriculum vitae that I was the co-founder of the Melbourne University African Drumming Club. As far as I know, that is still going strong. And having travelled through West Africa to Timbuktoo, and listened, entranced to a guy singing along to the accompaniment of his own kora playing in a petrol station in Dakar, I read with particular interest in The Age today about the African drumming and dance academy within a couple of hops of my house, in Hoddle St, Abbotsford:

“For [Grant Swift -- tap maestro, ex-stripper, ex-boxer, founder of the Academy], the important thing is to respect the history of tap. He has little patience with the showbiz ‘eyes and teeth’ style, which he considers disconnected from its origins. His own style is rooted in the original African rhythm of tap and was inspired by black vaudeville tappers such as the Nicholas Brothers and Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson.

‘Tap originally came from the slaves, in America. In 1739 they were banned from playing drums, so they started tapping their feet instead. That’s where the form came from.

‘A hundred years later Hollywood steals it, puts mainly white dancers in the films, and says,”If the black people are going to be in it you’re going to be dressed as a butler”.

‘It’s a stolen art form. Thankfully, some of those amazing black dancers were caught on film – you can see what tap really is.’”

I have noticed it before but never really investigated. The pricing of the classes seems pretty reasonable — $16 each for five 90 minute classes — and there is no shortage of them. Anyone able to say what this place is like?

This from the State Library’s archives. And the St. Kilda Historical Society has fascinating information about George Johnson, including that his great-grandson is practising as an architect in St. Kilda, representing a unique architectural and building dynasty of 6 generations:

“Over some two hundred years, the Johnson family have for six generations been involved in the building industry: as carpenter, builders, engineer, but no less than four as architects.  Probably George Raymond Johnson (1840-1898) architect is the best known.  I’m not aware of another such dynasty in Melbourne …

George was the son of William, journeyman (employee) carpenter and builder from Marston-on-Dove, Derbyshire.  He was articled to George Hall, architect to the Midland Railway Co.  He practised briefly in London before immigrating to Queensland in 1862.  He worked as surveyor and builder as Godfrey & Johnson (1863-64), then came to Melbourne in 1867.  He was soon a successful architect here, designer of three groups of almshouses, including: the Jewish, at 619 St Kilda Road, St Kilda (1869) and the Old Colonist Homes for George Coppin, the famous theatrical entrepreneur, at North Fitzroy (1870) and then fifteen theatres, including the Prince of Wales Opera House (1872), the Theatre Royal, Adelaide (1877), the Bijou, Bourke Street (1889), all now demolished and the Theatre Royal, Perth (1897) as well as many shops and hotels.

But George Johnson’s greatest works are splendid town halls: Hotham (North Melbourne, 1875), Daylesford (1882), Maryborough (1887), Fitzroy (1887), Collingwood (1885-90), Northcote (1888-90) and Kilmore (1893-95), as well as the Metropolitan Meat Market (1879-80 & 89), the 1888 extensions to the Royal Exhibition Building and the Hospital for Incurables (the Austin, 1881). … George Johnson’s practice collapsed in the 1892, losing all his assets in the subsequent financial crash.  He left Melbourne for Perth with his architect second son, Harry M.G. Johnson (1867-1931).”

Asleep at the wheel again, I missed and was ignorant of the Collingwood Historical Society’s Town Hall tour, but the Abbotsford Editor went along and reports:

“P. and I went to the Town Hall tour by the Collingwood Historical Society. Round the house, and round the house and up the tower we went with excellent commentary from former mayors and the author of a biography of the architect who designed town halls in Maryborough, Daylesford, North Melbourne, Northcote and Fitzroy. He obviously had a good line in civic architecture. We even viewed the golden trowel used for the foundation stone, and a descendant of Langridge spoke of his forebear’s contribution to civic life.

There were reminders of the good old days when Labor had all the seats on the Council, but still had a caucus meeting beforehand to decide how to vote. It now seems as absurd as it was then. Ex-mayor Jenny Backholer recalled the air thick with smoke at all meetings and the Council fridge being plundered for after-meeting drinks. No ghosts appeared, which is not surprising considering the very heavy attendance. The November annual CHS walk is unmissable and congratulations to all the organisers for the hard work in preparation. It is a pity that some of the grander rooms in the Town Hall have been subdivided into cubbyhole offices for the present staff.”

Thanks to Bronwen Hyde for the beautiful photo.

It was only a matter of time until I brought Google Earth’s Abbotsford to this blog. Here it is.

I never liked buses. I ride to work, and could think of nothing more nostalgic, transport wise, than rail journeys through the ideal villages of rural India. Then I realised I was too old to ride to work in winter. Then I realised I wasn’t and got some polypropelene gloves. In between, I decided to walk one day to work. I was told it would take 40 minutes. As I was about to cross Hoddle St, a bus marked “Queen St” like millions of others which must have gone by me pulled up and opened its door in front of me with a kind of gravitational pull. I got in, since that was where I was headed and goddamn was it cold. I took a seat (crazy concept). Fifteen minutes later the bus opened its door and deposited me a few metres from the doors of my building, which themselves opened up to welcome me. I could not have got there quicker on the train, I could sit down, and youths’ ipods were not arguing loudly modern music’s baselines’ rhythmic monotony. There was lovely scenery along the way, like St Patrick’s cathedral, and a human sold me a ticket for $2.30. [Thanks to Shadowplay over at Flickr for the wonderful image.]So now, I choose between four ways of getting to work: on the roads, on the bike; on the bike track; on the bus; and by train. From Abbotsford, of course, one could also canoe, and I will do that one day.

When I take the train, I look at the little hand-drawn timetable Miss K made for me because the bastards stopped making those little fold up timetables which represented a basal courtesy on the part of the state towards its subjects. I go to the station at the appointed time and definitely trying to avoid the gaps like the one between 8.26 and 8.43 a.m. and then the train doesn’t come. Connex then announces that the train is “delayed” (never conceding that the fucker might simply be late) and apologises for “any inconvenience”. Sometimes I listen to that with a bunch of miserable salarymen huddling out of the rain, but whipped by the wind, the sun not yet evident, insulted by the padlock preventing ingress to that other once-basal state courtesy, the waiting room, and wonder, bitterly, how a 7 minutes’ delay for a group of salarymen on a cold wet windswept morning locked out of a waiting room could possibly represent anything other than inconvenience. It’s enough to make you feel nostalgic for that particular brand of fascism in which the trains famously ran on time (and, no doubt, human beings with very nice uniforms and leather satchels and other paraphanalia of public service tore little tickets off of their perforated booklets and whistled).

The great thing is that buses to Queen St pour along Hoddle St in a constant stream having converged from far away suburbs. And I’ve realised buses pour along other thoroughfares too. Who will be the public transport map maker and bus correspondent for this blog? The people need you!

Pays to be careful as a pedestrian in Abbotsford. This poor bugger was knocked down dead by a van back in May and died, and at 2.25 a.m. yesterday, some bloke standing near the corner of Nicholson and Victoria Sts gets dead after being hit by a white van. It’s an event a minute on Victoria St: someone was pulled over at 2.30 a.m. on 6 June 2006 with a vial of GBH. Of course he was not a local, but a burgher of that disreputable part of town on the other side of the river, Kew. There they found the big stash. And now it seems a Hoddle St servo got visited by those kids on the security video on tonight’s news, as recently as 23 June 2006. And these guys are like serial armed robbers man. You can rely on hearing it second on this blog.