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.’

There’s a blog I like written by a food lover who spends some time in our ‘hood, Elegant Sufficiency. She takes beautiful pix too. I am over photos of graffiti, but these charm me. Read on for two more.

Barb, now of Frankston, formerly of Köln (i.e. Cologne, Germany), takes good photos which wring interest out of carparks, and reassemble beauty out of dross. Have a look at these ones of Collingwood. Of her recent work, I like this one, of a wall in Little Turner St, Collingwood.  Also beautiful is her photo of the Holden blimp over a Fitzroy Street:

I suppose cock fights just wouldn’t go down too well with the inner city white types sure to come, but something other than blaring loudspeakers is needed to pep up the Vietnamese festival. What does save the festival for this whitey is the food, real Vietnamese food like you get in Vietnam, rather than the Chinesey stuff which the Vietnamese restaurant industry has settled on for Melbourne. Thinking I was buying expensive fried potatoes, I ended up with some fried bits of cut-up rice cake with an egg fried into it, and then various sauces poured over it, some chilli paste in the corner. That was good, and had Miss K smacking her lips. I enjoyed the curiously pink bananas encased in a thick layer of sticky rice covered with damn thick coconut cream, and a pork satay with all the flavour of meat cooked on a barbecue of coals. We are yet to tackle the purple sticky rice and mungbean paste sandwich pressed into a mould so as to make a beautiful new year’s pattern. I didn’t go the ubiquitous minced beaf wrapped in la lot leaves, grilled — been there done that. These “pepper leaves” are a member of the wild betel family, according to Mai Pham, glossy dark green heart-shaped things, and this dish, bo nuong la lot is part of bo bay mon, beef seven ways. It has garlic, onions, lemongrass, roasted peanuts, turmeric, fish sauce, sugar, salt, and coarsely ground beef.

The Abbotsford blogger does not have a camera at the moment, a want which is starting to hurt, but he is also soon not to have an income for a while, so it might have to stay that way. But I discovered a fellow Flickrite in Abbotsford — Ciaostabella, but I dub her My Friend Flickr — who kindly agreed to take some photos for me, including the one in this post, and Donina was there capturing the action, unasked. If you have any photos, you would consider sharing, please send them to contactme@abbotsfordblog.com.

There is a long list of Flickr groups about things Melbourne here (including Abbotsford, Collingwood Children’s Farm, Abbotsford Convent, Richmond, Fitzroy, Kew, Fitzroy North, Collingwood, etc.).

Someone has set up a Yarra River group. Here it is.

This photo is by Alan Lam. His photos are stunning. I am noticing a lot of talk about something with the acronym “HDR” in relation to photos that are a bit more stunning than usual. I’m working on working out what that is exactly.

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