And, just a week ago, Dani Valent reviewed The Royston in The Age, which I have also earlier posted about, and which is also a place I want to go for dinner. If only I had the time.

The Age reported yesterday that the median Abbotsford property sale price — that is the middle number when all the sales results are lined up in chronological order — was 12.7% higher in the first three months of this year compared with the last three months of last year. But there were fewer than 30 sales results in the line of numbers, and the data are therefore implicitly not statistically reliable. The median was $575,000 in the first 3 months of this year, compared with the median for the whole of Melbourne of $380,000, and the median for houses within 10 km of the city of $566,000 (that figure is up 15% on a year ago, compared with the whole of Melbourne figure which is up only 5.3%). Richmond and Collingwood were also up about 10%, but Fitzroy — also with fewer than 30 sales — and Clifton Hill were down about 5%. The median sale prices in the last 3 months were:

Abbotsford $575,000

Collingwood $533,250

Clifton Hill $531,250

Kew $993,500

Richmond $610,000

Fitzroy $572,500.

There was a blip in Carlton, where the median price was $945,000, up more than 50% on the median in the previous three months.

Victoria’s population hit 5 million recently, of whom 3.7 million lived in Melbourne as at June 2006, compared with 4.3 million in Sydney. Sydney only caught up with Melbourne’s size at federation, but Salt suggests Melbourne may overtake Sydney, the growth rate of which is less than Melbourne’s.

The Age has helpfully identified “10 of the best” — I like the modesty of these words in a best of list — inventive cheap eats. Southern Richmond’s Pearl gets an honourable mention for $16 eggs on toast (keep it real, Cheap Eats), but I have to admit it’s one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to, and you can go there for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a drink. Then the Builder’s Arms on Gertrude Street Fitzroy comes in at number 3 for a $14 “3 mint pea soup with smoked paprika butter with steamed prawns” which sounds rather good. And Replete just down from MLC in Hawthorn, but metres away from being Kew, gets another gong at #6 for $12.50 ricotta hotcakes with lemon curd and strawberries. Thanks to Flickr’s Spin Spin for the photo of an uncommonly unpopulated image of the Builder’s Arms.

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.

Ronald Ryan, the last man executed in Australia, was a Richmond man, or at least that’s where his family lived at the time of his execution. Carlton man Barry Dickins wrote a play about the execution which occurred 40 years ago on Saturday. The outstanding Abbotsford publication Eureka Street, has an article by Jesuit prison reform advocate Father Peter Norden this week. There is to be a little gathering outside the gates of former-Pentridge-prison-future-New-York-style-loft-style- apartments on Saturday mo(u)rning.

Van Nguyen, executed in Singapore almost 14 months ago, was also a Richmond boy in the sense that he went to the parish school of St. Ignatius, where the bells tolled 25 times, once for each year of his life following his death by State homicide. That church is also where a memorial service for Ronald Ryan will be held later on Saturday. Thanks to the talented Philip Anthonie R. Cruz of Manila for the amazing image.

Brilliant snap! by the husband of Stephanie of Georgia, USA, aka Bonsai Butterfly, with thanks.

It has been a mountain goat day. The Mountain Goats were drinking Mountain Goat at The Corner this evening, a pleasure the punters were denied, Mountain Goat’s founders were on The 7.30 Report calling for a moratorium on excise on microbrewed beer, their Richmond brewery presumably held their weekly Goatage tonight, where the brewery turns into a pub, and John Darnielle — theconstant member of the ensembles which have over time performed as “the Mountain Goats” — sang about magpies in Richmond to an adoring goddam piercingly screaming crowd, a big crowd, and brought him and his little frantic guitar and vocals sometimes duet sometimes trio within the rubric of this little newspaper. Snap by husband of Bonsai Butterfly from Georgia, in Montana, with thanks.
Darnielle is mesmerisingly intense, and sings tight little packages of higly sprung songs earnestly, so that the perversity of his lyrics is rendered all the more delicious. Some come in under two minutes,formal little two stanza things with two line choruses. Bright young things in backless tops, curly hair and eager eyes bobbed along to “Hail Satan” making the sign of Beelzebub with thumb and little finger, and waving it like candles at a Carols by Candlelight. “This is a song of hope” said Darnielle before launching into a song with a refrain “I hope you die; I hope we all do”. “She told me you’d died, at last. At last” he says of his stepfather on his second-latest album before softening the sentiment momently. His between song repartee is good too, like his musing on how “thank you, you’ve been great” must appear almost like a nervous tick to an audience. (There was a pause and then a sweet voice piped out, clear as a bell, “We really love you”). The lyrics are attractive as in a good poem, and for the most part perfectly audible, obtuse as they are, as in this song which Darnielle described as “a true story — or two true stories actually, separated by 10 years and a lot of hard drugs”:

alright I’m on johnson avenue in san luis obispo
and I’m five years old or six maybe.
and indications there’s something wrong with our new house
trip down the wire twice daily
I’m in the living room watching the watergate hearings
while my step father yells at my mother.
launches a glass across the room, straight at her head
and I dash upstairs to take cover.
lean in close to my little record player on the floor.
so this is what the volume knob’s for.

I listen to dance music.
dance music.

ok so look I’m seventeen years old,
and you’re the last best thing I’ve got going.
but then the special secret sickness starts to eat through you.
what am I supposed to do?
no way of knowing,
so I follow you down your twisting alleyways,
find a few cul de sacs of my own.
there’s only one place where this road ever ends up.
and I don’t want to die alone.
let me down, let me down, let me down gently.
when the police come to get me

I’m listening to dance music.
dance music.

This is unique stuff. How often do you see a band consisting of two guitars and a bass, all blokes, all singing? (Though it was just guitar and bass most of the time.) How often do you see a singer take off his glasses thoughtfully during songs, and put them back on? How many vegan boxing nuts do you know? Darnielle has a more quixotic delivery than even the chick who fronts the Waifs. He is the very visage of insanity, grimacing, opening his mouth wide during silences, and shaking his head side to side at great speed, while singing so that his cheeks wobble. The whole thing works. You just can’t help liking the guy. Girls were going gaga. It’s a unique, 100% original Dylan-like experience for our age, and I’ve gotta admit to the special satisfaction of having beaten the madding crowds, getting in early, years ago, a tape in a car radio on the way to somewhere, over and over, one of those Texas Campfire Tapes-like albums recorded on a boombox.

When he was thrown from his earnest song by some witticism yelled from the mosh pit, he quietened the crowd with a finger to his lips and sang without a mike, from the front of the stage, to the accompaniment only of the bass, and then the bassist got in on the accoustic singing thing, and there they were singing “Love Love Love” as a final encore. And then he was finally gone. I loved the hour he sang for. It was great.

I journeyed out of the ‘wood today to North Carlton, and bought from Alice’s Bookshop two books which will stand this blog in good stead. My uncle had an Alice’s Bookshop addiction for a long time. Its owner is an old Cambridge man, a fact noted on his website, a bookseller for 20 years. The first was Bill Brodie and Brian McKinlay’s Collingwood and Fitzroy Sketchbook, published in 1978 when the Convent was still inhabited by nuns and the Eastern Freeway was just opened. It is a lovely hardback and has taught me some fascinating tidbits which I will feed you with over time. It is one of a series of 175 published in Adelaide as the Rigby Sketchbooks which also include Old Melbourne Hotels Sketchbook, River Yarra Sketchbook, and Richmond and East Melbourne Sketchbook.

The other was J.M. Freeland’s The Australian Pub; An Illustrated History of the Development of the Australian Pub from the 1790s to the Present one of the more interesting books to come off Melbourne University Press’s Presses. I declared to those I met for coffee at the Paragon Cafe that I was hitherto an amateur pubologist. The book was last owned by Thomas Hazell from 11 April 2005. Google suggests he is a Melbourne University fine arts academic and one-time president of the Dante-Aligheri Society.

And so I learned from Mr Freeland that the myth which I have come to know relatively recently about secret tunnels under The Tote is one of frequent occurrence:

“One other constantly-recurring tale should be mentioned — the secret tunnel running from the cellars to some distant point and used for a variety of nefarious purposes. Like the others, this story turned up frequently, but three examples may suffice. The smugglers’ tunnel belonging to the Hero of Waterloo in Sydney went some 150 yards clean through hard Sydney sandstone to Darling Harbour; the Macquarie Arms at Windsor had a similar hole running down to the Nepean River, though why even the most enthusiastic smuggler would make a devious sea and river trip of a hundred miles to a busy country town to defeat the Collector of Customs when the same thing could be done much more easily from any of the numerous bays within a few hundred yards of Sydney Cove, is not explained. The United Services Hotel in Perth has a variant in which the tunnel ran three-quarters of a mile to the old Western Australian Government House. Prisoners brought by coach to the inn were then transferred to teh cells at Government House (a novel arrangement in itself) by being marched underground. What advantage this would have over going above ground is not told. Logic has no place in these sotries. Unfortunately all the entrances to all the tunnels have been walled up so deftly that they now defy detection by evan a most meticulous scrutiny.”

My mate from Hanoi, the future Chief Justice of Vietnam, and I trundled down to the Royston this evening. I once lived in the inner eastern suburbs and rode my bike to university over in Parkville. I thought I had been along every road in the big rectangle in between, but it seems not. The other day, I pedalled over from the ‘ford to Ma and Pa’s and took a radical route. You know, most of the many combinations are left right left right but this was on the extreme sides of the rectangle. It was straight, straight straight, right, straight, straight, straight, etc. And suddenly, I saw a sign “The Royston“, just after I saw the mountain goat symbol writ large on a roller door and realised that the Mountain Goat Brewery had finally yielded up its secret location to me.

I thought it was a doss house, but was uncertain enough to peer in the window. And there I found a hotel which I had never seen before. And it looked enticing. And I realised that I had never been in this particular part of this street, the end bit of which I knew quite well. It’s a good place, consisting of a large front bar with many boutique beers on tap, a large dining room out the back, and a pool room giving onto a fairly serious kitchen. Two years ago it was renovated. Many years ago it serviced the tannery workers in what is now the Mountain Goat Brewery. I like a backstreet bar, and this is one of them. Thanks so much to the photographer of the mountain goat, my old mate Anne Kelliotte, photographeure phabuleuse Canadienne du Flickr.

And took these photos.