Category: Victoria Street

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More on Little Audrey and a whole site devoted to Melbourne neon

Via Walking Melbourne, I discovered multi-faceted Adam Dimech‘s website devoted to neon signs of Melbourne, and this spiel and great image of the original Skipping Girl Vinegar sign:

“This is undoubtedly Melbourne’s favourite heritage neon sign. Audrey the Skipping Girl was erected for Nycander & Co. Pty Ltd. (who owned the brand Skipping Girl Vinegar) in 1936. Despite becoming a much loved Melbourne icon, the original sign fell into disrepair and was removed in 1968. A replica sign was re-created for the Crusader Plate Company in 1970, in an attempt to salvage this icon. (The vinegar company had moved to Altona without a desire to keep the sign). Crusader’s new sign was placed in its present location above their factory, which has since been turned into offices and apartments. The sign’s design was somewhat altered from the original.”

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A trip to Footscray — the true Little Saigon — with Mr Nguyen


Herr Nguyen may be off to Seoul — good for his korea — and so we finally got round to driving over to Footscray to check out the thing that makes Victoria St look like a pale imitation. That thing is the Vietnamese market. I had long thought the Nguyens had been taking the train to the Footscray Market proper, but discovered that there is a second exclusively Vietnamese market, established in 1992. If you hanker after overseas travel but are short of cash, you could go and stay the night in Little Saigon. Once inside the Vietnamese Market, it only takes the ignoring of a small amount of English writing to suspend disbelief. Continue reading “A trip to Footscray — the true Little Saigon — with Mr Nguyen”

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Stickyrice gave Victoria St pho the thumbs up

Noodlepie‘s is a beautiful blog (just check out the detail in “The Vietnamese pate mystery“), but it’s Saigonese (and its author seems to live now in Toulouse which is going to make it hard for him). My interests lie more with Hanoi. Sticky Rice covers the food of Hanoi excellently, and in trying to find anything of interest about the Footscray Vietnamese Market in English on the web just now, I came across evidence that Mr or Mrs Rice came to Melbourne in May. The Ricester sampled our pho and declared it to be Saigonese in style and damned good too. It’s his photo — yes, I’m lazy.