The world from the perspective of Melbourne's best suburb
Medecins sans frontieres (MSF, or doctors without borders) are doorknocking in Abbotsford at the moment. They knocked on ours today and the bloke said only 2 in 50 people whose doors had been knocked had heard of them. They’re good people, very good — they pulled me out of Lhasa once in a four wheel drive — and their international head honcho is an Australian, Rowan Gillies (pictured). If you’re looking for a charity to add to your philanthropic portfolio, they’re a good bet.
I came across this attractive blog about streetfood in Saigon, more correctly known now as Ho Chi Minh city. It will serve as a useful touchstone in the cutting edge investigative journalism this blog will engage in in answering the question: is Victoria St’s food Chinese or Vietnamese? Meanwhile, just enjoy it. For balance, have a look at Sticky Rice, a food blog about Hanoi food. Friends from Hanoi study in Melbourne and their cooking is to die for and not much like Victoria Street’s at all. The photo is from noodlepie’s flickr pages and depicts my favourite foods: pork rolls bursting with another favourite food, coriander. More about pork rolls, much more, in due course.
When I was a kid and Mary Delahunty was an ABC radio announcer, and firemen were not yet heroic soldiers caught in the cross fires of the war on terror my old man would drive past the Metropolitan Fire Brigade training facility (which is now best identified as being diagonally opposite Victoria Gardens, just near the Skipping Girl between Victoria St and the Yarra) and tell us to look out and see whether the concrete skyscraper shell was on fire. Very rarely, maybe even only once, it was, and firemen-to-be were scurrying about pretend maidens frantically sizing up whether to jump or choke and roast to death.
A particularly pleasant part of the main Yarra bike path goes past there on the way to Hawthorn and then, believe it or not, the city after coming across a bridge from the bushy wilderness of Yarra Bend Park past the Studley Park Vineyard. The bike path goes right beside a swimming pool full of water used as a supply for quelling the flames in these exercises.
A property developer called Salta now owns all four corners of the Burnley, Victoria and Walmer Sts corner, and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal was to have heard Yarra Council’s objections until the planning application was “called in” by the Minister, Mary Delahunty. They paid the Brigade $20M for the asbestos-riddled building and the surrounding land and have plans for a $300 million development. Stay tuned or contact us with news…