An old and familiar groove

27 August 2006, Day 159

Melbourne, Victoria

The steady rhythm of working life has me zipped-up in it's straight jacket once more.

This is the cut of the cloth:

Monday: Wake up and grudgingly go to work. Tap numbers into a PC and strain my eyes (no glasses). Try to look around the town centre at lunchtime, but realise half my break is gone by the time I get downstairs in the lift. Get home and do the weekly shop with James, then cook, eat, do the washing up and realise that it is 10.30pm, then slouch off to bed.
Tuesday: Much the same during the day, expect skiving expeditions to the toilet increase. Stay in, but achieve nothing constructive with the time after making dinner, doing the washing and visiting the internet caff.
Wednesday: Look forward to going out in the evening. Scrape through the day and bite my tongue when my accent is compared to Prince William's. Realise that my eyesight is being reduced to the same state it was in before I left home! Stay out in town and go to the Greenepace meeting.
Thursday: Same office day again. Party night which involves going to see bands/exhibitions and then falling over into bed.
Friday: Go into work with a hangover and no sleep. Feel grumpy and 'emotional' all day and go home and have an early night.

So you see, it's not that I've stopped bothering with or thinking about the blog. It's still going to be kept up to date, but less frequently until we leave Melbourne, mainly cos there ain't so much to write about.

Seriously, though, I am still enjoying myself a great deal and there are elements of having a daily routine which enable me to get myself in check after four months travelling and decide what it is that I want to do next. For Mum, Dad and anybody else who might be interested, here's a quick catch-up on what I have done in the last three weeks:

We've spent a lot of our spare time with Dave and Jodie. As I mentioned in my last blog this is a fantastic piece of good fortune as both of them have been great fun to hang out with and it's a bit of familiarity so far from home. Considering how long I've known Dave (I started my middle school with him in 1989), it's an unlikely situation that I should be socialising with James and Dave two people I've known for well over ten years, in Australia.
Because of Dave and Jodie's design background we've been to a fair few exhibitions such as Genevieve Gauckler's exhibition at the Someday gallery, which James and I otherwise wouldn't have visited. I've often wondered how both of them got into setting up Peskimo as a business and labour of love. That night I found out a bit about what makes them tick which I really knew nothing about.

My work is OK. I did promise myself that I would do anything other than work in an office, only because that's what I do at home, and this trip - if nothing else - is about challenging myself to try new things. In this instance, however, the practical necessity of funding the rest of my trip outweighs all else in the short term. The only other thing which I could have picked up for two months work (most bars aren't interested in anything less than about 3 months commitment), was cash-in-hand manual labour, which would have been risky, and if I'd got injured on the job bloody stupid. What the job does give me is an insight into Australian office culture, that is to say that how it appears to be indentical British office culture. The behaviour of folk in Aussie clerical jobs is very similar to that of Brits, which is probably why everyone seems to know and appreciates the British sit-com the Office, and grin when I tell them that I'm from Slough.
Working here makes me think Australian superannuation arrangements are preferable to pensions in the UK, mainly because employer contributions are mandatory and the employee takes the fund with them from job to job and continually accumulate to one account. Lots of people I know at home don't think about pensions until they're into their late 20's.
By a quirk of fate, I'm working in the team with another bloke called Dan Morton. As you would expect he is sophisticated and charming. Actually, he's a nice enough Melboure Uni student taking a sabbatical year, whose Dad is from England. Who knows, perhaps we're distantly related somewhere back along the line? I've never met anyone with the same name as me before, despite Daniel being an incredibly common first name and Morton being a less-than-rare surname. Well, there you go.

Perhaps my favourite thing to happen at work was when I had to speak to a bloke with a really thick Aussie accent on the phone regarding payment of his employees' super. He responded with an informality better suited to the pub: 'Now look here mate, a lotta my pals are pretty upset about this June super cut-off business, and how the super funds do nothing to help our employees make sure they get their cash. Now what d'ya reckon you boys can do ta help us owt?' Short of a hotline to John Howard or our CEO there wasn't a lot I could do, but I was cheered by his optimism.

In my spare time I've been familiarising myself with and finding ways to contribute to the local group of Greenpeace activists in Melbourne. Julien, a St. Kilda native and Greenpeace intern, is involved mainly with climate change and renewable energy issues. He's organising this year's 'Walk Against Warming' which coincides with the International day of action against climate change. You can see last year's website here, but it apparently wasn't that hot (!).
The big difference this year is that it coincides with the UN Conference on Climate Change being held from 6-17 November in Nairobi, Kenya and we've got far more time to organise and plan than last year. The intention of the event is more or less education, but also to sway politicians in time for the state elections. The scales still need to be tipped on people understanding how to tackle this monster.
Anway, after a few drinks and a good chat, I got the feeling I'll be able to help Julien out a fair bit. He also lives just round the corner, and is someone I can talk to about football! It certainly impressed me when we were talking about England, and the subject (as it inevitably does) turned to Torquay United:

Julien: 'Who's a good Torquay United player? Hmm. Gregory Goodridge?'
Dan: 'How do you know about Greg Goodridge?'

Attitudes towards climate change here are even more divided than at home over the issue of nuclear power. One of the main reasons I am involved with Greenpeace is their total rejection of the nuclear 'out of the frying pan and into the fire' alternative energy to carbon rich fossil fuels.
At home the big nuclear talking point is the replacement of our elderly nuclear power plants and Trident nuclear submarines. In Oz the focus is different. Australia sits on 40% of the world's uranium resources which big business now has in it's sights. Who is to say that this deadly and finite resource will not prompt the next war frontline in the future when oil fields are sucked dry?
John Howard is an active supporter of nuclear energy and Kim Beazley is changing the ALP's attitude away from caution to increased consideration of further uranium mines and domestic nulcear plants. Despite having only one domestic nuclear energy facility a number of prominent politicians have begun to advocate nuclear power as a means to affordably reduce greenhouse emissions and perhaps allow for large-scale de-salination plants. Australia has very extensive, low-cost coal reserves and substantial natural gas. The brown coal used in Victoria such as at Hazelwood power plant is horribly polluting. According to some sources it is the most polluting power station in the industrialised world (based on CO₂ per megawatt hour sent out). Because of the ready-supply Australia could and probably will continue down the dirty brown coal route, but if and when it takes climate change seriously, it could be blindly lead away from one path to destruction and down a nuclear cul-de-sac. This is the time to make sure the public don't let it happen.

".. whilst you can guarantee that uranium mining will lead to nuclear waste, you can't guarantee it won't lead to nuclear weapons." - Anthony Albanese (Federal ALP, would you believe).

* * *

I've continued my exploration of some of the other suburbs of Melbourne, including a slog around Windsor, Prahran, South Yarra, Richmond, Collingwood and Fitzroy all in one afternoon a couple of weeks ago. Brunswick Street in Fitzroy is still the most vibrant street for my money. It feels like the centre of the band scene and a focal point of the street community.

We got an idea of what this 'street life' was like for previous Melburnian generations at the Skins n Sharps display on Gertrude Street. During the late sixties in Britain the skin-head cult appeared, perhaps as a violent reaction to hippydom. This same machoistic and hedonist movement was adopted in Melbourne by the turn of the dcade. Individuals morphed the look from skinheads to sharps. At that time sharps were skinheads retaining their 'tails' a mullet-like fringe of hair at the back of the head. One band adopted by the scene were AC/DC - the most successful Aussie band in history. Indeed, you can identify a bit of a sharp look in early photos of Bonn Scott. A more a natural part of 'the scene' were poeple like Lobby Loyde and the Coloured Balls. Regardless it was a reminder to us of a time when youth culture - for better or worse - was less established, local and honest about its intentions. Birds, booze and fighting: that's about the size of it. It was not intellectualised or something that could be packaged and sold to kids like todays 'subcultures': goth, punk, emo, sports casual or what have you. The sharp scene was organic to isolated and poor kids wanting a sense of identity and belonging; they knew it was nothing more than that, despite plenty of bullshit then too. The scene, moronic as it might have been in someways, belonged to them. I don't think kids today really think when they dress a certain way or listen to a set of bands or type of music. It's not so much peer pressure that forms the subconscious choice, it's case of selecting from a range of brands which sell you an image which you can be a part of, if you have the money. If you don't, well...

Finally, football absence has got to me to the extent that I've had to take action. Tonight I'm going to watch Melbourne Victory play Sydney. 'Soccer' is it is known here, is on the up. A few years ago with the National Soccer League on the verge of collapse, there was a breakaway 'professional' league set up in 2005 - the A-league. The reason for problems with the NSL were numerous. Just some of the oft-touted problems were: potentially divisive ethnic support for individual clubs, incompetant national administration and multiple clubs in a single city spreading support too thinly. This type of overhaul would never (and should never) happen in Britain, but Australia and New Zealand make up the best part of a continent not a country, and soccer support bases have not been organically established in the way they were in the UK.
Regardless of whether the slick new coporate sponsored structure was a good idea, this league and it's eight teams from Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Newcastle, Gosford and Auckland enjoyed a largely successful inaugural season. Bringing us back up to date, the Socceroos enjoyed a fabulously rewarding World Cup, making it through a tough group stage only to be knocked out in the second round by eventual winners Italy. Having observed the behaviour of some of the Aussies in Bangkok, it obviously meant a lot to them, and that passion is ripe for redirecting towards the domestic game.
Whether I'll enjoy this type of football when so much of what I like about supporting Torquay United is absent (intimacy, community, lack of corporate backers, fewer money grabbers etc.), has yet to be seen. I think that the sense of being at the start of something growing and popular will appeal. Tonight's game is at the Telstra Dome, which is bigger than Olympic Park which is Melbourne regular ground. The change of venue is because the Football Federation of Australia want to make Melbourne v Sydney the equivalent of a European derby game. The difference to home is that it isn't a local affair, but the rivalry of Sydney and Melbourne as cities has deeply embedded historical roots, and is not a wholly manufactured thing either. I hope the intensity of an Old Firm derby style game can develop between the sides (minus the bigotry and violence).

To give you an idea of how sport is conducted over here, and the support it gets from the City of Melbourne, here's a little anecdote from the other day. I went along to Melbourne city square about a fortnight ago to watch Melbourne Victory do a PR event to launch the new season. This involved plenty of 'Samsung' tracksuited vendors handing out glossy postcards with images of our heroes on the front - internationals Kevin Muscat and Archie Thompson. Samsung, the shirt sponsor, were offering a deal on the back of the cards to win a trip to watch a Chelsea game, whom they sponsor in England. There is a strong interest in English football here and a feeling that the English Premiership should be the template for the A-league (God preserve us). Amongst the local dignitaries present to make speeches and show their support amidst other major sponsors of the side was Lord Mayor of Melbourne John So and Minister for Sport and Recreation Justin Madden. They announced a new State Government funding commitment of $750,000 for junior football development in Victoria. I can't imagine this happening with Torbay Council for Torquay, but then I never have to listen to someone from Samsung banging on about their new Samsung 'Imagine Victory' promotion at Plainmoor.

Melby-ville

14th August 2006, Day 146 (Happy Birthday Mum)

St. Kilda, Melbourne

We've settled in now. The back pack is empty under my bed.

Two shaggy haired, travel-weary fellows arrived in Melbourne just over a week ago on a train from New South Wales, and it didn't take long for Sydney's serene twin to win them over.

When we arrived that night at Southern Cross station on the western edge of Melbourne's rectangular CBD, we traversed it's perimeter to North Melbourne where a YHA hostel was situated. Nice and easy. This is a quiet suburb though not far from town and we happily made our beds for the evening, but with an urge to set-up quickly and find somewhere permanent to live for the next few months. The following day we contacted Jackson Apartments, following yet another fruitful tip-off from our friend Mr. Partington. Jackson have property all over St. Kilda, which is backpacker central. For $120 a week signed up for a decent flat as we were unlikely to strike a superior bargain elsewhere.

A few days have passed, so what do I make of the city? Well it's every bit as beautiful as Sydney in my opinion, although it doesn't have the amazing estuary location and famous landmarks. It's little more subtle than it's sister and you must know the suburbs to know Melbourne; the CBD (whilst not ugly) is rather dull like all CBDs. Socially, instead of hanging out in St. Kilda, I've spent most of my time in Fitzroy and Brunswick where there are a multitude of bustling bars and exciting music.

Some of the nicest buildings in Melbourne include Flinders Street station's Victorian architecture and the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre which is a good example of the tasteful modern architecture dispersed throughout the city. The big recent addition was Federation Square where many notable exhibitions take place with corporate sponsors. I don't know whether I like it or not yet.

Here is a view along Bourke Street. One part of Melbourne CBD is on a hill and there's an excellent tram network around the city that shares the thoroughfare with the cars and pedestrians. As a result, parts of the CBD look a little like San Francisco. It's quite hard to find the shopping areas with familiar chain stores (which are in malls) - there's nothing here like Oxford Street in the West End for instance. I appreciate a few degrees less of intrusive advertising.







This is a view of the south bank of the Yarra river which runs through Melbourne. It wasn't nicest day when I took this and the shot is deceptive. It makes Melbourne look claustrophobic which it most certainly is not. According to Wikipedia:
'Melbourne is typical of Australian Capital Cities in that it was built with the underlying notion of a "quarter acre home and garden". As such, much of Metropolitan Melbourne is characterised by low density sprawl.'
The sense of space is instantly appealing.






Let me talk a little more about St. Kilda. This is a shot of the artificial 'Lady of St. Kilda' wreck on St. Kilda beach, a beach which the locals sneer at. It looks nice enough to me! St. Kilda is based around this beach, which looked like a nice spot to J.B. Were on the day he held a picnic to discuss his interest in the cargo yacht 'the Lady of St. Kilda' in about 1842. The name of the boat stuck and gradually plots of land around the bay were sold off to wealthy Melbournians. It was an exclusive place with churches and sports clubs quickly becoming established. A promenade and amusement ground (Luna Park which you can see in the picutures below) were built, making St. Kilda a magnet for outdoor pleasure. This goldne era didn't last forever, though. During the twenties and thirties this air of decadence spawned brothels and open prostitution, the 'class' of the area was dulled for a long time as a result. As prices dropped, poorer citizens moved into the area. The seedy side of St. Kilda perisisted and only in the 70's did the council confront this with a programme of gentrification. Gradually during the 80's and 90's the social strata changed again as 'polite cosmopolitanism' became the theme for the area. It remains today an area for street-cafes, posh bars and socialites. On the other hand it is home to Melbourne's backpacker community and some excellent gig venues - the most famous of which is the Esplanade Hotel (the Espy), which I expect to become our second home.

One of the best things about St. Kilda from my perspective is Albert Park. This is a fabulous 225 Hectare park with an huge lake in the middle of it for water sports. The park also contains the Sports and Aquatic centre, redeveloped for use in the 2006 Commonwealth Games which were held in March. I found this brochure on Albert Park, which boasts of the wetlands and wildlife contained within the park. On my run this morning it looked every bit a suitable venue for an international sporting tournament. The lake provides you with one of those views of the City and CBD which makes you think of somewhere like Miami or New York; skyscrapers silhouetted against a saphire blue sky. Only today did I find out that this picturesque lake is also home to the Australian Grand Prix, which made me rather sceptical about there supposed commitment to wildlife.

Ah! Captain James Cook, I presume. The first European to set foot on Australian soil on 29 April 1770, in the place now known as Botany Bay, NSW. Despite the man's undeniable aptitude and ingenuity in his job, I wonder if colonists such as Cook will always be held in esteem? I don't suppose aboriginals regard him with fondness. This statue is just behind St. Kilda pier, not that he had much to do with Melbourne directly.

Here's a little more on the establishment of Melbourne courtesy of Wikipedia:

'The European settlement at Melbourne was founded in 1835 by settlers coming from Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land), where they had difficulty finding available land.

The area was already inhabited by the Kulin people, then indigenous to the area. A transaction was negotiated for 600,000 acres of land from eight Wurundjeri representatives; this was later annulled by the New South Wales government (then governing all of eastern mainland Australia), who compensated the settlers in exchange. Ultimately, settlement continued regardless.

It was the capital first of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales and then of the separate colony of Victoria. With the discovery of gold in Victoria in the 1850s, leading to the Victorian gold rush, Melbourne quickly grew as a port and service centre.

Later it became Australia's leading manufacturing centre. During the 1880s, Melbourne was the second largest city in the British Empire, and came to be known as "Marvellous Melbourne". Victorian architecture abounds in Melbourne and today the city is home to the largest number of surviving Victorian era buildings of any city in the world other than London.'

A shot of Luna Park built in 1912, but refurbished recently and still going strong almost a century later. The big gob is a St. Kilda landmark.













I mentioned in my last blog that I was looking into the political landscape of Oz. Being aware of the memorial day marking 61 years since the Hiroshima bombings, tied in with an anti-Nuke protest, James and I rolled up outside the State Library. We went to find out the response of Melbourne to the current political crisis in Lebanon.

The event was organised by Stop the War and some Unions, the format being the usual speeches followed by a march. Afterwards some people argued that the event was hi-jacked by some leftist groups and the Lebanese community when they broke off route and burnt an Israeli flag outside the State Parliament at the end. I can see both sides of the argument on this. The event was supposed to be pushing an anti-war message and this is symbolically contradictory, although it was not a march for pacifism per se. On the other hand there is a direct link between Hiroshima and the Lebanese crisis as the Israeli army are alledgedly in possession of bunker-busting bombs (GBU-28). These bombs contain depleted uranium - a carcinogenic substance that spreads in the form of a toxic and radioactive dust, which enters the lungs and bones and is especially harmful to babies and young children. Therefore whilst their relatives are being massacred by Israeli troops it would be a bit difficult to turn around and exclude Lebanese people from the march and one can understand their fury at the Israeli state's actions (I personally see the burning of the Israeli flag, under these circumstances, as a message against the state, rather than anti-semetic). Regardless the event went off without much further incident, and I was able to chat to the local anarchos and to other groups like Greenpeace, TU's and community groups.
Later in the week I attended a local member's Greenpeace meeting, and immediately got my hands dirty by doing the minutes. My political views do not overlap exactly with theirs (which resulted in a full blown discussion-cum-argument in the pub afterwards) but am sure I can campaign with them in the short term, and play a tiny part in helping them to achieve goals which I do support. Their philosophy is based around action, and that is what interests me.

During the best part of this week, I have cast my attention towards finding work. This has mainly involved lengthy dull registration procedures with temping agencies, and personal brain wracking to find something more worthwhile than simply working in an office for 8 weeks. I went for an interview to do some 'frontline' charity work with Greenpeace which would have involved signing up members from the general public. Unfortunately I didn't get the job because I'm not around for long enough. They did offer me the chance to attend a local group meeting (which I just mentioned). Today I finally found some work with a superannuation company. Four weeks of data entry. It won't be much fun, but it is a relief that I'll have a source of income once again.

We've done a couple of other things this week such as attending a Neighbours theme night. We went mainly because it was an opportunity to hang out with our house mates and meet one of Thom's friend's Laura. I cannot deny that there was an element of curiosity on behalf having watched the daily Aussie soap continually between the years of 1988 to 1996 or so. I watched it because it is shown on BBC1 at 5.35pm - in other words, during or just before dinner time. It's banal stuff and the standard of acting has been questionable, however I certainly enjoyed watching it at the time. The character I'm pictured with is Jarrod 'Toadfish' Rebecchi. He was the only charater I recognised, so I eagerly got a snap taken. Obviously I was disappointed Harold Bishop didn't put in an appearance as he is still in the soap. The evening was full of British backpackers on a nostalgia trip so it quickly descended into druken nonsense. The main Neighbours related activities included a quiz, and footage of old episodes projected onto the back wall of the venue. It isn't something which will live on in my mind!

Oh, here's another St. Kilda icon. This is just weird. It's a mural of Steve Davis hanging above a video rental shop on Barkly Street, St. Kilda. Look at the eyes and the sucker-like fingers. We think it comes alive at night and haunts the streets.











One thing I've really kicked myself about is missing the vast majority of the Melbourne Film Festival, which has coincided with our arrival. We've had to be prudent with our cash, but we missed the bulk of it due to forgetting about it when we had time on our hands. Once our good friends Dave and Jodie rolled into town, I decided to make a last ditch attempt to see something on the closing night of the festival. After a hasty taxi journey into town, we managed to see one short and a full-length feature.
The short was entitled On the Other Ocean (Dir. Amiel Courtin-Wilson). This centred around a young woman reflecting back on a doomed childhood visit to the seaside which ended with the family having a car crash. It was beautifully shot and evocative of tender childhood, but it didn't do much more for me than that. The full-length feature was called The Desealer (Dir. James Clayden), which was am interesting look at mental-illness. It was confronted schizophrenia in the context of an intimate relationship between a man and woman. It picked up on how perception of things changes at different times of the day, and how disorientated anyone can feel under the right circumstances. Jodie thought it was a little overlong and indulgent, but I quite enjoyed it. Again I liked the mixture of shots, lighting and textures. These were both films with Melburnian directors, and I'll check out more about the local movie community whilst I'm here.

The old yellow'n'blue

5th August 2006, Day 139

Melbourne, Victoria

A new season and time to implore from the terraces of League 2, COME ON YOU GULLS!!!

Ian Atkins has put together a strong looking side in close season, bar a few question marks over the midfield and goalkeeper. Whilst I personally don't like Ian Atkins much (due to his behaviour at at Torquay with other sides), he turned things around at Plainmoor in a manner akin to Jesus last season. Let the second coming commence.

Shame I can't be there for the first game of the season, but I certainly will be next year. Hope you make some noise at Underhill, Sarah!

This year it'll be promotion not relegation under consideration. PLEASE.

Gis' a swig on the old yellow'n'blue!




















I am an fool for the marketing man.




















I'll post some musings about Melbourne in a few days time.