Land battles: Hardy-Gallagher Park

 

Just south of the Brunswick border is a small tract of bushland, a bocce court, a railway station with no train line, a children’s playground. This enchanted pocket of parkland is the meeting place of a number of intertwining stories. It used to be part of the Inner Circle line. The station building is now a Neighbourhood House. The bocce court is a memorial to an adventurous Italian immigrant, but the park itself owes its existence to a struggle and confrontation between the community and short sighted interests.

The Lamentations of Bobby Gatto

 

I have had the most dreadful time! Not since the abuse I suffered in my kittenhood, at the hands of the cruel woman who put me in a cage and took me away from my trusty old manservant, who called me Bert but later got into the habit of dressing me in a handkerchief and serving me buttered bread and jam….. but I digress.

My first uncovering

Here is a photograph that I took in June 2013, at the time of the Eleanor or Hildegard post. Two Art Deco apartment blocks side by side on Lygon Street. Whilst the one of the right hand side is perfect in its symmetry, the one on the left has obviously been designed to fit into a narrow space.
A few days ago I noticed an empty space where that building used to stand.

Mediterranean influence

One of the first places Vince took me when he first showed me around Brunswick was “the Mediterranean” - the supermarket, where every wine label is a line from Petrarch, every packet of pasta is an adventure and the cheese cabinet is a geography lesson!

Within spitting distance of Franco Cozzo there are many other reminders of the settlers from Italy, Greece and the Middle Sea. Here are but a few snaps from that small pocket of Sydney Road.

Albion Street

East Brunswick Auto

 

Brunswick is laid out on a grid, with the big streets such as Melville Road, Sydney Road, Lygon Street and Holmes/Nicholson Streets running north south. Apart from Brunswick Road (the southern boundary) and Moreland Road (the northern boundary) the streets running east west are small and narrow. However some of these are main routes in disguise. Albion Street has a bus service that takes you all the way to Essendon, so it is really quite an artery. It starts at the top of Lygon Street Brunswick East, with this wonderful old ghost garage just opposite the imposing façade of the Lyndhurst Club Hotel.

Yesterday I was out around Albion Street. It was a beautiful late spring day and I found a few more ghost signs.

Gallery Saint Phalle and Lake Mungo

Paul Mason: Lake Mungo, in Gallery Saint Phalle

In the back room of the Red Wheelbarrow on Lygon Street, Catherine has set up a beautiful little gallery. It is called Gallery Saint Phalle. They moved the bookshelves out and into Paul's shop, making the front room a kind of booklovers’ maze. You can stand there and not know who is on the other side. On a winter’s day like today, the lamp from his desk and the heater cast a dim warm light.


The back room however is the complete opposite: lightness.

On the shortest day of the year, Catherine opened “Solstice”, an exhibition of drawings by Paul Mason. They are perfect for the Gallery: gray lead drawings on white paper that defy dimension and create space through lines. One of them documents an epiphany that the artist had in a particular place. And as I had a couple of weeks’ break coming up, it gave me a destination: Lake Mungo.

Ghost neon signs and skeleton signs

 

 

As I walked along Sydney road I looked up and saw this wonderful old sign, not the supermarket one, but the one that says All Night Café. Straight out of some Hollywood movie. The metal structure is also magnificent. I have vague memories of driving back from Sydney in the days when the trip down Sydney Road was basically the only way to get into Melbourne, and no doubt the sign was then visible from afar. Not sure if it still lights up at night, must check that out next time I go to the Brunswick Green of an evening.

Progress Cinema in Coburg

Why are there no more cinemas in Brunswick or Coburg? Surely there would be a market for a small boutique cinema? I know we can catch the 8 or 1 trams down to the Nova in Carlton, but it would be great to revive at least one of the many old movie houses that used to exist in this area.

Gainsborough Charles Parsons Building on Brunswick Road

First it was the bricks that I liked about this building. Then it was the Art Deco features above the main entrance and the back entrance, although I am not sure how old the building actually is. It spans a long stretch along Brunswick Road, and I walk past it every time I go to Nicholson Street. However, it will not be there for much longer.

Capital Trail: Brunswick to Docklands

  

 

View towards Ross Straw Field

It was a beautiful morning. We headed down the Capital Trail, past the Zoo, through wonderful and threatened Royal Park and along the pathway next to Moonee Ponds Creek. First of all, it is but a swamp, like a forgotten wasteland under the concrete flyovers of the freeway. Then, it widens and becomes a small creek. With bridges, drains, industrial landscapes. But today, so beautiful.  A couple of men were fishing. A train stopped at Macauley Station. And I managed to capture a few wonderful sights. Hard to believe it is in the heart of a big city.

Update on Countryman Clothing building: stained glass windows

The back and roof have gone, but this wonderful little building continues to be a gem – just look at the lovely sight that has come about due to the combination of demolition and street art. The midday autumn sun shining through these windows is delightful.

Here is the view from the back of the building. Through the destruction, we can still see the lovely symmetry of the front entrance and side windows.

Countryman Clothing building Brunswick Road

When I arrived home late one afternoon, Vince said: “Do you know that the back of the Countryman’s building has disappeared?”  I had to rush down and see. I knew that the building had recently been up for sale but I did not know whether it had sold. My dream of a museum of manufacture on this site had obviously not occurred to anyone else. What a pity.

So I went down and snapped a few photos. Then my day just got better:

Two Marches in March

Today I found myself at the March in March. It was amazing to see so many people out on the streets of Melbourne, all with different complaints and concerns. The effectiveness of social media networking to bring people together and advertise events is quite mindblowing.


On Twitter later today I found out that there was another march, on the wonderful Sydney Road. In fact earlier today I had been near the Sydney Road Baptist Church, from where the march started. Tri Nguyen, who had arrived in Australia after a horrendous boat trip from Vietnam and shocking experiences in a refugee camp in a third country, is setting out on a 35 day walk from Brunswick to Canberra, hauling a wooden replica of the boat which carried them through the monsoon. The boat had "thank you" written on the side, thanking the Australian community for the kindness and welcome he and his family had received.

What a wonderful odyssey, back up the trapdoor to Melbourne, to the seat of power in Canberra, via those small towns which are perhaps not as multicultural as Brunswick but with a great diversity of opinions and personalities. I will be following his journey, and gaining inspiration from it.

My installation at the Sydney Road Street Party

Inspired by the Yoko Ono wall of wishes and comments (visited by me and Rosario in Sydney in December), I thought the Greens stall at this year’s Sydney Road Street Party should have one also. Despite scepticism from a number of quarters, that the set up was “jerry built” (well, it was mounted on a paint spattered vintage ladder which had originally come from ETSA) and “hippy”, it became a talking point. Tim even tweeted a photo of him and Greg attaching their contributions to “What do you want for Victoria’s future?”

Men’s Hairdresser Ghost Sign

I love this sign in one of the old shops along Sydney Road in Coburg. Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk to one of the owners of the neighbouring shop, Al Nada Sweets. She told me that the Men’s Middle Eastern Hairdressing Salon had opened in 1978, run by a gentleman from Tripoli, who passed away just recently. He had run the shop for about seven or eight years. The shop was in the front but he had lived out the back.