Ghost sign hunting, White Night, welcome rain

I got a comment on an old Girl in Melbourne post yesterday that has me a little excited. It was left by a fellow fan of old signs, and alerted me to an upcoming event in Melbourne called Ghost Sign Hunting ('ghost signs' is a much more evocative name for fading old signs. I shall steal it). The commenter, Stefan Schutt is one of the presenters and maintains a blog on ghost signs, which I'm keen to explore (along with the blog Ghost Signs Melbourne, which I found via Stefan's). 

The seminar will explore "what ghost signs can tell us about how we live with and experience diverse cultures and histories of place and image".   

It starts at 4.00pm on a week day (March 12th), but I think it will be worth arranging to finish work early to rub shoulders with a bunch of other people who are obsessed with ghost signs. It's pleasing to discover there are plenty of other people into something you like that you thought was a little bit obscure - like being part of a little community. 

If you're interested, click the 'upcoming event' link above for details.

That reminds me, I have photos of a bunch of old signs from the past few weeks, but I've been too lazy to post them. I'll get to it soon.

White Night

Luke and I went to White Night - an all-night festival of light shows, music and performance art  - last Saturday (no, we didn't stay until stumps at 7.00am). It's the first time Melbourne has held the event and it was a huge success, if the hordes of people who descended on the CBD are any indication. It was a perfect balmy summer's night for being out and about and the vibe was buzzy. 

Among other things, we visited the State Library, which a hosted a number of musical performances under the dome of the wonderful La Trobe reading room. To be honest, the performance we saw was a bit of a snooze, but I got a kick out of lining up at 11 o'clock on a Saturday night to go to the library, and the dome looked pretty. 

Sir Redmond remains impassive amid the light show 

out the front of the library

 Inside the dome

 The steps of Flinders Street Station became a concert stage, 

entertaining the masses

The Forum Theatre

Also Flinders Street

You can check out some good videos here and here, which show it off better than my photos. 

Rain, rain, glorious rain!

We've had a lengthy run of hot, dry weather in Melbourne the last few weeks - a record- breaking spell of 15 days over 30 degrees C in fact. Even the nights have been uncomfortably warm, with temperatures in the low 20s. But it's rained the last few days. Yay!  Some proper rain, too; not just that depressingly useless drizzle we often get. How wonderful it was to go to sleep listening to the rain and wake up to rain.  It wasn't raining when I walked  home last night, but everything was still damp and I could smell the eucalyptus trees beside the river when I passed. Aaah...lovely!

Other good stuff: 

Our herbs and lettuce are still alive! 

We got a new TV - a digital one. We've finally entered the 21st century! Our SBS reception is still poor, however, which is disappointing. We also bought a new entertainment unit to replace our rickety old one. It's nice having new stuff. Our new furniture - entertainment unit, dining table and bookcase  - all match too, even though we bought them at different places. 

I found a cool word Tumblr blog called Otherwordly via Pinterest. Continuing the theme of words ending in 'bund' (as in 'pudibund'), 'aspectabund' is an adjective meaning 'letting or being able to let expressive emotions show easily through one's face and eyes'. I think I'm going to need to take a day off work to churn through all these new blogs...

Muesli, eagle-eyed Luke, a birthday

Mini muesli mountain with minty peak

(second breakfast at Café 117, Richmond)

I went back today and took photos of those two old signs I saw yesterday while travelling past in the car. 

Windsor at the top and a word ending in ING down the side

 (Union Street, Windsor) 

Something ending in E and then Yeringa Wines

 (High Street, Windsor)

But wait! There's more! I also took photos of several other old signs while we were out and about today. I have to give high praise to Luke, who has turned into an eagle-eyed sign spotter. I think he's even better at it than I am. He spotted the first sign yesterday and also this one on Highett Street in Richmond. 

 It says McNiven Pty Ltd at the top

The degree of difficulty on spotting this sign was high. Not only is it on the side of a building that is almost rubbing shoulders with the one next door, a tree was obscuring our view of it from the other side of the street. When Luke first pointed at it, I had no idea what he was pointing at. 

Luke also spotted this great sign, also on High Street in Windsor. 

  

And this one on Swan Street in Richmond (although I'd seen it before, but not taken a photo). 

Aston maybe? 

And this one on Malvern Road, Hawksburn, not that you can tell what it says. 

100 years of dome

The marvellous domed reading room at the State Library - one of my favourite places in Melbourne - is turning 100. It was officially opened on 14 November 1913 and the library has kicked off a year of anniversary celebrations. Just before it opened, The Argus had this to say about it: 

Standing in the centre of this great room, it is almost awe-inspiring in its proportions. Up under the arcades of the galleries, the stacked books are dim ¡n a blue haze of distance. We certainly have nothing so wonderful as this reading-room in Australia in its suggestion of bigness and space.

When I was at uni, I did the research for my third year research project* in the reading room of the State Library, but  the dome wasn't visible then. It was covered over in 1959 because it was leaking, and wasn't unveiled again until 2003.  I still remember the first time I went back there after the dome was re-opened - only I didn't know that it had been re-opened, so I got quite a surprise.  I couldn't believe it was the same place.  If you live in Melbourne and have never been, you really should. I insist. 

* My project was about how women's magazines - specifically New Idea - had changed over the past 30 years and it was called New Idea: From Handicrafts to Hollywood. I must see if I can find it somewhere...

Henry puts on a show, Mr Lizard and a gumnut baby

Luke and I saw Henry Wagons and The Unwelcome Company at Thornbury Theatre last night. I had actually contemplated not going when I found out they weren't coming on stage until at least 10.30. I've been so ridiculously tired lately that I thought I'd spend the night wishing I were home in bed. But yay! I actually managed to feel relatively awake during the whole show. (*sigh* I really am getting old.)

And it was a good show. Henry was his usual garrulous, energetic self. He left the stage and stood on the tables a couple of times - some of the audience who paid for dinner and a show were seated at tables, which Henry said was like being at the Logies. 

They played all of the songs from Henry's debut solo album, Expecting Company? as well as a few Wagons tunes and a couple of covers. They finished with a cover of Islands in the Stream by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton - no, really! - because it's a duet, and Expecting Company is almost all duets. And I guess it's so naff that it's almost cool. 

Here's Henry and Gossling performing their duet from the album with a bit of Islands in the Stream tacked on the end at The Toff in Town a few weeks ago.

Gossling has an unusual singing voice, but I think it goes well with Henry's baritone. Most of the female voices on Expecting Company were provided last night by three members of the vocal group The Nymphs. They have amazing voices.   

This afternoon I was listening to all of Wagons' albums with my iPod on shuffle and it played Marylou and Marylou Two one after the other, even though they are from different albums.  

I passed the State Library on my way home from the gym today. Look, it's Mr Lizard and a gumnut baby! 

(Not two separate sculptures as I wrote in my last post.)  

I'm back at work tomorrow. Boo. But at least it will be a short week. 

Jack White live, Open House, Embiggen

I went to see Jack White last Wednesday. I would have mentioned it leading up to the show, but I kept forgetting about it! At one stage I had a mild panic thinking I'd actually missed it. Phew!

Aussie retro songstress Lanie Lane was Jack's support act, which was a nice bonus. It took me a while to warm to her music, but I eventually bought her album and now count myself as a fan. I like her even more after seeing her perform live. 

One of her band members was playing the double bass. Is it just my imagination or has the double bass made a comeback? Quite a few bands I've been to see in the last couple of years have had one in their line up. I like it. 

But anyway, back to Jack. I hadn't been too psyched about the show on the day because I felt physically and mentally exhausted and couldn't wait to crawl back into bed that night. But when he came on stage and started playing one of my favourite White Stripes songs, I got a little choked up! OMG! It's him! I'm here! And he's got the lady band with him! 

Being his usual kooky self, Jack's touring with a man band and a lady band, and he doesn't decide until that day which one he's going to take on stage. I'd hoped for the lady band, just because it's unusual to see a man backed by an all-female band. The women all had powder blue dresses, and Jack was dressed in black, with light blue suspenders. 

Jack played a few of my favourite White Stripes songs (Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, Ball & Biscuit and Doorbell), but my favourite of the night was the White Stripes' song Hotel Yorba.  I loved the fiddle solo, which isn't in the recorded version. Yeeehaw! 

He played quite a long set and encore. It was great...but I was very glad to get home and into bed. 

Oh, I forgot to mention I got asked for ID at the door to the venue (it was an over 18 event). So did Luke. They were probably checking IDs for everyone who looked under 30, just to be on the safe side, but even so, I JUST TURNED 40! 

Open House    

This weekend was the annual Melbourne Open House event, when dozens of culturally, historically and architecturally significant buildings throw open their doors for the public to come and have a stickybeak. 

We were late to get started, but we managed three buildings - the Harry Brooks Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology at Melbourne University, the State Library and the Myer Mural Hall. 

The anatomy museum is used for training medical students and is rarely open to the public (unlike quite a few of the other buildings taking part). It contains anatomical models, and four plaster death masks (including those of infamous bushrangers Ned Kelly and Mad Dog Morgan), but the majority of the collection is human material - most of it diseased or otherwise unhealthy. Some of the models and specimens date back to the 1800s. It was fascinating, but also confronting. It's not every day you see dissected human body parts. What a amazingly selfless act it is to donate your entire body to science. 

Next up was the State Library. This year the tour included the Elephant Lift, the Pendulum Staircase and the catacombs. Catacombs! How intriguing! These areas are normally off limits to the public.

While we waited for our turn, we visited the La Trobe Reading Room, which is one of my favourite places in all of Melbourne. There were quite a a few people studying and this guy having a study break. Heehee.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I had hoped the Elephant Lift (the oldest operating lift in the vast building) was so named because they used it to move around stuffed elephants and other big exhibits back in the days when the building also housed the Museum of Victoria. But no; they think the name comes from the name for very large books - elephant folio. 

The pendulum rose in the floor of the stairwell

The white marble Pendulum Staircase is named because it once housed a Foucault pendulum, which demonstrates the rotation of the earth. It was removed partly because pesky children were too fond of swinging on it, and now no one knows where it is. 

The catacombs are a series of underground corridors and rooms, which are used for storage, quarantine and conservation. The name sounds intriguing, but we saw a lot of broken chairs and dusty old office equipment! 

We did see the library's old card catalogue (above) which is now digitised, but library staff do still refer to it sometimes to check something in the digital records. This was my favourite thing about the catacomb tour: 

Sadly I didn't have time to look up any of the books about odd fish. 

They also still have an old catalogue from the 1880s, some of which was handwritten. 

The catacombs were used for storage, among other things, by the museum when it was housed there. During the move to its new premises in the Carlton Gardens in the 1990s, museum workers found two bird specimens with tags handwritten by Charles Darwin. Perhaps one day the pendulum will be discovered in much the same way...

Our final stop was at the Myer Mural Hall on level 6 of the Myer Department store. It's named after the 10 large murals by Napier Waller that adorn the walls, some of which depict prominent women through the ages. I've seen photos of the murals before, but have never been in the room. It was built in the early 1930s for use as a ballroom, but it's now a posh function room. 

Sections of some of the murals

We then visited Embiggen Books, a newish bookshop near the State Library. I think it's a silly name ('embiggen' is a word made up by a writer of The Simpsons), but it's a very nice bookshop - not large, but with lots of dark timber. It feels like you're in a library. One of the first books I saw was The Etymologicon, basking in the sun on a table in the window. My heart leapt a little. 

Old friend, more flowers, and origami

I spent the morning in the city with an old friend whom I haven't seen in ages (despite us both always saying as we part ways that "we should do this more often"). We didn't have any particular destination but we ended up visiting the magnificent La Trobe Reading Room at the State Library.

While we were there I made sure, as I always do, to visit the Midget Library, the smallest exhibit in the Mirror of the World Exhibition, and Audubon's Birds of America, which is a massive book, and also quite rare (there's only 120 known copies in the world).

Then we wandered to the Docklands in the glorious autumn sunshine and then back into the city for lunch before going our separate ways. 

At the end of Waterfront City there's a 

high wall, and this is what's on the other side

 - where Docklands meets the old docks 

Afterwards my friend sent me a text message thanking me for a lovely morning and saying I had lifted her spirits and made a crap week feel a whole lot better. That gave me a warm inner glow.

I bought my first pair of Doc Martins boots today. Metallic purple ones. They're pretty cool. One day I will grow up...Maybe! After I got them home I noted the writing on the tab on the back of the boot. 'With bouncing soles'...or is it 'With soles bouncing'? I kinda like the latter.