SATURDAY BREAKFAST #13: HIGH STREET, PRESTON

Visited 24 December, 2011

We had breakfast at the former fire station in High Street, Preston, now known as The Old Fire Station Café Gallery.  While there’s been a complete change in occupancy and use, the premises haven’t been totally made over.  The café occupies three ground-floor spaces, two inside - the principal one being the room that used to house the fire engines - and one a sizeable yard with plenty of cover provided by umbrellas.  There’s a detached two storey building beyond the yard, formerly living quarters for brigade personnel, I imagine, not associated with the Café; and who knows the status of the rooms above the Café – there’s no access, not even a shiny firemen’s pole to shinny up.

The décor is retro - a grab-bag of unmatched chairs, with laminex-topped kitchen tables of the 1950s and earlier.  Pretty daggy really, and not all that kempt; and the general impression is cheap rather than chic.  The food was average, but the coffee was excellent (although, as is so often the case, the second cups weren’t so good).  The cutlery was cheap – which isn’t the opposite of expensive.  The owners could have picked up good quality 60-year old cutlery from any opp shop for a song; instead we had forks that felt as thought they would bend in our hands.  An uncomfortable situation for patrons; and somebody should be told.

If you’d asked me in advance to guess the time when Preston was settled I would have said the 1890s, maybe 1880s.  But two High Street buildings were dated in the 1860s, one showing 1861 on its upper facade.  The answer lies in the amazing transformative effect of the Victorian gold rush.  Melbourne’s white settlement commenced in 1836; and, within 15 years, gold had been discovered in central Victoria, and thousands of gold-seekers were travelling north from Melbourne, including via High Street.   We can be sure that the solid 1861 building was a replacement of an earlier and more modest edifice, the later one built from the profits of trading with the would-be miners.

High Street is a major northern outlet from central Melbourne.  It retains its given name through a series of suburban localities, first Westgarth, then Northcote and Thornbury to Preston and beyond.  The Preston strip has undergone significant change in recent years.  The many Viet premises attest to a change in local demographics.  The construction of a median strip, complete with the plantings of Manchurian pears, has made the street more intimate and friendly, and there are numerous new high-rise apartments on High Street itself and behind.   Clearly people are moving into the area – it’s an area in transition.    Still there are lots of empty shop premises, often derelict looking; yet, despite this, and despite  the Woolworths complex in the back streets between High Street and the railway line, I fancy that High Street will rise again and once more become a  robust retailing strip.   So some free commercial advice:  open an up-market coffee shop and eatery.  There were only two breakfast places in the 250 metres of strip we explored, neither of them classy.

At the extreme northern end of our traverse there was a huge bicycle shop, Ray’s Preston, more an emporium than a shop.  There were a number of window displays, including a real treasure – a 1903 “The Charleston” bike.  In terms of basic design it didn’t look much different from a standard bike today, just simpler.  It had wooden grips on the handlebar, a bar-type handbrake under the right-side of the handlebar, and it had no gears.  As an indication of its bold 1903 modernity it had a sprung seat.  My Google search for information on “Charleston bicycle” - to establish, for instance, whether The Charleston was Australian made - produced over 50000 hits, but the first several pages were mostly to do with a bicycle business in Charleston South Carolina, and I gave up. …….but not before I’d learnt that around April 2010 the Canberra Bicycle Museum sold off its collection of 700 bikes.  The oldest bike in the collection dated from 1817.  The Museum website has been abandoned, but it seems that the collection had to go because of renovations to the Canberra Tradies Club, the owners of the Museum.  One posting expresses the heartfelt wish that someone would acquire the entire collection, but another posting says that the bikes all went “to good homes” – with the exception of a core 28 cycles that have been retained, albeit in storage.  A sad little story.  Why didn’t one of our public museums step in to keep the collection intact?

High Street’s major building is the former Preston City Hall, built in 1929 to replace the original 1895 Town Hall.  This building is now the civic centre of the merged City of Darebin.  Reached from the side street, all spick and span with a new iron roof, is a separate building, the “town hall” – used, I imagine, for large official and other functions.  The main High Street building doesn’t have the Victorian-era grandeur of the older Melbourne-area Town Halls – indeed, it’s “eclectic blend of the Queen Anne and French Second Empire styles” elicits a “what the…..?” reaction.

Standing in front of the old City Hall is a far more interesting structure, the First World War memorial.  The structure is about four metres square, about five metres high, and has a flagpole on its roof.  There are four corner pillars, and four more side pillars a little towards the centre of each side.  The structure is made of red brick, with occasional courses of rough-hewn stone.

The east/west sides are open, although passage has been impeded by the later erection of a plain brick pillar, with a tablet commemorating the dead of all subsequent wars and skirmishes.   The north/south sides are enclosed, and the inner wall space of each side is faced with white marble inlaid with black lettering.  The south side is fully taken up with the names of those from Preston who served in World War I.  The north side lists those who served and also perished; and the balance of the tablet contains an assortment of information about the War.  From the evidence of war memorials seen elsewhere, it was commonplace to show (as the Preston memorial does) “Principal Battles”, “Historical Events and Dates”, “Historical Names and Places”, “AIF War Statistics”, and “Casualties” - but never before have I seen a listing of “The Contending Forces”.  As a consequence, however, I now know that the good guys, The Allied Powers, were Great Britain and Dominions, France and Dominions, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Japan, Serbia, Roumania, Russia for two Years, and United States of America.  The very listing is a lesson in history.  Note, in particular, that at the time the memorial was built it was appropriate – certainly in Preston Australia - to regard Australia, Canada etc. as mere British appendages under the description “Dominions”.  And note that although Russia’s withdrawal from the War after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution warranted special mention, the short war of the Americans, whose doughboys didn’t arrive in Europe until after the USA declared war in April 1917, is not similarly engraved. 

The really curious thing is why the enemy countries are also listed.  Under the heading Central European Powers are German Empire, Austro-Hungary, Turkish Empire, and Bulgaria.  Were they being accorded honourable opponent status, or are the names there merely for historical completeness?  In any case, with four groupings only, versus the long list of Allied Powers, how is it that hostilities continued for nearly 4 ½ years?  Geoffrey Blainey observes that previous wars were typically fought by armies detached from the general populace, there was a pivotal battle and a victorious army, and an armistice was signed.  But in WWI whole populations were involved, either in the military services or as producers of food and armaments to satisfy the huge scale of the military operation……………although, as Blainey points out without irony, the demand for armaments was so great that the progress of the War was frequently held up waiting for deliveries to the front of fresh supplies of bullets and shells.   Trench warfare was also a prolonging factor, as was the fact that the War was being fought on several fronts simultaneously.  And throughout the War there was the continuing game of pick-up-sides, as formerly neutral nations signed up, and their physical involvement had to be slotted in.  Then there was simple psychology - neither side wished to concede defeat.  The four months madness of the Somme in 1916 claimed nearly a million dead and wounded, and after such an investment of flesh and blood which side could surrender with honour?  Double your bets ladies and gentlemen.  But, in the end, the obvious reason why the War lasted so long is that the sides were evenly matched.   Eventually the armistice was negotiated on the back of mutual exhaustion.  Sure the German army was in retreat, but it was more a retreat in the face of the inability to win rather than a retreat based on defeat………………………………. and this mindset gave rise to the sentiment in Germany that Germany wasn’t defeated it was betrayed, a sentiment that Hitler exploited a decade later and which was fundamental to his rise to the Chancellorship.

On the whole, the High Street experience was a pleasant one, but we left on a note of incredulity.  Passing the local undertaker’s we noticed a window display of funerary jars.   These were not ashes containers of stone or metal, but were porcelain, and obviously not intended to be temporary receptacles or to be buried, but meant for the mantelpiece.  Nothing surprising about that, I guess, except that these porcelain jars were not merely product samples, they were inhabited.  The dates of each dear deceased were engraved on the side, plus a coloured depiction.  Moreover, these were not last week’s cremations - the death dates on the jars were some time ago; and the mind conjures up stories of abandonment and treachery.   Did the family get tired of the project, and decide never to collect father?  Perhaps the widow died before she could collect, and nobody else knew.  Maybe the thought of dad’s stern gaze from the mantel became too much to handle.  Or, possibly, due reflection revealed that there wasn’t enough money to pay the balance of the purchase price.   Imagine the undertaker being landed with unsaleable stock!  Turn adversity into triumph: put them on display!

One jar was for a dog.  Pet cremation, I have subsequently learnt, is a thriving industry.  Are pet cremation fees based on size?  Is it cheaper to cremate a little yapper than a big woofer?    Personally, I’d be happy to see a special discount price for the yappers – it might stimulate business.

Gary Andrews

SATURDAY BREAKFAST #12: NEPEAN HIGHWAY, FRANKSTON

Visited 26 November, 2011

Frankston used to have a reputation as bogan territory. 

Having said that, I realized that I have no direct knowledge of Frankston’s demographics, past or present, and no right to make the assumption or to pass it on.  Moreover, I’m not sure what precisely the word bogan means.  To me it is someone uneducated, rough, uncultured, boorish, and dressed outlandishly – and all of this thrust boldly in the face of non-bogans with an “up you” attitude.  Furthermore, my mind’s eye sees all bogans as teenagers or twenty-somethings; a middle-aged bogan is an incongruity - although my description can still fit.

So I looked up a dictionary of Australian slang, and read the following definition:  “A person who takes little pride in his appearance, spends his days slacking and drinking beer”.   Certainly no age limit is suggested there;  and, indeed, it is clearly possible to become more bogan-like as one ages.  There is also a useful Wikipedia entry, which includes a note on the “bogan concept”:  “Certain types of clothing are stereotypically associated with bogans, including flannelette shirts, monkey hoodies, Stubbies shorts, ugg boots, jeans and black leggings.”  There’s even a website, www.bogan.com that pokes fun at itself, while at the same time providing a detailed description of bogan characteristics and bogan behavior.

What’s now clear to me is that to describe the Frankston of 30 years ago as bogan central is to do an injustice to bogans.  Underpinning the slur on Frankston was the perception of a higher than average crime rate.  It may also have had a higher than average bogan concentration – but bogans are not criminal by definition, or even “bad” people, they are merely duh people.

Frankston 60 years ago was quite different – different from its later years of decline, and different from today…………………can you believe the profundity of that statement?  But you get the drift.  In the early 1950s Frankston was principally known for its peerless white beach, the last on the line of the eastern Bayside beaches reachable by the electrified railway system.  There was the steam train connection to Stony Point on Western Port, but Stony Point wasn’t usually a beach destination, rather the connection to the French Island ferry.  And to get to the Port Phillip beaches beyond Frankston required motor transport, not then the province of all citizens as it is today.

Fairy story:  Once upon a time the Andrews family spent a Christmas vacation at Frankston, staying in an apartment at the rear of a ladies’ hairdresser in Wells Street.    This is not my Andrews family, but my parents’ Andrews family – at that time comprising my parents, plus me, plus sister Margaret.  It was 1951/1952 I think, but it may have been earlier.  The premises were actually a small cottage, with the hairdresser in the font rooms, and the holiday let in the rear rooms with access through a side gate.  Wells Street remains, but the hairdresser’s shop and the rental accommodation are long gone.  The whole area between that spot and the railway line and station to the east has been devoured by a huge shopping area – not a discrete shopping centre, but lumps and clumps of retail development, one of the most higgledy-piggledy imaginable. 

Back in 1951 it was a dreamy summer on the beach – although with some inconvenience. No summer of my childhood ever passed without me being severely sunburnt.  Here I have to admit that the populace has become smarter, because today you never hear of a child being badly burnt – the “slip, slop, slap” campaign has been successful.  But back then, while we didn’t set out to get sunburnt (as distinct from getting a suntan), we were not ultra violet wise.  My fate was always to be burnt, while Margaret with her olive skin always “just went brown”.  My vivid memory of Frankston includes the early-on sunburnt back, some days of pain and itch and lotions, then the peeling of the outer layers of skin - in long strips off my back, with Margaret being the chief peeler.

Today’s jaunt along Nepean Highway brought this to mind as we crossed the Wells Street corner.   The strip itself, not surprisingly given the mega-retailing nearby, is no longer the “main street” location it once was, and has little to recommend it.  Perhaps a residue of boganvillia was to be seen at one corner, where there was a McDonald’s, a Subway, and a Jenny Craig, with a Weight Watchers next door to the Subway!  And there were three pawnbrokers nearby.

We had breakfast at Vada Café, number 465 Nepean Highway.  It didn’t start well.  We noted the three front of house staff, and sat down waiting to be served.  After some time we noticed the small sign over the cash register telling customers to front up with their orders.  No staff member had come near us, not to say hello, not to tell us that the system says we should order at the counter, not to tell us to get lost – which is what the lack of any welcoming smile seemed to be saying.  We are not unaware of the “place your own order” routine, but when the signage is less than prominent, and when there are ample staff numbers who are doing nothing but chatter with the barista and deliver completed orders to the tables, then the Andrews blood boils.

Then there was the chalkboard, which I didn’t see.  There was a comprehensive menu, but the muesli was toasted, and our preference was to forgo it in favour of cooked breakfasts.  Then, standing at the cash register, I noticed the dish of gooey muesli in the counter refrigerator.  Yes, it was Bircher; didn’t I see it on the chalkboard?

Anyway, having vented, I need to confess that the muesli, doused in mixed cooked berries, was scrumdiddlyumptious [Spell Check has gone berserk].  And the coffee was exceptionally good. 

In continuous projection on a television screen was a promo for a Papua New Guinea children’s charity…………..and it transpires that Vada Café is owned and operated by the Gateway Church on behalf of their Gateway Children’s Fund.  A totally worthy cause, and totally okay by me that commercial profit should be channeled to that good cause. 

One final question.  Why is it Frankston and not Frankstown?  The suffix “ton” in place names is a shortening of “town”, but why is it used for some places and not others?  Sure take your pick, but what determines the choice?  In the Melbourne region we have numerous “tons” – Frankston, Alphington, Brighton, Flemington, Hampton, Ashburton, Carlton, Kensington, Preston, Clayton and so on.  But we have only two “towns” – Williamstown and Thomastown.  I suppose I could equally ask, why isn’t it Williamston?

Gary Andrews

 

SATURDAY BREAKFAST #11 - CHURCH STREET, RICHMOND (NEAR BRIDGE ROAD CORNER)

Visited 17 December, 2011

Why choose to explore Church Street when Bridge Road is by far the more important and vibrant thoroughfare of the two intersecting streets?

The answer has more than a touch of the George Mallory rejoinder on being asked why he wished to climb Everest:  “Because it’s there”.  Couple this defiant attitude with the fact that we’ve already explored the whole of Bridge Road, and the explanation becomes as plain as vanilla. 

This was going to be a bit of a nostalgia binge for me.  I spent my growing up years (from seven to twenty-one) about 200 metres – although they were yards in those days – to the east along Bridge Road, living above my parents’ businesses, a cake shop and a delicatessen.  On this very intersection was the ES&A Bank (now ANZ), where I frequently brought the daily takings

We started our walk on the south-west corner, heading south as far as Berry Street, then north along the eastern side of Church Street as far as Highett Street, returning finally to the intersection – with breakfast along the way. 

At the starting point is a large clothing store selling “samples & seconds”, down-market, and nothing like the business it once was.  It used to be “Alexander’s”, and its fame and clientele extended way beyond Richmond.  The founder and proprietor, Ben Alexander, was a larger-than-life figure - patron and life member of the Richmond Football Club, and supporter of all things local; an ever-present figure in the store, even when wheelchair-bound in later life.  The magic died with him, and the store is named Alexander’s no more.   But high above Bridge Road is an Alexander’s advertising placard that nobody has bothered to remove……………………..take it as a reminder of the good times of the past, or take it as a symbol that all things pass in time.

To the south of the former Alexander’s is a dreary group of businesses; while on the other side of Church Street the streetscape is little better.   A couple of places have low lintels, and a step-down into the shop premises with floor levels lower than the pavement.  Very odd.  One of them, a total shambles, calls itself the Richmond Sewing Centre and offers clothing alterations and an array of similar services.  It couldn’t possibly have sufficient business to support the nine or so sewing machines set up and apparently operational.  A bit of a mystery.  Perhaps they hold sewing classes, and the machines are there for customer use. 

There’s a terrace house, once the family home of a school friend, now converted to The Old Barber Shop coffee shop; and there’s an actual barber shop, imaginatively named The Barber of Seville. 

On the south-east corner of Bridge Road, evidenced by the cellar trapdoor set into the footpath, is The Vine Hotel.  The hotel now calls itself a “gaming lounge and café bar”.  Oddly, there are no beer advertisements on the exterior.

Across the way from The Vine, on the north-east corner, is the solid and attractive terrace of two-storey single-user premises that stretches for some distance along Bridge Road.  I wonder that it has survived Whelan the Wrecker, but perhaps these days it comprises a bunch of strata-title owners and is somewhat immune from the ultimate indignity of demolition.  Further along Church Street is McDonald’s.  Obviously I have no 1950s memory of Maccas, nostalgic or otherwise, but I can’t recall what used to stand on the spot either.   I do, however, recall the previous occupant of the site of the police station next door.   This was the location of the Picton Hopkins factory.  Picton Hopkins was and is a specialist manufacturer of plaster products – cornices, ceiling roses, mouldings etc.  The business has been operated by the same family since 1857, an amazingly long continuity.  The business moved from Richmond to Preston some years ago, but in the 1950s it was a landmark Richmond business and employer.  It’s possible that the Picton Hopkins building occupied the present sites of both the police station and McDonald’s.

While the present police station is of recent vintage (commissioned in February 2004) I do have some 1950s memories of policing at Richmond.  The former Richmond police station still stands, abandoned and sealed up, around the corner in Bridge Road next to the Richmond City Hall.  It’s a free-standing two-storey brick building, with a small bluestone lock-up at the rear.  The main structure is in polychrome brickwork, and that brickwork plus the architectural detail is identical to the original sections of the City Hall visible along the side and rear (the hall gained a new façade with art deco motifs in the 1930s, leaving the original bits hidden from Bridge Road).  The old Town Hall was built in the 1890s, and I’m sure the old police station is of identical vintage.

The location of the former police station is almost opposite our old shops, and the coppers were committed pie and sandwich eaters.  So we saw a lot of the constabulary and of the plain-clothes detectives stationed at Richmond.  These were not the difficult times of the 1920s when the gangs – known as “pushes” - terrorized the streets, and when their violence was matched by police violence.  Nevertheless, there was still plenty of criminality and violence in Richmond in the 1950s, and the police were well known for their direct policing.  Many a miscreant was treated to the summary justice of a knuckle sandwich in a back lane of Richmond.  As regular luncheon patrons, the detectives were “friends”.  Friends can be asked to fix things, and such it was.  I remember one detective, Keith Platfuss, who was regarded as a tough man; and only recently I saw his name in connection with some matter later in his career, and he was still tough.  I know that the association with detective Platfuss and his colleagues gave my father a sense of security that he wouldn’t otherwise have had.

Citizens Park (in my day known as Richmond Oval) is on the corner of Church Street and Highett Street.  It’s an oval with a scrap of adjacent recreational space, and is a resource much used by today’s Richmond populace.  There are playground facilities for youngsters; and the curious rockeries and unkempt lantana and broom of 50 years ago are gone, as is the sports pavilion where Grandpa Andrews used to play cribbage upstairs with his cronies.

There’s not much of note over the road on the west side of Church Street until you get to Bridge Road – where there’s the bank on the corner, and the shopping centre tucked in behind.  Over 50 years the principal changes in the bank have been twofold – to the banking corporation, and to the premises.  It’s now an ANZ bank, the ES&A identity having disappeared in the merger of 1970.  And the former building, of classic ES&A design, was replaced years back…………hopefully the building is functional because it certainly isn’t attractive.  It is sited well back from the Bridge Road frontage, further than would be required by the town planning order over the strip of Bridge Road between Church Street and Punt Road.  This piece of town planning was intended to relieve the obvious bottle-neck caused by the narrowness of the strip, and ultimately to open out the road to the same width as Bridge Road on the flat.  It must be 50 years ago when this measure introduced the rule that all new buildings on the north side of Bridge Road must be set back a significant distance from the present street line.  The rule has no in-built time frame, and it has no applicability to individual sites unless and until there’s a plan to modify or to re-build.  The result is the broken-tooth effect we have today, with the buildings of the most recent 50 years being set back, and the older buildings having a quiet snigger on their larger allotments.  Is this long-term planning at its best or at its worst?  The reality is that times have changed, and the need to widen the street is less pressing.  Now we have clearway provisions; now the flat section of Bridge Road – courtesy of a dedicated tram lane – has itself been reduced to one vehicle lane only; and now the 40 kph zoning has reduced traffic speed much more than the narrow tarmac ever did. 

And so to the shopping centre, Richmond Plaza.  L-shaped with access from both Church Street and Bridge Road, small and pokey as the minuscule site size dictates, with a Coles supermarket and not much else.  The big news, posted on several frontages, is that a major re-development is due to commence early in 2012.  The present sad real estate will be demolished, and superseded by an edifice with from three to twelve storeys, offices, shops (including a supermarket), a gym, and up to 333 dwellings.  Some re-development!  Pity help the small shopkeepers – either the closure (and temporary re-location for many months) will break them, or the size of the rents in the new centre will do it.

On the corner of the Church Street entrance to the shopping centre we found Café Pronto, and breakfasted there.  The staff members were amiable.  The toast under the good bacon and scrambled eggs was dark rye, and buttered.  But the sausages were a mistake.  The fat seeping from the chorizo into the toast would have made the most dedicated grease freak blanch.  Why is it so hard to figure that much of the fat can be released by a few pricks to the skin, and that the application of a paper towel to the corpse of a sausage will improve its appearance and palatability no end?  Have I become a grumpy old bugger?  Don’t answer that. 

Gary Andrews