I have hesitated over
posting this Piece because I’ve found it so hard to identify something useful
to say. With our usual Saturday
Breakfast I find a hook on which to hang some point of interest: I rarely dwell
on the breakfast itself or the café.
But as the years go by the destinations are typically less “exciting” as
the better-known streets are ticked off, and with many locations I conclude
that there’s nothing I want to write about. [Incidentally, the very next Saturday
breakfast will be our 250th.
Who would imagine that there are 250-plus different neighbourhoods to
explore in Melbourne?] With St. Georges
Road the premises and businesses were so depressing that any Piece was likely to
be too downbeat to bother, and even when I combined consecutive Saturdays the
situation improved little. Then when I
found a hook (tattooing) I was out of my zone of experience and into a big
subject. But I have kept going…….you
need not!
ST. GEORGES ROAD,
THORNBURY
Visited 14 July, 2012
Melbourne and its surrounds has hundreds of kilometres of
bike trails; and, a few days earlier, our weekly bike ride with a group under
the auspices of a local Neighbourhood Centre had taken Annie and me along a
route that showed promise for a subsequent Saturday breakfast excursion. Our Tuesday cycling group tries so far as
possible to ride only on “dedicated”
trails. These trails are usually shared between
cyclists and walkers, but they’re off-road, and automobile hazard is
minimal………..which is just as well for grey-heads with little cycling experience,
or getting back on their bikes after years of estrangement.
We gathered near the corner of the Yarra Boulevard and the Chandler
Highway, and travelled along the Yarra Trail to Fitzroy North where we joined the
St. Georges Road Path.
St. Georges Road is the result of a farsighted piece of
surveying. For the five kilometres
stretch north from Fitzroy North it is what we used to call a three chain road,
that is thrice 22 yards wide – think of three cricket pitch equivalents end on
end – and equal in width to Royal Parade or St. Kilda Road. The inbound and outbound thoroughfares are
separated by a wide garden plantation through which runs a double tram track,
and the bike path.
On its way north the path slopes gently upwards from Fitzroy
North, through Northcote, Thornbury and Preston; and you can continue to
Reservoir and beyond. On that Tuesday
we exited near the Preston Market, had reviving coffee, then returned the way
we’d come. As I said earlier, I noticed
some shopping strips, and determined to return with son Dan for our Saturday
excursion.
We explored the group of shops at Thornbury: these are on the western side of the road only. There is a small run-down supermarket; a laundromat
that’s temporarily closed; a gymnasium that seems to be operating happily; and
someone who offers “business advice and tax,” but whose window neglects to
mention membership of any accounting or financial planning professional body,
or that the proprietor holds any licence to prepare tax returns. The pavement is narrow, and the ugly concrete
light poles are set well in from the kerb, dangerously impeding pedestrian
traffic. There’s a ladies’ hairdresser
in a premises with a remodelled frontage, but this little bit of urban renewal does
not compensate for several unsafe-looking verandahs - including one whose wooden
posts have rotted at ground level, and have been “maintained” with star pickets
driven into the ground and simply fastened to the sound wood higher up the post. There is a harbinger of a property springtime,
however: one shop premises have been levelled, and work is about to commence on
a three-storey block of apartments. A
few more of these and there might be some revival of retailing.
Not surprisingly, there is no place to have breakfast, so we
retreated south to the Northcote section of St. Georges Road. We didn’t have time to explore the nearby
streetscape, but found the Breakfast Club Café at number 206. The Breakfast
Club Café has retro décor, and a pleasantly cluttered feel. It is very small: nine seats at tables, six
window stools, and ten chairs on the footpath at four tables - and no takers on
the day, because of the cold. But, also
because of the cold, knitted knee-rugs were folded over the backs of the outdoor
chairs, expectant but unused
The two staff were young, female, vivacious and efficient. In addition to attending to customers they
were making scones. The coffee was to
die for. The muesli was wholegrain, a
little unusual, but mixed with cranberries and nuts, shredded apple on top and
a glob of yoghurt. Very fine……..but
then, on leaving, we noticed the chalkboard, and the special of orange blossom
porridge, with a glut of toppings. Yes,
the porridge would still be on next week, so we made a date to return.
ST. GEORGES ROAD,
NORTHCOTE
Visited 21 July, 2012
The business premises in the Northcote section of St.
Georges Road are more extensive than at Thornbury, on both sides of the road, but
also mostly run down. Although there are
a couple of places that seem to be prospering - a florist, also stocking knick-knacks
and a range of gourmet preserves; a hairdresser; a shared premises of “natural
health therapists”; and a licenced grocer that’s presumably solvent - most
businesses are dead and don’t know it: a
Foodworks supermarket, on a corner location, the windows on both its frontages
having roller shutters as protection against some threat real or perceived; an
Indian grocery no more prepossessing; a dry cleaner and a laundromat, both of
dubious cleanliness; and a second-hand furniture and bric-a-brac shop whose
stock lines even the Salvos would reject.
There are several empty premises, including the substantial Windsor
Smith footwear factory at the edge of the strip whose business has relocated. Furthermore, there is a significant infestation
of graffiti on the shopfronts, a sure indication of the lack of resilience in
the shopkeepers and the property owners.
Strangely, despite the absence of soul, there is plenty of
attention offered to body: in this cluster
of maybe 40 premises there is the aforementioned natural therapies group, medical
rooms, a healthcare business, an osteopath, and a naturopath etc. practising under
the Urban Sense badge. And there is a
tattooist – indeed occupying double premises, and Health Department approved!
I expect that tattooing is today rather more popular than it
used to be say a generation ago, and that it’s rather more “in your face”, with
extensive body coverage being more the vogue than the one-time modestly-sized
forearm image.
The word tattoo derives from the Tahitian word tatau, and its usage in Britain - and
elsewhere by extension - dates from the time when Captain Cook brought a
tattooed Tahitian native to London. The
practice was widespread in Tahiti, and a number of Cook’s men had succumbed. This was the introduction of the word into
Britain, but not the introduction of tattooing per se: it is thought that Anglo-Saxon kings of England had been
tattooed. In Cook’s time though (the
late 1770s) the practice was no longer widespread; but because of Cook it
became something of a high society phenomenon.
In the last 200 years or so tattooing has spread by a sort of osmosis down from the aristocracy and up from the seafarers. Peer pressure has been very influential, and
not only with sailors, prison inmates and bikies (the peer pressure on whom is
doubtless extreme).
Notwithstanding its ubiquity, and despite its growing
acceptance, tattooing remains a subject of never-ending debate. Recently the Herald Sun ran a survey – with spectacular bias implicit in the
question - on whether persons with visible tattoos should be barred from
nightclub venues. The question was
clearly underpinned by the presumption that those with tattoos, and visible
ones what’s more, are likely to be troublemakers, whereas those with no tatts
or with tatts hidden from view, are less likely to be troublemakers. Inevitably the poll would have produced the
result that the paper had sought. I wonder
whether those who voted “anti tattoo” would be surprised to learn that
Churchill had a tattoo, as did Roosevelt, George V, and Edison, and as do
Beckham, Jolie, Depp, Gaga, Urban and Spears, indeed a huge number of
present-day entertainment celebrities.
Does it really matter? Who gives
a rat’s? Is tattooing just another of
those issues the discussion of which generates more heat than light?
Not surprisingly, tattooing blips the radar screens of some
parts of the world of religion. At an
objective level it’s hard to see how a tattoo – short of one that’s blasphemous
or generally offensive – could raise religious ire, but in some communities it
would. There is a range of views in the Jewish
community, with Orthodox Jews prohibiting the practice on the authority of a
passage in Leviticus, but most Jewish groups having a non-prescriptive
stance. The majority of Sunni Muslims
hold that, under Islamic Law, tattoos are forbidden because tattooing is
mutilation of the human form that God has already perfected. There is no Christian orthodoxy. Adherents who disapprove of tattooing are
able to cite a number of Biblical references (in addition to Leviticus) that
seem to put the kibosh; others, with no particular position, don’t have the
need to ferret out Biblical authority either way. The Catholics, ever practical, have no
prohibition - so long as the tattoo is not contrary to religious sentiment. Indeed, history records an incident where a
Christian with a tattoo described as being “for the sake of God” – meaning a
cross, or an image of Christ or a saint – was commended as praiseworthy by a Catholic
council. The fact that this happened in
the year 786 CE makes it quite a long-standing precedent.
By the way, the orange blossom porridge served at the
Breakfast Club Café was not quite as good as its tantalising description,
although we left none on our plates. The
poached fruit on the top – mainly figs, but also peach and some dried fruits -
all sprinkled with shavings of nuts, was excellent. There were no regrets about this visit to our
only ever two-time Saturday breakfast venue.
Gary Andrews
