I have resurrected this blog from a pile of half-written Pieces, and have administered a final flourish. It’s a bit of a nostalgia binge, but I hope it amuses. The actual Saturday breakfast in Hawthorn occurred in October, 2016. Happily, the venue, Who’s Harry, still survives.
Whereas in most parts of the globe the seasons are said to start from the dates of the equinoxes and the solstices (the equinoxes being the 21st of September and March, the solstices the 21st of June and January), in Australia we mark the changes of season from the beginnings of those four months. So here in Melbourne the (southern) spring begins on 1st September. This year you would hardly think so - despite the calendar the dominant weather pattern has remained wintry right into October. Not that Melbourne’s winter weather deserves the scorn that flows from the inhabitants of other major centres (for instance, we get no snow), but it certainly can be bleak. Yet today, kitted in winter clothing for breakfast at Who’s Harry, we became uncomfortably hot as the morning surprised us and turned from crisp to semi-tropical.
Who’s Harry is on a corner, and the next-door places are residential, so it’s a solitary business premises. It is not large: a couple of small rooms, some seating on the pavement, and a cramped counter area for take-away customers. But the fare is excellent. I had my usual Bircher muesli, and son Dan had a (huge) “breakfast board” comprising several slices of toasted French stick, a pot of avocado/ricotta blend, spinach, a generous dish of beans in a savoury sauce, and a poached egg – accompanied by a smallish (but not small) serve of the Bircher. Plus excellent lattes. The walk-up area was busy all the time we were there.
Our area of interest had been Church Street, Hawthorn, to the southern side of the Barkers Road intersection. It is not a buzzing commercial strip. Aside from Who’s Harry and several other eateries, there is not much retail of interest. There is, however, a dealer in custom-made interior wall tiles, a clue to the generally Victorian-era nature of the suburb. Renovation of 100-plus-years-old homes is a local pastime. The streetscape parades Victorian-era architecture, although interspersed with modern office buildings. And it was one of these recent buildings that jogged my recollection that once on that spot there had stood the Vogue cinema.
I had grown up in the adjacent suburb of Richmond, itself adjacent to the CBD area of Melbourne. Hawthorn is two suburbs from the city, and my erstwhile home and the Vogue theatre were both on the same tram route – the Andrews place about 3.3 kms from the old GPO in Spencer Street (from whence, in those days, all distances from “Melbourne” were measured), with about another 2 kms to the Vogue. The point being, and the point of this blog being, that the Andrews family - specifically Gary - had easy access to a picture theatre.
But wait, there’s more. Make that plural picture theatres. Within 2 kms of where I lived there were six cinemas, and all easy to get to by tram or on foot. Those cinemas were: the aforementioned Vogue [1181 seats], in nearby Hawthorn;
the Burnley [1085 seats], in Swan Street, Burnley (Burnley is part of Richmond);
the Victoria [886 seats], in Victoria Street, North Richmond;
the Globe [912 seats], in Church Street, Richmond;
and in Bridge Road, Richmond, the Cinema [2406 seats]
The cinema industry had a big boost with the arrival in Australia of wide-screen CinemaScope in 1955, but with the introduction of television the following year there began a decline in cinema attendance. By 1960 three of my local theatres had closed – the Burnley, the Vogue and the Cinema. The Globe switched to the screening of Greek-language films from 1964, but closed in 1968 after a fire; and the National survived until 1981 – by (also) becoming a “Greek theatre”. The Victoria re-badged itself as the Valhalla, showing specialist films, but closed in Richmond in 1988, and re-located to Westgarth. (It survives today as the Palace Westgarth.) So, for the one-time cinema-going audiences of Richmond not one of the entertainment venues of the 1950s remains.
As to the buildings themselves: four are gone (translation: re-developed), while two remain. The Vogue and the National have been replaced by offices, the Victoria by a retail complex, and the site of the Globe is now a branch of the City of Yarra municipal library.
However, two of the cinema buildings have been recycled and remain largely intact. The Burnley is today a warehouse and second-hand furniture outlet,
and the Cinema is a Barbecues Galore super-store. The present-day operators have managed the respective re-purposings without too much modification; indeed, each “theatre” still has its balcony.
Walk through the Barbecues Galore showroom towards the former proscenium arch, turn around and see the unused balcony………and it’s not too hard to imagine the Saturday children’s matinee, with Kool Mints rolling down the aisles, and the distracted theatre manager on stage at interval - after the cartoons, and before the Western of the week - trying to interest hundreds of unruly youngsters in an on-stage yo-yo contest, and to get them singing the Cinema Children’s Club theme song:
Here we are again,
Happy as can be.
All good pals,
And members of CCC!
Gary Andrews
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