SATURDAY BREAKFASTS #24 AND #25: ST. GEORGES ROAD

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 250^th.  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

SATURDAY BREAKFAST #23: SPENCER STREET, MELBOURNE (BETWEEN FLINDERS and LONSDALE STREETS))

Visited 28 July, 2012

There are a couple of words that Australians use rarely, but which are solidly American.   The words are “carpetbagger” and “huckster”.  

Carpetbagger is a wholly American word, originating from the United States in the late 1860s, the years immediately following the Civil War.  The American South was in ruins, and was invaded by profiteers from the North seeking to make their fortunes during the period of reconstruction.   These opportunists travelled light, typically carrying their effects in small suitcases made of carpet – hence carpetbaggers, a less than complimentary term.  Carpetbaggers, while expressing solicitude, seek to make money from the misfortunes of others.

As to huckster: the Americans have taken the word over from old English, and adapted it for their own purposes.  Originally nothing more than a peddler, huckster today in its simplest form is someone who works in advertising.  But at its most pejorative, it is one who uses aggressive and questionable methods of selling.  The 1947 movie, The Hucksters, had Clark Gable [integrity, white hat] battling the powers of advertising [unscrupulous, black hats].  Hucksterism was on show. Not attractive.

These two words came to mind as we breakfasted at the Vibe Savoy Hotel on the corner of Spencer and Little Collins Streets.  I have been to the Savoy a number of times, often as a guest of the Government of Nauru, and most memorably in 1987 on the occasion of the grand re-opening after a reported $46 million refurbishment.  The hotel was then owned by Nauruan interests.

Poor, sad, Nauru is a victim of colonial and commercial imperialism; but it is also the victim of mismanagement by its leaders – it once had the lot, and now has nothing.

Nauru is such a tiny place, 21 square kilometres only; and with fewer than 10000 people has the second smallest population of any state (after the Vatican).  The island was settled by Micronesian and Polynesian peoples more than 3000 years ago, and its remoteness from other Pacific islands has led to a distinctive Nauruan people and language.  First contacts with European seafarers date from the late 1700s.  Nauru was annexed by Germany in 1888, the same year that the Christian missionaries arrived.  The island was “captured” by Australian troops in 1914, and after the end of the Great War, it became a territory mandated by the League of Nations to the joint administration of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom; and later there was a similar United Nations trusteeship.  Nauru gained its independence on 31 January, 1968.

Phosphate was discovered on Nauru in 1900, and the huge deposits have since been the mainstay of the Nauruan economy, although the extraction of those deposits has seen the fracturing of traditional life.  Much of the centre of the island, once a hillock with its highest point 71 metres, is now a “lunar landscape” – jagged coral pinnacles from between which the phosphate has been removed; once vegetation-covered tribal land, now uninhabitable, with the entire populace relocated to the coastal fringe.

The wealth from the phosphate accrued first to German interests, then to the British Phosphate Commission, and then – from 1968 – to the Nauru Phosphate Commission and the people of Nauru.

Where do the carpetbaggers and the hucksters come in?  Well, at one time in the 1980s there was a Nauru national investment fund reportedly valued at $1.3 billion; today that fund may be as little as $100 million, all lost through unwise investment.  Acquisition of property in Melbourne (and Sydney) proved to be a particular disaster.  Take the Southern Cross Hotel, the site of the Carlton brewery, the site on the corner of Spencer and Bourke Streets, then take insufficient resources to turn them into successful property developments, and you have inevitable sale off at a loss.  And then you have the eventual sale of the successful property investments (Downtowner Motel in Carlton, Nauru House, and the Savoy) to cover debt.  It was the seductive tales of the real estate carpetbaggers and hucksters, coupled with the naivety and hubris of Nauruan leaders, that produced this mess.  The Nauruan people are the sufferers.  One Melbourne property consultant was reported to have said that he was probably the only estate agent in the World who had sent a country broke!

Anyway, this woeful story was in my thoughts over breakfast at the Vibe Savoy.  The breakfast, by the way, was average to poor.  It was the usual hotel buffet, but very small-scale, and suffered simply from the lack of takers.  I don’t know the hotel’s occupancy rate, but would guess that there is currently a problem.  A shame, really, because the building is handsome, the rooms first rate, and the location fine.

The Savoy in Melbourne has a long history; there has been a hotel on the Spencer Street site since 1866 when Charles Alexander built and named Alexander’s Family Hotel.  Thus it remained until 1923, when renamed the Sunshine Hotel.  James Richardson, prominent hotelier, acquired the property in 1926, demolished and rebuilt, and revived the Hotel Alexander name.  The Federal Hotels group became the new owners in 1954, and the hotel was renamed the Savoy Plaza.  Then a curious twist: in 1974 the Victorian Government took over the building, and used it for some years as the training college for prospective members of the police force.  The Nauruans’ massive 1987 makeover restored it as a hotel, now named the Savoy Park Plaza. Finally, the new ownership from 2004, and the present name Vibe Savoy.

The hotel building was strongly influenced by the American architectural fashions of 1926.  Although there were art deco touches in the guest rooms it was said to have been built in the style of a 16^th century Italian townhouse.  Originally entered from Spencer Street up a wide staircase to the first floor, the Nauruan remodelling inserted a ground floor entrance foyer and facilities off Little Collins Street.  The architectural styles and touches all came together successfully, and the Savoy remains one of the most elegant buildings in the city.

If “change” equals “vibrancy” then the three-block stretch of Spencer Street between Lonsdale and Flinders Streets must be the most vibrant in the Melbourne CBD. The eastern side has a bunch of new hotels (contributing, no doubt, to falling occupancy at the Vibe Savoy); the former GPO has been converted to apartments, with a spacious restaurant in the ground floor; there are a couple of high-rise residentials; and the former headquarters of The Age is a major project under construction. 

The old Sir Charles Hotham Hotel, on the corner of Flinders Street is, sadly, no longer vibrant.  Although not so long ago a backpackers’ hostel, today it is unoccupied, and its owners are clearly aiming to demolish it by neglect………several upstairs windows are open, and exposing the interior to the elements.  In time there will be an order to demolish and that will be that.  The 1912 building, in the Queen Anne style, has clearly “seen better days”, but it doesn’t deserve such an undignified fate.  Indeed, although it has never received the official recognition of a National Trust or a Heritage listing, it is an important building in the history of Melbourne architecture.  It was designed by William Pitt, one of Melbourne’s great architects, architect of The Rialto, the Olderfleet building, St. Kilda Town Hall, the Bryant & May factory in Richmond, the Princess’ Theatre, and many others.  A number of Pitt buildings have been destroyed, including the Federal Coffee Palace, later the Federal Hotel (on the corner of Collins and King Streets) and it would be a shame to lose another.

I shall now confess to a memory lapse.  Back in the 1960s I used to attend to the income tax affairs of the Sir Charles Hotham’s owner.  Fifty years on I cannot recall his name!  It will doubtless come to me after this blog is posted.  He was a large shambling man, already in his 80s, and he lived a reclusive life alone in a remote corner of the hotel.  This is no doubt an exaggeration, but I recall his principal passion as the search for authentication of an “old master” he possessed.  I don’t remember whether he’d inherited the painting, or whether he had bought it years before, but he’d become obsessed with the thought that it was old, and that it was valuable.  He had had no luck in his search for validation and vindication, and was happy to share his dilemma with me.  The painting certainly looked old, and grimy; but the people at the National Gallery had apparently passed up the opportunity to claim discovery of an unknown masterpiece.  

Mr. X said his painting was named The Cenci.  I find now that The Cenci is the name of a play by Percy Shelley, based on the doings of a Roman family circa 1599.  The play was never performed in Shelley’s lifetime, because incest and parricide were not at the time considered nice.  But Mr. X’s painting and Shelley’s play might have been set in the same era.  Who knows?  And who knows what happened to the painting after Mr. X’s death.  I certainly don’t.  I do know that the descent of the Sir Charles Hotham into oblivion has been inexorable.  It went from licenced hotel to private hotel to backpackers.  It flirted with cheap entertainment, including sandwich lunches accompanied by female strippers, the performers slipping back into their bank employee uniforms before returning to their desks.  There weren’t many opportunities for resurrection after that.  As our walk past highlighted, the Sir Charles Hotham needs a saviour with lots of money, and needs it quickly. 

The western side of Spencer Street has changed even more so than the eastern; but one of the most significant changes shows the least evidence of it.   I’m referring to the former Victorian Railways administration building on the south-west corner of Spencer and Flinders Streets.  To describe this building as monumental is no exaggeration.  It was built in the late 1880s, and under Railways ownership had a couple of major later additions - additions of extra floors, but totally sympathetic to the basic form and appearance of the building.  But as of 1985 the Railways personnel had been re-located, and the Government had earmarked the building for sale as a surplus public building.  Sale was effected, but the building languished in private hands, until it was reopened in 1998 as The Grand Hotel (117 apartment suites) and three floors of privately-owned Grand Central Apartments.  A splendid outcome.

A couple of blocks further north, adjacent to the old Spencer Street railway station (specifically alongside the platform where the interstate trains arrived) there used to be an extensive ground-level car park.  Now, since the latest re-modelling of the station and its emergence as Southern Cross, the parking space has been relegated to a multi-storey privately run operation quite a distance from the station.  In between the station and the car park there is the bus depot, with lots of food and other shopping on the street frontage.  All this is pedestrian and boring, and the contrast with the beautiful Savoy building and the sturdy former GPO building across the street is stark.

Then there is the Southern Cross station building itself.  Winner of awards for its design, it gets no award from me.  The undulating roofline is little more than a gimmick; and, as the storms of 18-months ago proved, it wasn’t even soundly engineered.  The station building is not there for the benefit of the trains; it’s there to make the whole experience of departure and arrival as efficient and as trouble-free as possible.  The edifice may indeed be all this, but there’s something else: it should be an amenable environment.  In this regard, in my view, Southern Cross is a failure – for one thing alone:  it doesn’t protect the public from the Melbourne winds. 

Obviously it’s not possible to protect the platforms from the wind and the cold, but by purposely leaving the building open at the Spencer Street side the architects have intentionally created a massive wind tunnel.  I can see the stylistic charm of the high roofline over the streetscape and the open space below – a very grand aperture – but in inclement weather there is no protection whatever: either the elements lashing in from Spencer Street, or the bleak wind rushing through from the platforms and out to Spencer Street.  Very innovative, and very stupid.  

One final and more positive note, although it’s a good news bad news story.   The previous station building, when Spencer Street, housed a large mural, painted by Harold Freedman (with a couple of assistants) and installed in 1978.   It was titled History of Transport, and was more than 36 metres long and 7 metres high.  I always regarded it as pretty awful, with its depictions of multiple modes of transport, not just railways.  Akin to the public art of (say) Diego Rivera in Mexico, there was plenty of colour and movement, and little subtlety.  Nevertheless, such works should never be intentionally destroyed in the name of progress.  There was no place for the History of Transport mural in the new Southern Cross complex, but it was preserved, first in storage for three years, then re-erected on the wall of the nearby Direct Factory Outlet premises.  An ignominious resting place perhaps, but a victory for the right thing, which even public authorities can sometimes do.

Gary Andrews

ANNIE AND PATCHWORKING

I spent much of the day hovering – loitering, really – beside and behind groups of women, eavesdropping on their comments and conversations.  Odd behaviour maybe, but necessary in order to gauge the reaction to Annie’s quilts.

The occasion was the annual show of Victorian Quilters Inc., Quilt Showcase 2012.  Annie, my wife, is a long-time member of Vic Quilters, and a frequent exhibitor in the annual show; and a prize-winner a number of times. 

Annie is a patchworker.  This is not something she does for profit, but it’s certainly something she does for pleasure.  And to say that patchworking is a pastime or a hobby - in my view, and certainly based on my observation – would be to devalue its importance.  This is not something to be picked up from time to time when the mood arises or when time permits; there is a commitment. The importance to Annie is evidenced by the fact that, on those annoying and intrusive forms that require one to indicate occupation, Annie inserts “patchworker”.  This is what she does; this is part of her identity, who she is.

It started a bit over 20 years ago.  Annie was already in her 40s, and had dabbled in a range of crafts.  There had even been early quilting attempts.  She had been her own dressmaker when a teenager, and had been a lifelong knitter.  Then she saw a notice about a forthcoming patchworking class at a nearby shop, joined the class, and was hooked.  [Primarily Patchwork is no longer trading in Canterbury, although the proprietor Di Ford remains active in the field.]

Annie likes to say that “the rest is history”, but that history didn’t just happen, and it wasn’t history made by others.  It was Annie’s history.  The current buzzword is “journey”, and patchworking has been a significant and pervasive backdrop to Annie’s journey of the past 20 years.  During more than ten of those years Annie was afflicted with chronic fatigue syndrome, and she freely acknowledges that her patchworking – one of the few things that she had the energy for – “kept her sane”.

All that is long past.  Today Annie is well and vigorous, and as busy as ever with her quilts.  With groups of friends she has made numerous small quilts for hospital nurseries and other good causes; and there have been group “friendship” quilts for friends’ birthdays; and others where the piecing and the quilting has been by machine rather than by hand.  But hand piecing, and hand quilting, is Annie’s passion; and, not surprisingly, therefore, some of her larger efforts have taken more than a year to complete.  Completion time is also stretched by working on more than one quilt at a time.  Still there’s always the deadline of some upcoming quilt show: in addition to Vic Quilters Annie has exhibited at the show of her patchworking club, Waverley Patchworkers, and at the Sydney Quilt Show.

The majority of quilts made (and exhibited) these days are machine pieced, certainly machine quilted – perhaps not so surprising in these “busier” times, and times with so many other preoccupations.  But Annie is disappointed at the trend, because it has tended to devalue the time and effort that goes into hand work.  When you think about it, there’s a pretty prodigious effort involved in embarking on a task that, at the outset, is known will take a year to complete. 

And so, with Annie’s “old fashioned” attitude to patchworking, it was doubly satisfying for her to be invited to be the Profile Quilter at this year’s Vic Quilters Showcase.  This involves a display area, separate from the quilts entered in the Showcase itself, for about 25 of Annie’s quilts.  Yes, there are 25, and more.  The quilts are arranged in completion order, and each has an accompanying short description.  Where the quilt has won some prize, the rosette or the ribbon is affixed.   Annie sits there, on display like her quilts, working on her latest quilt, happily sharing her experience with those who ask, and rightly (albeit modestly) receiving occasional words of praise.

At home a couple of the quilts are on the beds, but mostly they are stacked, so even when there might be a “show and tell” for some visitor there’s no way to get a full view or proper perspective.  Thus to see 25 of them individually displayed is really exciting.  And to see them hung in chronological order is a bonus…………although I reckon that it would be a mistake to assume that the earlier ones are inferior; Annie seems to have appeared on the patchworking scene fully formed.  Her sense of colour is matchless, and her work is superb.

So there I was yesterday, on opening day, with a mere passing interest in the quilt Showcase itself, spending nearly all my time prowling back and forth along Annie’s artworks – be in no doubt, this is an artist’s retrospective!  I was not disappointed by what I heard, and in the reactions I observed.  And more than once I was a little overwhelmed by the magnitude of Annie’s work, and the life she has invested in its execution.

Enjoy Saturday and Sunday, Annie.

Love, Gary

27 July, 2012

 

SATURDAY BREAKFAST #22: GLEN HUNTLY ROAD, ELSTERNWICK (EAST OF ORRONG ROAD)

Visited 21 April 2012

There’s something about hairdressing that inspires cute business names:  Hair 4 You, Tortoise Hair, Short Cuts, Mane Identity, Hair Today Gone Tomorrow.  Thoughts of this tonsorial inventiveness were triggered by the name of today’s breakfast venue, Bigger than my Belly – quite an adventurous title for a simple eatery, but one not to forget.  And the food was worth recalling, too:  excellent strong coffee; Bircher full of everything in the way of fruit and nuts; and porridge with maple syrup, pecans and sliced banana.

The retail precinct of Glen Huntly Road to the east of Orrong Road is a continuation of the extensive and vibrant strip to the west that runs all the way from the railway line and from Brighton Road beyond.  It is shorter than its westerly counterpart, but has stand-alone vigour.   There is an extraordinary number of eating places.  The commercial zone drifts into the residential zone without imparting the sense of petering out.  Right at the end of the shops is a retirement complex providing “care compassion and companionship”, all under the banner of Graceland Manor.  I can’t dislodge the word grotesque from my mind.  Somewhat coincidentally, there was yesterday’s report of the death of the American DJ and music entrepreneur, Dick Clark, who in his early days must have spun many an Elvis disc.

We had parked around the corner in Orrong Road to the south.  As we walked to Glen Huntly Road we paused to be amazed by the two storey Victorian-era mansion at number 70.  I am not averse to piling a bit of fulsome praise on buildings that excite and delight, but this one has sent me into an adjective-hunting frenzy.  It is grand and ornate and elegant.  It is flamboyant yet tasteful.  It is very heavily decorated, but has the solidity to get away with it – it is no gingerbread monstrosity.    It sits close to the street and square on, with a verandah along the whole front (but not around the sides), and a matching balcony above.  The façade, above and below, is heavily decorated with cast iron, all intact.  At each end of the verandah and balcony are robust square pillars, stone and ornate.  Above the balcony the façade is set back, with mouldings and cappings, and wings either side atop the pillars.  The decorative motifs – for instance, closed urns with pointed finials – all seem to be undamaged; but, sadly, the place as a whole is run down. 

The building is named Lisbon House, and therein must lie a story.   Was it built by a Portuguese?  Or by someone who had a happy memory or a romantic vision of Lisbon?  Or perhaps it’s called after a ship of that name?  But I confess to considerable frustration, having been unable to find anything of that story.  I can find no listing by the National Trust, or in the Heritage register.  The website of the City of Glen Eira has a “history” page, but the principal focus is on municipal history and there’s scant reference to social history.  I haven’t been able to track down a local history of Elsternwick that might have some reference to Lisbon House’s origins…………………… but there is a photograph in the bare bones Wikipedia page for Elsternwick, so somebody else must think that the building is noteworthy.

However, my search for information about Lisbon House past has by chance led me to something about Lisbon House present.  Web pages are rarely dated, and I have to assume that what I’ve unearthed is “current”:  Lisbon House is occupied by a group named The House.  The House is as mysterious as Lisbon House.  An internet search for “The House” turned up more than five million hits, including The House licenced brothel at Hornsby in Sydney – whose website, for geographical reasons of course, didn’t detain me for long.  As for the other millions of web sites:  too much trouble.  So the only information I have about The House is from its own web pages……………………….it started at Elwood in 1996; it is “now residing” at Lisbon House;  it has recently been developing “as a hub for human communities”, although it has “always interested itself with public versus private space and human creativity”; its residents (presumably residing in Lisbon House) “experiment with creativity and lifestyle, trying to create a balance between a home for ideas and a functional living space”.  [Are you still with me?]  “Such incubators explore the practical and political impacts of living within the urban environment, while also dealing with the political, cultural and peer pressures that go with everyday living.”

So, there is a bunch of people living at Lisbon House under the auspices of a group who badge themselves as The House.  Or are the residents themselves The House?  Regardless, residencies are for an initial three months period, and may be extended “based on the life of an idea submitted to fellow residents.  The ideas development and/or implementation are the indicators” that determine whether residencies are extended.  It is not explained how the “life” of an idea is judged.  The author of the web pages, in my anything but humble opinion, has his or her head stuck firmly up his or her fundament, and needs a lesson in plainspeak.

As to whether consensus rules, or the majority rule: this is not explained; and nor is there any indication as to how residents are recruited or chosen, or what they’re expected to pay for board and lodging, if anything.  More generally, there is no explanation of how The House is funded.  

Nevertheless, they are not simply navel gazers.  They are proponents of the benefits of local communities and local shopping.  They give Chadstone and Southland shopping centres a serve, and attempt, rather, to “engage with local and related services”.  Indeed, they encourage local service providers to advertise on The House’s website, and several do so.  The House facilitates “community chats”, and runs “community forums” – “anything from entertainment to health, business to politics”; or add your own topic.

Whatever the truth of The House, it seems to be fairly harmless.  Or is it?  I mean harmless in two senses – that the organization isn’t harming the local community, and that the organization isn’t harming the residents.  With regard to the latter, there can be quite a bumpy ride from starry-eyed to reality, and it’s a short journey from individual freedom to group duress. 

So, is The House a fluid group of people, formless and fluffy, living in a suburban community it supports and seeks to engage; or is it itself a community with a more inward focus than at first appears?  The outreach into the Elsternwick neighbourhood suggests the former, but the rigidity and humourlessness suggests the latter.  Utopian communes are notoriously unstable, and fall apart for a variety of reasons.  I am guessing that principal among these reasons is the issue of governance, underscored by the human truth – observed by many, but captured by George Orwell in his farm-yard analogy - that while all men are equal some are more equal than others. 

Maybe it’s for fear of the rise of a leader that residency at Lisbon House is for short periods only; or maybe it’s because there is already a heavy hand who does not wish to encourage any disruption to the status quo.  Or maybe the heavy hand is mine alone.            

Gary Andrews