RECENT COMMENTS

Thursday, August 26, 2010

melb 59



From a fabulous flickr set: Australia 1959-1960 that features great street scenes of Melbourne including:

Collins st

Swanston Street

ICI house

Royal Women's

 

10 comments:

Ann ODyne said...

The Coles photo makes Bourke St look very benign. maybe it was Sunday. I recall the pedestrian crossing between Coles and Myer opposite, as being a roiling surge of Ednas crossing the nano-second the light was green. Thousands of people at once.
The Collins St Tourist Bureau interior was a fabulous 50's Moderne Juan Miro-style artwork of patchwork vinyl.
Interested to see 'Elna' in nextdoor window - Sportsgirl must not have opened there yet.

The green tiled ICI building was raved about by Smarties, and reviled as a toilet block by the mob. This architectural denunciation became known as 'Atism (according to the WV).

boynton said...

This interior?

50s moderne preceded by 40s emu?

Yes - heard about the ICI reception of icon, and there are some nice-ici pics there.
(Think it has some significance for TT)


WV tends
(architectural trends with the r-end removed)

iODyne said...

oh thank you - that's what I remember.
'Tourism Victoria' at the time of those photos, would have been booking an Ansett Coach trip to Warburton, possible a train to Sydney to leer at Les Girls in KingsX, or for really posh people, an Ansett Coach honeymoon in Surfer's, for which they would have dressed as for the Member's on Melbourne Cup Day.
Look at the adults in all these old photos, some of them were 23, and imagine how The Sixties teen-culture hit them right in the face like a soggy beachtowel.
Long hair, short skirts, and 'different' was so threatening.

boynton said...

watching old docos, many people actually seem to get younger as the 60s and 70s hit. Reverse ageing, if they could let their hair down.

There is a Vic Tourism photo I saw of a wartime queue, for a holiday.
The city's past is a foreign country.

genevieve said...

You have me yearning for a shot of the interior of Hillier's right now.
Off I go to look...
(remember getting a malted milk there with my dad in 1967, AND I think he got change from a dollar too. What a fairytale.)

R.H. said...

That photo is before Melbourne became New York. People wore heavier clothing in those days. And cars parked outside Coles? Good heavens. Slower times.
I'm told a posh cafe in Anderson Street Yarraville (name too classy to recall, but it's beside the railway line) presents its victuals on emblazoned crockery from Coles Footscray. How's that for irony.
Forges Footscray is finally empty. The closing-down sale went on for weeks. Window notices say they've moved to Central West Plaza (wherever that is). Some people might remember a clothes shop in Elizabeth Street. They had a closing-down sale for seventeen years. In the end it was fair dinkum and no one believed them.

boynton said...

I had a malted milk in Bendigo Myers in the mid nineties - thinking at the time, this is a time warp.

Re: posh cafe. That's a bit too ironic for me, RH.
Sense there's a sneer in the soup-bowl, but who knows, maybe it's done with affection.
I guess 'closing' is a relative term.

R.H. said...

It's Plan Nine From Outer Space: reverse value; something so bad it's good. I'm a sucker for it myself, I'd like one of those heavy china mugs you could get coffee in while standing at fixed round tables on Flinders Street station. They had VR on the side and would be quite the thing for Latte Fitzroy, a huge irony itself.

boynton said...

VR = reverse value

R.H. said...

oh.





Well done.