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

 

glamour

One of the items at the exhibition* was a postcard of this hotel in Phillip Island

I used to think this hotel was the last word in glamour when I was six.




This was a glamourous place too...
 

danger

danger

While browsing Bacchus Marsh pics (as you do) I chanced upon an image from childhood that has since disappeared - one of the Danger signs that used to grace intersections in Melbourne. There used to be one along the late 60s valiant trek from the foothills to Preston, though who knows where it was exactly in those 20 scary miles of melways.

But I'm not old enough to remember the clocks
 

bernie

... in Street

in Footscray


(on behalf of Bwca)

floats

Images from the Moomba Parades from 1962 - 1965


(prompted by Tim's Sars post)

rockets

R was for Rocket


I remember spending a couple of goggle.hours looking for an image similar to this once.
I was after the everyday rocket-ware that adorned Dickens or the playgrounds of chadstone past.
Part of a great Flickr set

al fresco

Welcome to the Australian barbecue, 2008. Not everyone grills in the shadow of an architect-designed mansion, of course, but today's typical barbie barely resembles the simple snags-and-chops affairs of yore...

Sgarbossa, a property developer, has also seen the change. "When clients give me the specifications, they now include the barbecue," he says. "They think nothing of spending 50 grand on an al fresco dining area. That wouldn't have happened a few years ago. A barbecue was something you just put on the veranda."
Toffs 'n' tongs. The Age

I'll take the yore, thanks.

yore
yore
yore
 

experiments

Why is it so...
 

Sherry?

One thing that struck me about that second Morningtown (sic) pic link in the previous post was the price of groceries!!! As far as I can tell LtoR that's : Weeties 20c, Sqtyxlcs 33c, Carrots 10c, Pure Juice 12c, Round Steak 65c
Quite a balanced bayside diet if you ask me.
Alas, I can't determine what the mystery item is for 33c. Something halfway between Weeties and Meat I guess...

smelled

Vitamin Q: What British people smelled of in the early 1950s

Plan59 "Burning Man 1950
(see Aug 10 for text)
 

bumper

following up a recent discussion about bumpers cars, boynton started searching for some pictures of the kind of cars not dodgems she remembered.
It was not an auspcious start.
After so many googlepages of bumpers not dodgems, this picture was about the closest she could find but it's still NQR. These cars might match the scale but not the style of the Luna Park models. Calling all cars for memories.
On the other hand, dodgems not bumpers can be impressive - especially when they're buffalo cat cow mouse and up for sale.

The good thing about the web is that even when you don't find what you're looking for, the red herrings are diverting. There were more bumpers at this site - but they were dodgems not bumpers and they were scale models to build. You can build your own model amusement park. When boynton last looked at the world of miniature enthusiasts, she read of the theory that by minatiaturizing we make the world seem safer. Alas, some of the mini amusement rides seem as dangerous as their larger bretheren. For example the rating for the roller coaster:
Problems with this ride. Coaster operates for a few loops around the track, then track needs adjustment. This causes the cars to jump the track. Very finicky!
Like-wise the dreaded ghost train:
A good looking ride, but with a few problems... Driving chain occasionaly becomes stuck
miss boynton maintains a healthy mistrust of amusment rides on any scale.

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Comments: bumper

Yes. The bumpers had a big battery in the boot. Foot on pedal - go - foot off pedal - stop. Like a dodgem without the sparks. Rode around on a smooth polished concrete oval surface.
Posted by Nora at August 22, 2003 04:57 PM

Well, I'm definitely not letting Leslie read this page. I'll never get her on another coaster, even the apparently sedate ones.
Posted by Loren at August 22, 2003 05:11 PM

Nora: glad you confirmed my memory of LP. Was beginning to think I had imagined these cars?
And isn't that "Go/stop" automatic transmission? ...I wish.

Loren, let Leslie read this page. On behalf of the meek and sedate coaster chickens everywhere ;)
Posted by boynton at August 22, 2003 09:23 PM

I used to be a devotee of these rides, but as I'm now older, I'd prefer not to be shaken up or tossed about.
Posted by Scott Wickstein at August 23, 2003 01:09 AM

very wise, Scott.
actually though, if anything I'm the reverse
Posted by boynton at August 23, 2003 05:43 PM

Yes, it usually works out that way you know.

Me Olsen (Keeping up Apperances)
Posted by Scott Wickstein at August 24, 2003 01:41 AM

black beauty

as an update to the bicycle horse, Black Beauty and Black Beauty.

Last from the BB catalog at the marvellous bicycle Nostalgic.net via .s .

bike whisperer

in a nostalgic mood and around about the Unusual Museums of the Internet, boynton remembered that as a child she would often endow her bicycle as a horse. She dreamt of owning a chestnut, agisting it on the pipe-line, (as people did) but instead rode a beloved hand-me-down malvern star. Sometimes as a horse.
She once wrote a poem containing the lines:
tethering our malvern stars
outside milk bars
This is one of the few vintage malvern star images - (from morwell 1945 via korea) - with the nice line for spins during leisure hours

more nostalgia here at the British Lawnmower Museum Gallery: Allow Nora our Tour Guide To show you round.

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Comments: bike whisperer

Methinks you may be feeling a tad http://nostalgic.net/ ? And I see that in the lawnmower gallery they have just the car for me: http://www.lawnmowerworld.co.uk/prod03.htm , finally, I meet my rapid transit.

Excellent finds, all 'round.
Posted by .es at August 21, 2003 03:16 PM

Oh what sport! I've only just checked out ONE link on ONE link so far at Nostalgia - but the pictures of saddles are wonderful. Many thanks.

And that car is a find! It's Mine!
I think I once thought that driving a car could be fun. I imagined vehicles like this.
Best driving experience I ever had was in the old Bumper cars at Luna Park - that is, the most confident I ever felt behind a wheel!

(ps - The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: Female!)
Posted by boynton at August 21, 2003 03:29 PM

My God- I did exactly the same thing with my Malvern Star too...
Posted by mcb at August 21, 2003 04:02 PM

They were good sound horses weren't they, mcb.
Posted by boynton at August 21, 2003 04:06 PM

I'm glad someone else has memories of bumper cars being fun. I went on a bumper car ride at the local show recently (with 10 year old daughter) and it was not the remembered experience! The cars bumped and jerked and crunched and crashed, but never actually seemed to drive - I'm sure they did when I was a kid .... am I right, or should I just book myself into a museum?
Posted by wen at August 21, 2003 06:19 PM

I don't know how the modern ones compare - all I remember is a very pleasant experience when I was about 8 or 9 driving at Luna Park with my oldest sister. They did drive, I'm sure.
Perhaps the scale suits kids better - or perhpas the style was better then?
I preferred them to the dodgems, because I didn't like the sparks! (I was a rather sensitive child)
Interesting ground, wen, and prompts me to do some research.
Posted by boynton at August 21, 2003 06:26 PM

Oh - I think I've confused bumper cars with dodgems - these ones definitely had sparks. Maybe they don't make bumper cars anymore.

Not sensitive, Boynton, sensible.
Posted by wen at August 21, 2003 06:35 PM

Well bumpers certainly spoiled me for driving anyway, wen. Where else can you slowly trundle around in vintage vehicles and bump others almost with affection and definitely with impunity?
Posted by boynton at August 21, 2003 06:50 PM

I did try affectionately bumping (more of a pat, really) a telegraph pole with a vintage volvo once....

The pole was quite unscathed.
Posted by wen at August 21, 2003 08:00 PM

Yes I bumped a window with an old Valiant on my L plates. My reversing has never been very friendly

(btw The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: Female!)

Sexist git ;)
Posted by boynton at August 21, 2003 11:31 PM

I think my namesake advocates the self starter. In this Nora's experience the mower never does - or only after she's achieved mower-rage induced apoplexy. Not a good look.
Posted by Nora at August 21, 2003 11:41 PM

boots

Write about something that you haven't particularly thought about for at least five years.
This is a difficult task. Boynton is not being facetious in saying that she can't remember what she has forgotten. The data always seems to be present, recoverable. When it's taken out of the cupboard and examined it doesn't seem to have been neglected, just to have dimmed. Stand-by mode. Last night in that hypnagogic state she tried to recall some missing piece from the jigsaw of people, places, things, skills, names, settings, rules, dates, dreams, sentiments... but drew a blank. The registry possibly gets corrupted with age or denial. Or inversely with age -all memories are safely encoded, at hand, on tap. She doesn't like to think about the things that are lost or even that possibility. Anyway - all she could come up with after half an hour was a pair of boots. And this was only because she had recently found them idling at the back of the wardobe, when she needed a quick costume for a themed party. They were never fashionable - but they were destined to be worn at this event, which is no doubt why many years ago she paid $10 for them at the op-shop (the price still marked loudly on the soles). And as soon as she put them on, she remembered that old boot feeling, that character in the heels again, a bit of bravado as quick as champagne, a little dutch courage. Maybe this is why some actors start with the shoes. And something in the boot was sufficient to channel the sort of themed character she was remembering from the outer reaches of pop culture. (Even though it was probably obvious to no one but herself, who she was, who she was meant to be) These boots are made for walking.

seconds

There were some good links discovered in the course of compiling that fishy entry, too good to embed and forget.
A Photo gallery from Walhalla Historic Township, which includes this one of the famous cricket ground.
Lost Lives - The Second World War and the islands of New Guinea. this web site commemorates the Second World War in the islands of New Guinea and the impact it has had on many lives.
Lyric Records is dedicated to the preservation of 1920s and 1930s music by issuing CD compilations of the 78rpm record (makes boynton wish she had a credit card and/or credit)
Rock Snaps - Photographs from the Laurie Richards Collection -
One of the online exhibitions of items from the Performing Arts Museum Collection.
Cosmic breed - mod gear. ( boynton wishes she cld look so cool...alas)
zip-r-strip Hey! Don't part with your perfectly aged leather jacket. Add another zipper instead.

---

Comments: seconds

Tom the Tailor (of Zip-R-Strip) lives in my town, and is the guy I go to when my leather jacket needs work done. He does good work. Thankfully, I am still thin enough not to need his invention.
Posted by Christopher at July 31, 2003 02:34 AM

That's interesting. I found him through searching for "leather-tailor" actually - (trying to kill two fish with one stone) - but yeah I think it looks a good invention - knowing how attached people become to their leatherjackets.
Posted by boynton at July 31, 2003 01:23 PM

uncool

boynton's been feeling a tad culturally uncool today, and let's face it, she is. Although aware of the movements in blog lingo, the buzz words, the short hand, the megatrends, the word bursts of the verbal zeitgeist etc, there are certain words she'll never use. (And we're not talking rude, more your dude. ) A bit of if the slang don't fit feeling, but also a fear of the old built-in obsolescence factor. Like the rapid turn-over of technological speak described in this article (via Wood s lot)
once smart-sounding words and phrases now out of date but staggering on, vestigial techno-anachronisms of a wired world...
In fact, "phone" and "telephone" are so past-it that using them almost constitutes a form of swinging anti-cool.
Attatched as she is to telephone that's probably about the best boynton can hope for - a kind of swinging anti-cool. Why else would she find herself returning to the 20's in the Kraft virtual decades series. She is particularly taken with the third act of the flash movie, afternoon tea, where you get dialogue like this over the tea-cups:
Hello Bob
Hello Angus
and
Oh what a lovely day
This is interactive. You move on when you're ready. It is hypnotic. It can go on for ever.
There is something compelling about such banal beauty. Like Pinter the pauses become fully charged. There is great drama lurking within that parlour, under the surface, you just know it.
So as readers probably know by now, a side of boynton is actually happily trapped inside a false memory of the 1920's, drinking tea with Bob and Angus and remarking kindly on the weather. Uncool.

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Comments: uncool

"A pint a pauses." That's hip collective noun talk y'know.
Posted by Tony.T at July 18, 2003 07:12 PM

or good pub theatre?
sounds like a pinch-a-ble title for an anthology of short plays.
Posted by boynton at July 19, 2003 12:45 PM

sky high

boynton was rather dismayed recently when revisiting the Mt Dandenong Observatory. It may have been hazy, but all binoculars had been removed. There was no one on the gate. No one sat at the wind blown tables on the terraced pebbled plaza. A lone drumstick sign lured sight-seers into the strange empty milk-bar operating in fall-out mode under the once famous Sky High restaurant. Orange netting indicated major renovation work was apparently underway - but not today anyway.
Anyone growing up east of the CBD from the '70's on would probably have certain folkloric memories of this site, if not of the tennis-club dinner dances inside the restaurant, then perhaps of the youthful dance variations that transpired nocturnally within the car park. Apparently. Who knows - maybe the actual restaurant did have a touch of the Gobbler about it, but the architecture always looked rather bold and exotic and even sophisticated to this green young outer-suburbanite. It was a shock to see the great stoneworked edifice sitting idle and cold on top of the mountain.

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Comments: sky high

Those binoculars were a rip off! Didn't work half the time and all you could see was a horrible haze.
Posted by Nora at July 17, 2003 06:43 PM

Never tested the binoculars, but they always looked the part. But I seem to have struck a few "hazy" days up there, and always imagine that the other 362 odd days of the year are perfectly clear.
Posted by boynton at July 17, 2003 06:57 PM

They took them away because no one carrys around pennies anymore.
Posted by Tony.T at July 18, 2003 07:08 PM

can't speak for Penny, but I've only ever lacked cents in wanting to use binoculars.
Posted by boynton at July 19, 2003 12:50 PM

art of chess

Art of chess exhibition. ( via reenhead). Boynton likes the pumpkin set herself.

There is some link we think to this artistic commodity - a VW on your turntable - (via J Walk) but it is either unconscious or oblique. As a child boynton used to place her farm animals on the radiogram turntable, and also try to endow chess pieces with narrative storylines. Don't quite remember if the Queen and Bishop ever hung out with the cattle and ducks and pink emus down on the farm.

melways

boynton was in seventh heaven (melways map xx H7) last night when she suddenly stumbled upon this link to her favourite book- a first edition of the Melway Street directory (via virulent memes). This is said without irony- as much as all trace elements can ever be removed. Boynton is not much of a driver, but loves to read, scan, gaze for hours at the beautiful bird's eye view of streets and tram lines, post offices and public telephones. Parks. Bicycle tracks. Alternate routes for imaginary journeys. Short-cuts for alternate destinations, parallel paths.
She can possibly plan neurotically, retrace steps, check bus routes, estimate distances with a piece of string. There is another appeal of the early editions, especially this rare first edition. A sense of memory mapping. The map catches us in time. On this page for example, at this time, my grandparents were still living, this is the way we would get there. Extended families, neighbours, characters, old timers, lost communities. That brief illusion that they are still there, old lives, somewhere in the map. Perhaps such charts function as memory palaces.(via a comment here)
And the record of lost landmarks of the highway, the drive-in theatres that were privileged in 1966 with a symbol, a red triangle, as if a drive-in was a serious public amenity, an emergency centre. None survived apart from Coburg. And the strangeness of seeing the inner north uncut by freeway, that prehistory when the winding river was the only divider between suburbs. And the great white spaces at the edges of suburbs yet to sprawl into today's fringe. Emptiness coveted by speculators, still enjoyed by cows and orchards and dog boarding kennels (the latter often the signpost of the sonic frontier)
But it isn't merely nostalgia or archival value. Boynton can meditate over the current edition just as easily. She has about four in her collection - "about" because one was chewed by douglas and is only half readable. One was found dumped on a street with cover and pages missing. One is a deluxe hard cover large print. And one was a recent op shop find - a second edition. But this on line version will fill the need for virtual melways-gazing, a fish bowl, a fire place, a book of kells.

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Comments: melways

Our parents were determined we became organised little demons so they always gave us street directories for birthdays. And footies and cricket sets.
Posted by Pithy at July 3, 2003 03:32 PM

Ah but U B a UBD man yourself I imagine, Pithy?
A very wise present to give a child. I received my first on my 18th birthday to go with the car licence! That was the one douglas chewed.
Posted by boynton at July 3, 2003 03:40 PM

What a beautiful post, Boynton.

I, like you, am a map fancier (although, ironically, I'm not very good at reading them. Perhaps I spend too much time admiring the aesthetics of all those wiggling lines and not enough concentrating on what they actually mean...)
Posted by mcb at July 3, 2003 04:33 PM

Yes it's the aesthetics indeed mcb, but that is the only way to read a map in my book - isn't it!
Posted by boynton at July 3, 2003 04:41 PM

I'm also a map geek, but I much prefer the dead-tree versions..
Posted by Scott Wickstein at July 4, 2003 01:35 AM

Fascinating as the first edition Melway is (especially for checking out where all those long-gone Melbourne landmarks used to be), the Dallas Fort-Worth road map remains my favourite. I like the way it reflects the collective unconscious of the not so biggest state in the Union.
Posted by Gummo Trotsky at July 5, 2003 03:50 PM

No link to that great unconscious chart, Gummo?
Also: do you know of any Melburnians, apart from advertising merchants' faux RP, who ever say "melway" without the colloquial,universal "S"?
Posted by boynton at July 5, 2003 08:37 PM

Sorry - that was a big omission, wasn't it. Anyway, here's a map of Dallas from Yahoo. The collective unconscious manifests itself around Dallas in the centre of the map, extending westward past Irving, Grande Praire and North Richland Hills. Or maybe it's just in my mind.
Posted by Gummo Trotsky at July 5, 2003 08:52 PM

Oh damn. The link got stripped. It's at this big URL:

http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?Pyt=Tmap&ed=zTVPPup_0To0E6b69xaYI8LYz6RpsL2eHnM1hqKI25S_eZIfiXJeuaojSODS5_s1&csz=Dallas,+TX&country=us&cs=4&name=&desc=&poititle=&poi=&uz=75202&ds=n&BFKey=&BFCat=&BFClient=&mag=6&newmag=5
Posted by Gummo Trotsky at July 5, 2003 08:56 PM

or perhaps this?
This url is even bigger

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/gmd:@FILREQ(@field(SUBJ+@band(Richmond+and+Louisville+Railroad+))+@FIELD(COLLID+rrmap))

Possibly no greater meaning here than chance and chart-fancy. Just happened upon it at Coudal "for map freaks what could be nicer"
Posted by boynton at July 6, 2003 07:01 PM

Getting back to the Melway - I haven't found seventh heaven yet, but it's good to see that Nirvana is still where it always has been - Map 68 K3. And existential crises seem to have been going on for some time at Map 62 A9.
Posted by Gummo Trotsky at July 7, 2003 05:54 PM

Ha!
You'd think that there'd be a roundabout somewhere near nirvana?
And interesting re exi-crisis. I happened to be driving once with some actors, one of whom had just played the Great Dane himself. We passed
73 E2
"You'll go MAD in this street!!!" my friend observed.

I'm sure this virtual car-rally game has legs, Gummo!
Posted by boynton at July 7, 2003 06:18 PM

"I'm sure this virtual car-rally game has legs ..."

I think we may be in 30 C2 on that.
Posted by Gummo Trotsky at July 7, 2003 07:21 PM

7 B6
Verily

(presuming you didn't mean (H Swain) reserve of course)
Posted by boynton at July 7, 2003 07:28 PM

and btw. seem to have located 7th heaven.
It's somewhere within 60 G5, but the view is hazy as you might expect. Runs off Outlook
(according to my latest edition this is the 7th listing of such)
Posted by boynton at July 8, 2003 12:29 PM

Some people get totally adicted to owning Melways - or street directories generally. I have 35 Melways (23 different editions and various double-ups) and over 200 other Australian street directories. This has been known to present problems - like where to put them and to whom you would actually admit owning them... but adictions are not easily kicked.
Posted by Phlip at September 10, 2003 04:43 PM

You inspire me Philip.
Not to kick mine at any rate.
35 is a benchmark - and I have not added to my collection for a while.
I have the same problem of storage with other books I collect (50's and 60's stuff - not to mention Girl's Annuals) - but would never think of shedding any melways - even the shredded ones.
I do have a few directories from other States - and other countries - and can even gaze at these for long stretches.
I wonder if you have edition number one?
And which is the best edition in your opinion (apart from the current one of course?)
Posted by boynton at September 10, 2003 06:15 PM


Hey Boynton, mmmm, unfortunately no edition 1. I reckon my grandma had one when it was new, and I was always hoping to inherit it, then she went and died while I was interstate and no-one remembered me. Bet it was thrown out. I have only seen one "in the flesh", so it is kind of nice to have it on-line now. Favourite? Dunno - I liked edition 7 very much - 35% increase in maps (from 130 to 175) including the peninsula & "now with ladies bowling clubs" !!! What overseas directories do you have? I have one of London in the 50's and one of Singapore.
Posted by Phlip at September 11, 2003 08:45 AM

Must look out for that edition 7 now - top of the list.
I don't have anything too exotic. I have the London A-Z of course, and the large AA guide to the UK (which I love), a good hardback European road atlas - with lots of Euro city maps within, and a couple of the US directories - no individual city ones - alas.
London in the fifties would be fantastic.
As I tried to suggest above - they do somehow capture the era.
Posted by boynton at September 11, 2003 11:37 AM


Is the London A-Z a directory or a fold-out map? I have an A-Z fold out map. The directory is a Bacon's Atlas of London, actually 1968 when I look again - it is fabulous. The oldest Melbourne directories I have are Morgans - the cinema advertising poeple - from late 30's I think, no date to confirm.

Been having a bit of a look on your web site - its v interesting, well done!
Posted by Phlip at September 11, 2003 01:42 PM

Thank you kindly.
The London A-Z is the directory. Makes you realise just how good the Melways is - although perhaps like our relative currency - I'm dazzled by the Monopoly-colours and there is style in basic monochrome!
I have a Morgans too - but only from the 60's.
I like the Morgans-yellow, but otherwise the Melways beats 'em all hands down. (eyes up)
Posted by boynton at September 11, 2003 02:56 PM

Asthetics aside, if someone is offering straight swaps of dull-looking stirling for dazzling-looking aussies, its a good deal!
Posted by Phlip at September 12, 2003 02:19 PM