Northcote the new St Kilda?

Northcote the new St Kilda?

August 12, 2005

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/northcote-the-new-st-kilda/2005/08/11/1123353447391.html

"I moved to Northcote 12 years ago," says Mick Thomas, "and everyone said I was nuts." They're not saying the singer-songwriter-playwright and former Weddings, Parties, Anything frontman is nuts any more. According to new stats, Northcote has more songwriters than any other suburb in Victoria. Does that mean Northcote is the new St Kilda? The Triffids' late legendary founder, Dave McComb, lived in Northcote. Nick Barker has recently moved north. My Friend the Chocolate Cake's David Bridie has given years to the suburb as have the Whirling Furphies' Frank Jones, and Kavisha Mazzella.

This musical energy finds expression later this month in the Darebin Music Feast, which will feature, among others, Mazzella in three acts — with the Italian Women's Choir accompanying the silent movie Dall'Italia all'Australia, playing with her band, and leading a BYO vocal cords event called The Big Sing.

Things were different in the old days, says Thomas wistfully. "When I first came to Northcote, I'd been living in the Punters Club in Fitzroy and it did feel like moving to the outback. Everything I did had to start with a 15 to 20-minute cab ride. Now when you go into the Northcote Social Club, you're always running into people — it's like going to the Punters or the Prince or the Espy circa 10 years ago." Real estate agent Kerry Davis reckons the space and greenery are part of the attraction. "It's not just musicians who are coming here, it's people across the whole arts spectrum," she says. "The bigger houses here lend themselves to the communal living that a lot of artists enjoy."

So what are the Northcote landmarks, the equivalents to Richmond's clock on the silo that says 11 degrees? Davis reckons the Westgarth picture theatre is worth a tune, and the parklands that surround the suburb down to the Fairfield boatsheds. My Friend the Chocolate Cake have sung about (John) Cain Avenue, near Dennis railway station. But you can't beat a good shopping mall. Thomas has written the seminal track, Northcote Plaza, while Mazzella's instrumental Tarantella di Northcote Plaza attempts to describe what would happen if all the old Italian guys standing around in groups talking at the plaza suddenly started playing accordions.

This sporting life

This sporting life
August 28, 2005

http://www.theage.com.au/news/tv--radio/this-sporting-life/2005/08/25/1124562976266.html

In its short life, TV has wrought massive change on the face of sport in Australia. Brian Courtis takes a look at what we've gained - and what we've lost - along the way.

The rules of the game are that every now and then you must let television tap you on the shoulder and remind you of what you are missing.

They call it nostalgia. It can be sweet or it can be hard to take but, when it comes to sport and Melbourne, the medium largely responsible for changes to both needs to make sure that, whatever it comes up with, it is on a winner.

This is a city where you can fill the Rod Laver Arena with experts ready to bet on the sporting capabilities of a couple of raindrops falling from the stadium roof.

This is also a place where you can worship a stuffed racehorse, where 12,000 gathered at the MCG in 1869 to watch our first cycle race, and where three boring hours of watching a ballroom packed with glammed-up football stars as the umpires' best-and-fairest votes for the Brownlow Medal are totted up count among our top-rating TV programs.

We have always taken our sport seriously in Melbourne. And we still do. Ask Cathy Freeman, Lauren Burns, Michael Klim and their Olympic medal-winning successors of tomorrow. It's not just the big sports that belong here.

Every sport. If tiddlywinks has a championship, you can be sure there will be someone wanting official recognition and the key to our city door.

We will watch anything, everything. From bocce to lawn bowls, from World Hot Air Ballooning Championships to the Commonwealth Games, and from international golf to the grands prix, formula one and motorcycling. Check it out with the city fathers.

In this week's first episode of its two-part special, Made in Melbourne: Sport, Channel Seven uses our awe for great athletic heroes and sporting triumphs to show what television has done to help change us since the 1956 Olympics.

Inadvertently, perhaps, it also reminds us of the less-commercial delights we have lost as we've gained our sporting maturity.

Fifty years of extraordinary change. Barassi is already talking himself towards his 70th birthday. Kooyong, where we lined up hopefully for a glimpse of Laver, Rosewall, Roche, Alexander and the world's finest not so long ago, now enjoys a modest reunion or two, overshadowed by the grand-slam superstar-headlining roofed arena down the other end of the freeway.

Kooyong holds many other memories. In 1969 we watched as Lionel Rose slugged it out with Englishman Alan Rudkin.

The sniff of liniment and other exotica has also drifted away from Festival Hall, that other yesterday-Melbourne venue that would draw us to its curious mix of TV Ringside boxing with Ron Casey, world wrestling, Billy Joel, Barry Manilow, Julio Iglesias or Cold Chisel.

But pass it today and you're still haunted by Casey's pounding calls, a parry of broadcast genius in moments of controlled brutality.

And didn't we hit the rails, that red train with jammed-open carriages, through the wintry rains to Glenferrie, Moorabbin or Arden Street, arriving soaked but pie-hungry, six-pack thirsty for the full four quarters in those days when going to the football was not like going to the cinema.

We were there to watch Ted Whitten, Michael Tuck, Big Nick, Jezza, Tuddy, Peter Hudson, Big Carl, Bruce Doull, Cowboy, Doug Wade, Graham "Polly" Farmer or Bartlett, rushing home early if Collingwood's flogger-whirling barrackers were looking hungry, perhaps only brave enough to catch the rest on the final-quarter replay on TV.

It was a different Melbourne, surely? One where you found yourself going underarm in a pub gathering that included Frank "Typhoon" Tyson, Ian Meckiff and Ian McDonald, sports editor and later Australian cricket team manager.

And from Macca and other sports lovers you were bowled gently away to TV critiques. That was my fate, at least. Theirs was a kindly spin, but oh, how many questions you wish you could have asked now you've picked up a little more knowledge.

Made in Melbourne: Sport - produced by Graeme Rowland and Gordon Bennett, written by Stephen Phillips - gets you that way. Presented solidly, assuredly, by long-time Seven star John Wood, it takes us back to a time when the network went neck and neck with Nine for Melbourne, sports and the lot.

To imagine Seven without football was like imagining a royal divorce. Or perhaps like imagining Nine or the ABC without the cricket?

It takes us from its scraps of Betty Cuthbert and Murray Rose's 16th Olympiad to broadcaster Tony Charlton and our ecstasies with football as we had never seen it before.

Amazing what Alf Potter could do with three cameras in tow! It shows the larrikin switch from radio days with Ron Casey and Bill Collins.

We return to that black-and-white world of sport that could not look more alien to today's coddled fan than if it were inhabited by Klingons.

This was the world of League Teams, Michael Williamson, Dougie Elliott, Bob Skilton, Jack Dyer, Bob Davis and Lou Richards, Peter Landy, Gus Mercurio and the wonderful savs, meat pies and hairdryer giveaways that lured the VFL's finest into the HSV-7 studios the day after their big games, there to join the wood choppers from Tassie and to try their lot in World Of Sports' handball competition. Ah, sweet, sweet parochialism.

Suddenly we could watch our champions without ever needing to leave the front room.

We entered the magical world of spectacular footy finals, where everyone belonged to Melbourne, where a goal-hopeful star could split the goalpost with a kick, where brawls at Windy Hill looked rough and you always knew who to blame alongside the umpires. Jezza in full flight.

Windy Waverley, which came and is now almost forgotten. Robert "Dipper" Dieperdomenico chasing Jerry Lewis and making the most of his new role at the MCG with the microphone.

Days of change? John McEnroe as erudite, witty commentator. I'd like to see that. Up There Cazaly, the rejected TV advertising jingle that sticks like gum in your mind.

Andy Roddick marathons, Agassi and the Swedish cheer squads. The Wallabies when they were tops. And the reality of an interstate grand final winner? I wouldn't like to see that.

AFL football, in that time before Eddie, Sam and The Footy Show, dominates here. But golf, tennis and boxing each take a round in this program, with today's commentators - Bruce McAvaney, Sandy Roberts and Wood - sliding out of seemingly live scenes to remind us it is not just the tennis centre, Docklands, or Albert Park that has advanced.

Television has never shown us so much at play, allowed us so easily to second-guess our betters.

Along with our sports heroes it opened wider Australia's windows on the world. Now, if Ron Walker can only attract a couple of sponsors to Melbourne for those raindrops, we will all be on another winner.

Made in Melbourne: Sport, 8.30pm Sunday, Channel 7

What's the big idea?

What's the big idea?
August 25, 2005

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/whats-the-big-idea/2005/08/25/1124562976884.html



What would it take to make Melbourne a more liveable city? Martin Boulton goes in search of answers.

ASK Melburnians for an opinion about Melbourne and you’ll get one. Whether the city lives up to the hype of being the world’s most liveable city — a status not taken entirely seriously by all the locals — it is true that nearly everyone has a view of what could be done to enhance life for the inhabitants. After our series on Liveable Melbourne, based on a study by Tract Consultants and ACIL Tasman, The Age sought the views of a cross-section of Melburnians on what they would change. We also invited readers to give us their views on what makes the city liveable — and why they live where they live.

Professor Miles Lewis, of Melbourne University’s architecture, building and planning faculty, says the idea of living in high-rise apartments is alien to many Melburnians, but it will happen. “We will change, people will live in highly concentrated areas, just as they do in Europe,” he says. “It might be some time away still but it will happen and as it does we must be aware of the heritage values that made our suburbs liveable in the first place … the quiet, leafy streets.” Lewis hopes the “erosion of heritage” in Melbourne’s inner suburbs — the features that gave suburbs such as Collingwood and Richmond their identity — is arrested as inner-city growth gathers pace.

The former lead singer of the Hunters and Collectors, Mark Seymour, recently moved out of the city and was shocked to find roads leading to the CBD crammed with traffic during peak hour. “After living in the city for so long I suddenly realised just how congested the roads can get,” he says. “Just negotiating your way in and out of Melbourne is quite hard.”

Architect and professor of urban design at RMIT Dimity Reed believes the liveability survey has shone a light on Melbourne and shown up glaring problems in the public transport system. “There are gaps, particularly with transport in the outer suburbs … gaps that clearly need more attention.

Reliable public transport is crucial,” she says.

“We need a more inter-connected transport system that’s more responsive and flexible, so people in the outer and fringe suburbs won’t have to drive such long distances.”

Radio broadcaster Neil Mitchell worries that “the heart of the city is dying” but agrees transport is a priority. “We need to fix the south-eastern arterial because it is appalling. And the trams and trains are going backwards since they were privatised. We need to get them running on time.”

Former Victorian premier and presidential aspirant at Hawthorn Football Club Jeff Kennett says he’d like to see the Hawks win a premiership. “But in terms of liveability, I think the real test, the most important thing about an area being successful, is the level of confidence in the community and the goodwill in a community,” he says.

Crime writer Peter Temple believes a stronger police presence on the streets would improve people’s sense of safety, wherever they lived in Melbourne. “A couple of coppers is a deterrent,” he says. “In public places generally, particularly in Europe, there is a visible police presence. All you see in Melbourne is a squad car passing by from time to time.”

Chairman of public transport at Monash University Graham Currie says traffic congestion will only get worse across Melbourne and tough political decisions have to be made.

“I worry about the future of trams. We need to separate trams from cars, we have to make decisions that will change the look of the city . . . but we’ve got to make them if we want to keep our trams,” he says.“This (liveability survey) is important to the future of Melbourne (and) there’s plenty of evidence to show people will use public transport — trams, trains and buses — if the service is improved.”

Senior lecturer in transport planning at Melbourne University Paul Mees believes it is a fantasy to think Melbourne can continue building freeways and expect public transport to be improved.

Vancouver — another holder of the world’s most liveable city title— made a decision 35 years ago to stop building any more freeways, he says.

“That freed up additional money to improve their public transport and put them in a position where they couldn’t weasel out of fixing public transport … there was no fall-back option.”

“Nobody, no government will improve public transport until they stop building freeways.”

Jason Marriner, general manager of Marriner Theatres, a group that includes the Forum, Princess and Regent theatres, says the diversity of Melbourne’s live entertainment, its restaurants and retail precincts should be fostered. “It’s what makes Melbourne such a unique experience,” he says.

Save Our Suburbs president Ian Quick wants to see more mandatory planning controls that protect traditionally low-rise suburban neighbourhoods from higher-density development.

“Our biggest problem is big high-rise buildings and the 100 per cent land coverage that’s going into our residential areas — that’s decreasing our liveability.”

Youth worker Les Twentyman wants to see an end to what he calls “postcode discrimination … the stigmatisation of where people go to school and where they live.”

“We should realise we’re all Victorians and we’re all Melburnians, it doesn’t matter where you went to school or how rich your dad is,” he says.

“That’s just a recipe for the problems I’ve seen in places like Los Angeles, where there’s gated communities and people feel shut out, that’s what really concerns me.”

Eating, drinking Melbourne's heart beats anew

Eating, drinking Melbourne's heart beats anew

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/citys-heart-beats-anew/2005/08/18/1123958182702.html

By Adam Morton
August 19, 2005


The city we know and love, from left, the State Library, Degraves Place, Swanston Street.


MELBOURNE'S heart has been "reconquered" as a place for eating and drinking, study and recreation, and the number of people living in the CBD has risen eight-fold in a decade.

The jump in city dwellers helped lift Swanston Street above Regent Street — London's second-busiest thoroughfare — for daily pedestrian traffic, according to a City of Melbourne report to be released today.

Places for People project manager Jan Gehl, a Danish architect who has been visiting Melbourne for 25 years, said the CBD had transformed from being the hole surrounded by the "doughnut"of suburban dwellers, to the "miracle of the Yarra".

"There will be three times more people sitting and standing and listening and enjoying Melbourne today compared to 10 years ago," Professor Gehl said.

Professor Gehl said the city was a marked contrast to the place of the 1960s and 1970s, when it was considered a mono-functional and useless centre of unco-ordinated high-rise development.

The study found pedestrian traffic in the CBD on weekday evenings nearly doubled to more than 90,000 a day in the decade to 2004.

Other increases include:

■ 275 per cent more outdoor cafes, restaurants and bars.

■ 177 per cent more seats at kerbside cafes.

■ 809 per cent more apartments.

■ 62 per cent more students living and/or being educated in the CBD, up to nearly 82,000.

The length of CBD laneways in use has multiplied by a factor of 10, from 300 metres to 3.43 kilometres, including 500 metres of completely new space. Professor Gehl said Melbourne had increased the quality of its streets, the number of squares, parks and trees, and upgraded trams and lighting.

"If one should make a list of what a city could do to make it more friendly for people and more inviting, most of these things would be in that list," he said.

CBD space has grown since the 1994 Places for People report, now including the part of Southbank to St Kilda Road.

Click on this link for a photo gallery of changes to Melbourne City streets from the 1980's to 2005.

http://www.theage.com.au/photogallery/2005/08/19/1123958216160.html

CHANGING FACE OF MELBOURNE: 1994-2004
Then Now % Rise
City residents 1008 9375 830
Private residential apartments 736 6692 809
Pedestrian traffic (Sat 6pm-midnight) 88,020 99,420 13
Seats at kerb-side cafes 1940 5380 177
Outdoor cafes, restaurants and bars 95 356 275
Students (learning or living) 50,482 81,732 62
Public space (square metres) 42,260 72,200 71
Lanes, arcades and alleys in use (metres) 300 3430 1043
Pedestrian traffic (weekdays 10am-6pm) 190,772 265,428 39
Pedestrian traffic (weekdays 6pm-midnight) 45,868 90,690 98
Pedestrian traffic (Saturday 10am-6pm) 194,764 212,862 9

Radio ga-ga

Radio ga-ga
August 16, 2005

http://www.theage.com.au/news/tv--radio/radio-gaga/2005/08/15/1123958002259.html


Photo: Dominic O'Brien

For those obsessed with public radio, the annual fund-raiser is a source of neurotic foreboding, writes Jonathan Alley.

I've always been a creature of my passions. Some may ebb and flow, but my constant all-consuming obsessions are community broadcasting and playing new music. I've been at it since I was 18, and since 1992 I've been with the doyen of Melbourne's thriving public broadcasting scene, 3RRR FM. It's one of the things I live to do.

But, once a year, the piper comes calling for payment from the station's volunteer broadcasters and paid-up subscribers in the annual fund-raiser known as the radiothon.

By about June, the first hairs prick up on the back of my neck. The beast is rattling the cage doors again. By July, I'm scribbling lists of songs, tangential ideas, pitch angles and back-up plans I'll never use. Come August, it's become a minor obsession rooted in vaguely neurotic performance anxiety, an anticipated "event" to be got through — won or lost; the radiothon program where the pitch must be constantly, inventively shaded, refined and repeated to induce new and existing subscribers to actually pick up a phone and pledge money to a radio station they can hear for free.

Triple R's listeners tolerate the suspension of their reliable, habitually loved programming and expose themselves to a 24/7 campaign to cajole, inspire, bribe and downright beg them to fund the broadcasting institution's existence for another 12 months.

With no government funding, this 10-day on-air fund-raiser meets 50 per cent of 3RRR's annual operating budget. It's had various guises over the years — "Feed Your Head", "Planet of Sound", "Show Us Your Love", "Dial It Up", "Cash for Content". This year we "Kick It To RRRs".

While we broadcasters all have fun spinning the various themed campaigns on air, it boils down to a fundamental truth and reality for the 62 shows: get the numbers up, and keep them coming — or no station. The fate of a Melbourne cultural institution and the industries relying on it rests in the unpaid hands of 150 on-air volunteers, annually. We all shoulder the burden and we work hard.

Station staff and volunteers answer phones, handle data entry, stuff envelopes and assist with the campaign in many ways, but only the announcers intimately know the existential terror of sitting alone in a small studio, living and dying by the red flashing lights of the phone system. I've had nightmares about the lights.

A blank board can be crushing. Seeing a full board is euphoric. The ebb and flow of the lights as you weave around pre-prepared themes, special mixes, lists of newly minted subscribers and prize inducements with station favourites mark the fortunes of a radiothon program. Old favourites can be telling — I swear Nick Cave, Polly Harvey and King Tubby have garnered me more subscribers than all other artists combined in 12 years.



Jonathan Alley in the studio
Photo:Dominic O'Brien

The station's atmosphere during the radiothon is markedly different — numbers are discussed in depth, tallies are kept, strategy is formulated; guests are welcomed, former announcers suddenly turn up. It's the music industry's equivalent of a war room, sometimes; a nerve centre. Walking into it can be nerve-racking and exhilarating all at once.

The final Sunday afternoon of "The JVG Radio Method" in 2004 was more like a carnival — Dave Graney and David Bridie live in the studio, a packed green room and plates of donated food. It felt like a party — I guess it was.

Tuesday evening's Best of the Brat is known for its presenters stripping as the subscriptions roll in. The Skull Cave's Stephen Walker continues to conjure the big numbers, his iconic brand of lateral psychology/philosophy and musical finesse holding firm, year after year.

But I have no such speciality or pedigree, no tricks or trademarks — I'll think on my feet, play the tracks I know will count and hope the reserves of enthusiasm will infect and inspire. Before my own radiothon show begins, my hands will be shaking. I'll carefully rearrange the selected CDs and vinyl again. I'll introduce myself to the dozen phone-room volunteers — listeners who turn up to man the phones and arrange subscriptions. I've been known to ingest a hurriedly purchased 250-gram bag of chocolate coffee beans; it's always empty by halfway, and I'll continue babbling when it's all over, albeit a little less coherently — sans the pressure of the live microphone and the threat of a shortage of little red flashing lights.

But it's not all abject terror and DJ neurosis. Over 12 years, some of my fondest and most inspiring memories of life at 3RRR have come during the radiothon. Relationships and marriages (though not my own) have germinated and blossomed in the station green room between shifts, companies and bands established, friendships formed. The extremities can be entertaining, too. Passionate listeners will often subscribe their unborn children, body parts and vehicles, and pet subscriptions now take pride of place in the yearly prize line-up.

For me, my on-air colleagues and, most importantly, listeners, 3RRR remains a rock of imagination and character in a bland, moneyed world where reality TV, latte travel and corporate hegemony get more media time than famine, art and injustice.

Mark Phillips, a Melbourne journalist writing a history of the station, perhaps encapsulates this in a soon-to-be-published article in The Trip, the station's subscriber magazine: "Sometimes it feels as if our social structures are being broken apart, but that largely invisible community of 3RRR listeners out there is always a safe refuge."

Triple R is a living, evolving cipher of the strands of community it holds dear. To many, it exemplifies warts-and-all humanity in aural form. Come Friday, I'll be looking for your flashing red light — it'll mean more than you may think.

Jonathan Alley is a Melbourne writer who broadcasts Tough Culture on 3RRR from 6-8pm on Saturdays. The "Kick It To RRRs" radiothon airs August 19-28. Details: www.rrr.org.au

Victorian identity loss

Victorian identity loss

http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2005/08/10/1123353384555.html

By Jake Niall

August 11, 2005

The greatest calamity to befall Victorian clubs isn't a lack of money or facilities, or their domination by interstate interlopers, but a crisis of identity.

Eddie McGuire seemed to sense the problem last weekend when defending Collingwood's constitutional right to bear black-and-white stripes. "We will not become a franchise for the AFL like McDonald's," he thundered.

McGuire saw the jumper as inviolate because so much else had been sacrificed on the altar of progress. "These days we don't have home games, we do not have home zones, we get our coaches elsewhere, we are forced to get our players from the draft."

The impositions McGuire spoke of have been driven by the centralising AFL, which, in its (successful) zeal to create an even and economically sustainable competition, has also made a competition in which the club differences we once celebrated have shrunk. Equalisation, sadly, has brought homogenisation.

McGuire wants to save the sacred jumper, but what do their — or any old club's — colours really represent these days? History, yes, but what about the present?


Nine teams share two grounds in this city, thanks to ground rationalisation. The clubs draw their players from a draft pool, in which anyone could end up anywhere, regardless of their geography or tribal inclination. The only significant concession to tribalism is the father-son rule.

Coaching panels contain fewer and fewer former players who played for that particular club. The only former Richmond player on the Tiger match committee is Terry Wallace! Neale Daniher's panel does not contain a single Demon.

Geelong and the interstate teams are not threatened with the same identity issues. The Cats not only retain a home ground, they have a penchant for recruiting locals and have made a deliberate effort to hire former Geelong people in their coaching panel. They are shamelessly, and blessedly, parochial.

Ground rationalisation wouldn't be so troubling if it had not been accompanied by the randomness of the draft, the career coach and administrator and other homogenising forces. Carlton, the last Melbourne club allowed to play home games, does not feel like Carlton right now. The Blues have lost Princes Park, have won a spoon and struggle to pay the bills. The system, which can and will undo any club, has humbled them. It is not the arrogant Carlton of yore. This team lets you down, quite often, while St Kilda — thanks to the system — is reinvented as a winner.

West Coast — rich, arrogant, uber-professional, with a fortress ground — is more like the old Carlton.

Something is seriously rotten in Denmark, too, when Carlton and Collingwood supporters are talking about the benefits of tanking Saturday night's game.

The AFL, doubtless, will argue that its crowd and television ratings are booming, that beanie sales have never been greater, and so on. It measures the competition's health largely by numbers, speaking of KPIs. If people are still turning up, tuning in and remaining loyal consumers, everything's fine.

I see more troubling trends. Kids today are more apt than ever to follow a winning team, or even to follow seductive and exciting players, such as Chris Judd. The game has become part of the entertainment industry, but in the process has sacrificed biodiversity and spiritual fervour.

Essendon can keep a powerful identity while Kevin Sheedy is coaching, and James Hird (father-son), Matthew Lloyd (local from the north-west) and Dustin Fletcher (father-son) are running around, but, as the draft removes their Essendon-ness and Sheedy goes, it mightn't be the same. The same goes for Collingwood, Eddie and the Clokes and Shaws.

Same grounds, same player pool, same interchangeable coaches and decision-makers. I guess the supporters are the last definers of cultural identity, along with the businessmen who represent them. The club is them and, as such, the congregations should re-assert ownership of their churches.

In Melbourne today, there are only nine churches, instead of the 11 (plus Geelong) we grew up with. For decades, we've wondered how many will be left standing but the result might be worse: nine clones, plus Geelong.

Snow falls in Melbourne - first time in 19 years

The last time it snowed in Melbourne city was in July 1986. I was 12, walking to school thru it at the time. Now I'm in Vancouver, Canada and missed it.

Check this link for the full story
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/whiteout/2005/08/10/1123353351466.html