Street walk, street art

As in other great cities there are excellent walking tours of Melbourne. We walked the lanes and byways of the city with dozens in a great group and discovered interesting little snippets about Melbourne that were new to us.

The “Paris end of Melbourne”, east of Collins street towards the treasury gardens, came to be so known when the owners of the Oriental Hotel sought permission from the council to set up a boulevard cafe on the sidewalk outside the hotel. 

At first permission was refused, but, after many a long decade, and just as the 1956 Melbourne Olympics rolled up as an international influence on the near horizon, permission was finally granted for nineteen tables to be allowed space on the sidewalk. Melbourne folk thronged to find a seat. "It is just like the Champs Elysees back in Paris” enthused the owner’s wife, who, herself, was a Parisian. And so the newspapers reported it. And so the notion came into being. And stuck, even today. But, the now dismantled Oriental was the first of them. 

The Green Brain canopy atop one of RMIT buildings in La Trobe street was pointed out to us as being commissioned as a new and creative renovation that cost millions.

It is almost as if a green sludge monster has been allowed to grow malformed and unimpeded atop the plain red brick building beneath, and captured there, cast in fixative and neon plastic. With not a hint of connectivity between the building and the canopy. So, not exactly architecture inspired by its context, unfortunately. 

Some people think it creative. Others think it such an eyesore they cannot bear to look at it.

Our guide pointed out several other interesting buildings as we came across them. The Eureka Tower, for one. Named so, after the Eureka stockade when gold miners rose up against the unfair tax being imposed by the government. Architects have integrated points of history and detail into the very fabric of the Eureka Tower to enrich its tale.

The gold tower at the top is symbolic of the gold rush, of course. The red stripe, a slash down the side of the building, represents the blood that flowed as the miners rebelled and many died. The blue glass of the building and the white slashes represent the blue and white colour of the Eureka flag. As well, the white lines across the length of the building see the whole as a surveyor’s ruler, broken into its parts by precise white horizontal measurement lines. 

To reinforce the gold connection the building has 24 carat gold plated windows on the top ten floors. A lovely building. 

Another interesting building that was pointed out to us was the William Barak apartment building. William Barak, we learned, was an early elder of one the aboriginal tribes in the area. He was actually present, it is believed, when Batman drew up his land ‘purchase’ treaty with the aboriginals. Not only that, but he became one of the wise advisors on Wurundjeri ways as well as developing into a great artist, reflecting and honouring the ways of his people. 

So great was his contribution to the area that architects sought to include his image as part of the exterior of an apartment block close to downtown Melbourne, and worked in close collaboration with aboriginal representatives to ensure his image was appropriately represented.

Barak’s ageless, timeless, expressive face is moulded into white panels of composite materials on the external facade of the building, contrasting with the black of the balconies. He watches over much of Melbourne, as he ever did. It is quite stunning. 

We then walked the graffiti covered lanes of the inner city and learned that not all graffiti is illegal. Apparently, if it is commissioned, if the property owner gives permission for that use of the wall, then the plastic bag toting, hoodie wearing, street artists may even paint in daylight. With their hoods down. 

Many streets, buildings, walls and subways throughout Melbourne attract graffiti. But, there must be something in the air in Melbourne, as some of it is not only quite exceptional, but is politically provocative and interesting. 

Actually, we seem to be coming to enjoy street art more, these days, than we do contemporary art in museums. Which we haven’t quite cottoned on to, as yet. Having said that, there are places where the squiggles of the graffiti are, still, just eyesores. And once you start allowing the hoards to paint in one place en masse, it is really hard, then, to control where else they might paint, or not. Particularly when half the thrill for the street painters is ‘the edge’ to it. Doing something that is not quite legal. 

So, that is an ongoing predicament for Melbourne. As the city fathers are really between a rock and a hard place, now, as Hosier Lane has become quite the hotspot for street art in Melbourne. And is definitely a major tourist draw in the city. Among the biggest in the city, it seems, given the crowds we saw there on several days. 

What, too, is interesting is to see the art work on some walls completely change over just two or three days. These street artists are bursting with energy and creativity -- and time. We really enjoyed so much of it. And while there is nothing remaining of Banksy’s contributions on Melbourne’s city walls, there are others who are busy filling commissions that is getting their work seen by as wide an audience. 

Take Baby Guerrilla, for instance, one of the few street artists from the female brigade currently working on her displays. She has been busy painting the walls of many of the city buildings, including Victoria University spaces, on commission. Her pieces are vibrant, massive, imaginative. She is an artist who chooses, for whatever reason, not to follow the traditional route. She is not the only one. 

Lunch was at a German bar along the Southbank precinct, looking back over the city. The German sausages came five ways, five colours, five flavours. With cabbage varied for each. And a mimosa salad on the side. Along with a selection of sharp mustards. All incredibly tasty. We are loving the food of Melbourne, too. 

Ode to William Barak 

Melbourne Arts Centre

Eureka tower

RMIT's Green Brain

Massive piece

You will know my name

Baby Guerilla's work at Victoria University

German sausage five ways

And change is good

Street art changes daily

Sissinghurst revisited

It took us almost a complete day to visit the Heidi Museum of Modern Art. There are so many exhibitions, so much art, and so many installations in the garden, but, it was the story of the Reeds themselves that ended up occupying most of our time.

Sunday and John Reed. An extraordinary couple who occupied such an influential space in time in Australia’s art history. He a lawyer, she a gardener with a discerning mind, found a home together, in a farmhouse they named Heidi on 15 acres of land, in Heidelberg, where they nurtured a circle of like minded friends, interested in analysing and debating all forms of modernist art and literature. 

The talent amassed throughout their lives at Heidi is like a Who’s Who of Australian Art including Sydney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, John Perceval, Joy Hester and Albert Tucker. They were young, full of ideas and passion, keen to come together to clarify their ideas and share their work with Sunday and John who housed and fed many of them throughout the 1930s and beyond, and nurtured their work. 

What probably was not wise, in hindsight, they also shared their beds and their bodies with many others of the group. He slept with her, slept with him, slept with them, watched a sexual menage, or begat him. It all became terribly convoluted and eventually far too complicated to sustain. 

Which put some noses seriously out of joint. Sydney Nolan fell in love with Sunday while painting the Ned Kelly series at Heidi. This affair went on over many years, with John, the voyeur on the sidelines. Nolan gifted the Kelly works to Sunday, but regularly beseeched her to leave John and run away with him. Sunday couldn’t. Nolan finally realised this was not going to happen, so left Heidi permanently. Enroute he met up with John’s sister, Cynthia, and married her, much to John and Sunday’s horror. Then adding fuel to a volatile flame, he asked for his Kelly works back. All of which permanently severed all ties with John and Sunday forever. Never to be reconciled.

Joy Hester and Albert Tucker of the Heidi Circle had a similar complication. Hester, who already had several abortions, was pregnant when she and Tucker married. With someone else’s child, as it happens. This time she had an infection and could not abort. Their alliance, like many of the others, did not last, and Hester’s son, Sweeney, was left for Sunday and John to rear when the two went their separate ways.

Sweeney’s life was short and skewed. He committed suicide when he was thirty four. John died of bowel cancer two years later. Cynthia, his sister, and Sidney Nolan's wife, committed suicide five years before that. Sunday committed suicide ten days after John died. Strange goings-on. It all reminded me very much of Virginia Wolf and the Sackville-West's Sissinghurst gatherings. Revisited, in many ways. 

Rings of Saturn, Heidi 

The farmhouse where they were all welcomed 

In the sculpture garden 

One of the Ned Kelly pieces by Sydney Nolan 

Garden art

One of our favourite outdoor pieces

The house that Thomas built

Such a beautiful house, Werribee Park Mansion, with such tragic tales as part of its very fabric. Built by Thomas Chirnside and his brother Andrew as they were both approaching their sixties, Werribee Park was seen as a reflection of the success of their pastoral ventures to that time, and was one of the most extensive and exceptional homes ever built in Australia. But it was much more than that. At the age of twenty-four Thomas could hardly have known when he set out from his home in Scotland with just a couple of hundred pounds in his pocket to begin a new life in the colonies that he would become one of the greatest landowners in the history of Australia, or that he would build a house like no other for the only woman he had ever loved.

Thomas was driven. Within months of landing he bought sheep on the Murrumbidgee but left them to graze as a drought set in. A dicey step. Soon after, he collected Andrew from his ship and together they bought cattle. They drove them overland to the markets in Adelaide selling them there successfully when many others had failed. The gods were still smiling.  Rains fell, and on his return Thomas’s sheep made good. He took over a run he found being abandoned, then he bought a station, then other stations so he and Andrew reared cattle and steadily grew their wealth.  Andrew was the quiet one. Thomas was the gruff one. 

Frequently Thomas would visit Scotland. He imported red deer for his hunt from the deer stock owned by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband. He also imported the foxes. To be healthy, Thomas believed, one had to ride to hounds. He loved thoroughbreds and became an expert at horse flesh, importing mares and stallions to improve his racing stock. His racing achievements were legendary, including winning the 1874 Melbourne cup with Haricot. He would not work on Sundays, nor would he allow work on any of his properties on the Sabbath. His feelings ran deep. 

On one of his trips back to Scotland he fell deeply in love with his first cousin, Mary Begbie.  But he arrived back in Australia, months later, without her. She had not accepted him, though he must have felt there was hope, for when Andrew made his first visit back to Scotland some time later, Thomas begged him to bring Mary back with him,  any way he could. 

And Andrew did.  Andrew married Mary whilst in Scotland, and brought her out to Australia once their first child, Mary Matilda, was born. 

Thomas was never to marry. But he soon set about building Mary a home. It was to be a place of serenity and peace, a fitting tribute to Mary. Thus Werribee Park Mansion was conceived, adding to the extensive portfolio of properties that the Chirnside brothers already owned throughout Victoria and the other states. It took three years to build, drew on the best architectural skill and craftsmanship available at the time, and when finished held sixty grand rooms of lavish proportion and style.

Andrew and Mary and their three children moved in, then beseeched Thomas to join them there. Eventually, he did.  But his health was deteriorating. Given to spells of melancholia Thomas was often acutely depressed. He sought treatment for this. But to no avail. During this time he transferred funds out of his name into the name of family members. Then, imagined himself bankrupt. He threatened suicide. Reality was fast fading for Thomas. 

One Saturday late in June, just after lunch with the family, it became all too much. Thomas took himself and a gun out into the grounds of the mansion. He set the butt into the dirt, took off his boot, and firmly set his toe over the trigger. His forehead bent to the muzzle, and very deliberately, Thomas blew his brains out. His life ended at 72.

Just three years later, when Andrew was 73, he died of a heart condition. Mary lived on at Werribee until 1908 when the flame of a candle in her bedroom torched her beautiful hair. She died as a result, a terrible and traumatic death. 

One son, George, inherited Werribee. The other, John, inherited stony land above the railway. John set about building himself a home. George took him to court to ensure he did not use the name “Werribee” in the title.  It had come to this. Werribee was put on the market in 1922, and sold. Which marked the end of any Chirnside ownership in the house that Thomas had specially built for Mary. 

Mary's house

Beautiful chandelier 

Lovely symmetry

Garlands for Mary 

Art on the edge

The modernists, we are discovering, are not the only artists who have come under great scrutiny, discussion and dissension on the Melbourne art scene. 

Another is the grunge artist, Adam Cullen. One day we were taken to lunch at the HuTong Duck and Dumpling bar in Prahran where the food was divine, delicious morsels of split eggplant and prawns in hoisin, and all sorts of dumplings filled with anything from crab to crispy duck. But, even more interesting, the food bar is situated on the ground floor of The Cullen, a boutique hotel named for Adam Cullen’s edgy art pieces, which the hotel group bought and displays on every wall, in every suite. Somewhat like a patron.

Adam Cullen grew up in an apparently stable home and studied art, formally, and at length. From early on he stood out, turning up at art school with a rotting head of a dead pig chained to his ankle. Clearly wanting to stand out. 

His life and his art became even more lurid, more exposed. Diagnosed bipolar, his behaviour became as extreme as his drinking and drug taking. Guns were his passion, shooting at things, anything. He even shot the leg of the man he’d invited to write his biography. He incorporated gun violence into many of his works and many of his creations drip paint-blood.

To start the day Cullen needed a bottle of vodka to fuel the violent apparitions he plastered over his canvas: mongrel dogs, the hair on their backs set brutally afire; human faces, their eyes slashed out, dripping from the eye cavities. Rabid animals, fangs exposed, drooling blood. Or decapitated. All against brightly splashed backgrounds of acid yellow, neon orange, lurid pink and shard green exaggerating the violence of his subject matter. Standing out.

The most peaceful work we have seen is his yellow tinged head of the actor, David Wenham, which calls to mind one of Van Gogh’s self portraits in its mood, its brush strokes, its style. For this, Cullen won the Archibald Prize.

A driven man. His subject matter so often violent and difficult to comprehend, is stark and visually stunning in its simplicity, for with just a few simple almost caricature-like lines, he can portray a canvas overflowing with a violent warped rage.

Watching his paint splatter over his canvas is like watching Van Gogh in the agony of his dark days, painting swirling skies that are starry no more: the subject matter growing grimmer, darker, more dangerous and edgy the closer the end came. 

And the end came for Adam Cullen quite young. He was just forty seven when he was found dead. And, like Van Gogh, his work will likely sell stratospherically. 

At the bottom of the garden

One of the more eccentric things we viewed this trip was a photographic recreation of a Victorian Pleasure Garden spectacle inspired by the famed garden parties held at one of Melbourne’s historic mansions, Rippon Lea.

Rippon Lea was home to the Sargood family. Sir Frederick Thomas Sargood grew his wealth selling drapery during the gold rush days. He later became a politician in Melbourne, frequently entertaining his guests to fabulous parties in the grounds of the exotic pleasure gardens he and his wife had created on their property at Rippon Lea, with its expansive lake, waterfall, archery hut and arched bridges over meandering walkways; all of which covered more than fourteen acres of land. 

Inspired by the tales of such magical themed parties, professional photographers and stylists, makeup artists and actors playing dressup together with the National Trust for support, set up a three day photo shoot to capture the essence of such a lush and exotic party. 

Mythical characters were researched. Museums scoured for costumes and jewellery. Tables laid with the extravagant feasts typical of the times. Characters were dressed and posed including arrogant butlers, insouciant hostesses, and peeking at them from the green boughs were woodland nymphs, fanciful unicorns, foxes, peacocks and faerie queens. The exhibition showed it all to be quite magical, slightly wicked, and delightfully fanciful.

In keeping with the garden theme, we followed the exhibition with a wander through the Fitzroy Gardens which were close. And what a boon to have this lovely open space such a short walk from the city centre. So commendable of our forefathers to ensure such green spaces were set aside for us to enjoy, even today.

Here, too, we found faeries at the bottom of the garden. The gnarled trunk of a three hundred year old tree, long dead, was carved by a lady sculptress and storyteller, Ola Cohn, who, in the 1930s, on returning from London where she’d trained under Henry Moore, was spilling over with new ideas and technologies and wanting to start something new.

Taking up her mallet and chisel she set about chipping away to release the little creatures she imagined hidden in the cracked whorls and knots of the dead redwood in the park. She uncovered faeries and spiders, imps, wizards and elves. Here, a kangaroo, there a lyrebird, even a sorcerer spider’s web was exposed. The trunk became a veritable cornucopia of dozens of delightful fairytale characters that Ola spent three years imagining and carving. 

It was a work of love that she gifted to the children of Melbourne whose families were in the midst of a depression at the time, so had very little. But the children then, and now, have treated Ola’s gift gently. With help from the city fathers who contributed to its preservation by installing metal rods to keep the trunk standing, and fluids to prevent rot setting in around the wee characters. 

And, once a year, in the summer, children gather at the base of the trunk and Ola’s characters spring, as if to life. The folk of the fairies tree dance, sing, and cavort as villains are vanquished and heroes rise up and rejoice. A touch of Enid Blyton enmeshed with Beatrix Potter. These are indelible memories for impressionable young minds. Deeply imprinted. Stirring their imaginings. 

And close by the fairies tree is a tiny model village,  not at all exceptional, until you read its intent. It came from the folk of the City of Lambeth in England to the folk of Victoria, as a thank you, for food packages sent and desperately needed, given the food shortage caused by the second world war. 

This little village of the Tudor period, with its thatches and half timbers, churches, barns and stocks, was lovingly carved by the wizened hands of a seventy-seven year old pensioner with such a passion for his hobby that he scoured the rubble of bombed out London war sites hunting down suitable material for his task. These tiny homes, and no doubt visiting children think they are for faerie folk, grew out of the rubble of war. 

And the tales from Fitzroy Gardens keep on keeping on. A grainy old noticeboard near one of the footpaths we trod told us of the early days of Melbourne’s hospital care. Prior to 1900, hospitals in Victoria were essentially charitable institutions. If you were well off, but poorly, you paid for any treatment needed at home. You did not go to hospital.

Hospitals were set up for the poor. Workhouses, as in England, were not a feature that the early fathers encouraged in Australia. They considered hospitals the better option for the poor. Typically, they were run by nuns, volunteers, and funded by private donors in the main. But public donations were welcome, too. 

And that is where Fitzroy Gardens played its part. Once a year, from as early as 1873 and right though until the1920s, Fitzroy Gardens was a venue for fund raising activities for a special event that came to be called, Hospital Sunday. 

Hospital Sunday would often involve the Bishop delivering a special service in the town hall. Different churches, throughout town, would offer different choral services. Donation plates were passed around. Sacred music would be laid on in the afternoon in the gardens. Crowds would come to listen. Collections would be made at the entrance gate, or on board excursion steamers, if listeners came by boat.

Collection points came together in the early evening, and the total of the funds donated was published in the newpaper in the following days. And folk were amazingly generous. In 1888 one Hospital Sunday raised over £14,000. Mind you, they were the good times still. The banks had not yet toppled. And finally, as we headed back to the city to find some lunch we passed Captain Cook’s parents house, dismantled stone by stone in Great Ayton, in Yorkshire, in the 1930s, and shipped to Australia in hundreds of cases and dozens of barrels, along with a cutting of ivy from the front garden, to be re-erected in Fitzroy Gardens where today you can stop and chat to the volunteers playing the part of Cook’s folk. 

We take a shortcut through the Conservatory and are enchanted by the display. Today, the arrangements are exceptionally romantic with a pink and purple vibe, separated by little puffs of white.

The Conservatory garden, like much of what we have seen today has stood here since the 1930's, changes form and flowers every two to three months. This involves moving dozens of hanging baskets, laying out hundreds of pots of background plants and greenery, and arranging nearly two thousand pots of coloured flowers. Quite an expensive operation it would seem, to change these so regularly, but most of the plants, we are told, are recycled, so that’s a relief. Tho’ still, the work involved is a huge expense.

But, it is all so very beautiful. And every little seating rock (and sadly, there are not nearly enough. People want to sit and gape) is occupied by a pair of city workers taking a romantic respite as they slowly munch on their lunch time sandwiches in one of the most beautiful settings to be found. 

Lunch is not a sandwich for us. We find a place called Lucy Liu, in one of the city lanes, and dive into platters of Michael Lambie’s delicious soft shelled crab, and blackened ham hock served as if it were Beijing duck with delicate pancakes, pickled greens and a tart, spicy sauce. Superb. We will return.

Romantic garden in the Fitzroy Conservatory

Rippon Lea from the gardens

Victoriana pleasure garden tableaux

Just that hint of danger 

The Fairies tree

A thank you from the ruins of war

Cook's parents house transplanted

Blackened ham hock