Supporting Your Neighbours

After heavy rainfall, and prolonged drought, some of the old sixties flats have dilemnas. I live in a basin of stormwater drainage, called a river basin. It's an an old quarry so visual environmental scars are blatant, but the longterm environmental effects are being shown here - stormwater and erosion.
The Aloha Flats are stopping their neighbours from collapsing.


All may work out spiffy, but I am concerned about the structure of the building...
Hairline fractures are occuring within the bricks. If anyone has played with LEGGO, then you know that these are faulty bricks.
Who do I contact?

Aerial Marrickville

Here's a great photo of South Marrickville posted on Google Earth by maxim75. It's good to see the contours of the ground and you get a sense of how hilly Marrickville is before it falls to the Cooks River. The blob in the middle is the Borgia Centre with Illawarra Road disecting the foreground.

Pertinent Trivia

An appropriate title to blog after a hiatus of computer death, and daylight savings.

Computer death is self explanatory, but daylight savings needs clarifying.It's so much easier to blog when it is dark outside, and summer hours get me out and about.

Anyway, around one corner from home is an institution called The Marrickville Golf Club. On the first Friday of the month they have a trivia night. It is a gem of a timecapsule - a social time capsule where at least three generations of Marrickville culture get together to play Trivia. Sometimes it's four generations. This is in a setting of a 1960's bungalow in someones backyard - but the backyard is a golf course. Hang on, this is the real deal... a 1960's golf clubhouse on a golf course. Filled with folks whose names are on the tribute boards adorning the walls. An asterisk next to the name of Life Members, generally means deceased. This kind of night is keeping the sign writer at bay.

Friday's Trivia Night was a hoot... there was no trivia competition as such, as it was all Christmas trivia leading up to a dance party with Glen Miller as the starter. The usual trivia MC was too pissed. As the Oldies left, it degenerated into dancing and laughing. If you are missing any old 80's vinyl singles, the DJ has them.

Eventually, this conglomerate of society petered out into poofters, lesbians, grannies, grandads and Cary Street people. And a few of us ended up having nightcaps on my front veranda. Thank God (FSM) it was a Friday night.

Time Inc Farewell

Here's the Time Inc Production Department's farewell lunch. It was a fun day, but still a bit sad as we are all going various ways - either made redundant, going to Pacific magazines or staying with Time Inc. This was at The Flying Yacht Squadron in Kirribili.

Oktoberfest

Just along the Cooks River from home is the Concordia Club. It's a German social club that used to be on Stanmore Road - in a 70's style Brutalist building. Thankfully, they downsized a few years back and took over the Tempe Lawn Bowls Club. Greens and clubhouse. Germans going to greens... not new.

And like Munich, they have the Bavarian Oktoberfest. Beer, music and dancing.
John and I went along on Saturday to sample the Germanic festivities, and resample, and resample. I only had six beers (which should be "biers"), over a couple of hours. Half litre steins are the go - $7 for a take home glass stein and $6.50 to fill it. That makes my intake being three litres of Warsteiner, a brilliant Pilsener. We were drunk, but strangely not as drunk as if you drank that volume in a local pub. Then again, I doubt any local (apart from Concordia Club) would have it on tap. As we exercised our stein arms, we met some locals - Simon from Tempe; and Kim and John from atop the Warren Cliff. Hope to catch up with them in the future.

We arrived as a procession of very Anglo Medieval marchers were about to parade. Decked out in finery of felt and feathers; with a couple of drummers and pipers, they did a great tattoo (see the photos). Afterwards, we spoke to Helmut, who was manning a barbecue and cooking German sausage. We know his name as he sported a Concordia Club badge proudly proclaiming "Helmut, Director". He told us that the marching group was "found" as they practised in the adjoining parkland. (I can't do his German accent in text but he said; "You must march at our Oktoberfest". And so it goes.)


After the parade, the Medieval Anglos made good use of the Green Common, and proceeded to play Croquet.

Michelle Turcscanyi and her husband, Atti, do Hungarian folk dancing. I worked with Michelle for many years as she is the art director for Time magazine - but a corporate schism has occurred and I no longer work on Time. Their dance group did an amazing set - fifteen minutes of folk dance. One of the photos here shows them being introduced and the MC was explaining how the dancing is unstructured and free flowing; with men solo first, women solo next... then coupling. The band in the background is a German band brought over especially for the event. They only speak Deutsch, so the MC was doing a lot of explaining. They played mostly bad eighties pop but in German, which made it bearable. But it was a good time to stumble upstream towards home.

Relocation

Recently, the company that I work for was swallowed by a bigger local fish. I do prepress/digital imaging for Time Inc Magazines, and the US parent company decided to sell off it's Australian magazines. It's a kick in the teeth for those of us who have worked there for a while, but the corporate world is rarely kind. Pacific Magazines, a part of the Seven Network, was the winning bidder and thankfully I was not made redundant (although a payout would have been handy). As a result, we're moving out of our spacious four floors in Milsons Point and being shoe horned into the Pacific building up the road in Blues Point - that's about 150 people being crammed into an already crowded place.
Being a part of a much bigger company is a bit of a shock. It's far less personal - if you pass people in a corridor they are more likely to ignore you than to give a greeting, but I can't complain as redundancy could have been a hassle.
I've now been "imbedded" into InStyle magazine, meaning that is the only mag I'll be working on. There's benefits in that I get to work directly with editorial, and negatives in that I get to work directly with editorial. I'm going to miss the variety of working on other magazines, but then again Time magazine was really the only different mag.

Nice Shoes

In a fortnight I'm off to Brad and Belinda's wedding, and don't think wearing runners would be appropriate. I therefore need some shoes - and where can I get some shoes.....preferably nice shoes......
and yes, that is even what's written on the shoebox.

Christmas in September

At this neighbour's house it's always Christmas. The decorations have been up since we moved in in March - but for all I know they may have been put up for a Christmas years ago. This stone house is what I believe was the original quarry foreman's house, and is made from the surrounding stone. The leadlight window has been broken for ages, but someone has tried repairs with plastic and silver tape. There is a Council heritage listing on this building, so I wonder if that is hindering permanent repairs.
Walking past is my next door neighbour, Chris. He's the one that gives us fresh eggs.

Back in January, Meredith blogged about another neighbouring house and it's Christmas attire. I'm spewing.... not going to get to see the kitschness this year as it's up for sale. It's open for inspection today so I may have a look as it's the same design as our house but still has the original front bay window.The spartan interior shots are fascinating. I think it's a Vietnamese family that own it.I find it an interesting example of Marrickville's changing cultural makeup - one house that has gone from WW1 white Australian, through Greek influences and then Asian. What comes next, We'll find out after the sale.

We went to the inspection, and John was particularly impressed with this post modern chandelier.

Getting Primitive

This morning, my next door neighbour, whose name I think is Meelah or similar, was beaming over the fence. Meelah is a young Lebanese woman and has practically no English, so most conversation consists of pointing and mimeing. Her 3yo son, Paul, is often throwing things over the fence, and so I thought it might have been retrieval time. Instead, she had dropped this large wooden primitive carving over the fence. A great gift. Where she got it, I don't know.

Marrickville Cultural Festival

Sunday was Festival day along Marrickville Road. Was a good crowd, as the pics will show. Deborah Conway was playing but John (at left) and I kept moving through the crowd. She has a beautiful powerful voice. I wanted to see Unkle Ho, but there was no way to find out when he was playing. The Council website had a dud link to a programme so we missed out. It would have to be one of the better street festivals around due to the diversity of local cultures, although I thought there'd be more Vietnamese and Greek food.

The Last act , Deborah Conway. The sound at the centre stage where Unkle Ho would have been playing was poor - three walls boxing it in and distorting. That makes it a bit easier to accept missing him.

Google Earth / Borgia Centre

I was looking at Google Earth and thought I'd better grab an image of the sports centre over the road, before Google updates the aerial shot. It must be from 2002-2003 as the building is under construction. With a long winded name, The Debbie and Abbey Borgia Community Recreation Centre was named after some local Bali bombing victims. The story is here.
I used to live at the "other" end of Marrickville, on Newington Rd, and very rarely ventured down to the river, so I had no idea that this big corrugated iron behemoth was being built. Now I look out at it every day, and can hear the sound of rubber soles squeaking on the inside courts. I've also seen posters around announcing that pro-wrestling is returning to Marrickville after 21 years; and will be at The Borgia Centre. We should be able to sit on the porch and hear the grunts of testosterone.

Spring 2007 - Clifface

This is the back of the garden, and as you an see there is a lot of work to be done. Our house is built in the old Schwebel Quarry, where they cut sandstone to build 19th century Sydney. Behind the banana tree there is a six foot pile of junk that included the decapited figurines and fake flower arrangements. I should have taken some photos, but the the bin beckoned. During the morning the shadows on the clifface dance. Once cleaned up it will be a great place to sit in summer, and could be fun to project images onto the wall at night. John and I intend to make a fernery as most of the day the base is in shade. I love the reataining walls - not what I expected for Greek landscaping.  

Spring 2007 - Teletubbies to Porch

One of the two lemon. I'm loving having lemon and soda water. Huge storms a few weeks back downed many trees and branches, resulting in piles of mulch. I'd get more from the Council nursery if it was feasible to carry it on pushbike. The small plant at the back is a Gymea Lily and native to the Sydney Basin. One day, it should have a flower on a 5 metre stem. Very Dr Who. The Tellytubby is Boulee's. He likes to grab the antennae in his mouth and shake, whacking himself with Po's body and making a right dickhead of himself.  



This is dog bliss - a massive frontyard that goes for kilometres. It's a pity about the road in between. It's also a damn fine spot to sit and have a bevvy. All hail the porch. I often see old Greek men and woman sitting on their porches, and now we can do it. Very civilised. May have to grow some nasal hairs to look the part. It's a pity that so much contemporary architecture ignores any relationship between house and street to the detriment of any community interaction. It seems as if many people now prefer total privacy and never use balconies and porches, but then again there are so many balconies that are llittle more than a shelf. And keeping with Fedeterannea, the mixmatch of pots.  


It was literally right out the front of here a few Sundays ago that a guy was run over. Soccer was on in the park, and from inside we heard a long skid and a loud thump. I didn't think it was a person, but it was the sound of metal and flesh. The poor guy was lying on the road (just behind the van) and was trying to get up, but couldn't. He had a little blood on his face, but at least he was conscious. When the ambulance arrived, one of the ambos nonchalantly looked at the guy on the road and went to inspect the car first. It seemed strange at the time, but it makes sense as the car damage will reflect the extent and location of injuries. The guy is lucky that there was a long skid first. 

Spring 2007 - The Farm

It's still a mess, but I'm mainly trying to document the farm for future comparison. Lemon City at the moment.

 
 
  

Lemon City with a suburb of snails.

Chris The Greek keeps his harvested pumpkins on his shed roofs. They look great! We get fresh eggs from him as he keeps chooks. And pidgeons. And a rooster. And a galah. And a dog. And grandchildren. Not sure, but he might have a duck. I'll have to get some photos!

Spring 2007 - The Front and The Farm

 The frontyard. Boulee is happier than a dog with two dicks. And I'm happier than a dog with four dicks and two tongues. 
 
 

 

Three in a row, although there's more.

 

More farming. Leeks, Brocolli, Cauliflower and beetroot.

The River and Front

Boulee at the river, and some pics to give perspective. 
 
 
 

The Emperors

The emperors are in town for APEC, so that means a long weekend and time to blog.

Hi Christine.... here's the pics of home. Lots of work to do in the garden as it is a 30 year old Cypriot garbage dump. You'd probably call it buried treasure. John did find that all the ceramic figurines that were dumped behind the banana tree had been decapitated. Old George must have had a fit of rage.