A Dog With Wings

Sam is a recalcitrant dog.
She likes to jump on to the roof and bark her lungs out at the passing world.
Sometimes I want to do the same, but I'm not as comfortable with heights as she. This is a semi regular sight alonh Illawarra Road. Repeated attempts by Bill, her owner, to block her access to the roof has obviously failed. She is friendly but out of control.

Ello Nina

Nino has left the building and El Nina seems to have settled in. Sydney has had drought for the past eight years, and it may be breaking. These are some pics from about 10am last Sunday - the front of my house. I live on a flood plain, but this is purely stormwater not escaping; not a river breaking it's banks.. I'd hate to know the outcome if the river floods and we get an extreme downpour. The house is about a metre above the road, but the shop next door is not.

After 15 minutes, the water dissipated.

Experimental "Rain Gardens" up the road had been installed to filter rainwater, and may have had an influence on the flash flood, but I doubt it. The drains below the rain gardens were overwhelmed (The Rain Gardens are meant to be a reticulation basin for plants to filter excess stromwater). I hope the gardens weren't the cause, as I support them. But if they are behind this, they need tweaking.

Photoshop Archaeology

I've just been playing with two old images taken from Hill Street in 1936, and doing very raw manipulations of parallax distortion. I'll eventually do a "proper" composite, but for now it is best that everyone has a sense of the two images as being separate - and being merged.

Hill Street Blues

Hill Street runs up the saddle of the hill from Illawarra Road, and is dominated by flats. It's not the most creative of names.
I recently found a photo on the Marrickville Council's website taken in 1936, and today I revisited the site. If it wasn't for the retaining wall and chimney, it would have been near impossible to find. Very few weatherboard houses are left in Marrickville and I wonder how long this one survived. 1936 was probably an optimistic time in Marrickville, with the municipality celebrating it's 75th anniversary and Australia coming out of Depression. The upcoming war would put an end to all that.

I've just found another image from the same spot. The inscription reads:


Val Gleeson (far left) is pictured here in Hill Street Marrickville, 1951. Her younger brother Stanley can be seen at far right. The Warren Estate is pictured in the background (Day Street) and the RB Bavies factory can also be seen in the left of the picture.

Warren and Maggie

The Warren is a locality of Marrickville named after a huge Gothic inspired mansion that used to sit on the hill overlooking the Cooks River. There is a painting of The Warren, having it's last gasp above encroaching suburbia, that was painted by Peter Lawson in 1911.
Hoping to find out more about the artist, I did a search and found another Peter lawson who paints. It's not the same guy, unless he has painted the picture of Dorian Grey. What struck me was one of his website paintings. It looked strangely familiar.

It turns out that I've been to the contemporary Peter Lawsons gallery and spoken with him. His gallery is on Magnetic island, and the familiar painting is from the top of Maggie, looking down over Horseshoe Bay. Here are some of the pics I took of the same spot when John and I holidayed there in 2005. All great coincidences!

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.

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.

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 - 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!