Melbourne Observer. December 16, 2015

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This is the final issue of the Melbourne Observer for 2015, and we will be taking a break, with our first 2016 issue due on the news-stands on February 3. We also take this opportunity of thanking our readers and advertisers for their support and loyalty over the past year. Turn inside for all your regular columnists, and enjoy your summer holiday!

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Healthy Living

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Melbourne People

Limbo Up Close Opening Night At Spiegel Zelt, Sorrento Photos: Tony Healey

● Flinders Hotel’s Rebecca Farrow with Peter Barry

● Miss Australia International Jessica Martini with Geoff Briscoe

● Scot Maidment with Limbo Up Close producer James McPherson

● Mikael Bres and Andy Brown

● Evelyne Allard with Stephen Brown

● Fred Bennet and Melanie Quirk

● Warm Up Guy, accomplished fiddler Nicholas Lyon

● Garry Woodhams and fiancee Debbie Taylor

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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 9

Court Roundsman

It’s All About You!

Melbourne

Lied about academic results: Observer banned from law for 10 years In This 140-Page Edition

Cabarate burlesque fun ........................... Page 10 Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus ........ Page 11 Merry Christmas, says Yvonne ................. Page 12 Melbourne Confidential: secrets ............. Page 13 Observer Readers’ Club ............................ Page 14 Christmas memories: Victoria Pictorial ... Page 15 West Hollywood live. Gavin Wood .............. Page 17 Nick Le Souef in hospital ......................... Page 18 Travel and Wine with David Ellis ............... Page 21 Sulky Snippets with Len Baker ................. Page 36 Ted Ryan’s Racing Round-Up .................... Page 49 Hey Presto, what an epic fail Justin Smith is back at 3AW. Why?

Christmas Eve carols at Beaumaris centre

Observer Showbiz Showbiz

● Mother and daughter vocalists Katrina and Lucinda Pezzimenti will perform at the Christmas Eve Beaumaris Community Carols. Photo Stelios Papoutsidis ■ The 39th Annual Beaumaris Christmas the baton of Darryn Wright, once again acEve Community Carols will be presented on companying the Carols. the lawns of the Beaumaris Community CenEntrance is free. Carol books and candles tre, Reserve Rd, Beaumaris at 7.45pm on are available and a gold coin donation welThursday, December 24 , compered by come. All proceeds go to the Christmas Bowl convenor Roger Wilson.

Appeal. Last year $400 was donated.

Two of the featured artists will be motherFamilies can arrive early and enjoy a picand-daughter vocalists Katrina and Lucinda nic on the lawns at the Beaumaris CommuPezzimenti, who will sing together a medley nity Centre. If it is inclement weather, the of numbers from Hansel and Gretel Carols will still go ahead inside the Beaumaris There will also be entertainment from two Community Hall. choirs, MLOC and the St Martin’s Singers, Enquiries: 0418 395 946. with the Southern Area Concert Band under - Cheryl Threadgold

■ Law clerk Dorian Swies has been banned from legal practice for 10 years after significantly overstating academic results to a law firm.

Jonathan Smithers, Senior Member of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, heard that Swies applied for a seasonal clerkship at Arnold Bloch Leibler.

Swies had enrolled in a ‘Juris Doctor’ degree at Monash University, but did not complete the course.

“His application relied on a false statement of his academic results,” Mr Smithers said.

Swies later applied for a graduate position, again providing a false statement.

Swies applied to Barling Finance for a personal loan, falsely stating he was employed as a solicitor, enclosing forged payslips alleging he was earning at the rate of more than $100,000 a year.

Swies had been earlier fined $1000 at Moorabbin Court, after pleading guilty to attempting to obtain property by deception. The Victorian Legal Services Board brought the case against Swies, with Swies agreeing to be made a disqualified person for 10 years.

“I just want it all done with, it’s being going on for too long,” Swies had told a Board representative. Swies did not appear at the Tribunal.

Remorseful guilty plea after fatal collision at Hallam:

4 years corrections order for death car driver, 53

■ Character evidence from a woman’s pastor, and from the owner of Cranhaven Lodge where she volunteered at weekends, has assisted in dangerous driver Nayana Demel being given a four-year community corrections order.

Demel, 53, pleaded guilty of driving a motor vehicle in a dangerous manner causing death, before Judge Frances Hogan of the County Court.

The offence carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment.

Judge Hogan said Ms Demel’s guilty plea came late, and that the Judge was “troubled by the manner in which your defence was conducted”.

“I think it likely that, had you been advised more carefully, this matter would have resolved a long time ago. The legal process would not have been so protracted and costly.”

The Court heard thatMs Demel’s car entered Frawley

Rd, Hallam, from a side street (Cornwall St), failing to give way to a car driven aqt 55kmhby Mr Girys.

The force of the collision saw Mr Girys suffer multiple injuries including a fractured sternum, fractured ribs, cardiac contusion, pulmonary contusion, lacerations, bruising and abrasions.

Mr Girys was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of the Dandenong Hospital, where he was placed on life support.

He died of multi-organ failure, 10 days later.

Ms Demel said she had stopped at the ‘Give Way’ sign for one or two seconds, then took off.

Ms Demel said she did not see Mr Giry’s car, said to be travelling at 54.4-kmh.

Witness Mr Rickards said Ms Demel’s car “burst out like a rocket”. Police calculated her speed to be 20.6-kmh.

It was 2.79 seconds travel from the ‘Give Way’ sign to the point of collision, Judge Hogan was told.

Ms Demel’s defence case was that the prosecution could not prove beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Girys died from the injuries sustained in the collision.

Judge Hogan said Ms Demel’s driving was a serious breach of the proper management or control of rhe car.

“I reject your counsel’s submission that yours is a case of momentary lapse of concentration.

“A car us a potentially lethal weapon. To cause the death of another human being is the most serious consequence that driving can have.”

Latest News Flashes Around Victoria

‘Fund kids at uni’

■ M.H. Halilic, of Taylors Hill, father of three caught with 72kg of cannabis, was growing the drug to help his children through university, the County Court has heard. Halilic was jailed for six months to be followed by a 2½-year Community Corrections Order after pleading guilty, reports the Geelong Advertiser.

Ice vs grog: doctor

■ Ice users are doing as much damage to themselves in 18 to 24 months as alcoholics do over 10 or 20 years, according to rehabilitation worker Dr Alan Fisher, reports theBorder Mail Albury-Wodonga.

‘Increased deaths’

■ The Hazelwood mine fire likely contributed to an increase in deaths, the Mine Fire Inquiry board has found, says the Gippsland Times.

Weather Forecast

■ Today (Wed.). Mostly sunny. 13°-27° ■ Thurs. Sunny. 15°-29° ■ Fri. Partly cloudy. 12°-24° ■ Long range forecast for Christmas Day (Fri. Dec. 25): Rain at times. 12°-27°

Final issue for 2015

■ This is the final issue of the Melbourne Observer for 2015. Our office is now closed for the year, and is due to re-open on Wednesday, January 27. Our first issue for 2016 is due to be published on Wednesday, February 3.

Mike McColl Jones

Top 5

THE T OP 5 TV SHO WS TOP SHOW THA T WERE REJE CTED FOR THAT REJECTED THE SUM MER BREAK 5. The sex life of a lobster - 50 Shades of Cray.

4. A series about a florist that sells sells sub-standard merchandise. Fawlty Flowers.

3. A sit-com about a Martial Haemophiliac.

Take Me to Your Bleeder.

2. Former star of Two and a Half Men appointed coach of Essendon. You can be Sheen but Not Hird.

1. Four casual shoes appear on stage singing Georgy Girl. The Sneakers.

Page 10 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

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sands of hours” were taken in the recording of the Bee Gees How Deep Is Your Love? If that was the case, the recording wouldn’t be released yet.

Heidelberg community radio station 96.5 Inner FM announced the death on Friday night of presenter Trevor Dagley, formerly of Ivanhoe.

He was one of the original presenters, hosting the Scouting Around program. He was 86-87, and in recent times lived in care at Berwick. A funeral service is planned to be conducted at St John’s, Heidelberg-Ivanhoe, today (Wed.).

Was that singer Mark Holden ‘helping’Father Christmas at the Melbourne Town Hall on Saturday night?

Radio host Tom Elliott has taken delivery of an electric blue new Ford Mustang ... it is impressive but will never beat Derryn Hinch’s black Cadillac.

Wantirna man Adam Sorrell has raised $13,000 for the HeartKids appeal.

Quentin Tarantino and Kurt Russell will be at The Rivoli,. Camberwell on January 17.

● Danny Finley, Colleen Hewett and Belinda Visser were at the opening night of Limbo Up Close at the Spiegel Zelt at Sorrento on Thursday evening.

Photo: Tony Healey ■ Are you looking for a fun destination over the summer holidays?

The coastal town of Sorrento is home to a new world-class cabaret-burlesque-circus style production with an outstanding cast of musicians, dancers, acrobats and singers.

The record breaking, award-winning show Limbo Up Close opened on Thursday, and runs until just before Australia Day (Jan. 26).

On Page 8 we have a selection of opening night photos taken by Anthony Healey. It was good to see Danny Finley, Colleen editor@MelbourneObserver.com.au Hewett and Belinda Visser. with Ash Long, Editor It is an intoxicating mix “For the cause that lacks assistance, of music and dance, ‘Gainst the wrongs that need resistance breathtaking stunts and ilFor the future in the distance, lusion.

And the good that we can do” The show made its Sorrento debut after sold out seasons in London, Edinburgh, Colombia, Denmark, Germany and Brussels.

"I am excited to rework the show into the intimate surrounds of the Spiegelzelt,” says director Scott Maidment.

New York's Sxip ■ “Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to Shirey has composed ex- the bone.”

- Dorothy Parker clusive music for this show.

The show's stunning international cast includes: ■ “The secret of staying young is to live honestly, Coney Island's sword eat slowly, and lie about your age.” - Lucille Ball swallower Heather Holliday; French gravitydefying Chinese pole master and clown, Mikael ■ “For God so loved the world that he gave his one Bres; the exquisite and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not French-Canadian aerial- perish but have eternal life.” ist Evelyne Allard, the - John 3:16 hand balancer Danik Contents of Court Lists are intended for information purposes Abishev’ and Australia's The lists are extracted from Court Lists, as supplied to the own acrobatic dancing only. public, by the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria, often one week prior sensation Hilton Denis. to publication date; for current Court lists, please contact the The show runs until Court. Further details of cases are available at www.magistratescourt.vic.gov.au The Melbourne Observer shall in Monday, January 25. event accept any liability for loss or damage suffered by any Show Times: Tuesday no person or body due to information provided. The information is to Sunday 6.30pm and provided on the basis that persons accessing it undertake responsibility for assessing the relevance and accuracy of its content.

8.30pm No inference of a party’s guilt or innocence should be made by Tickets on sale: of their name as a defendant. Court schedules may Ticket-master or Three publication be changed at any time for any reason, including withdrawal of Palms, Sorrento the action by the Plaintiff/Applicant. E&OE.

Long Shots

Observer Treasury

Thought For The Week

Observer Curmudgeon

★ ★ ★ ★

Butel directs ‘Violet’ ■ Blue Saint Productions announce the Melbourne season of Mitchell Butel’s Violet, to be presented at Chapel off Chapel from March 3 -20.

Violet is a musical from Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Caroline or Change) with a libretto by Brian Crawley (The Little Princess).

Featuring show-stopping anthems ranging from gospel to soul to bluegrass, it follows a truly original young woman (Violet Karl) who on her quest across America (from North Carolina to Oklahoma) for divine intervention, finds a very different kind of salvation Violet is currently performing in Sydney where this Australian production premiered at the Hayes Theatre early this month.

Three-time Helpmann Award winner Mitchell Butel directs Violet, with musical direction by Lucy Bermingham (Strictly Ballroom, Guilty Pleasures), choreography by Amy Campbell (Guilty Pleasures, SYTYCD), costume design by Lucetta Stapleton (High Society), set design by Simon Greer (Man of La Mancha) and lighting design by Ross Graham (Sweet Charity, Avenue Q).

The Melbourne cast will include Samantha Dodemaide (Anything Goes, Sweet Charity), Steve Danielsen (Wicked, Legally Blonde), Barry Conrad (X Factor), Damien Bermingham (Chicago, Strictly Ballroom), Katie Elle-Reeve (Hair), Ryan Gonzalez (Strictly Ballroom, Legally Blonde) and introducing Luisa Scrofani as Young Violet.

Tickets are now on sale.

Performance Season: March 3-20.

Venue: Chapel off Chapel, 12 Little Chapel St., Prahran Running Time: 1 hour 45 minutes – no intermission Tickets: $59/$54 Bookings: www.violetthemusical.com.au or www.chapeloffchapel.com.au or 8290 7000.

- Cheryl Threadgold

Text For The Week

● Flick (Barry Conrad) and Monty (Steve Danielsen) in Violet, opening on March 3.

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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 11

Showbiz News

Bradman heads bush Shows In Black

● Deidre Rubinstein ■ The Melbourne Theatre Company's first 2016 production, Ladies In Black, is a new Australian musical that has just wowed the crowds in its premier season in Brisbane.

The story caught the attention of Split Enz musician Tim Finn, who said he could hear songs in his head as he read the book.

Bring in director Simon Phillips and his writer wife Carolyn Burns, and a new Australian musical is born.

Male roles are played by Bobby Fox, Greg StoneandAndrew Broadbent. Female talent includes Lucy maunder, Deidre Rubinstein, Christen O'Leary and Sarah Morrison The stage is set for a trip back in time, meeting the characters who inhabit the store, as they sing and act.

Melbourne audiences have their chance to embrace this new Australian music when it starts its season at the Sumner Theatre in Southbank on January 16.

Bookings and all details at www.mtc. com.au - Julie Houghton

■ Greta Bradman is taking her voice and personality beyond the cities to entertain regional Australia.

With her new Decca Classics album My Hero, she is embarking on a tour on January 23 that starts in Wagga Wagga and ends in Goulburn on March 6.

In between she criss-crosses the country, taking in the major capital cities, but is visiting places like Hamilton, Bendigo and Geelong in Victoria.

Taking her music to the country is a long-held dream for Greta.

"I want to perform in regional Australia as well as capital cities because I adore the vastness of this great continent and its people - I believe it's imperative to include Australia's rural community, the country's life blood, and make sure there are opportunities for people living here to experience live performances of classical music," she explained.

Greta's My Hero album has become the best-selling classical debut recording for 2015.

Greta has deliberately chosen churches, town halls and smaller venues where possible in the tour, because she genuinely wants people to be able to see her as well as hear her, and to come up afterwards to say hello.

To find out more or book tickets to hear Greta Bradman live, visit www.gretabradman.com - Julie Houghton

● Greta Bradman

Melbourne Observations

with Matt Bissett-Johnson

‘Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ton.’

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

● The Banks family in Mary Poppins: Winifred (Lauren Elise), George (Daniel Ginsberg), Michael (Lenny Thomas) and Jane (Felicity Bertram). Cheryl Threadgold has more details in the Observer Showbiz section on Page 39.

Kids festival at MRC ■ Melbourne Recital Centre has developed an innovative children's festival called Music Play, running from January 14-16.

The first day brings Space Symphony into orbit. It's a journey through space created with children and families in mind.

Patrons will go on an imaginative journey through the solar system to discover what sounds are in outer space, discovering space-related music from Strauss, Holst and John Williams.

Also sprach Zarathustra, well known as the theme from the film 2001: Space Odyssey is on the musical bill of fare, along with Star Wars and Holst's contribute to space mu-

THE BARREL

● James Morrison sic, The Planets. This program will demonstrate the brass, winds and string families of the orchestra, with the Space Symphony Ensemble, with musical director Michael Tyack and presenter Ana Maria Belo.

On Friday January 15, trumpeter James Morrison and his band present Jazz up Your Kids, taking you through music from Dixieland to bop, and from early Blues to Birdland, introducing everyone to the musical instruments vital for jazz.

Singer Hetty Kate will lend her smooth vocals for the occasion.

On Saturday January 16 Play School favourite Jay Laga'aia invites the audience to join him in a fun interactive concert of music and dance.

Music Play also includes interactive workshops, indigenous music experiences and a family bush dance. melbournerecital.com.au - Julie Houghton

Nurse faces Tribunal after abortion

■ Catherine George has faced the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal after allegations of unprofessional conduct were brought against her by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia.

Ms George has been reprimanded for her failure to advocate for her patient and her failure to make adequate notes in the patient record.

Ms George must undertake and complete further education in the form of a course in law and ethics.

Ms George worked at a private hospital, and the case related to a patient being unable to be aroused after the termination.

● Virginia O'Hanlon ■ In 1897, Dr Philip O'Hanlon, a coroner's assistant on Manhattan's Upper West Side, was asked by his then eight-year-old daughter, Virginia O'Hanlon (1889–1971), whether Santa Claus really existed.

O'Hanlon suggested she write to The Sun, a prominent New York City newspaper at the time, assuring her that "If you see it in The Sun, it's so."

In so doing, Dr O'Hanlon had unwittingly given one of the paper's editors, Francis Pharcellus Church, an opportunity to rise above the simple question and address the philosophical issues behind it.

Church was a war correspondent during the American Civil War, a time that saw great suffering and a corresponding lack of hope and faith in much of society.

Although the paper ran the editorial in the seventh place on the page, below even one on the newly invented "chainless bicycle", it was both noticed and well-received by readers.

More than a century later it is the most reprinted editorial in any newspaper in the English languag: DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.

Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.

Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’

Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

VIRGINIA O’HANLON. 115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET. ★ VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.

They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds.

All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.

Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus.

It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.

We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies!

Turn To Page 13

Page 12 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

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If you haven’t got a ha’penny, then God bless you

Yvonne’s Column

Christmas is coming; the geese are getting fat, Please put a penny in the old man’s hat, If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do, If you haven’t got a ha’penny, then God bless you.

The charitable lyrics of this nursery rhyme were to associate the Christmas feast with geese, which were traditional English Christmas fare.

The meaning that was conveyed to a child was that the festive period was where each would give to charity, according to their means – even if they could only give a blessing.

It’s a great nursery rhyme, which we sang, with much gusto as children, without knowing the true meaning.

with Yvonne Lawrence

Tighter belts ■ I have a feeling that this Christmas there will be many who will be tightening their belt, but in true Aussie fashion, those in need will be looked after, plus a God bless you.

Aussies can be so generous.

It seems that there are not as many houses decorated this year around our suburb. Most have just hung a wreath on their front door.

However I have seen pretty Chinese lanterns hanging in some front gardens.

And if you are lucky, a piece of mistletoe will be suspended above the front door. So be prepared for a big festive smackaroo when you enter.

Queen Victoria insisted a berry be plucked off mistletoe branches after each kiss, ensuring only a limited number of embraces were possible.

Was there anything that amused this woman after the death of her very handsome husband?

Politically correct ■ It disappoints me that there are some shops that don’t play carols. One shopkeeper told me that she did want to offend some of her customers. Tough, it’s a Christian festival.

Perhaps it’s that some people are being overly politically correct. And perhaps most of our migrants of other faiths wouldn’t be concerned If we don’t let them hear our carols, then they will never get to enjoy the beautiful Christmas music that is part and parcel of our Christian heritage. at all.

Bloodlines

■ Matthew Brabham, 21 hopes to become the third Brabham to win a shot at winning the Indy 500.

His grandfather, Sir Jack, and Matthew's dad, Geoff, both competed in the gruelling challenge.

Next year Matthew will race his $1.5 million Dallara - Chev hoping to make the final cut of 33 cars to compete for the coverted trohy.

You can catch up with Matt's high octane life on www.matthew brabham.com

yvonne.lawrence@bigpond.com Much of the music that we hear in stores at Christmas time is a celebration of seasonal goodwill and more concerned with encouraging us to open our wallets and spend money, rather than have any religious connotation.

It doesn’t matter if you are not Christian, there is something heart warming about a choir of children singing carols. And for something special to play throughout your house, there is a superb CD that we play: Carols from the King’s College. It is simply wonderful.

Angels explained ■ I still recall reading something called Angels Explained By Children.

Greg, aged 5 said that he only knew two angels, Hark and Harold Then an older child said … “Everybody got it wrong. Angels don’t wear halos anymore. I forget why, but scientists are working on it”.

Fred aged 7 said, “It’s not easy to become an angel. First you die. Then you go to heaven, and there’s still flight training to go through. And then you have to agree to wear those angel clothes”.

Mitchell, aged 9: “Angels work for God and watch over kids when God has to go and do something else”.

Jack, aged 9: ““Angels talk all the way while they are flying you up to heaven, the main subject is where you went wrong before you got

✔

dead”.

And Jarrad said that angels live in a cloud house made by God and his son, who is a very good carpenter.

Innocent beauty ■ Christmas is not only for children, but their innocence is beautiful. It’s a shame they have to grow up.

Peter and I are putting our feet up this Christmas without feeling indulgent in any way. This year has been, in the words of our gracious Queen, our “annus horribilis” with health issues.

So Christmas Day, Mekonnen and Meseret, our Ethiopian family have invited us share with them an Italian Christmas feast at a celebrated Italian restaurant.

We are looking forward to a wonderful day, celebrating with hospitable Italians and with delicious dishes that never seem to cease arriving at the table.

One year we enjoyed Christmas Day with my Italian friends family. After a sumptuous meal, we were sitting back groaning having eaten too much, when Nonno beckoned me to follow him out into the garden.

He whispered that he had some special grappa and it was the custom to have a glass with a new friend at Christmas.

It had a kick like a mule, and as my limit would be a half glass of white wine, it took me

Gift cards

Santa says

● Luke Bona

■ I keep on thinking of the words in the Jodie Mitchell song, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” How often that turns out to be true.

But there is one piece of news that made my heart sing and personifies the true meaning of giving at Christmas and a gesture of peace.

Russia presented to France a beautiful male German Shepherd puppy to replace Diesel, the brave German Shepherd who was on duty with our soldiers and was killed during a terrorist attack in Paris.

Dobryya is the new pups name, and I wish him safe and happy times with our brave soldiers.

Thank you to Russia for a true Christmas gesture.

To my readers I wish you all a very happy Christmas. Enjoy the day.

Let us all look forward to a prosperous, and above all, safe 2016.

Talkies Award

■ Not that we've been counting them but there are approx 20,000 Uber vehicles in Australia.

We're also informed some very serious money intends to build upon that number.

Serious money comes from the investment coffers of James Packer, Lachlan Murdoch and aspiring media baron Ryan Stokes - all have clubbed together offering finance for drivers to purchase vehicles and pay for them while working for Uber.

Uber has been active in Australia for just 18 months.

■ Currently screening in the US is a tv commercial with a difference.

Camera pans around a living room of adult family swapping Christmas presents - the usual thanks and hugs.

Thirty something man hands an

True gesture

envelope to an isolated elderly man, they hug and reveal the much appreciated gift is a Gift Card to PornHub. Sure beats the usual pair of socks and jocks.

■ We listen to a lot of current affair-talk back programs. The discussion that took our fancy was when Luke Bona (Australia Overnight) was chatting to a truckie as the truckie trundled along some outback road.

All of a sudden there was an enormous thud, sounds of glass breaking and truck brakes screeching..

A concerned Luke asked: “What happened, are you OK?” Without flinching the truckie said “oh yeah, I just hit a 'roo'”, and continued on with his discussion.

We've awarded that interview our Talkies Award for 2015.

Uber offer

Good neighbours

■ Don’t forget to wish your neigbours the joys of the season.

I’m remembering in my Christmas wishes the former Prime Minister Tony Abbott. He deserves our thanks for what he did, and the charitable work he still does.

Former treasurer Joe Hockey really needs our best wishes and thanks for his past contribution. He kept his head whilst non -thinking Australians like lemmings threw insults at him.

If the words of praise that Prime Minister Turnbull heaped on Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey were genuine, why is one sitting on the back bench, while the former treasurer Joe Hockey is winging his way to America to take up the position of Australia’s new ambassador?

It seems such a waste of a very experienced and compassionate man, but who knows what may happen in the future in the ever-changing world of politics?

O’Keefe’s Extra Bit

OK

with John O’Keefe

an hour to stop talking like the star of The Godfather.

It really is the time to think of relatives and friends you haven’t seen during the year.

Please remember your friends and neighbours who may be doing it tough this Yuletide.

■ Have a very Happy Christmas, make it one to remember and make it a safe one.

I'll be back on deck with the rest of the Observer team next year.

All the best.

- John O’Keefe

■ A few issues ago we mentioned Hillier's Soda Shop in Regent Place, Melbourne.

This mention rekindled many fond memories of this icon of good taste.

The Hillier's story commenced in San Francisco in the early 1900s when a Englishman Ernest Hillier, and his Australian born wife opened a chain of soda shops.

All their hopes were destroyed in the San Fransisco earthquake of 1906.

Destitute they moved to Sydney-, somehow they cobbled together sufficient funds to start the first chocolate making factory in Australia.

Next came the Great Depression , they relocated to Melbourne..

In 1929 Hillier's Soda Shop opened in Regent Place retailing the elegant dark red chocolate boxes, plus serving the most temptuous delights of waffles, ice cream sundaes with

exotic toppings, milk shakes , spiders and sodas.

The new soda shop was ahead of it's time with marble type counters white coated sales attendents wearing peaked caps.

Hillier's Easter Eggs were a treat and at one point in time the factory produced four million Easter eggs some with your name inscribed upon the rich, dark chocolate shell, inside was a taste delight of marzipan Memories of all that sugar.

Hillier's were masters of the game by selling chocolates via direct mail Ernest Hillier was an entrepeneur a fighter, a survivor - he pased away in 1967.

The company was sold , the brandname continued until 2015 when it was placed in voluntary liquidation.

- John O’Keefe

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 13

Melbourne

Confidential Talk is cheap, gossip is priceless

At the Car Wash

● D PHOTO: DENIS WALTER/ FACEBOOK

● 3AW personalities Darren James, Andrew McLaren and Denis Walter will lead a charity fundraiser this Friday (Dec. 18) from the Magic Hand Carwash, 895 High St, Kew East. ● Continued from Page 11

Yes Virginia, ther e is a Santa Claus You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove?

Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus.

The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.

Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there.

Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart.

Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real?

Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood..

● Francis Pharcellus Church

Radio ‘killing seasons’ begin: SCA bosses axed

■ Southern Cross Austereo Victorian General Manager Cathy Thomas’s position has been axed ... with the same happening to her Sydney counterpart Jeremy Simpson.

Both executives were given bombshell news by Chief Executive Officer Grant Blackley.

Cathy Thomas has been General Manager of Fox 101.9 and Triple M. Simpson was GM for Triple M and 2DAY FM Sydney.

They are both to exit at the end of this month.

Cathy Thomas has been with the group for more than 20 years. Starting in Sales, she became Melbourne GM in 2012.

“SCA appears to be following in the tracks of Nova Entertainment, Australia Radio Network and Macquarie Media Group who each went down a similar path in centralising their management structure,” says the Radio Today website.

“With the recent appointment of Chief Operating Officer John Kelly based in Sydney, he will now formerly oversee both markets,” Radio Today said..

$110,000 penalty for Macquarie

● Cathy Thomas

Vic. Govt. duped school teachers ■ Teachers in Victoria will receive back payments totalling approximately $37 million as a result of orders made in a landmark case late last week.

Orders handed down by the Federal Court of Australia will see approximately 46,000 teachers and principals receive back payment from the Victorian State Government after unlawful deductions were made from their wages for laptop computers.

“Laptop computers are essential equipment for teachers and principals. This was a matter we had to pursue,” said Meredith Peace, President of the Australian Education Union Victorian Branch.

“Expecting teachers and principals to pay out of their own pockets for a computer that they use to write school reports, communicate with parents and other teachers and plan lessons is absolutely unfair.

The Federal Court found the Victorian Government made unlawful deductions from teachers’ and principals’ salaries in contravention of the Fair Work Act, by requiring them to pay for access to the Education Department’s laptops directly out of wages.

Teachers and principals currently employed by the Department of Education who had money unlawfully deducted from their wages will be repaid by December 24, including a 5 per cent interest payment. Former employees who participated in the program will have repayments made by March 31.

The Fair Work Act provides that an employer can only make deductions from an employee’s salary in limited circumstances.

Justice Bromberg found the Department’s deductions were unauthorised under the Fair Work Act. The Victorian Government ceased making deductions from teachers’ and principals’ pay on November 26.

“Today’s orders mean 46,000 teachers and principals will receive the recompense they deserve for having these deductions made from their salary.

These orders also mean unlawful deductions like this cannot happen in future,” said Ms Peace.

■ Macquarie Securities (Australia) Limited has paid a penalty of $110,000 to comply with an infringement notice given to it by the Markets Disciplinary Panel.

The penalty was for Macquarie Securities failing to prevent a non-Designated Trading Representative from submitting Trading Messages though the non-automated order processing component of its automated order processing system, into the ASX Trading Platform.

Macquarie Securities is alleged to have contravened the Corporations Act 2001 by reason of contravening theAustralian Securities and Investments Commission Market Integrity Rules .

Rumour Mill

Whispers

Out of here

● Wayne Carey ■ Is football legend Wayne Carey preparing to be part of a jungle-based TV series in 2016?

New GM

● Anne Frankenberg ■ Radio station 3MBS Board of Directors is looking to appoint a General Manager. Anne Frankerberg has been GM since 2012. Applications close on December 28.

To Court

Hear It Here First

News in the clear

■ British prosecutors say they will take no further action in their phonehacking investigation.

This ends a four-year inquiry with Rupert Murdoch UK news organisation at its centre.

It shed light on tabloid media, its sometimes unsavory methods and its proximity to the highest ● Rupert Murodch echelons of power.

Paper without ads ■ Publisher Joel Cohen has expanded his St Kilda Community Newspaper Inc to produce the Cardinia Chronicle as part of a work-for-the-dole scheme.

St Michael’s action ■ St Michael’s Grammar School is due in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court tomorrow (Thurs.) after it applied for a pre-hearing conference. The session is due to allege that Brett Mcallen owes a “debt” to the school.

E-Mail: Confidential@MelbourneObserver.com.au

■ The Ivanhoe Grammar School has requested a Registrars’ Hearing at Heidelberg Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday, January 12, when it is due to allege a ‘breach of contract/agreement (non-payment)’ by Samantha Hanson.

Shorts

■ Is a big Melbourne radio name to receive a DCM (Don’t Come Monday) in the next week?

■ Channel 9 is planning a Sex Ed program for 2016.

■ Meshel Laurie will team with Katie ‘Monty’ Dimond as the new The 3PM Pick Up team on the KIIS Network in 2016.

Page 14 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Observer Readers’ Club Festive Facts

Melbourne Photo Flashback

Join in our chat

■ In England, Christmas celebrations were banned from 1644 until 1660 by an Act of Parliament. Some politicians thought that Christmas was a wasteful festival and the celebrations were against Christian beliefs.

■ The first-ever nativity scene was set up in a cave by Saint Francis of Assisi in Italy around 1224. He had to gain permission directly from the Pope before he could proceed.

■ The inventor of strings of electric Christmas lights got the idea from the string lights used in telephone switchboards in the late 1800s.

■ The song Jingle Bells was written in the American town of Massachusetts by James Lord Pierpont. It was originally sung to celebrate Thanksgiving, not Christmas.

IN PRINT: Read the Melbourne Observer every week.

Buy at your newsagent, or by mail subscription.

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Birthdays

■ December 17. John Wilson, Drysdale.

■ December 19. Bill Duff, Mount Waberley.

■ December 21. K. Sims, Heidelberg. Bloyd Christmas, Frankston.

■ December 23. Pauline Sturges, Frankston.

■ December 25. Neville Brown, East Burwood.

■ December 29. Audrey Evans, Surrey Hills.

■ Decem,ber 30. Jillian Oregan, Cranbourne.

■ December 31. Shirley Tangey, Albert Park.

■ January 4. Neil D. Hamilton, Middle Park.

■ January 11. Tim Glennen, Bundoora.

■ January 15. Nancy Bowman, Bacchus Marsh.

■ January 17. Maree Perry, St Albans.

■ January 21. Sarah-Anne Mooney, Moonee Ponds.

■ January 26. James Cosgrove, Glen Waverley.

■ January 29. Leonie McLachlan, Ashwood.

■ February 1. Gary Hamilton, Hampton Park.

■ February 2. Ron Mounsey, Melton.

Publication of the Melbourne Observer resumes on February 3, 2016.

FAX: 1800 231 312 E-MAIL: editor@ melbourneobserver.com.au

Christmas Fast Facts

■ Officially, there is still a law in Britain which makes it illegal not to attend church on Christmas Day. It also states that you cannot use a vehicle to travel to the church.

■ Until 1939, Rudolph (the red-nosed reindeer) was known as Rollo.

■ In the United Kingdom, there is an old wives’ tale that says that bread baked on Christmas Eve will never go mouldy.

■ Once, housewives spread rosemary on the floor at Christmas time, so that the leaves would release a fragrant scent when stepped on and crushed.

● Elizabeth Street, Melbourne

Your Stars with Christina La Cross ARIES (MAR 21 - APR 20) It's time to dust off past issues and to move forward with your head held high. Don't allow yourself to be made a victim. You and I know you are better than that.

TAURUS (APR 21 - MAY 21) The first offer you get today may not be the best, so don't be afraid to take your time or to let others know that you are worth more. A new romantic path opens up from today.

GEMINI (MAY 22 - JUNE 21) I know you think you are not making any progress, but the beginning of all things is small. Try to enjoy this slow start as, before you know it, the future gets exciting.

CANCER (JUNE 22 - JULY 23) I know you have been though a lot, but you mustn't beat yourself up about things which went wrong. The easiest way to live happily from now on is to live honestly.

LEO (JULY 24 - AUG 23) You think your reputation has been ruined, but you've actually managed to earn far more supporters and admirers than you have critics Leo. Talks this morning confirm this. Venus promises you a much needed apology.

VIRGO (AUG 24 - SEPT 23) A more varied social life is evolving which makes your life a much more interesting place to be. You no longer feel so self aware, but you're able to be you at last.

LIBRA (SEPT 24 - OCT 23) You waited so long to get what you want that you no longer want to feel that way again.

That's why, with the influence of Mars, you will be running after what and who makes you happy.

SCORPIO (OCT 24 - NOV 22) I can see how much you've had on your plate this year, but I also know that the painful part is over and what you're experiencing now is the healing, which is both emotional and cathartic.

SAGITTARIUS (NOV 23 - DEC 21) This is a really important time for relationships where you no longer feel the need to pretend to be someone you're not. You're speaking and acting from the heart. You feel like you again.

CAPRICORN (DEC 22 - JAN 20) You have an appetite for knowledge and will feel like acting upon it. This could see many of your sign committing to things, situations and people you would usually shy away from.

AQUARIUS (JAN 21 - FEB 19) A problem you have been trying to ignore doesn't seem to be showing any signs of going away. Stand tall and face your fears. I know you can beat what's worrying you.

PISCES (FEB 20 - MARCH 20) You have started to face some uncertainty about your goals and ambitions, but that's because you've stopped mixing with the positive influences and started listening to the negative. Believe in you. I do!

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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 15

Victoria Pictorial

Christmas Nostalgia Photo Collection

● Christmas Market, Melbourne. 1893.

● Christmas shopping. 1970.

● Christmas Dinner, 1943, at Royal Park Camp.

● Christmas at Brighton Beach. 1920.

● Christmas picnic at Studley Park. 1920.

● Christmas excursion train. 1882

● Christmas at Macedon. 1909.

● Servicemen dining at Christmas. 1943.

g 16 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, y, December 16,, 2015 Page

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Masons say NO to domestic violence

In memory of Peter Atkin

● From left: Norm Willoughby; Antoinette Schellekens, Charles LaTrobe College Principal Jason Bek; scholarship recipient Hibaq Mohamed; and Mark Vincent.

■ Fairfield Lodge members and Peter Atkins' mother-in-law Antoinette Schellekens presented a Certificate of Encouragement and scholarship funding to a student from Charles Latrobe College, Macleod earlier this month. in memory of Peter Atkin.

The award, established in memory of late Peter Atkin in 2013, was presented at the Year 11 students' graduation night at Latrobe University on December 3.

Hibaq Mohammed, who expressed an interest in continuing her schooling through to completing year 12, was chosen as a worthy candidate to receive the award.

Hibaq was born in Australia from Senegal parents but her mother has been raising her on her own as a single parent. She said that she would like to go to University to study law and is very grateful for the donation.

The Bro. Peter Atkin Scholarship Fund and Encouragement Award was established by Peter's wife Justine soon after Peter's untimely death in September 2013.

At just 30 years old, newly married and on his way to the Austin Hospital where he worked as a Bio-medical Engineer, he was tragically involved in an horrific car accident that took his life.

Following the accident his wife Justine suggested that Fairfield Lodge might like to assist in setting up a scholarship in the name of Peter.

Norm Willoughby pursued the suggestion and discovered that Charles Latrobe College, Macleod had a year 11 student that required an encouragement award. It is also interesting to note that Peter graduated from Latrobe University next to Charles Latrobe College.

There are particular awards that go to the best performers but sometimes there is an award that goes to a person who does all the training, is on time and performs to the best of their ability no matter the outcome. This award is commonly referred to as the coach's award, and in this case, an Encouragement Award.

Fairfield Lodge members agreed to donate $500 to the cause.

Prior to the presentations Norm and Mark Vincent gave a brief overview to guests, of the principles of Freemasonry and the importance of devoting time to supporting the community, providing a helping hand for students, schools, those in aged care, or those suffering the effects of severe weather events such as bushfires and floods.

Antoinette Schellekens represented her daughter Justine at the presentation.

Relieving Vanuatu ■ Since April , Freemasons Victoria's Lord Northcote Lodge and Lodge of Australia Felix have been raising funds for the Vanuatu Relief Appeal. Members of the Lodges have just announced a total of more than $11,000 raised towards the cause.

Cyclone Pam struck Vanuatu with devastating force on March 15 this year, claiming lives and destroying homes, hospitals and crops.

This Category-5 cyclone was one of the worst storms to ever hit the region. It is estimated that more than 180,000 were affected, and between 50-90 per cent of the country's infrastructure destroyed.

The Vanuatu Relief Appeal was established by members of both the Lord Northcote Lodge and Lodge of Australia Felix to provide funds to assist in rebuilding and/or equipping schools that were destroyed or severely damaged by this natural disaster.

With the selling of raffle tickets, a FaceBook campaign, and a number of generous individual donations, the Appeal raised enough funds to provide considerable support to schools that lost all matter of equipment, furniture and books in the tragedy.

■ The issue of domestic violence and violence against women was front and centre at Freemasons Victoria's CBD Business Luncheon last Tuesday.

The last of the luncheons for the year, this function was particularly timely with the holiday season approaching and many spending more time with family.

It is also particularly relevant given recent documentaries aired on television in the last month; Hitting Home (ABC), How Does Domestic Violence Begin? (ABC), Q&A Special with Julia Baird, and Death in Plain Sight (SBS Dateline).

Freemasons from various Lodges across the State joined Grand Master Hillel Benedykt in welcoming CEO of Domestic Violence Victoria, Fiona McCormack, to the podium, to talk about the issue now referred to as an 'epidemic' in Australia, and reinforce the importance of bringing the topic out into the open.

"Seventy-eight women are killed each year at the hands of a male, a woman is hospitalised every three minutes as a result of family violence and $20 billion is spent each year in health care, refuge and loss of productivity,” Fiona said.

As the horrifying statistics continued, guests listened to some of the reasons why domestic violence numbers have increased and what can be done to change the culture of this behaviour.

"The issue of domestic violence has largely been ignored, with women too afraid to speak out, and police taking very little action.

"Evidence shows that the issue is a

● Fiona McCormack, CEO Domestic Violence Victoria, speaks at the lfinal Freemasons Victoria CBD Luncheon for 2015. social and cultural one. It's not in the genes, so thank fully these behaviours can be un-learned, but domestic violence is bred. It can stem from a family upbringing of abuse, and from the interactions young men have with other young men in proving their masculinity".

Fiona went on to explain that legislation has recently changed, now allowing the removal of the perpetrator from the environment, leaving the mother and the children in the safety of their home, but this support is limited.

"It's difficult for some women to afford their independence however, especially those supporting children", she said.

"The key to stamping out family or domestic violence is education. Education in schools and from a young age, that this behaviour is not on, and the more men who discuss this with other men, the better,” Fiona said.

One guest stood up after the talk and suggested that each and every member at the event should return to their Lodges and discuss this issue as a group, to reinforce the importance of awareness and remind each other of the principles of Freemasonry, that a man has a responsibility to behave honourably in everything he does, acts with personal decency and personal responsibility, and inspires others to do the same.

If you or anyone you know is experiencing this kind of abuse, or if these stories raise feelings of depression or anxiety, support is available from: 1800Respect - 1800 737 732 (24 hours) Men's Referral Service - 1300 766 491 Lifeline - 13 11 14 (24 hours)

Chiltern gets a visit from boys in blue (lycra) ■ Wodonga Lodge members teamed up with the Freemasons Cycling Club (Vic) to participate in the annual Chiltern Mo Ride event on November 22 to raise funds for the Movember.

While the riders readied their bikes and registered their attendance, Lodge members set up an information tent and signage. Both groups then teamed up to mingle with the growing crowd and engage in some friendly banter with the organisers.

At 8.30am, the team saddled up and headed out on their 65km journey through the picturesque surroundings of the region: first stop, Jones’

● Excitement builds as the Freemasons Cycling Club (Vic) gets ready to compete Winery near Rutherglen. Arriving other riders coming and going and there to a friendly greeting, the team refilled water bottles. Bidding the voltopped up on fresh fruit, chatted with unteers a joyous farewell, they gathered together and got back on the road.

Under bright sunshine, they pedalled their way back towards Chiltern, picking up some other riders and tucking them into the Freemason echelon.

Following another short stop along the road to Beechworth, more chatter, fruit and water, they hit the road for the last 20 kms.

Riding Yackandandah Road through Chiltern Box-Ironbark National Park, the team climbed the biggest hill on the ride and then raced into Barnawartha before turning towards Chiltern (and the finish line!)

Back at the start/finish line, the riders and Wodonga Lodge members again teamed up to make sure everyone knew the Freemasons were supporting Movember at the event.

Another great ride in support of a great charity and some positive publicity for Freemasonry in a local com● Victoria’s Freemasons have raised money to help Vanuatu munity.

To find out more about Freemasonry, how to become a member, or attend upcoming public events, please visit www.freemasonsvic.net.au Or ‘like’ our FaceBook page www.facebook.com/freemasonsvic for the most up to date information.

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au Melbourne

Observer

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 17

West Hollywood

A lot like Christmas, LA-style

■ Hi everyone, from my suite at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites comes this week's news for the last time in 2015.

Holiday party guide

Zsa Zsa’s holiday party ■ Hi up in the hills of the affluent neighbourhood of Bel Air is Zsa Zsa Gabor's mansion.

Zsa Zsa is 98 and with her husband Prince Frederic Von Anhalt live in Elvis Presley's old mansion.

It was a glittering affair with the Hollywood A-listers in attendance.

Managing Director and CEO of the Ramada Hotel and Suites, Alan Johnson, was a guest and major sponsor of the event.

Pictured at the glamour event is my business partner Adam Howard with Prince Frederic Von Anhalt and Alan Johnson.

Other invitees included Heidi Klum, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rod Hardy and Bruce Willis.

Malibu real estate on rise ■ Frasier star, Kelsey Grammer, has sold his Malibu house for a tidy profit.

The house was brought in 1998 for $4.5 million and now has just sold for $12.94 million.

The 4.75-acre estate in the gated Serra Retreat community comprised a two-storey house with a kitchen designed by Wolfgang Puck, a library, a home theatre, four bedrooms and six bathrooms with a detached guesthouse, a lily pond, a swimming pool, tennis court and horse facilities.

● Adam Howard, Prince Frederic Von Anhalt and Alan Johnson

Curtis goes sailing ■ Princess Cruises is launching a speciality restaurant concept on select ships that sounds like old school. S hare your meal with others. The cruise line will feature "intriguing dishes served family style" at new restaurants called Share. It has enlisted Australian celeb chef, cookbook author and Beverly Hills restaurateur Curtis Stone (Maude, 212 S,.Beverly Drive) to design what that kind of dining looks like.

The idea is to make the dining experience more intimate.

Share is being rolled out this month aboard the Ruby Princess which sails between Los Angeles and Hawaii and Mexico and on the Emerald Princess on cruises between Fort Lauderdale, Florida and the Caribbean.

Eventually the restaurant will be featured on Australian cruises aboard the Sun Princess.

Message from Alan Johnson and Gavin Wood

■ How quickly the years seem to pass! Once again the holiday season is upon us and in each geographical area that we are now located (Australia and USA) together with the rest of the world where we are so strongly supported by our friends and travel colleagues, we give thanks to those around us for the support and happiness we share together.

Every year we encompass the spirit of Christmas to offer help to those less fortunate than ourselves and are thankful for the opportunity to be able to offer support to children's charities on behalf of our group of colleagues and friends.

We gather much inspiration from our journey through our commercial life and it is this insight that creates the image and the principles that enables us to steadfastly commit to quality service, which has ensured a strong and successful 2015.

We are continually astounded by the strength of our partnerships we have formed together with you. As we approach the New Year, we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support and we look forward to a successful year together in 2016.

Warm festive wishes to you, your families and friends with a special shout out to our editor, Ash Long, and his family, who have supported our page every week from West Hollywood.

GavinWood

From my Suite at the Ramada Plaza Complex on Santa Monica Blvd

Special Holiday Offer

■ If you are considering a move to Los Angeles or just coming over for a holiday then I have got a special deal for you.

If you're coming for your holiday, we would love to see you at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites, 8585 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood.

I have secured a terrific holiday deal for readers of the Melbourne Observer.

Please mention 'Melbourne Observer' when you book and you will receive the 'Special Rate of the Day'.

Please contact: Joanna at info@ramadaweho.com Happy Holidays, Gavin Wood

www.gavinwood.us

MISTLETOE-FRIENDLY WEST HOLLYWOOD VENUES The holiday season is all about giving, celebrating, loving and, most importantly, watching your boss go Gangnam-style on the dance floor after three glasses of bubbly.

Holiday season means holiday parties-from office to personal-and the better the venue, the brighter the memories. Put another shot of brandy in the eggnog and cut loose at one of our favorite holiday party venues in West Hollywood.

GRACIASMADRE This hip restaurant in the Design District attracts tastemakers and foodies alike. The vegetarian menu serves up some delicious plates of innovative and healthy Mexican cuisine, and their gorgeous outdoor patio is all the rage. Gracias Madre offers passed appetizers or a buffet-style set up, with a full bar selection available and serviced from a separate bar outside. Ole! BOA STEAKHOUSE BOA Steakhouse is a frequent destination for celebritystudded private events thanks to its seamless event packages, popularity with A-listers and, of course, delicious food. The brand-new Club Room is all the rage since opening earlier this month. The chic lounge space has direct access to the outdoor patio and can fit between 30 and 45 guests.

PEARL'S LIQUOR BAR From its charming garden with porch swing and photo booth to its three outdoor decks equipped with private bars, Pearl's Liquor Bar features separate five private party options. If you want a bit of everything, you can take over the entire club, which has a capacity of 250 people. The three-level, stylish venue is a favorite for young Hollywood, and the food menu is a highlight! Pearl's can also provide a wealth of amenities, including a drop-down movie screen with projector, brandable 50" TVs and DJs. V WINE ROOM Nothing gets a party started like the uncorking of a bottle, and V Wine Room serves up some great wines in its intimate quarters. Guests can rent out small parties or take over the entire space for their event. Send your best oenophile before the event to pre-select the wines and amuses-bouches such as cheese plates, olives, olive oil, fruit plates and dark chocolate.

Guests can also bring in their own hot food or dessert catering.

LA market overview The California economy is projected to outpace US. through 2020. With a gross state product (equivalent to a country's gross domestic product) of over $2.3 trillion, California, by itself, would be the eigtth largest economy in the world.

To put this into perspective, the United States tops the GDP list at $17.4 trillion followed by China's $10.4 trillion.

California is projected to climb up to the seventh position for 2015, and, according to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, it will out pace the rest of the country over the next five years.

Job gains will continue to be driven by growth in construction, professional and technical services along with transportation and warehousing tied to international trade.

California tourism will continue to benefit immensely from international visitor growth especially from the Asia/Pacific markets.

Annual visitor volume growth for the next five years is expected to be in the 3.8 to 4.6% range. This will result in the total number of international visitors to the US reaching 96.4 million by 2020, a 29% increase over 2014. This bodes well for the hotel market especially in California.

The countries with the largest total growth percentages are expected to be China (63%), Colombia (54%), India (42%), Mexico (37%) and Taiwan (33%). Three countries, Mexico, China and Canada are expected to account for 61% of the total projected growth through 2020.

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Page 18 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

■ Who would believe that an Australian actor who bore the same name as the famous Hollywood actor Robert Taylor would become known throughout the world as a US Marshall in a popular western television series?

Robert Taylor has become a respected actor internationally. He has a great body of work to his credit - Robert is tall, rugged, handsome and plays great character roles.

Robert Taylor was born in Melbourne in 1963. He came from a family of three children and when his parent's marriage broke up Robert moved to a mining town in Western Australia to live with his aunt and uncle.

When he was 21 he went to sea to work on oil rigs and was aboard a ship which was involved in a collision and sank.

Robert and his friends made it to a lifeboat and whilst convalescing in hospital he saw and an advertisement in the local paper for auditions at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

He passed the audition and enrolled as a student. Robert's first acting job was a small part in The Flying Doctors in 1988.

The following year he played the character of ‘Nicholas Walsh’ in Home and Away.

Robert was cast as ongoing characters in many television series such as Stingers, Blue Heelers, MDA and Killing Time.

In 2001 he was cast in the popular Irish television series Ballykissangel and played Father

Whatever Happened To ...

Robert Taylor

By Kevin Trask of 3AW and 96.5 Inner FM

Vincent Sheehan. I remember meeting Robert briefly at the St Kida Film Festival at the Palais Theatre in 2002.

At that time Robert was the President of the Veg Out St Kilda Community Artists Gardens which were located at the old St Kilda Bowling Club.

His film credits include Storm Warning, Ned Kelly and The Matrix.

In 2010 Robert married Ayisha Davies and they have a daughter.

Robert's big break came in 2011 when he was cast in the lead role in the popular television series Longmire.

Robert plays the Sheriff Walt Longmire and the show is filmed in New Mexico.

This is one of my favourite television westerns; I love the characters and the scriptwriting I had a coffee with Lou Diamond Phillips when he was in Melbourne for The King and I and Lou told me he loved working with Robert on Longmire playing Walt Longmire's best friend, ‘Henry Standing Bear’.

Robert Taylor has already been in four films this year - Downriver, What Lola Wants, Focus and The Menkoff Method.

In recent years there have been many Australian actors who have been cast in leading roles in American television series - they seem to be able to handle the accent and portray grea characters.

I'm hoping that Robert Taylor will be back in a new series of Longmire in the new year.

This is the last Whatever Happened To article for 2015. I wish to thank the people and the sources who have assisted in producing the series.

Looking forward to 2016 and wishing all the Melbourne Observer readers a very happy and safe Christmas.

Kevin Trask ● Robert Taylor The Time Tunnel - with Bruce and Phil Sundays at 9.20pm on 3AW This series originally was produced by the That's Entertainment - 96.5FM A&E cable channel and it was cancelled after Sundays at 12Noon three seasons.

96.5FM is streaming on the internet.

There was a public outcry across the world and fortunately the Netflix channel produced the To listen, go to www.innerfm.org.au and follow the prompts show for its fourth season.

Still on the hunt for elusive opals ■ And so, two weeks later, once more unto the breach, dear friend.

My surgeon, James Stoney, by now my new found best mate - he was going to be responsible for a pain free existence for my next 20 years greeted me with the reassurance that all will be just fine.

So I was wheeled up a few floors, to my anaesthetist who proceeded to

introduce me to a little "sting", as I had experienced about a dozen times of late.

The next thing I knew was, I gathered by looking at the wall clock as I was being wheeled along another corridor, a couple of hours later.

Then back into my room and soon again being woken into a sprightly state.

Again I was summarily bedecked with sticky things and wires, and little green numbers began clicking all over the dial.

Then came the after party.

About 800 pills needed to be taken each day for my pain, for my blood, my heart pressure and heart regularity, and various other matters. And, of course, my "bowel softening" because I wasn't allowed to put any strain on my wound.

I was handed a chair in my shower so that I could wash and shower and shave under the welcome stream of warm water.

And then all I had to do was lie recumbent for the rest of the day. That was in between interminable reminders from nurses to ingest these interminable tablets, presented in little plastic cups, to ward off these little bacteria.

I read a few books, surfed the few dozen TV channels. And attempted to compose a few stories along the way. This didn't work too well - the chemicals in all these pills just produced gobblegook.

Then of course there were physio ladies to show me the rehab exercises to perform, and constant temperaturetaking. Once it was under the tongue, then in the bottom - now it's an electronic click in the ear.

The one thing that struck me most in the whole of this exercise was the fact that when I was a kid with mumps or appendicitis, I just popped in to hospital for a couple of days when things went wrong.

Now, medicine is a huge, monstrous industry.

■ So now a few days later, once again, "on yer bike".

Into a nice cosy bed.

I've never been able to successfully sleep on my back, and still can't.

In hospital I could adjust the bed with little buttons, but at home trying to adjust a dozen pillows was a nightmare.

The myriads of pills I was still stuffing down my throat didn't seem to do any harm. I'm sure that all these drugs which were coursing through my veins were all encouraging my slumber as well. I would also awaken from these many sleeps with a sense of euphoria - I think I was getting hooked.

Then of course introducing the "aids" to their new home, and the visits from the physio to show me how to use them.

The Outback Legend

with Nick Le Souef Lightning Ridge Opals 175 Flinders Lane, Melbourne Phone 9654 4444 www.opals.net.au ■ Whilst I am hardly in any fit state to be wandering up to the Outback anytime soon, at least I can dream and plan.

If the operation had been the supposed two weeks earlier, as was the original plan, I'd now be in Coober Pedy, digging away in my claim with my mate Cosmo, who is the lighting director of AC/DC. However, the best laid plans of mice and men …. and he's now landed in New Zealand to give the Kiwis a taste of their particular music.

So I had to content myself with a cuppa in North Balwyn with himself and his dear wife Deanna.

Which leaves me with an empty claim - my friends Leila and Eric are trying their luck elsewhere - in fact they'll be back here soon. But I have had some interest from a couple of would-be miners - one from the UK and one from Germany, so they may be headed north very soon to try their luck.

Not much happens in the next few months because the ground temperature soars into the fifties, which isn't much good for mining machinery.

‘So I'm hoping that somewhere in this still virgin ground there remains a large seam of some brilliant colour’

■ And the plan is currently to continue working with these other chaps on the same claim.

Although Leila and Eric gave the claim a good run without finding much, I'm still convinced that there may be some good opal lurking in there. nd of course the only way to find this out is to look for it.

My mate Ken, who originally bulldozed the claim, discovered lots of potch, which is opal with no colour, and hence no value.

However at various times I have discovered that this potch was turning into colour, which is a very good sign.

So I'm hoping that somewhere in this still virgin ground there remains a large seam of some brilliant colour.

With very good quality opal selling for thousands of dollars an ounce, this is what every miner aspires to.

So, with any luck I can organise the new chaps up to the claim again, in search of our elusive fortune.

For years I've been awaiting an excited call from the field: "We've struck it!"

Once at Lightning Ridge years ago I got the call from my partner Jim Glass.

A huge black opal he'd unearthed.

So I hopped into the car and sped up.

By the time I arrived he'd had it cut into a gemstone. There are many things which can go wrong in the cutting process, most particularly inclusions of clay can interrupt the colour of the stone.

And that's what happened in this case. We ended up, from our monster stone, with a tiny gem which we sold for $135.

I've heard this lament the field over for decades: "How's that stone going, Herb?"

"The sand beat it!"

But then again I've seen some flawless, priceless gems at the same time.

Which have instantly turned lives and fortunes around.

So maybe a happy Christmas present for all.

- Nick Le Souef ‘The Outback Legend’

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 19

Observer Classic Books

‘The Uncommercial Traveller’ by Charles Dickens Continued From Last Week This occasioned the greatest excitement of the evening; for, no sooner did the curtain rise on the introductory Vaudeville, and reveal in the person of the young lover (singing a very short song with his eyebrows) apparently the very same identical stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, than everybody rushed out to the paying-place, to ascertain whether he could possibly have put on that dress-coat, that clear complexion, and those arched black vocal eyebrows, in so short a space of time. It then became manifest that this was another stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt: to whom, before the spectators had recovered their presence of mind, entered a third stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, exactly like him.

These two ‘subjects,’ making with the moneytaker three of the announced fifteen, fell into conversation touching a charming young widow: who, presently appearing, proved to be a stout lady altogether irrepressible by any means — quite a parallel case to the American Negro — fourth of the fifteen subjects, and sister of the fifth who presided over the check-department.

In good time the whole of the fifteen subjects were dramatically presented, and we had the inevitable Ma Mere, Ma Mere! and also the inevitable malediction d’un pere, and likewise the inevitable Marquis, and also the inevitable provincial young man, weak-minded but faithful, who followed Julie to Paris, and cried and laughed and choked all at once. The story was wrought out with the help of a virtuous spinningwheel in the beginning, a vicious set of diamonds in the middle, and a rheumatic blessing (which arrived by post) from Ma Mere towards the end; the whole resulting in a small sword in the body of one of the stout gentlemen imperfectly repressed by a belt, fifty thousand francs per annum and a decoration to the other stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, and an assurance from everybody to the provincial young man that if he were not supremely happy — which he seemed to have no reason whatever for being — he ought to be. This afforded him a final opportunity of crying and laughing and choking all at once, and sent the audience home sentimentally delighted. Audience more attentive or better behaved there could not possibly be, though the places of second rank in the Theatre of the Family P. Salcy were sixpence each in English money, and the places of first rank a shilling. How the fifteen subjects ever got so fat upon it, the kind Heavens know.

What gorgeous china figures of knights and ladies, gilded till they gleamed again, I might have bought at the Fair for the garniture of my home, if I had been a French-Flemish peasant, and had had the money! What shining coffee-cups and saucers I might have won at the turntables, if I had had the luck! Ravishing perfumery also, and sweetmeats, I might have speculated in, or I might have fired for prizes at a multitude of little dolls in niches, and might have hit the doll of dolls, and won francs and fame. Or, being a French-Flemish youth, I might have been drawn in a hand-cart by my compeers, to tilt for municipal rewards at the water-quintain; which, unless I sent my lance clean through the ring, emptied a full bucket over me; to fend off which, the competitors wore grotesque old scarecrow hats. Or, being French-Flemish man or woman, boy or girl, I might have circled all night on my hobby-horse in a stately cavalcade of hobbyhorses four abreast, interspersed with triumphal cars, going round and round and round and round, we the goodly company singing a ceaseless chorus to the music of the barrel-organ, drum, and cymbals. On the whole, not more monotonous than the Ring in Hyde Park, London, and much merrier; for when do the circling company sing chorus, THERE, to the barrel-organ, when do the ladies embrace their horses round the neck with both arms, when do the gentlemen fan the ladies with the tails of their gallant steeds? On all these revolving delights, and on their own especial lamps and Chinese lanterns revolving with them, the thoughtful weaver-face brightens, and the Hotel de Ville sheds an illuminated line of gaslight: while above it, the Eagle of France, gas-outlined and apparently afflicted

Charles Dickens with the prevailing infirmities that have lighted on the poultry, is in a very undecided state of policy, and as a bird moulting. Flags flutter all around. Such is the prevailing gaiety that the keeper of the prison sits on the stone steps outside the prison-door, to have a look at the world that is not locked up; while that agreeable retreat, the wine-shop opposite to the prison in the prison-alley (its sign La Tranquillite, because of its charming situation), resounds with the voices of the shepherds and shepherdesses who resort there this festive night. And it reminds me that only this afternoon, I saw a shepherd in trouble, tending this way, over the jagged stones of a neighbouring street. A magnificent sight it was, to behold him in his blouse, a feeble little jog-trot rustic, swept along by the wind of two immense gendarmes, in cocked-hats for which the street was hardly wide enough, each carrying a bundle of stolen property that would not have held his shoulder-knot, and clanking a sabre that dwarfed the prisoner.

‘Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you at this Fair, as a mark of my confidence in the people of this so-renowned town, and as an act of homage to their good sense and fine taste, the Ventriloquist, the Ventriloquist! Further, Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you the Face-Maker, the Physiognomist, the great Changer of Countenances, who transforms the features that Heaven has bestowed upon him into an endless succession of surprising and extraordinary visages, comprehending, Messieurs et Mesdames, all the contortions, energetic and expressive, of which the human face is capable, and all the passions of the human heart, as Love, Jealousy, Revenge, Hatred, Avarice, Despair! Hi hi! Ho ho! Lu lu! Come in!’ To

this effect, with an occasional smite upon a sonorous kind of tambourine — bestowed with a will, as if it represented the people who won’t come in — holds forth a man of lofty and severe demeanour; a man in stately uniform, gloomy with the knowledge he possesses of the inner secrets of the booth. ‘Come in, come in! Your opportunity presents itself to-night; to-morrow it will be gone for ever. To-morrow morning by the Express Train the railroad will reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker! Algeria will reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker!

Yes! For the honour of their country they have accepted propositions of a magnitude incredible, to appear in Algeria. See them for the last time before their departure! We go to commence on the instant. Hi hi! Ho ho! Lu lu! Come in!

Take the money that now ascends, Madame; but after that, no more, for we commence! Come in!’

Nevertheless, the eyes both of the gloomy Speaker and of Madame receiving sous in a muslin bower, survey the crowd pretty sharply after the ascending money has ascended, to detect any lingering sous at the turning-point.

‘Come in, come in! Is there any more money, Madame, on the point of ascending? If so, we wait for it. If not, we commence!’ The orator looks back over his shoulder to say it, lashing the spectators with the conviction that he beholds through the folds of the drapery into which he is about to plunge, the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker. Several sous burst out of pockets, and ascend. ‘Come up, then, Messieurs!’ exclaims Madame in a shrill voice, and beckoning with a bejewelled finger. ‘Come up! This presses.

Monsieur has commanded that they commence!’ Monsieur dives into his Interior, and

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the last half-dozen of us follow. His Interior is comparatively severe; his Exterior also. A true Temple of Art needs nothing but seats, drapery, a small table with two moderator lamps hanging over it, and an ornamental looking-glass let into the wall. Monsieur in uniform gets behind the table and surveys us with disdain, his forehead becoming diabolically intellectual under the moderators. ‘Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you the Ventriloquist. He will commence with the celebrated Experience of the bee in the window. The bee, apparently the veritable bee of Nature, will hover in the window, and about the room. He will be with difficulty caught in the hand of Monsieur the Ventriloquist — he will escape — he will again hover — at length he will be recaptured by Monsieur the Ventriloquist, and will be with difficulty put into a bottle.

Achieve then, Monsieur!’ Here the proprietor is replaced behind the table by the Ventriloquist, who is thin and sallow, and of a weakly aspect.

While the bee is in progress, Monsieur the Proprietor sits apart on a stool, immersed in dark and remote thought. The moment the bee is bottled, he stalks forward, eyes us gloomily as we applaud, and then announces, sternly waving his hand: ‘The magnificent Experience of the child with the whooping-cough!’ The child disposed of, he starts up as before. ‘The superb and extraordinary Experience of the dialogue between Monsieur Tatambour in his diningroom, and his domestic, Jerome, in the cellar; concluding with the songsters of the grove, and the Concert of domestic Farm-yard animals.’

All this done, and well done, Monsieur the Ventriloquist withdraws, and Monsieur the FaceMaker bursts in, as if his retiring-room were a mile long instead of a yard. A corpulent little man in a large white waistcoat, with a comic countenance, and with a wig in his hand. Irreverent disposition to laugh, instantly checked by the tremendous gravity of the Face-Maker, who intimates in his bow that if we expect that sort of thing we are mistaken. A very little shaving-glass with a leg behind it is handed in, and placed on the table before the Face-Maker. ‘Messieurs et Mesdames, with no other assistance than this mirror and this wig, I shall have the honour of showing you a thousand characters.’ As a preparation, the Face-Maker with both hands gouges himself, and turns his mouth inside out. He then becomes frightfully grave again, and says to the Proprietor, ‘I am ready!’ Proprietor stalks forth from baleful reverie, and announces ‘The Young Conscript!’ Face-Maker claps his wig on, hind side before, looks in the glass, and appears above it as a conscript so very imbecile, and squinting so extremely hard, that I should think the State would never get any good of him. Thunders of applause. Face-Maker dips behind the lookingglass, brings his own hair forward, is himself again, is awfully grave. ‘A distinguished inhabitant of the Faubourg St. Germain.’ Face-Maker dips, rises, is supposed to be aged, blear-eyed, toothless, slightly palsied, supernaturally polite, evidently of noble birth. ‘The oldest member of the Corps of Invalides on the fete-day of his master.’Face-Maker dips, rises, wears the wig on one side, has become the feeblest military bore in existence, and (it is clear) would lie frightfully about his past achievements, if he were not confined to pantomime. ‘The Miser!’ FaceMaker dips, rises, clutches a bag, and every hair of the wig is on end to express that he lives in continual dread of thieves. ‘The Genius of France!’ Face-Maker dips, rises, wig pushed back and smoothed flat, little cocked-hat (artfully concealed till now) put a-top of it, Face Maker’s white waistcoat much advanced, FaceMaker’s left hand in bosom of white waistcoat, Face-Maker’s right hand behind his back. Thunders. This is the first of three positions of the Genius of France. In the second position, the Face-Maker takes snuff; in the third, rolls up his fight hand, and surveys illimitable armies through that pocket-glass. The Face-Maker then, by putting out his tongue, and wearing the wig nohow in particular, becomes the Village Idiot.

The most remarkable feature in the whole of his ingenious performance, is, that whatever he does to disguise himself, has the effect of rendering him rather more like himself than he was at first.Continued on Page 20

Page 20 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

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Observer Classic Books From Page 19 There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had the pleasure of recognising several fields of glory with which I became well acquainted a year or two ago as Crimean battles, now doing duty as Mexican victories. The change was neatly effected by some extra smoking of the Russians, and by permitting the camp followers free range in the foreground to despoil the enemy of their uniforms. As no British troops had ever happened to be within sight when the artist took his original sketches, it followed fortunately that none were in the way now.

The Fair wound up with a ball. Respecting the particular night of the week on which the ball took place, I decline to commit myself; merely mentioning that it was held in a stable-yard so very close to the railway, that it was a mercy the locomotive did not set fire to it. (In Scotland, I suppose, it would have done so.) There, in a tent prettily decorated with looking-glasses and a myriad of toy flags, the people danced all night.

It was not an expensive recreation, the price of a double ticket for a cavalier and lady being one and threepence in English money, and even of that small sum fivepence was reclaimable for ‘consommation:’ which word I venture to translate into refreshments of no greater strength, at the strongest, than ordinary wine made hot, with sugar and lemon in it. It was a ball of great good humour and of great enjoyment, though very many of the dancers must have been as poor as the fifteen subjects of the P. Salcy Family.

In short, not having taken my own pet national pint pot with me to this Fair, I was very well satisfied with the measure of simple enjoyment that it poured into the dull French-Flemish country life. How dull that is, I had an opportunity of considering — when the Fair was over — when the tri-coloured flags were withdrawn from the windows of the houses on the Place where the Fair was held — when the windows were close shut, apparently until next Fair-time — when the Hotel de Ville had cut off its gas and put away its eagle — when the two paviours, whom I take to form the entire paving population of the town, were ramming down the stones which had been pulled up for the erection of decorative poles — when the jailer had slammed his gate, and sulkily locked himself in with his charges.

But then, as I paced the ring which marked the track of the departed hobby-horses on the market-place, pondering in my mind how long some hobby-horses do leave their tracks in public ways, and how difficult they are to erase, my eyes were greeted with a goodly sight. I beheld four male personages thoughtfully pacing the Place together, in the sunlight, evidently not belonging to the town, and having upon them a certain loose cosmopolitan air of not belonging to any town. One was clad in a suit of white canvas, another in a cap and blouse, the third in an old military frock, the fourth in a shapeless dress that looked as if it had been made out of old umbrellas. All wore dust-coloured shoes. My heart beat high; for, in those four male personages, although complexionless and eyebrowless, I beheld four subjects of the Family P. Salcy Blue-bearded though they were, and bereft of the youthful smoothness of cheek which is imparted by what is termed in Albion a ‘Whitechapel shave’ (and which is, in fact, whitening, judiciously applied to the jaws with the palm of the hand), I recognised them. As I stood admiring, there emerged from the yard of a lowly Cabaret, the excellent Ma Mere, Ma Mere, with the words, ‘The soup is served;’ words which so elated the subject in the canvas suit, that when they all ran in to partake, he went last, dancing with his hands stuck angularly into the pockets of his canvas trousers, after the Pierrot manner.

Glancing down the Yard, the last I saw of him was, that he looked in through a window (at the soup, no doubt) on one leg.

Full of this pleasure, I shortly afterwards departed from the town, little dreaming of an addition to my good fortune. But more was in reserve. I went by a train which was heavy with third-class carriages, full of young fellows (well guarded) who had drawn unlucky numbers in the last conscription, and were on their way to a famous French garrison town where much of the raw military material is worked up into soldiery. At the station they had been sitting about, in their threadbare homespun blue garments, with their poor little bundles under their arms, covered with dust and clay, and the various soils of France; sad enough at heart, most of them, but putting a good face upon it, and slapping their breasts and singing choruses on the small

est provocation; the gayest spirits shouldering half loaves of black bread speared upon their walking-sticks. As we went along, they were audible at every station, chorusing wildly out of tune, and feigning the highest hilarity. After a while, however, they began to leave off singing, and to laugh naturally, while at intervals there mingled with their laughter the barking of a dog.

Now, I had to alight short of their destination, and, as that stoppage of the train was attended with a quantity of horn blowing, bell ringing, and proclamation of what Messieurs les Voyageurs were to do, and were not to do, in order to reach their respective destinations, I had ample leisure to go forward on the platform to take a parting look at my recruits, whose heads were all out at window, and who were laughing like delighted children. Then I perceived that a large poodle with a pink nose, who had been their travelling companion and the cause of their mirth, stood on his hind-legs presenting arms on the extreme verge of the platform, ready to salute them as the train went off. This poodle wore a military shako (it is unnecessary to add, very much on one side over one eye), a little military coat, and the regulation white gaiters. He was armed with a little musket and a little swordbayonet, and he stood presenting arms in perfect attitude, with his unobscured eye on his master or superior officer, who stood by him.

So admirable was his discipline, that, when the train moved, and he was greeted with the parting cheers of the recruits, and also with a shower of centimes, several of which struck his shako, and had a tendency to discompose him, he remained staunch on his post, until the train was gone. He then resigned his arms to his officer, took off his shako by rubbing his paw over it, dropped on four legs, bringing his uniform coat into the absurdest relations with the overarching skies, and ran about the platform in his white gaiters, waging his tail to an exceeding great extent. It struck me that there was more waggery than this in the poodle, and that he knew that the recruits would neither get through their exercises, nor get rid of their uniforms, as easily as he; revolving which in my thoughts, and seeking in my pockets some small money to bestow upon him, I casually directed my eyes to the face of his superior officer, and in him beheld the Face-Maker! Though it was not the way to Algeria, but quite the reverse, the military poodle’s Colonel was the Face-Maker in a dark blouse, with a small bundle dangling over his shoulder at the end of an umbrella, and taking a pipe from his breast to smoke as he and the poodle went their mysterious way.

CHAPTER XXVIII— MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION My voyages (in paper boats) among savages often yield me matter for reflection at home. It is curious to trace the savage in the civilised man, and to detect the hold of some savage customs on conditions of society rather boastful of being high above them.

I wonder, is the Medicine Man of the North American Indians never to be got rid of, out of the North American country? He comes into my Wigwam on all manner of occasions, and with the absurdest ‘Medicine.’ I always find it extremely difficult, and I often find it simply impossible, to keep him out of my Wigwam.

For his legal ‘Medicine’ he sticks upon his head the hair of quadrupeds, and plasters the same with fat, and dirty white powder, and talks a gibberish quite unknown to the men and squaws of his tribe. For his religious ‘Medicine’ he puts on puffy white sleeves, little black aprons, large black waistcoats of a peculiar cut, collarless coats with Medicine button-holes, Medicine stockings and gaiters and shoes, and tops the whole with a highly grotesque Medicinal hat. In one respect, to be sure, I am quite free from him. On occasions when the Medicine Men in general, together with a large number of the miscellaneous inhabitants of his village, both male and female, are presented to the principal Chief, his native ‘Medicine’ is a comical mixture of old odds and ends (hired of traders) and new things in antiquated shapes, and pieces of red cloth (of which he is particularly fond), and white and red and blue paint for the face. The irrationality of this particular Medicine culminates in a mock battle-rush, from which many of the squaws are borne out, much dilapidated. I need not observe how unlike this is to a Drawing Room at St. James’s Palace.

The African magician I find it very difficult to exclude from my Wigwam too. This creature

takes cases of death and mourning under his supervision, and will frequently impoverish a whole family by his preposterous enchantments.

He is a great eater and drinker, and always conceals a rejoicing stomach under a grieving exterior. His charms consist of an infinite quantity of worthless scraps, for which he charges very high. He impresses on the poor bereaved natives, that the more of his followers they pay to exhibit such scraps on their persons for an hour or two (though they never saw the deceased in their lives, and are put in high spirits by his decease), the more honourably and piously they grieve for the dead. The poor people submitting themselves to this conjurer, an expensive procession is formed, in which bits of stick, feathers of birds, and a quantity of other unmeaning objects besmeared with black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly order of which no one understands the meaning, if it ever had any, to the brink of the grave, and are then brought back again.

In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed to have a soul, so that when a hatchet is irreparably broken, they say, ‘His immortal part has departed; he is gone to the happy hunting-plains.’

This belief leads to the logical sequence that when a man is buried, some of his eating and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike implements, must be broken and buried with him.

Superstitious and wrong, but surely a more respectable superstition than the hire of antic scraps for a show that has no meaning based on any sincere belief.

Let me halt on my Uncommercial road, to throw a passing glance on some funeral solemnities that I have seen where North American Indians, African Magicians, and Tonga Islanders, are supposed not to be.

Once, I dwelt in an Italian city, where there dwelt with me for a while, an Englishman of an amiable nature, great enthusiasm, and no discretion. This friend discovered a desolate stranger, mourning over the unexpected death of one very dear to him, in a solitary cottage among the vineyards of an outlying village. The circumstances of the bereavement were unusually distressing; and the survivor, new to the peasants and the country, sorely needed help, being alone with the remains. With some difficulty, but with the strong influence of a purpose at once gentle, disinterested, and determined, my friend — Mr. Kindheart — obtained access to the mourner, and undertook to arrange the burial.

There was a small Protestant cemetery near the city walls, and as Mr. Kindheart came back to me, he turned into it and chose the spot. He was always highly flushed when rendering a service unaided, and I knew that to make him happy I must keep aloof from his ministration. But when at dinner he warmed with the good action of the day, and conceived the brilliant idea of comforting the mourner with ‘an English funeral,’ I ven tured to intimate that I thought that institution, which was not absolutely sublime at home, might prove a failure in Italian hands. However, Mr. Kindheart was so enraptured with his conception, that he presently wrote down into the town requesting the attendance with to-morrow’s earliest light of a certain little upholsterer. This upholsterer was famous for speaking the unintelligible local dialect (his own) in a far more unintelligible manner than any other man alive.

When from my bath next morning I overheard Mr. Kindheart and the upholsterer in conference on the top of an echoing staircase; and when I overheard Mr. Kindheart rendering English Undertaking phrases into very choice Italian, and the upholsterer replying in the unknown Tongues; and when I furthermore remembered that the local funerals had no resemblance to English funerals; I became in my secret bosom apprehensive. But Mr. Kindheart informed me at breakfast that measures had been taken to ensure a signal success.

As the funeral was to take place at sunset, and as I knew to which of the city gates it must tend, I went out at that gate as the sun descended, and walked along the dusty, dusty road. I had not walked far, when I encountered this procession: 1. Mr. Kindheart, much abashed, on an immense grey horse.

2. A bright yellow coach and pair, driven by a coachman in bright red velvet knee-breeches and waistcoat. (This was the established local idea of State.) Both coach doors kept open by the coffin, which was on its side within, and sticking out at each.

3. Behind the coach, the mourner, for whom the coach was intended, walking in the dust.

4. Concealed behind a roadside well for the irrigation of a garden, the unintelligible Upholsterer, admiring.

It matters little now. Coaches of all colours are alike to poor Kindheart, and he rests far North of the little cemetery with the cypress-trees, by the city walls where the Mediterranean is so beautiful.

My first funeral, a fair representative funeral after its kind, was that of the husband of a married servant, once my nurse. She married for money. Sally Flanders, after a year or two of matrimony, became the relict of Flanders, a small master builder; and either she or Flanders had done me the honour to express a desire that I should ‘follow.’I may have been seven or eight years old; — young enough, certainly, to feel rather alarmed by the expression, as not knowing where the invitation was held to terminate, and how far I was expected to follow the deceased Flanders. Consent being given by the heads of houses, I was jobbed up into what was pronounced at home decent mourning (comprehending somebody else’s shirt, unless my memory deceives me), and was admonished that if, when the funeral was in action, I put my hands in my pockets, or took my eyes out of my pocket-handkerchief, I was personally lost, and my family disgraced. On the eventful day, having tried to get myself into a disastrous frame of mind, and having formed a very poor opinion of myself because I couldn’t cry, I repaired to Sally’s. Sally was an excellent creature, and had been a good wife to old Flanders, but the moment I saw her I knew that she was not in her own real natural state. She formed a sort of Coat of Arms, grouped with a smelling-bottle, a handkerchief, an orange, a bottle of vinegar, Flanders’s sister, her own sister, Flanders’s brother’s wife, and two neighbouring gossips — all in mourning, and all ready to hold her whenever she fainted. At sight of poor little me she became much agitated (agitating me much more), and having exclaimed, ‘O here’s dear Master Uncommercial!’ became hysterical, and swooned as if I had been the death of her. An affecting scene followed, during which I was handed about and poked at her by various people, as if I were the bottle of salts. Reviving a little, she embraced me, said, ‘You knew him well, dear Master Uncommercial, and he knew you!’ and fainted again: which, as the rest of the Coat of Arms soothingly said, ‘done her credit.’

Now, I knew that she needn’t have fainted unless she liked, and that she wouldn’t have fainted unless it had been expected of her, quite as well as I know it at this day. It made me feel uncomfortable and hypocritical besides. I was not sure but that it might be manners in ME to faint next, and I resolved to keep my eye on Flanders’s uncle, and if I saw any signs of his going in that direction, to go too, politely. But Flanders’s uncle (who was a weak little old retail grocer) had only one idea, which was that we all wanted tea; and he handed us cups of tea all round, incessantly, whether we refused or not. There was a young nephew of Flanders’s present, to whom Flanders, it was rumoured, had left nineteen guineas. He drank all the tea that was offered him, this nephew — amounting, I should say, to several quarts — and ate as much plumcake as he could possibly come by; but he felt it to be decent mourning that he should now and then stop in the midst of a lump of cake, and appear to forget that his mouth was full, in the contemplation of his uncle’s memory. I felt all this to be the fault of the undertaker, who was handing us gloves on a tea-tray as if they were muffins, and tying us into cloaks (mine had to be pinned up all round, it was so long for me), because I knew that he was making game. So, when we got out into the streets, and I constantly disarranged the procession by tumbling on the people before me because my handkerchief blinded my eyes, and tripping up the people behind me because my cloak was so long, I felt that we were all making game. I was truly sorry for Flanders, but I knew that it was no reason why we should be trying (the women with their heads in hoods like coal-scuttles with the black side outward) to keep step with a man in a scarf, carrying a thing like a mourning spy-glass, which he was going to open presently and sweep the horizon with. I knew that we should not all have been speaking in one particular key-note struck by the undertaker, if we had not been making game. Even in our faces we were every one of us as like the undertaker as if we had been his own family, and I perceived that this

Continued on Page 37

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Melbourne

Observer

Melbourne Obser ver - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 21

Travellers’Good Buys

with David Ellis

Gotta pick a pocket or two ■ Travel writing colleague David Potts says it was over in the blink of an eye: standing in line for a bus outside the Prado museum in Madrid, a well-dressed man bumped him from behind.

When David suggested “There’ll be room on the bus for all of us,” the man seemed embarrassed and walked off. David stayed in the line – and when he went to pay his fare, realised his wallet was gone.

“I’d been pickpocketed by that man. And then came the hours of inconveniences: reporting to police, the credit card company, getting onto the bank….and the feelings of invasion of privacy – and my own stupidity.”

Unfortunately, too many travellers can relate to these experiences, with professional pickpocket theft on the rise, tourists primary targets.

So sometime later when David coincidentally met Bob Arno – who reckons he’s the world’s only legal pickpocket – he asked him for advice, and got such a fascinating response he offered to share what he learned with us.

Swedish-born Arno was, David says, a war photographer in Vietnam when he encountered his first pickpockets, their targets mainly American servicemen and about whose misfortunes Arno wrote several newspaper articles.

These exposés caught the atten-

● All in a day’s work – Bob Arno with what a good pickpocket can get away with on a successful day.

Melbourne

Observer Wines & Liqueurs

with David Ellis

Semillon sets world record ■ We admit to being somewhat blasé when it comes to medals, trophies and other gongs going to those in the winemaking industry, seemingly just about every maker we know winning something or other for one of their wines (at some time or other,) and which makes us fear that if we mention one award we’re going to have to mention the lot – and that would take up our entire column every week of the year.

But we feel we should give recognition to one accolade that’s just been handed out as it’s a world first – and that we can give it mention because the wine’s sold out anyway. And that’s the Semillon Trophy at the 2015 International Wine and Spirit Competition that was won for an amazing fifth consecutive year by the Hunter Valley’s McGuigan Wines – the first time in history anyone’s achieved such a feat.

The record-setting 2015 winning drop was McGuigan’s 2006 Bin 9000 Semillon that Chief Winemaker, Neil McGuigan sums up as having been “a true Hunter style Semillon, fresh and light when young, and which will develop rich honey and toast characters with extended cellaring over the next 10+ years.”

Medium bodied and full of gooseberry and lime on the palate, with fresh acidity and a lingering finish, it virtually marched off the shelves… to the disappointment of those who missed out.

One to note ■ Tintillae, that proudly boasts to being the first in the Hunter Valley to plant Sangiovese vines – and that was back in the mid-90s – is earning a well-deserved reputation for the Rosé it makes from the fruit of these vines.

So much so in fact it has a waitlist each year of regular buyers, and this year had sold a third of anticipated production before the wine was even made. Winemaker James Lusby has created in the 2015 a Rosé that, despite coming from a challenging cold and wet vintage, is wonderfully dry and foodfriendly.

At $26 its good-value buying and ideal at this time of year with summer salads (avoid any bitter greens,) pork sausages off the barbie, or linguine with garlic and mussels.

Pictured ■ Aussie world record setter that virtually marched off the shelves…

■ This Rosé has a regular waitlist of keen followers, and this year a third of anticipated production had been sold before the wine was even made.

tion of the U.S. Military, and when Arno was invited to give lectures on the subject they were so well-received he took his "act" into show business, and with wife Bambi today travels seven months a year with his pickpocketing lecture-show that’s been seen by millions world-wide.

Now living in the USA he also works as a security consultant to highprofile business clients, law enforcement agencies and corporations worldwide on how to combat street crime … and never misses an opportunity to film pickpockets and other street thieves in action against unsuspecting tourists.

Arno, who dubs himself Professor of Pickpocketry, even sets himself up to be robbed in known pick-pocket hang-outs – so he can make contact and get to understand better both they and their methods, and thus get to know more about the game than many professional pickpockets themselves “We lure them into conversation and pick their brains the way they pick their victims pockets,” he says. “Most thieves love to brag.”

And so what’s his advice to travellers?

“Prepare before you leave home,” he says. “Make photocopies of all travel documents, including tickets, passports and itineraries, phone numbers of your credit card companies, your insurer and other important contacts, numbers of your travellers’ cheques, and carry them separately from the originals.

“Also scan these documents and email them to yourself – so you can internet access them when travelling.

“As well, carry three credit cards, each on different accounts, and always leave one with your valuables in the hotel safe... and make sure your room number is not on the hotel key or card, because if you lose either, a thief has your hotel address.”

Attach two labels to each piece of your luggage with your name, country and email address – but not your home address, which would tell thieves where your home’s empty. Put a third label inside your bag.

“And very importantly, at airport security checkpoints don’t put your valuables on the scanner belt until you are certain you can walk through the metal detector without delay. Be especially wary of someone cutting-in to separate you on one side and your belongings on the other side of the scanner – phones and laptops are commonly stolen this way.”

Pickpockets, however, are the worst hazard facing tourists. “They’ll spill something like ice-cream on you, then helpfully offer to wipe you down – and in doing so dip into your pocket.

“Or they’ll brush against you in a crowd to feel where your wallet is.

Back pockets and loose and gaping front pockets are easy targets – the safest place for valuables is a small pouch that hangs from your belt and inside your pants, or from a string around your neck and under your shirt or blouse,” Arno says.

“Carry minimum cash and spread it around your pockets and pouch, and if you need to carry passport identification, carry only a photocopy of the relevant pages…. And beware thieves who take-off with laptops in hotel restaurants while you’re filling your plate at the buffet.”

For more tips on how to travel safely, visit Bob Arno’s website www.thiefhunters.com

Page 22 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

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What’s New

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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 23

Geelong Fireworks not only provide amazing outdoor firework displays for all types of invents for weddings, NYE, Carols, Corporate Events and even wrestling shows.

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We also offer a range of products available at our website for online ordering geelongfireworks.com.au SPARKLERS … amazing 90 cm sparklers for weddings, NYE etc CONFETTI CANNONS … user friendly single shot cannons with your choice of confetti colors, streamers, money, hearts etc FOR MAGICIANS, THEATRE PRODUCTIONS, PHOTOGRAPHERS we have Australia's largest range of FLASH PAPER products, FLASH DEVICES, SMOKE PRODUCTS, &FIRE DEVICES … from flash guns to floating tables, all in stock ready to send Australia wide.

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Page 24 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Places To Go In Gippsland

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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 25

Page 26 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

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Places To Go

Historic Boondooma Homestead The original ‘Spirit of the Bush’ Traditional Balladeers & Heritage Muster April 21-22-23-24, 2016 ANZAC Service: 9am Monday, April 25 Featuring some of Australia’s leading Balladeers and Poets (To be announced on confirmation) Plus Walkup Artists & Homestead Balladeers & Poetry Competition

For details of competitions, general information and bookings contact: Buddy Thomson and Lynne Bennett.

Ph/Fax (07) 4168 0168 www.boondoomahomestead.org.au E-Mail: buddythomson@bigpond.com Camp Oven by Boondooma’s Camp Oven Cooking Team

Licensed Bar - BBQ - Stalls - Chips/Drinks etc (Stalls Welcome, Insurance Required) Vintage Cars & Engines - Broad Axe, Adze, Photographic and Historic Displays Admission $95 per person full festival inc. camping from April 18-26.

Day rates available: Wed $15, Thu $20, Fri $25, Sat $25, Sun $15 Discounted camping rates of $5pp/pn apply up to and including Sun., April 17 and after April 26. Festival patrons only.

Pre bookings. Phone Lynne 07 4168 0168 for details.

Sorry no EFTPOS available.

Bring your own mug and get free tea and coffee.

Bush camping available General inquiries and bookings Phone caretakers 07 4168 0159

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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 27

Places To Go: Greater Geelong

Page 28 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015- Page 29

Page 30 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

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PlacesTo ToGo Go: Places InGreater GreaterGeelong Geelong

Malcolm and Czes Ralton invite you to enjoy fabulous fish and chips, fresh seafood, a glass of wine or coffee and cake from 10am everyday, on their 100 year old fully renovated barge on the water in beautiful Corio Bay. Fish and Chips: Dine in or takeaway. Sit at tables on the gangplank, go upstairs to the bridgedeck, or grab a rug and have a picnic on the grass. If it’s cold, wrap yourself in a blanket provided free by your hosts. Phone orders welcome. Open seven days from 10am.

Bistro: Their fish and chips are fabulous, now try the Bistro. The seafood is delivered direct from the Melnourne Fish Market six days a week and cooked simply and deliciously so that the fresh flavour of the seafood can be enjoyed. Enjoy the relaxed atmosphere and spectacular views from inside the bistro near the wood heater or outside on the deck.

Lunch from 12 noon, seven days a week.

Dinner from 5.30pm, six days a week.

Saturday dinner bookings are essential (Closed Sunday nights).

Functions: Geelong Boat House specialise in functions tailored to your needs. The Bistro can be transformed into a magical setting to host weddings, corporate events and birthday parties. It can be as formal or as casual as you would like - a cocktail buffet or a sit down dinner. All the food is prepared by the in-house chef in the bistro kitchen. They can accommodate up to 80 people seated or 130 guests standing.

Location: turn off the Esplanade at Cunningham Pier and turn hard left past the Skate Park. Look for the red staircase in the water.

P: 5222 3642 (takeaway orders and bokings) E: thegeelongboathouse@aussiebb.com.au www.geelongboathouse.com.au Western Foresshore Road, Western Beacj, Geelong

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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 31

Places To Go

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Page 32 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Places To Go

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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 33

Travel Planner

Page 34 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

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Travel Planner

Christmas by the Seaside in Merimbula

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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 35

Travel Planner

Page 36 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

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Observer Victorian Sport Melbourne

Racing Briefs

Seasons greetings ■ To all readers of this column throughout the year - best wishes for the festive season and a most happy 2016

90-min. radio show ■ The long running award-winning Harness Review radio program heard Mondays over the airwaves of 979FM will revert to a 90-minute mostly local content program.

Due to a number of requests from listeners who are asking for a bigger input of local news, the new format will centre more on all matters relevant to Victoria.

Thanks to all interstate correspondents – Robbie Dewar (WA), Matt Robertson (Tas), Seryn Adams (NSW), Tom Eglinton (SA) and Craig Rail (Queensland) for their assistance over a number of years.

These people will still be heard when there is an interstate feature race meeting program which will attract interest.

Harness Racing Victoria will also play a major part in the future of the program.

For all inquiries contact Len Baker (0401 679745) or Cody Winnell (HRV, 8378 0288)

Settled midfield ■ At Tabcorp Park Melton on Wednesday, Mt Cottrell trainer/driver John Vella caused an upset result when 6-Y-0 Grinfromeartoear/Peregian mare Khaleesi at Supertab odds of $82.40 greeted the judge in the Garrards Horse & Hound Pace for R1 class over 2240 metres.

Settling mid-field from outside the front line, Khaleesi ran home strongly on straightening to score by 8.2 metres in a rate of 2-00.2 from a death-seating Blue Chipped and melton Little Max which trailed the weakening leader Raylan Gibbons.

Led all the way ■ Toolern Vale area trainer Steve Zammit and stable reinsman Rod Petroff were successful with Modern Art/Awesome Powers filly Platinum Power in the Echuca Sulkies 3-Y-0 Pace over 1755 metres at Echuca on Wednesday, leading all of the way from the pole to account for Glam Rock and Ruby Shadow in a mile rate of 2-02.2.

In front from start ■ Mick Barby and Anne-Maree Conroy have enjoyed a great week and 6-Y-0 Metropolitan/Metro Glen mare Miss Metro Glen scored in the Standardbreds Australia Unharnessed Pace for C1 class over 2180 metres at Kilmore on Thursday.

Settling mid-field after a checked passage from gate two, Miss Metro Glen ran home well to register a 1.4 metre victory over Martys Hope and Blurred Lines in a rate of 1-59.9.

Toolern Vale trainer/driver Gary Hoban's very smart Modern Art/Sierra Tango filly Dancingwithsierra led throughout to land the Merry Xmas From Kilmore Racing Club 3-Y-0 Pace over 2180 metres, leading all of the way from gate fpur to account for Artoripace and Recork in 2-01.5.

Having good run ■ Elmore trainer Keith Cotchin has been having a good run of late and was victorious with 5-Y-0 Mach Three/Just Say Go gelding Just Knew in the Bi-Rite Electrical Pace for C3 to C5 class over 2175 metres at Stawell on Sunday December 6.

Driven by Greg Sugars, Just Knew (gate four) enjoyed a cosy passage trailing the front runner Longtan Bliss (gate two) before easing to the outside approaching the home turn.

Racing clear on turning, Just Knew prevailed by 6.8 metres in a track record mile rate of 1-58.3 over Longtan Bliss and Wheatsheaf Avaball.

■ Listen to Len Baker on Harness Review, 8pmMondays, on 97.9 FM, 979fm.com.au

Cravens control Stawell Cup Day

■ Youthful Paddy Lee, mother Marg, brother Jason and cousins Glen and Matt Craven made Stawell Cup Day their own on Sunday December 6, winning four races on the program including the $12,610 Stawell Times News Stawell Trotters Cup for T5 or better class (D-H) over 2590 metres with 7Y-0 Sundon/Maori Daunou gelding Maorisfavouritesun.

Raced and trained by Paddy, Maorisfavourite sun (Glen Craven) was badly away from outside the front row as the tapes released, but quickly regained his gate to settle one/one as Death Defying flew the tapes to lead from barrier three.

Vacating the prime spot mid-race as cousin Matt Craven sent Star Gun forward to park in the open, Maorisfavouritesun again slotted in to the perfect spot.

Easing three wide running into the final bend, Maorisfavouritesun exploded to the front on turning to register a most impressive 5.7 metre victory from the roughie Herecomes The Cat and ever reliable Action Kosmos in a mile rate of 2-04.4.

Marg and Jason combined to land the Autopro Stawell 3-Y-0 Pace over 1780 metres with Art Major/Jilliby Flame gelding Jilliby Jay Mac and The Glamorous Grub Pace over 1780 metres with Courage Under Fire/Diplomatic Lover 5-Y-0 gelding Jilliby Courage, both leading throughout in their respective races.

Mattie was victorious aboard Burrumbeet trainer Ash Herbertson's 6-Y-0 Metropolitan/Sneak Peak mare Citysneak in the 3rd heat of the Fishers IGA Vicbred Platinum Mares Sprint Championship over 1780 metres.

The previous Friday, Marg and Glen snared the $50,000 (Group 2) Bankstown Trotting Recreational Club M. H. Treuer Memorial over 2540 metres at Bankstown (NSW) with Keayang Steamer.

A seven year old gelded son of Riverboat King and Alimar Star, Keayang Steamer led throughout from gate three to record an untouched 7.3 metres victory in advance of Beetson and The Dip in a mile rate of 1-59.2.

Mt Gambier's David Drury was successful at Stawell with Santanna Blue Chip/Natural Creation 4-Y-0 gelding Blue Eyed Creation in the Landmark Harcourts Stawell Pace over 1780 metres.

At Charlton's Monday fixture, Concongella

Baker’s Delight

Harness Racing

This Week’s Meetings

■ Wednesday - Kilmore/Nyah @ Swan Hill, Thursday - Maryborough/Cranbourne, Friday - Ballarat, Saturday - Melton, Sunday - Terang, Monday Bendigo, Tuesday - Shepparton.

Settled three back Melbourne

Observer

len-baker@ bigpond.com

with Len Baker

trainer Ken Taylor combined with Zac Steenhuis to land the Tormey's IGA Supermarket Pace for C1 class over 1609 metres, leading throughout from the pole to account for Elsu Prince and Royal Icing in a rate of 1-56.

Paddy Lee and Glen Craven provided another winner, when Sportswriter/Strike Line gelding Keayang Sporty snared the Charlton & District Community Bank 3-Y-0 Pace over 2100 metres at Charlton.

Holding the lead from the pole, Keayang Sporty just lasted by a nose to defeat the rough going Nikkibadwagon and Artikulate Miss in a rate of 2-01.5.

Winners ■ Peter and Kerryn Manning each trained a winner at Charlton - Peter taking the Terminus Hotel Wycheproof Pace for C1 class over 2100 metres with Pride Of Flight with Kerryn in the sulky and Kerryn guiding her own charge Never Sighted to an all of the way victory in the Bayswater Jayco Pace for C2 & C3 class over 2100 metres.

Success ■ Ballarat's Tuesday program saw Kerryn Manning take driving honours with three winners on the night - Angry Beach (Damien Burns), Defence Got Jumped (Daryl Crone) and Linda Lovegrace which she trains herself.

Husband Grant Campbell was also successful on the night with Rogue Assassin driven by stable assistant Denbeigh Wade.

At G’long ■ The Marg/Jason Lee combination were successful at Geelong on Thursday with Riverboat King/Alimar Star 4-Y-0 gelding Keayang Maverick in the Devcon Proper-

ties Pace for C0 class over 2100 metres, leading throughout from the pole to account for El Bates and Element Of Art in 2-01.1.

Stand-in

■ Glen Park trainer "Bassie" Steenhuis was victorious with 8-Y-0 Christian Cullen/Vernett gelding Narre Boy at Ballarat on Tuesday, taking out the Colin McClelland & Associates Claiming Pace over 2200 metres.

With stand-in reinsman Brian Gath in the sulky due to son Zac taking a break courtesy of HRV stewards, Narre Boy led throughout from gate five, winning by 8.2 metres in advance of Our Bold Lustre and Comply Or Die in a mile rate of 2-00.6.

Unfortunately for connections, Narre Boy was claimed and will head to another stable.

Daylesford's Bob Conroy and daughter Anne-Maree (Barby), snared the Ballarat Sports Foundation Vicbred Pace for C0 class over 1710 metres with Lombo Pocket Watch/Lombo La Shelly 4-Y-0 gelding Watchoutnexttime in a mile rate of 1-59.3.

Settling mid-field from gate four, Watchoutnexttime ran home best to score by 1.1 metres over Katsina and Lils Angel.

Mick and Anne-Maree were also successful with 7-Y-0 In The Pocket/ Beauty Rainbow gelding Pocket Of Fortune in the City Of Ballarat Trotters Handicap for C2 or better class over 2710 metres.

Starting from the pole, Pocket Of Fortune led all of the way from the pole to defeat Bob Conroy's consistent Button Brigade (Glen Conroy) from 40 metres by 6.7 metres, with Hinault (40 metres) third after racing in the open following a slow beginning. The mile rate 2-05.1.

- Len Baker

■ Major In Art/Pimlico colt Major Mosby trained and driven by Ballarat's Nathan Cahir snared the Homestead Stud 3-Y-0 Pace over 1720 metres at Tabcorp Park on Wednesday.

Settling three back the markers from inside the second line, Major Mosby making his second race appearance, ran home stylishly when clear to score from Miss Quatro and Smile Lyle in a rate of 157.3.

Stablemates in front ■ At Charlton on Monday, veteran Moama/Echuca part-owner/trainer/driver Ron Gilligan's 8-Y-0 Wind Cries Maori/Salute The Rain gelding Salute The Wind returned to the winners list by taking the Laura Stuart Trotters Handicap for T1 or better class over 2570 metres.

Coming from a 50 metre backmark, Salute The Wind made a lightning burst from back in the field to lead for the final circuit and defeat Tella Tall Tale (three back the markers) by a head, with Spud a stablemate of the runner-up third after taking over mid-race. The mile rate 2-03.4.

Three-way trail ■ Strathfieldsaye's Glenn Douglas snared a stable double at Tabcorp Park Melton on Wednesday - 4Y-0 Christian Cullen/Kotare Yangtze gelding Kotare Mahde taking the Bendigo Harness Training Centre Pace for R0 class over 2240 metres and Courage Under Fire/Village Glow gelding Firenglow the Collaborate Communications 3-Y-0 Pace over 1720 metres.

Kotare Mahdi led throughout from the pole, recording a mile rate of 2-01.1 in accounting for Major Missile which trailed and Coldplay Rose (one/ one).

Firenglow ran home from mid-field off a three way trail to defeat Fairest Fella and She Can Rock in 1-59.8.

Aggressive drive

■ At Echuca on Wednesday, Shepparton trainer/ driver Stephen Boyington was successful with 7-Y0 Julius Caesar/Eastwood Lass gelding Tom Grainger.

Despite racing outside the weakening leader Summerhayes, Tom Grainger was too strong at the finish for Hezacomotion along the sprint lane after trailing, with Cee Goddess (one/one) third. The mile rate 1-59.6.

Moama duo Tony Peacock and Damian Wilson landed the Two Tarts Catering Pace for C2 & C3 class over 1755 metres at Echuca with 5-Y-0 Four Starzzz Shark/Lady Julie gelding Fours Enuf Tas. Driven with aggression to take over from gate four, Fours Enuf Tas had 4.7 metres to spare on the wire ahead of Another Ayjay which trailed after leading out from gate five and Modern Lebron which followed the pair. The mile rate 1-58.6.

Bendigo's Col Latter was also victorious at Echuca snaring the Bendigo Bank Pace for C0 class over 1755 metres with 4-Y-0 Ponder/Go Letitia gelding Aitutaki.

Driven by Nathan Jack, Aitutaki led all of the way from gate three, accounting for Ricciardo which raced outside him in a rate of 2-01.4. Oldseadog (three wide last lap) finished third.

Trotters Handicap ■ Avenel's David Aiken snared the Stawell Lotto Trotters Handicap for T0 or better class over 2175 metres at Stawell on Sunday December 6 with fully American bred Yankee Boy/Aspenglow 4-Y-0 mare Yankee Sister.

- Len Baker

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 37

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Observer Classic Books From Page 20 could not have happened unless we had been making game. When we returned to Sally’s, it was all of a piece. The continued impossibility of getting on without plum-cake; the ceremonious apparition of a pair of decanters containing port and sherry and cork; Sally’s sister at the tea-table, clinking the best crockery and shaking her head mournfully every time she looked down into the teapot, as if it were the tomb; the Coat of Arms again, and Sally as before; lastly, the words of consolation administered to Sally when it was considered right that she should ‘come round nicely:’ which were, that the deceased had had ‘as com-for-ta-ble a fu-ne-ral as comfortable could be!’

Other funerals have I seen with grown-up eyes, since that day, of which the burden has been the same childish burden. Making game. Real affliction, real grief and solemnity, have been outraged, and the funeral has been ‘performed.’

The waste for which the funeral customs of many tribes of savages are conspicuous, has attended these civilised obsequies; and once, and twice, have I wished in my soul that if the waste must be, they would let the undertaker bury the money, and let me bury the friend.

In France, upon the whole, these ceremonies are more sensibly regulated, because they are upon the whole less expensively regulated. I cannot say that I have ever been much edified by the custom of tying a bib and apron on the front of the house of mourning, or that I would myself particularly care to be driven to my grave in a nodding and bobbing car, like an infirm fourpost bedstead, by an inky fellow-creature in a cocked-hat. But it may be that I am constitutionally insensible to the virtues of a cocked-hat. In provincial France, the solemnities are sufficiently hideous, but are few and cheap. The friends and townsmen of the departed, in their own dresses and not masquerading under the auspices of the African Conjurer, surround the hand-bier, and often carry it. It is not considered indispensable to stifle the bearers, or even to elevate the burden on their shoulders; consequently it is easily taken up, and easily set down, and is carried through the streets without the distressing floundering and shuffling that we see at home. A dirty priest or two, and a dirtier acolyte or two, do not lend any especial grace to the proceedings; and I regard with personal animosity the bassoon, which is blown at intervals by the big-legged priest (it is always a big-legged priest who blows the bassoon), when his fellows combine in a lugubrious stalwart drawl. But there is far less of the Conjurer and the Medicine Man in the business than under like circumstances here. The grim coaches that we reserve expressly for such shows, are non-existent; if the cemetery be far out of the town, the coaches that are hired for other purposes of life are hired for this purpose; and although the honest vehicles make no pretence of being overcome, I have never noticed that the people in them were the worse for it. In Italy, the hooded Members of Confraternities who attend on funerals, are dismal and ugly to look upon; but the services they render are at least voluntarily rendered, and impoverish no one, and cost nothing. Why should high civilisation and low savagery ever come together on the point of making them a wantonly wasteful and contemptible set of forms?

Once I lost a friend by death, who had been troubled in his time by the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and upon whose limited resources there were abundant claims. The Conjurer assured me that I must positively ‘follow,’ and both he and the Medicine Man entertained no doubt that I must go in a black carriage, and must wear ‘fittings.’ I objected to fittings as having nothing to do with my friendship, and I objected to the black carriage as being in more senses than one a job. So, it came into my mind to try what would happen if I quietly walked, in my own way, from my own house to my friend’s burial-place, and stood beside his open grave in my own dress and person, reverently listening to the best of Services. It satisfied my mind, I found, quite as well as if I had been disguised in a hired hatband and scarf both trailing to my very heels, and as if I had cost the orphan children, in their greatest need, ten guineas.

Can any one who ever beheld the stupendous absurdities attendant on ‘A message from the Lords’ in the House of Commons, turn upon the Medicine Man of the poor Indians? Has he any ‘Medicine’ in that dried skin pouch of his, so supremely ludicrous as the two Masters in Chancery holding up their black petticoats and butt-

ing their ridiculous wigs at Mr. Speaker? Yet there are authorities innumerable to tell me — as there are authorities innumerable among the Indians to tell them — that the nonsense is indispensable, and that its abrogation would involve most awful consequences. What would any rational creature who had never heard of judicial and forensic ‘fittings,’ think of the Court of Common Pleas on the first day of Term? Or with what an awakened sense of humour would LIVINGSTONE’S account of a similar scene be perused, if the fur and red cloth and goats’ hair and horse hair and powdered chalk and black patches on the top of the head, were all at Tala Mungongo instead of Westminster? That model missionary and good brave man found at least one tribe of blacks with a very strong sense of the ridiculous, insomuch that although an amiable and docile people, they never could see the Missionaries dispose of their legs in the attitude of kneeling, or hear them begin a hymn in chorus, without bursting into roars of irrepressible laughter. It is much to be hoped that no member of this facetious tribe may ever find his way to England and get committed for contempt of Court.

In the Tonga Island already mentioned, there are a set of personages called Mataboos — or some such name — who are the masters of all the public ceremonies, and who know the exact place in which every chief must sit down when a solemn public meeting takes place: a meeting which bears a family resemblance to our own Public Dinner, in respect of its being a main part of the proceedings that every gentleman present is required to drink something nasty. These Mataboos are a privileged order, so important is their avocation, and they make the most of their high functions. A long way out of the Tonga Islands, indeed, rather near the British Islands, was there no calling in of the Mataboos the other day to settle an earth-convulsing question of precedence; and was there no weighty opinion delivered on the part of the Mataboos which, being interpreted to that unlucky tribe of blacks with the sense of the ridiculous, would infallibly set the whole population screaming with laughter?

My sense of justice demands the admission, however, that this is not quite a one-sided question. If we submit ourselves meekly to the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and are not exalted by it, the savages may retort upon us that we act more unwisely than they in other matters wherein we fail to imitate them. It is a widely diffused custom among savage tribes, when they meet to discuss any affair of public importance, to sit up all night making a horrible noise, dancing, blowing shells, and (in cases where they are familiar with fire-arms) flying out into open places and letting off guns. It is questionable whether our legislative assemblies might not take a hint from this. A shell is not a melodious wind-instrument, and it is monotonous; but it is as musical as, and not more monotonous than, my Honourable friend’s own trumpet, or the trumpet that he blows so hard for the Minister.

The uselessness of arguing with any supporter of a Government or of an Opposition, is well known. Try dancing. It is a better exercise, and has the unspeakable recommendation that it couldn’t be reported. The honourable and savage member who has a loaded gun, and has grown impatient of debate, plunges out of doors, fires in the air, and returns calm and silent to the Palaver. Let the honourable and civilised member similarly charged with a speech, dart into the cloisters of Westminster Abbey in the silence of night, let his speech off, and come back harmless. It is not at first sight a very rational custom to paint a broad blue stripe across one’s nose and both cheeks, and a broad red stripe from the forehead to the chin, to attach a few pounds of wood to one’s under lip, to stick fishbones in one’s ears and a brass curtain-ring in one’s nose, and to rub one’s body all over with rancid oil, as a preliminary to entering on business. But this is a question of taste and ceremony, and so is the Windsor Uniform. The manner of entering on the business itself is another question. A council of six hundred savage gentlemen entirely independent of tailors, sitting on their hams in a ring, smoking, and occasionally grunting, seem to me, according to the experience I have gathered in my voyages and travels, somehow to do what they come together for; whereas that is not at all the general experience of a council of six hundred civilised gentlemen very dependent on tailors and sitting on mechanical contrivances. It is better that an Assembly should

do its utmost to envelop itself in smoke, than that it should direct its endeavours to enveloping the public in smoke; and I would rather it buried half a hundred hatchets than buried one subject demanding attention.

CHAPTER XXIX—TITBULL’SALMSHOUSES By the side of most railways out of London, one may see Alms-Houses and Retreats (generally with a Wing or a Centre wanting, and ambitious of being much bigger than they are), some of which are newly-founded Institutions, and some old establishments transplanted. There is a tendency in these pieces of architecture to shoot upward unexpectedly, like Jack’s bean-stalk, and to be ornate in spires of Chapels and lanterns of Halls, which might lead to the embellishment of the air with many castles of questionable beauty but for the restraining consideration of expense.

However, the manners, being always of a sanguine temperament, comfort themselves with plans and elevations of Loomings in the future, and are influenced in the present by philanthropy towards the railway passengers. For, the question how prosperous and promising the buildings can be made to look in their eyes, usually supersedes the lesser question how they can be turned to the best account for the inmates.

Why none of the people who reside in these places ever look out of window, or take an airing in the piece of ground which is going to be a garden by-and-by, is one of the wonders I have added to my always-lengthening list of the wonders of the world. I have got it into my mind that they live in a state of chronic injury and resentment, and on that account refuse to decorate the building with a human interest. As I have known legatees deeply injured by a bequest of five hundred pounds because it was not five thousand, and as I was once acquainted with a pensioner on the Public to the extent of two hundred a year, who perpetually anathematised his Country because he was not in the receipt of four, having no claim whatever to sixpence: so perhaps it usually happens, within certain limits, that to get a little help is to get a notion of being defrauded of more. ‘How do they pass their lives in this beautiful and peaceful place!’ was the subject of my speculation with a visitor who once accompanied me to a charming rustic retreat for old men and women: a quaint ancient foundation in a pleasant English country, behind a picturesque church and among rich old convent gardens. There were but some dozen or so of houses, and we agreed that we would talk with the inhabitants, as they sat in their groined rooms between the light of their fires and the light shining in at their latticed windows, and would find out. They passed their lives in considering themselves mulcted of certain ounces of tea by a deaf old steward who lived among them in the quadrangle. There was no reason to suppose that any such ounces of tea had ever been in existence, or that the old steward so much as knew what was the matter; — he passed HIS life in considering himself periodically defrauded of a birch-broom by the beadle.

But it is neither to old Alms-Houses in the country, nor to new Alms-Houses by the railroad, that these present Uncommercial notes relate.

They refer back to journeys made among those common-place, smoky-fronted London AlmsHouses, with a little paved court-yard in front enclosed by iron railings, which have got snowed up, as it were, by bricks and mortar; which were once in a suburb, but are now in the densely populated town; gaps in the busy life around them, parentheses in the close and blotted texts of the streets.

Sometimes, these Alms-Houses belong to a Company or Society. Sometimes, they were established by individuals, and are maintained out of private funds bequeathed in perpetuity long ago. My favourite among them is Titbull’s, which establishment is a picture of many. Of Titbull I know no more than that he deceased in 1723, that his Christian name was Sampson, and his social designation Esquire, and that he founded these Alms-Houses as Dwellings for Nine Poor Women and Six Poor Men by his Will and Testament. I should not know even this much, but for its being inscribed on a grim stone very difficult to read, let into the front of the centre house of Titbull’s Alms-Houses, and which stone is ornamented a-top with a piece of sculptured drapery resembling the effigy of Titbull’s bath-towel.

Titbull’s Alms-Houses are in the east of London, in a great highway, in a poor, busy, and

thronged neighbourhood. Old iron and fried fish, cough drops and artificial flowers, boiled pigs’feet and household furniture that looks as if it were polished up with lip-salve, umbrellas full of vocal literature and saucers full of shell-fish in a green juice which I hope is natural to them when their health is good, garnish the paved sideways as you go to Titbull’s. I take the ground to have risen in those parts since Titbull’s time, and you drop into his domain by three stone steps.

So did I first drop into it, very nearly striking my brows against Titbull’s pump, which stands with its back to the thoroughfare just inside the gate, and has a conceited air of reviewing Titbull’s pensioners.

‘And a worse one,’ said a virulent old man with a pitcher, ‘there isn’t nowhere. A harder one to work, nor a grudginer one to yield, there isn’t nowhere!’ This old man wore a long coat, such as we see Hogarth’s Chairmen represented with, and it was of that peculiar green-pea hue without the green, which seems to come of poverty.

It had also that peculiar smell of cupboard which seems to come of poverty.

‘The pump is rusty, perhaps,’ said I. ‘Not IT,’said the old man, regarding it with undiluted virulence in his watery eye. ‘It never were fit to be termed a pump. That’s what’s the matter with IT.’ ‘Whose fault is that?’ said I. The old man, who had a working mouth which seemed to be trying to masticate his anger and to find that it was too hard and there was too much of it, replied, ‘Them gentlemen.’

‘What gentlemen?’

‘Maybe you’re one of ’em?’ said the old man, suspiciously.

‘The trustees?’

‘I wouldn’t trust ’em myself,’ said the virulent old man.

‘If you mean the gentlemen who administer this place, no, I am not one of them; nor have I ever so much as heard of them.’

‘I wish I never heard of them,’ gasped the old man: ‘at my time of life — with the rheumatics — drawing water-from that thing!’ Not to be deluded into calling it a Pump, the old man gave it another virulent look, took up his pitcher, and carried it into a corner dwelling-house, shutting the door after him.

Looking around and seeing that each little house was a house of two little rooms; and seeing that the little oblong court-yard in front was like a graveyard for the inhabitants, saving that no word was engraven on its flat dry stones; and seeing that the currents of life and noise ran to and fro outside, having no more to do with the place than if it were a sort of low-water mark on a lively beach; I say, seeing this and nothing else, I was going out at the gate when one of the doors opened.

‘Was you looking for anything, sir?’ asked a tidy, well-favoured woman.

Really, no; I couldn’t say I was.

‘Not wanting any one, sir?’

‘No — at least I— pray what is the name of the elderly gentleman who lives in the corner there?’

The tidy woman stepped out to be sure of the door I indicated, and she and the pump and I stood all three in a row with our backs to the thoroughfare.

‘Oh! HIS name is Mr. Battens,’ said the tidy woman, dropping her voice.

‘I have just been talking with him.’

‘Indeed?’ said the tidy woman. ‘Ho! I wonder Mr. Battens talked!’

‘Is he usually so silent?’

‘Well, Mr. Battens is the oldest here — that is to say, the oldest of the old gentlemen — in point of residence.’

She had a way of passing her hands over and under one another as she spoke, that was not only tidy but propitiatory; so I asked her if I might look at her little sitting-room? She willingly replied Yes, and we went into it together: she leaving the door open, with an eye as I understood to the social proprieties. The door opening at once into the room without any intervening entry, even scandal must have been silenced by the precaution.

It was a gloomy little chamber, but clean, and with a mug of wallflower in the window. On the chimney-piece were two peacock’s feathers, a carved ship, a few shells, and a black profile with one eyelash; whether this portrait purported to be male or female passed my comprehension, until my hostess informed me that it was her only son, and ‘quite a speaking one.’

‘He is alive, I hope?’

Continued on Page 38

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Page 38 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Observer Classic Books From Page 37 ‘No, sir,’ said the widow, ‘he were cast away in China.’ This was said with a modest sense of its reflecting a certain geographical distinction on his mother.

‘If the old gentlemen here are not given to talking,’ said I, ‘I hope the old ladies are? — not that you are one.’

She shook her head. ‘You see they get so cross.’

‘How is that?’

‘Well, whether the gentlemen really do deprive us of any little matters which ought to be ours by rights, I cannot say for certain; but the opinion of the old ones is they do. And Mr. Battens he do even go so far as to doubt whether credit is due to the Founder. For Mr. Battens he do say, anyhow he got his name up by it and he done it cheap.’

‘I am afraid the pump has soured Mr. Battens.’

‘It may be so,’ returned the tidy widow, ‘but the handle does go very hard. Still, what I say to myself is, the gentlemen MAY not pocket the difference between a good pump and a bad one, and I would wish to think well of them. And the dwellings,’ said my hostess, glancing round her room; ‘perhaps they were convenient dwellings in the Founder’s time, considered AS his time, and therefore he should not be blamed. But Mrs. Saggers is very hard upon them.’

‘Mrs. Saggers is the oldest here?’

‘The oldest but one. Mrs. Quinch being the oldest, and have totally lost her head.’

‘And you?’

‘I am the youngest in residence, and consequently am not looked up to. But when Mrs. Quinch makes a happy release, there will be one below me. Nor is it to be expected that Mrs. Saggers will prove herself immortal.’

‘True. Nor Mr. Battens.’

‘Regarding the old gentlemen,’ said my widow slightingly, ‘they count among themselves. They do not count among us. Mr. Battens is that exceptional that he have written to the gentlemen many times and have worked the case against them. Therefore he have took a higher ground.

But we do not, as a rule, greatly reckon the old gentlemen.’

Pursuing the subject, I found it to be traditionally settled among the poor ladies that the poor gentlemen, whatever their ages, were all very old indeed, and in a state of dotage. I also discovered

that the juniors and newcomers preserved, for a time, a waning disposition to believe in Titbull and his trustees, but that as they gained social standing they lost this faith, and disparaged Titbull and all his works.

Improving my acquaintance subsequently with this respected lady, whose name was Mrs. Mitts, and occasionally dropping in upon her with a little offering of sound Family Hyson in my pocket, I gradually became familiar with the inner politics and ways of Titbull’s AlmsHouses. But I never could find out who the trustees were, or where they were: it being one of the fixed ideas of the place that those authorities On Saturday nights, when there is a greater stir than usual outside, and when itinerant vendors of miscellaneous wares even take their stations and light up their smoky lamps before the iron railings, Titbull’s becomes flurried. Mrs. Saggers has her celebrated palpitations of the heart, for the most part, on Saturday nights. But Titbull’s is unfit to strive with the uproar of the streets in any of its phases. It is religiously believed at Titbull’s that people push more than they used, and likewise that the foremost object of the population of England and Wales is to get you down and trample on you. Even of railroads they know, at Titbull’s, little more than the shriek (which Mrs. Saggers says goes through her, and ought to be taken up by Government); and the penny postage may even yet be unknown there, for I have never seen a letter delivered to any inhabitant. But there is a tall, straight, sallow lady resident in Number Seven, Titbull’s, who never speaks to anybody, who is surrounded by a superstitious halo of lost wealth, who does her household work in housemaid’s gloves, and who is secretly much deferred to, though openly cavilled at; and it has obscurely leaked out that this old lady has a son, grandson, nephew, or other relative, who is ‘a Contractor,’ and who would think it nothing of a job to knock down Titbull’s, pack it off into Cornwall, and knock it together again. An immense sensation was made by a gipsy-party calling in a spring-van, to take this old lady up to go for a day’s pleasure into Epping Forest, and notes were compared as to which of the company was the son, grandson, nephew, or other relative, the Contractor. A thick-set personage with a white hat and a cigar in his mouth, was the favourite: though as Titbull’s had no

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other reason to believe that the Contractor was there at all, than that this man was supposed to eye the chimney stacks as if he would like to knock them down and cart them off, the general mind was much unsettled in arriving at a conclusion. As a way out of this difficulty, it concentrated itself on the acknowledged Beauty of the party, every stitch in whose dress was verbally unripped by the old ladies then and there, and whose ‘goings on’ with another and a thinner personage in a white hat might have suffused the pump (where they were principally discussed) with blushes, for months afterwards.

Herein Titbull’s was to Titbull’s true, for it has a constitutional dislike of all strangers. As concerning innovations and improvements, it is always of opinion that what it doesn’t want itself, nobody ought to want. But I think I have met with this opinion outside Titbull’s.

Of the humble treasures of furniture brought into Titbull’s by the inmates when they establish themselves in that place of contemplation for the rest of their days, by far the greater and more valuable part belongs to the ladies. I may claim the honour of having either crossed the threshold, or looked in at the door, of every one of the nine ladies, and I have noticed that they are all particular in the article of bedsteads, and maintain favourite and long-established bedsteads and bedding as a regular part of their rest. Generally an antiquated chest of drawers is among their cherished possessions; a tea-tray always is. I know of at least two rooms in which a little teakettle of genuine burnished copper, vies with the cat in winking at the fire; and one old lady has a tea-urn set forth in state on the top of her chest of drawers, which urn is used as her library, and contains four duodecimo volumes, and a black-bordered newspaper giving an account of the funeral of Her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte. Among the poor old gentlemen there are no such niceties. Their furniture has the air of being contributed, like some obsolete Literary Miscellany, ‘by several hands;’ their few chairs never match; old patchwork coverlets linger among them; and they have an untidy habit of keeping their wardrobes in hat-boxes.

When I recall one old gentleman who is rather choice in his shoe-brushes and blacking-bottle, I have summed up the domestic elegances of that side of the building.

On the occurrence of a death in Titbull’s, it is invariably agreed among the survivors — and it is the only subject on which they do agree — that the departed did something ‘to bring it on.’

Judging by Titbull’s, I should say the human race need never die, if they took care. But they don’t take care, and they do die, and when they die in Titbull’s they are buried at the cost of the Foundation. Some provision has been made for the purpose, in virtue of which (I record this on the strength of having seen the funeral of Mrs. Quinch) a lively neighbouring undertaker dresses up four of the old men, and four of the old women, hustles them into a procession of four couples, and leads off with a large black bow at the back of his hat, looking over his shoulder at them airily from time to time to see that no member of the party has got lost, or has tumbled down; as if they were a company of dim old dolls.

Resignation of a dwelling is of very rare occurrence in Titbull’s. A story does obtain there, how an old lady’s son once drew a prize of Thirty Thousand Pounds in the Lottery, and presently drove to the gate in his own carriage, with French Horns playing up behind, and whisked his mother away, and left ten guineas for a Feast. But I have been unable to substantiate it by any evidence, and regard it as an Alms-House Fairy Tale. It is curious that the only proved case of resignation happened within my knowledge.

It happened on this wise. There is a sharp competition among the ladies respecting the gentility of their visitors, and I have so often observed visitors to be dressed as for a holiday occasion, that I suppose the ladies to have besought them to make all possible display when they come. In these circumstances much excitement was one day occasioned by Mrs. Mitts receiving a visit from a Greenwich Pensioner.

He was a Pensioner of a bluff and warlike appearance, with an empty coat-sleeve, and he was got up with unusual care; his coat-buttons were extremely bright, he wore his empty coatsleeve in a graceful festoon, and he had a walking-stick in his hand that must have cost money.

When, with the head of his walking-stick, he knocked at Mrs. Mitts’s door — there are no knockers in Titbull’s — Mrs. Mitts was overheard by a next-door neighbour to utter a cry of surprise expressing much agitation; and the same neighbour did afterwards solemnly affirm that when he was admitted into Mrs. Mitts’s room, she heard a smack. Heard a smack which was not a blow.

To Be Continued Next Issue

Observer Crossword Solution No 26 C O I F F E O R A P A K I S T E T E S A D I S T T N R A T I S H O A P O S C R I M P H R E D E T E R R R E E M E A S U R E W N A L L Y I N N E O S H R I N E E N V S M U D G E I I N U N E A S E N R O D M U R A L O O C E T H R A S H U N O S M O K E R I L E A D V E R S D E E M I N D F U I D E R O O F R A E R E D I S P E N M R U E M B A L M E N B C R O C H E S E R M E S S E S I A X M A N D A R I T L C R A F T I

U T A H

R D R A A E U N R A S O S E T F N E E E F I T R O N W E N E D G E S I L Y C L E N T F A N S H E D E S A D D R T R C R E G I T C H S S W A S E R S A E E Y E S I C K N O S H U D L Y A L I N S T E T C C P I N A T S N E O G L N D U P E E P A C G O G O T L S Q U E I R C K T O I T T E R N S E R A G E N S A G I A D D I E T L S C E L E T U E H A B M A K E I I N E X C T E N L E R O V E

G S Q P U A D L O I R C I N E R C L E S E P R T E S E S T O I Q U R E T T E E S T E R A A N G L E I L N F T E R A R I T I I S T R S

T E M T I S E S I D O I N G R A E S H S P E R I M E E V G A A L Z E R T T I E M P I A R T D E D D R E E S C S U P P E N U E L I O P E E

R T A A Z E S N A B T A R E R S N G O T U O C E N S A I N I N T V E A R P E S I E N N Y S S O S K O T T O U H O D K A I M S O R A U O S G L A U N I E S D W R I S E O A E C U R Y I R I N O I N G S S A L I S R G I E N C E I S T A R R E O U N S E P A R G O N U N O L L S N P E

J M A E R T P I A B L E M O O A U N S H E P R E T O I C U S N C O W U T H O U F T M O E D E A D M N I E S I T Y R E L A D F E R R S

A H O D E D N O W O N L D E E R A D O V A A N T R A G R E H O R D E R S I R A N W E I L L I B U V I L F T U N G G I E F Y F E N C T I S

A L E N E U T S G A N L I L E F E L U O S T C E R S S E G Y R E D G A Q T E D E L E P L E N C E O D Y N E S O S P U L O E D

S S E E X P E A D N G O R I L O Y E

I C O W O Y O D S W O D R K B E R A S A P

H E T I H I C K A L A V W E R A T T S S

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Melbourne Obser ver - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 39 e urn lbo Me

Every Week in the Melbourne Observer

ver N ser O Ob TI C SE 3

Observer Showbiz

Radio: Justin Smith is back at 3AW. Why? ........ Page 40 Theatre: Meet Elizabeth Semmel ................................... Page 41 Country Music: Rob Foenander’s column ................... Page 40 Jim and Aaron: Best of 2015, top 10 lists, reviews ......... Page 42 Cheryl Threadgold: Local theatre, auditions, thanks ........... Page 43 OVATT”S MEGA CRO PL US THE LLO PLUS CROSSSWORD

Hey Presto, what an epic fail Always on a Sunday

● Geraldine Quinn. Photo: Sarah Walker ■ Rock-cabaret musical comedian Geraldine Quinn takes up residence at The Butterfly Club for the last four Sundays in January.

Geraldine was winner of Best Cabaret Artiste in the latest Green RoomAwards and MICFGolden GibboAward winner in 2011.

She has been touring for 10 years in Australia, UK and New Zealand, and appeared on Spicks And Specks, Rockwiz, Upper Middle Bogan, Adam Hills Tonightand The Weekly.

Geraldine says: “As well as throwing yet another drop of podcast into the ocean of podcasts, I'm gathering a bunch of that project’s alumni for my January residency at Butterfly Club.”

“I'm getting Scott Brennan (SkitHouse) and pan-European performance-art visionaries Artifist to join me in hosting a brace of Bang On The Strillers alumni for a live variety show the last four Sundays of January at The Butterfly Club.

“Each week is a new show (new stuff each week from me as well as new acts), featuring performers from drag, burlesque and cabaret.”

Confirmed acts include: ■ January 10 – Dolly Diamond, Jude Peri, Becky Lou ■ January 17 - Gillian Cosgriff, Clara Cupcakes, Karen from Finance ■ January 24 - Tina Del Twiste, Michelle Brasier, (Mystery Guest) ■ January 31 - Oliver Clark, Christina Andrews, Hairy Soul Man Geraldine explains this is not a live podcast record, but a full variety show, bringing together performers she personally knows and likes a lot, and who straddle cabaret in different forms – including live music, drag performance, burlesque and comedy.

“Think of the podcast as a chat behind the scenes, and the live show as a private party with a bunch of talented show ponies.”

Performance Season: January 10, 17, 24, 31 at 6pm Venue: The Butterfly Club, 5 Carson Place, Melbourne Tickets: $30/$25 Butterfly Club members $24 Bookings: 9663 8107, www.thebutterflyclub.com - Cheryl Threadgold

Showbiz Briefs ■ Bec Brown Communications, with a newly opened office in Melbourne, has grabbed the rest of the Australian Radio Network PR business, and will work on the Gold 104.3 and KIIS 101.1 accounts. Sacha McDougal has been retained to work the Melbourne end of the business.

■ The Demtel man, Tim Shaw, has been signed to host a breakfast radio show in Canberra.

Mary Poppins begins

● Nic Westaway and Dan Ewing in An Eye for an Eye, a special Home And Away episode on Presto ■ A major pre-Christmas marketing launch by the video streaming service Presto turned to disappointment this past week, when many potential subscribers were unable to tune into a special summer series for Home And Away.

H&A is the Seven Network weeknight series which attracts close to one million viewers each weeknight. The 2015 cliffhanger final show went to air on Wednesday (Dec. 9).

Viewers were invited to switch to Presto to view the special An Eye For An Eye series. The aim was to introduce viewers to Presto on a free trail basis, prior to them becoming paid subscribers.

But the pay-for-view Presto service could not deal with the level of requests, locking out many paying subscribers.

They voiced their disappointment on Presto’s social media.

Viewer Tamara Last complained; “I can’t even load it.”

Deb Cambourn: “Presto drops out a lot.”.

Tamara Parker: “I can't even find it on mine.”

David Corless: “I can't even load the bloody main page. I am paying $15 a month to watch deadwood, not to have my Facebook spammed with posts about Home and Away. Fix your servers!”

Steffanie Gohr: “Garbage! Can't even get on!”

Mitchell Bell: “Can’t login either, what a garbage site. I guess if your getting a few 100 thousand people on it now it’d be 1000x more than it’s used to.”

Karen Lang: “Can’t get on site, won’t load again, what a joke.”

Isobel Moana Dayberg: “Not working on my Apple Mac either. Whats going on Presto?”

Sharni D Kanon: “Won't load on computer smart TV or device. This is ridiculous.”

Tahlia May: “Won't load for me either. and it's not my connection because Netflix is working fine.

Emma Brett: “Can't even load the website. I hope it won't always be like this as I wont be paying $15 a month for nothing.”

Karen Hansen: “It sucks. Totally not impressed especially after all the hype.”

Wendy Jackson: “I signed on. They have all my details including bank and I cannot get into my account. It will me let me change my password but not log in, it's ridiculous. Netflix is so much better.”

Tracey Singh: “I cancelled and they took money from me.

Check (your) account once (you) cancel.”

Siobhan Perry: “Cant log in ... so we tried to change password in case that was the issue ... but then there was no email received to change password .. .and turns out that technical contact reponse will be within 48 hours? What a joke Presto!”

Jason Thompson: “Come on Presto, can you update us on what the hell is going on with the Presto service? I cannot get anything to stream on Presto through Telstra TV.” Heather Tervit: “I can't watch it after joining Presto. Has anyone else had that problem?”

Sabine Batzmarowsky: “Presto can go jump. We don't know anything about Presto. What happens when the first month free trial is over? How much does it cost to keep it on? And the fact that it's not on our TV screens. We have to pay to get it on a device. My family have been loyal Home & Away watchers since the first episode. How could you and Channel 7 do that to thousands of devoted fans. Yeh, would love to watch An Eye For An Eye, but, along with heaps of us, we're simply not interested” Mitch Mayes: “Are your servers not capable of providing the service, 45 attempts just to login after I had already logged in and watched a show.

Shaylee Bennetts: “Presto. This sucks! Keeps crashing all the timee. Most frustrating thing.... I’m out! See ya Presto!”

● Mary (Nadia Gianinotti) and Bert (Andrew Perry) and in Mary Poppins, opening New Year’s Eve at the Frankston Arts Centre.

■ PLOS Musical Productions presents the delightful family musical Mary Poppins from January 1-9 at the Frankston Arts Centre.

Everyone’s favourite practically perfect nanny takes to the Frankston Arts Centre stage on New Year’s Eve in this Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious musical adventure.

Based on the books by P.L. Travers and the classic Walt Disneyfilm, Disney and Cameron Mackintosh’s Mary Poppins delighted Broadway audiences for more than 3500 performances and received nominations for nine Olivier and seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical.

The jack-of-all-trades, Bert, introduces us to England in 1910 and the troubled Banks family.

Young Jane and Michael have sent many a nanny packing before Mary Poppins arrives on their doorstep. Using a combination of magic and common sense, she must teach the family how to value each other again.

PLOS’s show is directed by Karl McNamara, musically directed by Sue Fletcher and choreographed by Steve Rostron.

Performances: December 31 at 5pm, January 2 at 7.30pm, January 3 at 1.00pm, January 5 at 7.30pm, January 6 at 1.30pm, January 7 at 7.3pm, January 8 at 7.30pm and January 9 at 1.30pm.

Tickets: $49/$44 U/16 $34 Bookings: www.plos.asn.au or 9784 1060.

- Cheryl Threadgold

Colleen, Doug at Crown

■ Colleen Hewett will be performing at The Palms at Crown with Doug Parkinson on January 30. Colleen said: “I have known Doug most of my life, and it will be great to sing with him. Can't wait."

Page 40 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Observer Showbiz

Radio Confidential News from stations from around Victoria

Justin Smith returns. Why?

Country Crossroads info@country crossroads.com.au Rob Foenander

Mick, Mal on stage

■ After a long 35 years, former Stars band members Mick Pealing and Mal Eastick once again join forces and return for a stage performance at the Flying Saucer Club, Elsternwick, on February 20.

The two will play the songs of the late Andy Durant and the Stars. The night will feature tracks from two legendary albums Paradise and Land of Fortune, plus music from the live album Stars 1157.

Andy Durant was a singer-songwriter with the band. He passed away in 1980.

Nia, Bill tie knot

■ Congratulations to Melbourne music couple Nia Robertson and William McMartin who were married on December 5.

The two are active supporters and participants in the local indie music scene and are regular hosts of the popular house concerts that feature prominent Australian artists.

Bill is also a presenter of the long running Rebels Rednecks and Rock n Roll Show on Casey Radio 97.7FM every Friday nights along with Roger Lloyd.

Ramble Tamble

■ The Australian Creedence Clearwater Revival tribute show Ramble Tamble will be the main feature on New Years Eve at the Hampton RSL. The boys do all the classic CCR hits of the 70s and are known to sell out shows very fast based on their performance and likeness to the original group.

More info at the Hampton RSL. - Rob Foenander

Showbiz Briefs

■ Voting is now open for Triple J’s Hottest 100 which is broadcast on Australia Day. Chet Faker’s Talk Is Cheap was 2014 winner.

■ Ben Mendelsohn has been nominated for a Golden Globe for his role in Bloodline.

■ UK actor Nicholas Smith, best known for Are You Being Served?, has died aged 81.

r Obser vbeiz On This Day Show

Wednesday Thursday December 16 December 17

■ German classical composer Ludvig Van Beethoven was born in 1770. He died aged 56 in 1827.

British actor, writer and composer Sir Noel Coward was born in 1899. He died aged 72 in 1973.

Actress Georgie Parker was born in Sydney in 1964 (51).

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

■ British singer Tommy Steele is 79 (1936).

Australian media magnate Kerry Packer was born in Sydney in 1937.

He died aged 68 in 2005.

ABC presenter Ian ‘Macca’ McNamara was born in 1945 (70).

Artist Clifton Pugh was born in 1924. He died in 1990 (65).

■ Popular 3AW presenter Justin Smith has returned to Melbourne after a two-year stint at Sydney sister station 2UE. This week he started as the summer morning man on 3AW, but the big question is what will a presenter of his calibre be doing at AW during 2016.

In 2014 and 2015, Smith has presented the Drive program at the Sydney station. He has innovated, sometimes presenting the show from the streets of the Sydney CDB, armed with a microphone, set of headphones, and a backpack that allowed him to broadcast live from anywhere he walked.

His programs included many interviews with members of the public, of whom he asked questions of the day.

Smith is perhaps known best to Victorian listeners as a long-time senior producer for the Neil Mitchell program. Is he in waiting to take over from the morning presenter who turned 64 last month?

Justin Smith was raised in Echuca, and had his start in radio at age 17 Smith has worked in radioat nearby 2QN Deniliquin, He has also worked at 3SH Swan Hill, 2LF Young, 3BO/ 3CV Bendigo, and 2AY/ Star FMAlbury.

Summer line-up

● Justin Smith hosting the late Sunday adternon shift from 4pm.

He does it for you

New ratings

■ The final radio ratings survey results for 2015 were released yesterday (Tues.), after this issue of the Melbourne Observer went to press.

The ratings are now available online at www.jocks journal.com

Limit up ■ Pacific Star Network, operators of SEN and 3MP, have had a vote passed that allows the annual remuneration payable to non-executive directors be increased from $250,000 to $450,000 per annum.

■ One of 3AW’s Sydney sister stations, 2UE, has launched its summer line-up.

Former Ten News presenter Bill Woods and entertainment reporter Angela Bishop will fill in for Breakfast co-hosts John Stanley and Garry Linnell over summer.

Taking over 10am to 2pm is Tim Webster, with Australia Overnight’s Luke Bona on air from 2pm-6pm.

3AW has started its Summer of Cricket broadcasts, beginning with the first Test between Australia and the West Indies live from Hobart.

Macquarie Media will broadcast ball-by-ball commentary of the feature Boxing Day and New Year’s Tests, plus all One Day International and Twenty20 fixtures.

Macquarie’s cricket commentary team includes Ian Chappell, Greg Matthews, Damien Fleming, Dean Jones, Bruce Eva and Tim Lane.

● Bryan Adams ■ Bryan Adams, the voice behind the hit songs Heaven, I Do It For You, and Summer of 69, has joined the Smooth 91.5FM a weekend line-up.

Adams, who starts his Get Up national tour in March, is

Magic lost

■ Melbourne-hosted programs relayed to Brisbane’s Magic 882 station are not being received well by many Queensland listeners, if the station’s Facebook page is any indication.

Listener Bev Anderson said: “The only reason I haven't switched yet is because I can't work out how to change the station on my digital radio but I will.

“The play list is nowhere near as diverse and the number of prolonged silences is just plain embarrassing for the station and as far as the weather forecast is concerned, I am not interested in the weather in Frankstton, Geelong or Dandenong!”

Brisbane is 1675-km by road from Melbourne.

Briefs

■ Afternoon program contributor Flip Shelton made 3AW sound like a backwater community station late last week when she sent greetings messages to family members.

Producers of Denis Walter’s show should have a word.

■ The Australian Radio Network, which includes Gold 104.3 and KIIS 101.1, is advertising for applicanjts for an Agency Account Director to work in Melbourne. CVs should be lodged by Thursday next week (Dec. 24).

■ Nova Entertainment, which operates Smooth and Nova, wants to appoint a Melbourne-basede Technology Manager.

Melbourne

Observer

Friday December 18

Saturday December 19

■ Rolling Stones lead guitarist Keith Richards was born in Kent, England, in 1943 (73).

US film director Steven Spielberg is 69 (1946).

Film critic Leonard Maltin is 65.

US actor Brad Pitt is 53 (1963).

US actress Katie Holmes is 37 (1978).

■ English actor Sir Ralph Richardson was born in Cheltenham, England, in 1902. He died aged 80 in 1983.

French singer Edith Piaf was born in Paris, France, in 1915. She died aged 47 in 1963.

American actress Jennifer Beals is 52 (1963).

Cricketer Ricky Ponting is 41.

Sunday Monday December 20 December 21

Tuesday December 22

■ Former Australian Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies was born in Jeparit in 1894. He died aged 83 in 1978.

Actor and TV-radio presenter Noel Ferrier was born in Melbourne in 1930. He died aged 66 in 1997.

TV presenter Ray Martin is 71 (1944).

■ US actress Barbara Billingsley (June Cleaver) was born in 1915. She died aged 94 in 2010.

Radio and TV host Donnie Sutherland was born in Sydney in 1945 (70).

Actor Simon Westaway is 567(1958).

Model Jennifer Hawkins is 31.

American actress Jane Fonda is 79.

US rock guitarist Frank Zappa was born in 1940.

He died aged 52 in 1993.

US actor Ray Romano is 58 (1957).

Canadian actor Kiefer Sutherland is 49. He stars in 24.

US talk show host Phil Donahue is 80.

Thanks to GREG NEWMAN of Jocks Journal for assistance with birthday and anniversary dates.

Jocks Journal is Australia’s longest running radio industry publication.

Find out more at www.jocksjournal.com

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

ShowBiz!

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - Page 41

Observer Showbiz

Wind In The Willows

■ The Wind in the Willows will once again transform Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens from December 24 to January 23.

Almost three decades old, The Wind in the Willows is Australia’s longest running theatre show.

Continuing to win appreciative audiences year in year out, Glenn Elston’s show has played to audiences of more than 500,000 across Australia.

Special regional performances will also be presented in Gippsland.

Glenn was the recipient of the 2014 Melbourne Award for his “enormous contribution to Melbourne and Australia’s artistic and community life, pioneering open-air theatre in Australia with a vision to make theatre accessible”.

As Elston’s longest running production, The Wind in the Willows is an integral part of this contribution. So why is this production so enduring?

“The Wind in the Willows has become an Australian tradition. It might be because the characters are so identifiable; each of our audience members forms a relationship with them as they go on the adventure – both physically and metaphorically! It touches the child in all of us,” says director Glenn Elston.

Join Ratty, Mole, Badger, Otter, Portly and, of course, Mr Toad will return this summer amid music, songs and laughs. There is fun for young and old as the Head Chief Rabbit transforms audiences into rabbits with a waggle of the ears and a wiggle of the nose.

The young 'rabbits' are encouraged to get involved in the action, and are given every opportunity to scream out loud, sing along and become part of the adventure. With laughs and surprises for children and adults, this is interactive theatre at its best.

The Wind in the Willows has become a national treasure, playing to delighted audiences each year in the gardens of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

The Wind in the Willows asks you to pack a picnic, pack the kids and join in the fun.

Performance Dates: December 24 – January 23 Times: 10.30am and 6pm Tuesday – Saturday (No 6pm performance on Christmas Eve, no shows Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year’s Day) Sale: December 20 at 5pm, January 21 at 10.30am Warragul: January 22, 10.30am and 5pm Venues: Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, Enter via Gate F on Birdwood Avenue Sale Botanic Gardens, 70 Foster St, Sale Civic Park, Warragul, Clifford Street, Warragul Tickets: Single tickets $25; Family of four $90 (four tickets, any age) Bookings:: www.shakespeareaustralia.com au or call 8676 7511 - Cheryl Threadgold

Affair Play ■ Two couples, four frustrated individuals unhappy with their respective partners and a dinner party where they all come together creates the potential for farce.

This is the premise behind Sam Floyd’s Affair Play. The ensemble of Anthea Greco, Remy Coll, Lucy Norton and Sam Floyd do their best to realise the latent possibilities behind this set up but the play is, ultimately, unbalanced and lacks direction.

The dramatic tension of being discovered is lost as the dialogue dominates – a dialogue that is a little too self indulgent at times and divided inequitable between the characters.

The split stage of living room and kitchen is underutilized with the bulk of the play concentrated in the latter domain.

The set itself was original covered, as it was, in brown paper with windows and wall hangings drawn on it – including a single red rose that stood out from everything else.

This would seem to be a work in progress requiring some judicious shaping of the hour long drama with character motivation and psychology benefitting from more nuanced development.

Performance Season: Until December 19 at 8pm Venue: The Mechanics Institute, Brunswick Bookings: 9387 3376 or www.freshlyground theatre.com - Review by David McLean

TV, Radio, Theatre Latest Melbourne show business news - without fear or favour

Meet Elizabeth Semmel ■ Elizabeth Semmel says being her friend in primary school meant joining in her imaginary games.

Always loving play acting in primary and secondary school, Elizabeth participated in the school productions and classes.

Then she became a member of St Martin’s Youth Arts Centre, attending drama classes and performing in shows.

Elizabeth received her Bachelor of Education at Rusden (Victoria College), majoring in English and Theatre for Young People, and has completed various short courses.

She has written, directed and acted in numerous plays for children and adolescents and worked in companies in Melbourne, Italy, Canada and Japan.

She has also performed and run drama workshops and performances in schools and for school holiday programs.

For many years Elizabeth sang with the children’s band The Jelly Bugs, and performed in the Ronald Mc Donald character program.

She has been a member of The Arts Centre’s Education team and worked in the road safety program for kindergarten children.

As well as working with and for children, Elizabeth has directed three musicals for Aspect Theatre Company and numerous short plays for various festivals.

● Elizabeth Semmel This includes the Short ing, reading and hanging and Sweet Festival at the out with friends to share Arts Centre Melbourne, stories and a laugh. in which Perfect Stillness Whilst Elizabeth has won the People’s Choice had experience in film and Award. television, her passion is She is also a casual live theatre, and she is now relief teacher in primary a valued member of the schools, and facilitates Melbourne Observer thesessions in drug education atre review team. with Harold the Giraffe.

Elizabeth says: “ReOn a personal note, Eliza- viewing for the beth loves spending time Melbourne Observer has with her four children, led to many and varied marvelling at the achieve- opportunities to see all ments of her toddler, sorts of live work in watching her imaginary Melbourne.” play at work, and love of Great to have you music developing. She aboard, Elizabeth. also loves travelling danc- Cheryl Threadgold

Ryan. Review by Martin Curtis ■ On February 3 1967, the Beatles put the finishing touches to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Jimi Hendrix recorded Purple Haze, and Ronald Ryan, a small time crook who shot a prison warder in a dashing escape from Pentridge Prison, became the last man hanged in Australia.

Ryan was relatively late to crime – he was 31 and married with three daughters when first convicted for forging cheques – and was 14 days short of his 42nd birthday when executed.

Playwright and author Barry Dickens takes us to the last hour of Ryan’s life, to the condemned man’s cell in Pentridge, in his second play on Ryan and the swinging sixties.

Dickens creates a likeable character: Ryan was 5ft 8 ins (173 cm) tall and dressed like Frank Sinatra; his escape from Pentridge on Sunday December 19 1965 with a career criminal called Peter Walker was a tabloid sensation; his arrest in Sydney a month later in a police sting (Ryan thought he was meeting a nurse) was just as sensational; that a prison officer named George Hodson was shot in the escape; that Ryan had a gun; that while on the run Walker murdered a tow truck driver named Boofhead Henderson; and that Premier Henry Bolte wanted to fight an election around law and order later that year and was

determined to see Ronald Ryan hanged.

Ron Saw, one of 14 reporters who witnessed the execution that hot February morning walked away from the execution, picked up a phone and dictated without pause one of the great pieces of Australian journalism.

To Saw, Ryan “hardly seemed to be a man at all; either from drugs or exhaustion or perhaps even some inexplicable last-minute composure, he seemed more like a boy waiting to be caned … I forget how old he is, or was, but he could have been 16; a kid playing a silly game; clean-shaven, pink-cheeked, pathetic.”

Some 48 years later it’s still the sense of a man caught up in circumstances beyond his control that underlines the injustice of the Ryan hanging, and that keep writers like Dickens returning to it.

Dickens describes his writing as a stream of unconsciousness and in building the story he over indulges in conspiracies. But in building the character he excels. Ryan (ably played by Syd Brisbane) is intelligent, articulate and furious at the unfairness that will see him hanged but Walker and a child killer named Keith Ryrie live.

His last words captured his essential decency: “God bless you. Make it quick,” he whispered to the hangman.

La Mama Courthouse until December 20 - Martin Curtis

Exit Ceremonies ■ Two of Australia’s most vibrant musical forces, Australian Art Orchestra and Ensemble Offspring present Exit Ceremonies, uniting with giant of American experimental music, Alvin Lucier, and celebrated young composer-pianists: Austin Buckett (Australia) and Simon James Phillips (Germany), who have each created immersive and bespoke compositions that exploit the extraordinary array of sonic effects that can only be achieved with large pipe organs.

For one night only on Saturday, February 6, Exit Ceremonies will create an unfamiliar and entrancing world of sound with the unexpected addition of reel-to-reel tape machines, turntables, electronics, percussion, vocals, trumpet and strings in combination with majestic Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ – one of world’s largest organs that uses 90,000 cubic feet of air every minute.

Internationally acclaimed composer, trumpeter, sound artist and Australian Art Orchestra artistic director, Peter Knight, explains that it’s important to constantly stretch genres and break down the barriers separating disciplines, forms and cultures.

“Exit Ceremonies creates new rituals for the organ and explores the meeting points of classical, jazz and experimental music.

“It also aims to be accessible and to draw the audience into a totally immersive sensual experience – an experience that can only be created using this giant instrument.”

Eager to see Exit Ceremonies after being appointed the new Australian Art Orchestra director and chair, Brian Ritchie said “Australian Art Orchestra explores a panoply of sonic textures and formal approaches as part of their mission to conquer musical terra incognita and this original new work and international collaboration is testament to this vision.”

Swings is a major international event and is written for two violins, cello, double bass, trumpet in C, female vocals as an additional three players will manipulate the sounds of the mouths of the organ pipes that will cause pitch bending and audible beating.

Working in multi-mediums that focus on the perception of sound repetition and a slow evolving approach, Austin Buckett’s Aisles is a new work for that draws on a wide range of inspirations from minimalism to hip hop.

Aisles sets up looped conversations between the pipe organ, turntables, percussion and strings as the ethereal voice of Sonya Holowell and the trumpet of Peter Knight float like kites in the ether.

Trained as a classical pianist and currently working as an experimental improvising pianist and composer in Berlin, Simon James Phillips is influenced by electronic music and is interested in replicating mechanical and repetitive sounds.

Working with subtle timbral and structural development to build a complex composition, Phillips’ Flaw uses a mix of multi-layered impacts acoustic and electronic instruments.

Date: Saturday, February 6 Time: 7.30pm. Duration approximately 90 minutes with intervals Location: Melbourne Town Hall, 90-120 Swanston St, Melbourne Tickets: $35 Full / $20 Concession Bookings: aao.com.au/exitceremonies - Cheryl Threadgold

At Bennetts Lane

■ Melbourne International Jazz Festival Summer Sessions return again in January – kicking off the year with world-class jazz.

The re-opened Bennetts Lane Jazz Club will play host to Ethio-jazz giant Hailu Mergia, Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii’s astounding improvisation project Kaze, a celebration of Australian saxophone legend David Ades – and more! Enjoy balmy evenings and cool jazz this summer.

Saturday, January 9 and Sunday, January 10– Vince Jones Quartet (Aus). Thursday, January 14 – Swooping Duck (Aus). Friday, January 15 – Hailu Mergia with Tony Buck and Mike Majkowski (Eth/Aus), Saturday, January 16 – A Life in a Day (Aus). Sunday, January 17 – Satoko Fujii and Kaze (Jap/Fra). http://melbournejazz.com

Page 42 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Observer Showbiz What’s Hot and What’s Not in Blu-Rays and DVDs

● Oddball and Friend in the delightfully quirky adventure based on a true story, Oddball.

FILM: ODDBALL: Genre: Family/Adventure.

Cast: Shane Jacobson, Sarah Snook, Alan Tudyk, Coco Jack Gillies.

Year: 2015.

Rating: G. Length: 95 Minutes.

Stars: ***½ Verdict: Delightfully engaging early Disney-esque family adventure based on the true story of a chicken farmer who, with the help of his granddaughter, inadvertently find out his mischievous dog Oddball has an affection to protect the wild penguins in a nearby island sanctuary that are suffering great losses due to fox attacks, and in the process tries to reunite with his family and save their seaside town. A throwback to the style and innocence of such Disney classics of "Greyfriars Bobby" and "That Darn Cat," "Oddbal" is a charming adventure that will captivate adults and much as the children. Beautifully filmed mostly in and around Warrnambool in Victoria, Shane Jacobson, Coco Jack Gillies and Sarah Snook are wonderfully, and amusingly, captivating at the extraordinary task they have in hand. Funny, inoffensively thrilling, exciting and a uniquely quirky slice of Australiana that makes "Oddball" a delight from beginning to end.

FILM: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION: Genre: Action/Adventure/Thriller.

Cast: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames.

Year: 2015.

Rating: M. Length: 131 Minutes.

Stars: ***½ Verdict: Ethan Hunt and the Mission Impossible team are back in this fifth instalment of the super spy franchise and this time they're after an International rogue organization as highly skilled as they are who are out to enlarge their assets of global terrorists and bring the Mission Impossible force down. After seeing Tom Cruise hanging from a cargo plane door, there's good reason to think there's some pretty impressive action follow, and there is, from high in the sky, under water and on the road with a jaw-dropping motorcycle chase. However, it soon falls back into a predictable spy formulaic process. That aside, and even though it may not be as overall thrilling and overall exciting as its predecessor Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Tom Cruise and company, including regulars Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner and the scene stealing Simon Pegg are back in good form, with the balance well tipped in its favour not to ignore and enjoy.

FILM: SLEUTH: Genre: Mystery/Thriller.

Cast: Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine.

Details: 1972.

Rating: PG. Length: 138 Minutes.

Stars: ***** Verdict: Outstanding mystery-thriller directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz from playwright Anthony Shaffer's Tony award winning play of a gameplaying mystery author who invites his wife's lover into a diabolical trap, setting up a battle of wits with potentially deadly results. The direction, the landmark biting and witty screenplay by Anthony Shaffer, eye-popping set design by Ken Adam, and shattering career high tour-de-force performances by stars Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine make this supremely superlative and unforgettable entertainment. Retaining its theatrical grip yet excelling in its own uniquely original cinematic palate, the play makes and extraordinarily easy transition to the screen.

"Sleuth" is a delightfully rich and energetic labyrinth filled with devilishly tantalising and engaging plot twists that lurk in the shadows. Delicious from start to finish, it would be a crime to reveal any more of the plot, only to say that it will have you reaching for repeated viewings. Nominated for four Academy awards including Best Director (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Best Actor for both Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, and Best Music (John Addison). Available for the first time ever on DVD in Australia.

Movies, DVDs

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

With Jim Sherlock and Aaron Rourke

Best for 2015 ■ Christmas is upon us once more, so now is the time for everyone to look back on those films that left a deep, unforgettable impression, top-shelf features that show cinema is alive and well.

The following list of movies (beginning with my top 10) are my personal favourites for this year, all of which kept my celluloid heart beating strong.

I would like to wish our fearless Editor Ash Long, my partner-in-crime James Sherlock, the rest of the Observer staff, and of course you the readers, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Oh yeah, I also hope everyone sees at least one movie over the holiday period that doesn't have Star Wars in the title.

1. Madonna (MA). It has been a great year for Korean cinema, and this provocative and intense experience was my number one pick for 2015.

2. Han Gong-ju (MA). Another stunning film from South Korea, one that was both harrowing and moving.

3. A Girl At My Door (MA). My top three films prove to be a Korean trifecta, and this brilliant film which deals with a number of heady topics is must-see viewing.

4. A Most Violent Year (MA). Meticulously crafted, this confirms J.C Chandor's status as a world-class film-maker.

5. Foxcatcher (M). Beautifully orchestrated drama based on a bizarre true story. Like Chandor, Bennett Miller is another director whose work is to be admired and applauded.

6. Mad Max : Fury Road (MA).

Eye-popping return to the Mad Max universe was one of the best bigscreen experiences to emerge in the last few years.

7. Haemoo (MA). Grim tale that focuses on the controversial subject of human trafficking. Brutal at times but superb on every level.

8. Far From Men (M). Thoughtful and involving film features terrific performances and gorgeous cinematography.

9. Alive (MA). Gruelling, three hour examination of a brother and sister who have fallen on hard times.

10. The Tale Of Princess Kaguya (PG). Visually dazzling, completely absorbing animated film from the always-reliable Studio Ghibli.

Gangnam Blues (R). Expansive, ultra-slick look at gang life and widespread corruption.

Why Don't You Play In Hell? (R).

Insane action/satire vigorously skews the modern film-making process.

Tokyo Tribe (MA). A sensory overload of a film that is truly one-of-akind.

White God (MA). Allegorical thriller about neglected dogs that take over a Hungarian city.

Sicario (MA). Director Denis Villeneuve once again takes us on an unsettling journey into the dark side of human nature.

Assassination (MA). This big budget crowd-pleaser is confidently made, and is filled with an all-star cast and a number of impressive action set-pieces.

Veteran (MA). Breathlessly paced cop flick that effortlessly moves between comedy, action, and drama.

In Order Of Disappearance (MA).

Stand-out mix of revenge thriller and

● My favourite film for 2015, the dark, stunningly crafted Madonna. deadpan comedy contains a great turn from Stellan Skarsgard.

The Throne (M). Oscar hopeful intelligently unveils a tortured relationship between a father and his growingly unstable son.

100 Yen Love (MA). The underdog boxer formula is given a unique spin, and also offers an outstanding performance from Sakura Ando.

Being Good (MA). Involving, finely-tuned character piece features first-rate acting and several emotionally gripping sub-plots.

The Tribe (R). Challenging film where the actors perform entirely through sign language. Impressively made but sometimes hard to watch.

American Sniper (MA). Clint Eastwood delivers again as a director, and is backed up by an Oscarnominated peformance from Bradley Cooper.

Still Alice (M). Touching and always believable, and Julianne Moore deserved the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Lost Soul (M). Incredible documentary detailing the troubled 1996 production of The Island Of Dr Moreau.

The Homesman (MA). Tommy Lee Jones' vastly under-rated western is another triumph for the actorturned-director.

Inside Out (PG). Pixar's surprisingly complex animated outing also saw the studio make a welcome return to form.

Pieta In The Toilet (M). An original, expertly handled mix of dour drama and unpredictable humour.

Princess Jellyfish (PG). Based on a highly acclaimed anime series, this live-action adaptation is colourful, energetic, and utterly charming.

Other Films That Were A CutAbove.

Jauja; SPL 2 : A Time For Consequences; Inherent Vice; The World Of Kanako; Rurouni Kenshin : The Legend Ends; John Wick; Ex-Machina; The Duke Of Burgundy; Housebound; Starry Eyes; When Animals Dream; My Ordinary Love Story; A Matter Of Interpretation; Sleepless Night; Song Of The Sea; The Walk; The Face Reader; My Dictator; Wild Tales; The Case Of Hana And Alice; The Guest; It Follows; How To StealA Dog; Journey To The Shore; Chasuke's Journey; Whiplash; Predestination; Partners In Crime; When MarnieWas There;A GirlWalks Home Alone At Night; The Harvest; Yakuza Apocalypse; Slow Video; Ryuzo And The Seven Henchmen; Big Match; Parasyte Part 1; Casa Amor : Exclusive For Ladies; The Admiral : Roaring Currents; The Liar And His Lover.

- Aaron Rourke DVD's and Blu-Rays kindly supplied by Video Vision, 177-179 Carlisle Street, Balaclava. Some movies mentioned are available on DVD. For more information please check online at videovisiondvd.com.au

Top 10 Lists

THE AUSTRALIAN BOX OFFICE TOP TEN: 1. THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 2.

2. SPECTRE. 3. HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2.

4. CREED. 5. IN THE HEART OF THE SEA. 6. THE NIGHT BEFORE. 7. THE DRESSMAKER. 8. LOVE THE COOPERS. 9. SECRET IN THEIR EYES. 10. BRIDGE OF SPIES. NEW RELEASES AND COMING SOON TO CINEMAS AROUND AUSTRALIA: DECEMBER 10: MISSISSIPPI GRIND. DECEMBER 17: STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS. THE DVD AND BLU-RAY TOP RENTALS & SALES: 1. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION [Action/Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner].

2. LAST CAB TO DARWIN [Comedy/Drama/Michael Caton, Jacki Weaver, Emma Hamilton].

3. ANT-MAN [Action/Fantasy/Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lily].

4. TED 2 [Comedy/Mark Walhberg/Amanda Seyfried, Morgan Freeman, Seth MacFarlane].

5. PIXELS [Comedy/Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan].

6. TRAINWRECK [Comedy/Romance/Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, Brie Larson].

7. RICKI AND THE FLASH [Comedy/Drama/Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline].

8. THE HOBBIT: TRILOGY Extended Edition.

9. INSIDE OUT [Animated/Adventure/Diane Lane, Bill Hader].

10. JURASSIC WORLD [Action/ Adventure/Sci-Fi/Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard].

Also: FANTISTIC FOUR, JURASSIC WORLD, MAX, SAN ANDREAS, LOVE & MERCY, PAPER TOWNS, MOMENTUM, SELF/LESS, FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, MADAME BOVARY. NEW RELEASE HIGHLIGHTS ON DVD THIS WEEK: THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. [Action/Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander].

5 FLIGHTS UP [Comedy/Drama/ Diane Keaton, Morgan Freeman, Cynthia Nixon].

SURVIVOR [Action/Thriller/Pierce Brosnan, Angela Bassett, Milla Jovovich].

MAZE RUNNER: SCORCH TRIALS [Action/Sci-Fi/Dylan O'Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster].

ODDBALL [Family/Comedy/ Drama/Shane Jacobson, Sarah Snook].

LIFE [Drama/Robert Pattinson, Peter Lucas].

MR. HOLMES [Mystery/Drama/Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Parker].

NEW RELEASE HIGHLIGHTS ON BLURAY THIS WEEK: THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. [Action/Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander].

5 FLIGHTS UP [Comedy/Drama/ Diane Keaton, Morgan Freeman, Cynthia Nixon].

Turn to Page 49

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 43

Observer Showbiz

Local Theatre With Cheryl Threadgold

End-of-year shows, auditions Little Red

Melbourne

Observer ONE VOICE FESTIVAL

SHOWS ■ PLOS Musical Productions: Mary Poppins December 31 January 9 at the Frankston Arts Centre, Frankston. Tickets: $49/ $44. Bookings: www.plos.asn.au ■ Encore Theatre: Little Red (by Matthew Chaloupka-Wagner) January 14-23 at the Clayton Community Centre, Cooke St., Clayton. Bookings: 1300 739 099.

■ The Midsumma Festival: January 17- February 7 at various venues. www.midsumma.org.au

AUDITIONS ■ The Basin Theatre Company: Sleuth (by Anthony Shaffer) December 30 at 9.00am at The Basin Theatre, Dongalla Rd., The Basin. Director: Chris Shaw. Audition bookings: 0414 684 346 or email chris@shawramics.com .

THANKS ● Kate Deavin (Gingy), Emily Zienow (Red), Matthew Chaloupka-Wagner (Wolf) and Louisse Linney (Pig) in Little Red in Clayton from January 14.

Photo: Eleni Miller ■ Encore Theatre Company presents the school holiday pantomime Little Red from January 14-23 at the Clayton Community Centre Theatrette.

Directed by Karina Hudson and written by Matthew Chaloupka-Wagner, this panto is based on the classic children’s story Little Red Riding Hood.

Join Little Red, Woody the Woodcutter and Pig the Pig as they travel through the woods to Granny Red’s house. Find out if they have what it takes to outsmart the dastardly Wolf and his sidekick, Gingy, who try to intercept Red’s basket of goodies.

This song and dance pantomime is fun, affordable and a great way to enjoy a special day out with the kids.

Matinees: January 14, 15, 16, 21, 22 and 23 at 11am and 2pm daily Venue: Clayton Community Centre, Cnr Cooke St and Centre Rd., Clayton.

All tickets $10 only (no concessions).

Bookings: 1300 739 099

■ Sincere thanks to honorary theatre reviewers Geraldine Colson, Rita Crispin, Martin Curtis, Barbara Hughes, Cenarth Fox, Kathryn Keeble, Beth Klein, Stephen Leeden, Deborah Marinaro, Catherine McGregor, David McLean, Maggie Morrison, Jill Page and Elizabeth Semmel for their dedicated work during the year.

Congratulations to our wonderful local theatre industry for another splendid year of quality productions.

Many thanks to all readers and patrons of community theatre for continuing support of this vibrant and special arts sector.

Happy Christmas and a safe, happy and healthy New Year - Cheryl Threadgold

COMEDY FESTIVAL

■ The ytear 2016 marks the 30th anniversary of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

The first acts have been announced, with the full program to be unveiled in February.

In 1987 an idea was hatched to create a festival to showcase MELBOURNE ART TRAMS and celebrate Melbourne’s groundbreaking comedy and caba■ The public has spoken and Melbourne based photographic ret venues and the performers who inhabited them. its humble beginnings with 56 shows across 33 venues, artist James Voller has taken home the 2015 Melbourne Art theFrom Melbourne Comedy Festival has become Australia’s naTrams People’s Choice Award and the accompanying $5000 cash tional comedy festival and one of the biggest in the world. prize.

The Festival has played host to thousands of local and interThe popular Melbourne Art Trams initiative is a partnership national performers and millions of people have been entertained between Creative Victoria, Yarra Trams and Melbourne Festi- and inspired by their fearless imaginations in the pursuit of free val. speech and good times.

The 2015 project features trams that reflect the architecture, International guest artists coming to tickle our collective funny urban planning and interiors of Melbourne with a theme of Ar- bones in 2016 will include: Festival debutants: Hal Cruttenden, chitecture and the City.

Larry Dean, Adam Hess, Sofie Hagen, Lou Sanders, Mae MarThe eight trams debuted on the streets of Melbourne in early tin and Penny Arcade October as part of this year’s Melbourne Festival visual arts Recent visitors returning: Joel Dommett, Nish Kumar, Sara program.

Pascoe, Alex Edelman, Luisa Omielan, Urzila Carlson, and Tom Voting in the People’s Choice Award closed at the inaugural Green Melbourne Art Trams Community Day, when all eight trams Much loved favourites: Rich Hall, David O’Doherty, Sarah travelled on the City Circle at once. James Voller was declared Millican, Arj Barker, Ross Noble and Paul Foot A plethora of local Australian performers are also heading to the winner.

Exhibited internationally from London to Christchurch, James Melbourne to join the party: Celia Pacquola, Anthony Morgan, specialises in site-specific works, delving into the essence of Hannah Gadsby, Judith Lucy, Joel Creasey, Matt Okine, Tommy Little, Frank Woodley, Wil Anderson, Tom Gleeson, place: www.jamevoller.com.

His tram design investigates iconic northern Melbourne ar- Sam Simmons, Peter Helliar, Sarah Kendall, Nazeem Hussain, chitecture. Having documented the facades of these homes for Ali McGregor, Dave Thornton, Dave Hughes, Steen the past two years, they now transcend the inner city suburb to Raskopoulos, Tom Ballard, Anne Edmonds, Nick Cody, Trimove across Melbourne on a D class tram running on routes 5, pod, Carl Barron, Akmal, Em Rusciano, Lehmo, Lawrence Leung, Adam Richard, Charlie Pickering, Fiona O’Loughlin, 6, 8, 16 and 72.

Minister for Creative Industries Martin Foley said: “The Felicity Ward, Lawrence Mooney, Sammy J & Randy, Zoe Marr and Tripod Melbourne Art Trams continue to bring art and creativity to our Coombs To celebrate 30 years of laughs, the Melbourne Comedy Fesstreets and into our daily lives. tival in conjunction with Arts Centre Melbourne, is presenting a “This year’s artists took inspiration from the city itself, and major exhibition starting from the 1987 launch with Peter Cook offer very different creative interpretations of this theme. and Sir Les Patterson, through backstage, behind the scenes “James’s work brings a quiet piece of North Melbourne ar- moments and much-loved costumes, to Deadly Funny – the only chitecture, and a serene feeling of home, to our transport net- dedicated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander comedy prowork. gram for Australia’s traditional owners – the life and mood of the “Commuters have loved it and I extend my congratulations to Festival is captured in an exciting exhibition.

James on being the People’s Choice.”

Popular national initiatives also return including RAW ComOn receiving his award, James said “Thanks so much to ev- edy (Australia’s largest and most popular open mic competieryone who voted for my art tram - I was so humbled to be tion), Class Clowns (workshops and comedy competition for included with such an wonderful bunch of artists, and to be part teens), Deadly Funny (supporting indigenous comedy), Upfront of such a significant and prestigious event like the Melbourne Gala (the glamour girls of comedy), Oxfam Gala (sold out), OpenFestival.” ing Night Comedy Allstars Supershowand The Comedy Zone.

James’s tram can be found by using TramTracker, pressing For more information, and tickets for shows already on sale: www.comedyfestival.com.au the MyTram function and entering tram ID 175.

● Alice Zaslavsky ■ MasterChef finalist from 2012, Alice 'in Frames’ Zaslavsky, has signed on to judge the best cheesecake at the In One Voice Jewish Street Festival to be held on Sunday March 20.

Zaslavsky, who has traded chalk and talk, for talk and stir, is clear on what makes a good cheesecake.

“It's a perfect storm of velvety creamy filling and crunchy biscuity base. It's a dish that requires balance and finesse,” she says.

“The best cheesecake I've ever had was in San Sebastián in a place called La Viña – we loved it so much, we had it every night for almost two weeks. It was slightly torched on top and gooey through the middle. Divine.”

Zaslavsky says her father-in-law makes a “mean” cheesecake.

“It must be his French roots,” she reckons. “There are so many variations on the cheesecake theme - and they're all brilliant.

“The key is just to make it the best version of what it's supposed to be, not have preconceived expectations.”

Festival Manager Judith Weizman has urged Melbourne cheesecake aficionados to start brushing up on their favourite cheesecake recipes.

“It doesn’t matter whether your best recipe hails from Poland, Germany or New York. As Alice says, cheesecakes can all taste wonderful, no matter what their culinary roots,” she said.

“You don’t have to be Jewish to enter. The cheesecake is a truly international dish. It might be a highpoint of Jewish cuisine these days but cheesecake dates back to the ancient Greeks and was apparently served at the first Olympics.

“The great thing about the In One Voice Festival is that you can have their (cheese)cake and eat it too. We’ll be selling off the cheesecakes once Alice has delivered her judgement.”

Zaslavsky attended the Leibler Yavneh College in Elsternwick and sang at In One Voice/Yom Haatzmaut concerts with the Yavneh Vocal Ensemble for years.

These days Zaslavsky is the host of her own foodie kids’ game show Kitchen Whiz on Channel Go (with another on the way) and 'Adventurer-in-Residence' and face of iconic Prahran Market. She has also written a cookbook for teenagers, Alice’s Food A-Z .

Alice's recipes, edible adventures and general musings on life abound at www.aliceinframes.com or you can find her on various forms of social media as @aliceinframes.

A full festival program will be announced closer to the date: /www.inonevoice.org.au In One Voice Jewish Street Festival: 11am-5pm, Sunday March 20. Sinclair and Selwyn Sts, Elsternwick.

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Page 44 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 Melbourne

Observer

Lovatts Crossword No 26 Across

Across

1. Hair-stylist 6. Straight-line racing car 11. Famous Indian mausoleum (3,5) 15. Nightclub dancer 20. ... kwon do 21. Labyrinths 22. Aegean or Caspian 23. Lahore is there 24. Mad Russian monk 25. NE Scottish seaport 27. Jumbo animal 28. Watering tube 29. Fixed gaze 31. World fair 32. Cruel person 36. Pins & ...

37. Prolong (4,3) 38. Checks (text) for errors 41. Renovate (ship) 44. Metal bar 45. Unfortunately 48. Sneeze noise (1-6) 49. Oddball 52. Rectangular 56. Addressing crowd 57. Anxious (2,4) 58. Perfumed burning stick 61. Goat's wool 62. Economises, ... & saves 63. Fibbing 64. Naomi Campbell is one 65. Imperial ruler 66. Collided with (3,4) 67. Disincentive 71. Absurd comedy 73. Of the ear 75. Windbag 80. Clarify, ... light on 82. Hone 83. Disobey 85. Gauges 86. Befuddles 88. Labourer's tools, pick & ...

90. Welcomes 91. British coin 93. Taking sides 94. Climbing plants 95. Female voices 96. Wither 97. Tingle 99. Mark as correct 100. Holy places 104. Rubbish 105. School maxim 106. Track down 107. Sent via Internet 111. The other way around, vice ...

113. Observe 114. The masses, ... polloi 115. Disorderly 117. Smear 118. Affirmative replies 121. Russian spirit 122. Mustard & ...

125. Canine disease 126. Shaving cut 127. Roman dress 129. Pulpy, soft food 131. Yoga master 132. Apprehension 135. Feng ...

136. Unplaced competitor (4-3) 139. Wild party 140. Representatives 144. Strangely 145. Scandinavian 146. Wall painting 147. Underwriters 148. Glared

149. Gallows rope 150. Group of eight 152. Hang loosely 154. Flog 157. Fluid unit 158. Minutest 162. Iran's neighbour 163. Exhausts supply of (4,2) 166. Porridge cereal 167. Pour with rain 169. Slow down!

171. Car pioneer, Karl ...

172. Tobacco user 173. Leers 175. Lever (off) 176. Single 179. Swiss banking centre 180. Come to rest (3,2) 182. Liqueur, ... Maria 183. Towards stern 184. Blackboard stand 186. Negative 189. Harness-racing horse 190. Return (of symptoms) 191. Epic movie-maker, Cecil B De ...

192. Big Apple city (3,4) 196. 60s pop dance (2-2) 197. Dad 198. Heedful 199. Spend extravagantly 201. Not fit for consumption 202. Gloomier 203. Performing 204. Car-top luggage frame (4,4) 205. Worked hard 208. Guidance 210. Up to this time 211. Aquatic bird 212. Pragmatism 213. Vein of ore 215. Vending machine 219. Nimble 221. Small & efficient 223. Striped brown gem (5'1,3) 227. Biology or physics 228. Mummifies (corpse) 230. Donations 231. Scorch 232. Charts (course) (4,3) 233. Villain 234. Arrogant newcomer 238. Power outlet 239. Knit with hooked needle 240. Scratch 243. Eagle nests 246. Ancestry 247. Lease again 250. Naming words 251. Greek philosopher 253. Muddles (up) 256. Frequent visitor 257. Mischievous 258. Character 262. Manufacture 263. Florida's Key ...

266. Is in debt to 268. Citrus fruit 269. Surgical removal 270. Not enclosed (of land) 271. Ruling (monarch) 272. Decimal unit 273. Opinion surveys 274. Corroded, ... away at 275. Slyer 276. Supervised 277. Perseveres 278. Least

Down 1. Manages 2. Annoyed 3. Abstains from food 4. Salt Lake City state 5. Absconded (3,3) 7. Severely simple 8. Seedy conditions 9. Discharge 10. Talk wildly 11. Muscle rupture 12. Fire-resistant material 13. Of war 14. Country dance 15. Leaked slowly 16. Aura 17. Windscreen cleaner 18. Rocky Mountains state 19. Early guitars 24. Tenant's fee 26. Fish traps 30. Quarrel 33. Document bag, ... case 34. Evoke 35. Cavalryman 38. Triangular-sided building 39. Constantly busy (2,3,2) 40. Learn (4,3) 42. Great ages 43. Charges with crime 46. Furiously 47. Beliefs 49. Properly nourished (4-3) 50. Frostier 51. Stray 53. Bewails 54. More mature 55. Biblical sea 59. Oil paintings 60. Skittles 67. Lowers (oneself) 68. Fishing boat 69. Ex-pupils' get-together 70. Invigorate 72. Residential locations 74. Score after deuce 76. Exposed 77. French N-Test region, ... Atoll 78. Rude 79. Pestered 81. Cargo door 84. Unnerves 87. Strong coffee 89. Nonconformists 91. Primitive 92. Japan's second largest city 98. Recording room 101. Restrict (3,2) 102. Asian cricketing nation 103. Flattened 108. Countless number 109. Saturate (with colour) 110. Turn inside-out 112. Remembered 116. Carpenters 119. Brightening up 120. Proper behaviour 123. Now Zimbabwean 124. Set apart 128. News-sheet 130. Ill-bred 132. Unfulfilled

Down

133. Inaccuracy 134. Songs for one 137. Actress, ... Sarandon 138. Scoundrel 141. Heredity units 142. Cosy corners 143. Clean with broom 151. Household jobs 153. Riddle 155. Hot & moist 156. Lower leg joint 159. Revealed (knowledge) 160. Foolishness 161. Inducting, ... in 164. Too soon 165. Open wound 168. Alienate 170. Unfashionable 173. Reverse 174. Giving university talk 177. Soundly constructed (4-5) 178. Worsened (of crisis) 181. Leaves uncared-for 185. Permitting 186. Liked 187. Retailers 188. Football umpire 193. Sun or rain 194. Acorn bearer (3,4) 195. Sing-along entertainment 200. Prayer beads 201. Official emblems 206. ... & lemons 207. Wear best clothes (5,2) 208. Human rights group, ... International 209. Modesty 211. Large pedal 214. Moral 216. Dip in liquid 217. Capers 218. Numerals 220. Conclude 222. Toadstools 224. Great joy 225. Questionable 226. Junior 229. Fully satisfy 232. Liquefy 235. Actress, ... Cruz 236. Straighter 237. Reaction 241. Changing booth 242. Picasso & Monet 244. Library patrons 245. Belongings, personal ...

248. More meagre 249. You 251. Walk with heavy steps 252. Turns away 253. Imitate 254. Father Christmas 255. Praise highly 259. Divine messenger 260. Combine 261. Roman VIII 262. Small tick 264. Unknown writer 265. Swallow noisily 267. Appear

Melbourne Obser ver - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 45

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Observer

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Sport Extra

GRV appalled at ABC reports

■ Media reports highlighting the treatment of greyhounds exported overseas have "appalled" Greyhound Racing Victoria.

A story prepared by the ABC's 7.30 program drives home the urgent need for reform in greyhound racing at all levels, according to GRV Chairman, Bernie Carolan.

In a statement released in the wake of the report, Carolan said "everyone who loves this racing code and the greyhounds that are its heart must be united in stamping out this terrible trade.”

“As part of GRVs new reform agenda, we are vigorously investigating any Victorian involvement in greyhound exports to any jurisdictions that don’t have strong and firmly enforced welfare regulations,” Mr Carolan said.

“We are working closely with Greyhounds Australasia to put a stop to all such exports but while trade with poorly regulated and enforced jurisdictions is banned under Victorian and National greyhound racing rules, it’s not yet illegal under Federal law.”

Carolan pointed out that no action has been taken on the enforcement of a Federal ban, despite repeated requests from greyhound authorities.

The 7:30 report comes in the wake of the ABC's Four Corners expose into the greyhound racing industry and associated animal cruelty earlier this year.

Appointed ■ Global advisory company KPMG has been appointed by Greyhounds Australasia to develop a study into

Greyhounds

rights of industry participants." Areas the model will cover will include the movement of greyhounds across jurisdictions, the impact of breeding in all racing codes, wagering trends, financial viability of participants, strategies for increasing the average starts of a greyhound, and demand for greyhound adoption.

Full details will be available in late February.

with Kyle Galley

Classic Final

the movement of greyhounds over their life cycle.

The study will develop a scenario based model which will help industry leaders make decisions that will ensure the greyhound racing industry in Australia will have a long and successful future.

Given the intense focus this year on animal welfare, Greyhounds Australasia CEO Scott Parker says an evidence based approach to the issue will help industry leaders to more confidently allocate their resources to areas where they are needed most, while also developing rules and policies that will ensure the industry in all states remains sustainable.

“This work will directly support the key objective of industry reform which is to overcome the challenge of excessive greyhound breeding and stopping the unnecessary euthanasia of greyhounds," Parker said.

"In particular, the modelling will help identify the number of greyhounds required to be bred that meet both our moral obligations to the community and the commercial obligations of each jurisdiction while respecting the

■ The time-honoured Laurels Classic Final will be staged at Sandown Park tomorrow night (Dec. 17).

An age-restricted event for bitches only, the Laurels series has attracted some outstanding entries, and the Final carries a prize cheque of $72,500.

Feature race at Sandown Park last Thursday night was the Sir John Dillon Memorial Final, won by Lithgow Panther for trainer Rob Britton.

The former New South Wales chaser, made favourite by punters, raced on the rails throughout before taking the lead at the top of the home straight to record a four length victory.

Young males ■ While the girls take centre stage with the Laurels event, the young male dogs get their chance to shine over coming weeks with the annual Silver Chief series.

Heats are set for The Meadows this Saturday night (Dec. 19), with SemiFinals and the Final to follow over coming weeks.

The race is for dogs whelped after June 1, 2013, and carries a first prize of $100,000.

Heats of the Sale Cup (650 metres) are being held this Sunday night, with the Final on Boxing Day. And Warrnambool will conduct their popular Seaside Carnival, with five meetings programmed between December 27 and January 2, which will capture the attention of the many holiday makers in the region.

At Mt Gambier ■ Mount Gambier conduct regular race meetings which often prove popular with Victorian trainers prepared to travel across the border.

Meetings are conducted on Sunday afternoons and occasional Friday's - there are no lights at the track so all meetings are staged in daylight.

The club committee have been working hard to upgrade facilities on course.

The kennel block has been insulated, which, along with the installation of air-conditioning has made the area cool and comfortable.

On hot days there will also be ice vests supplied in the catching pen for the comfort of competing dogs.

An automated watering system has been installed on the track to ensure a consistent racing surface.

Mount Gambier meetings receive nationwide TAB and Sky channel coverage and, despite not being of the highest standard, still attract good turnover and a following among punters.

It has been a challenging year for the greyhound sport

Back in 2016

■ This is the last Melbourne Observer greyhound column for 2015 compliments of the season to all, and we'll be back in print on Wednesday, February 3.

It has been a challenging year for the greyhound sport, but the code appears to have learnt from the negative publicity, and is working hard to repair any damage in the eyes of the public.

It will be an interesting year ahead for the dogs in Australia, so keep reading the Melbourne Observer in 2016 to keep up to date with the latest greyhound racing news.

Upcoming race meetings

■ Wednesday: The Meadows (Day), Bendigo (Twilight), Cranbourne (Night), Ballarat (N); Thursday: Shepparton (T), Sandown Park (N), Warrnambool (N); Friday: Bendigo (T), Sale (N), Geelong (N); Saturday: Traralgon (T), The Meadows (N); Sunday: Sandown Park (D), Healesville (D), Sale (T); Monday: Ballarat (D), Traralgon (T), Shepparton (N); Tuesday: Geelong (T), Horsham (T).

- Kyle Galley

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - Page 49

Observer Victorian Sport Melbourne

Perth’s turn to shine Ted Ryan

Showbiz Extra ■ From Page 42

Top 10 Lists

SURVIVOR [Action/Thriller/Pierce Brosnan, Angela Bassett, Milla Jovovich].

MAZE RUNNER: SCORCH TRIALS [Action/ Sci-Fi/Dylan O'Brien, Thomas BrodieSangster].

ODDBALL [Family/Comedy/Drama/Shane Jacobson, Sarah Snook].

LIFE [Drama/Robert Pattinson, Peter Lucas].

MR. HOLMES [Mystery/Drama/Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Parker].

UNDER THE DOME: Season 3.

THE ORIGINALS: Season 2.

NEW RELEASE TELEVISION, DOCUMENTARY AND MUSIC DVD HIGHLIGHTS: TEEN WOLF: Season 5 - Part 1.

NEW TRICKS: Season 12.

STEVE JOBS: The Man in the Machine.

UNDER THE DOME: Season 3.

THE ORIGINALS: Season 2.

KEEPING UP WITH THE KARDASHIANS: Season 10 - Part 2.

- James Sherlock

Racing: helmets

■ The cream of Western Australia's thoroughbred crop will go under the hammer and provide a real, opportunity for buyers at the 2016 Magic Millions Perth Yearling Sale.

The auction will be held at the Belmont Park Sales Complex on February 15 and 16.

The sale comprises 349 quality lots, the sale to be held following the running of the $250,000 Magic Millions WA two-year Classic (RL) and the $150,000 Magic Millions WA three year-old Trophy (RL) AT Pinjarra Park on Sunday February 7.

Buyers from around Australia and abroad will be impressed by this lift in quality at the 2016 sale and will be hoping to unearth the next Perth yearling sale Group One winner like Magnifisio, Luckygray or Moment of Change.

Other graduates include carnival stars Man Booker, Let It Slip, Lucky Street and Spangled Impact plus the untapped and unbeaten speedster, Hot Goods.

Lately, Western Australian racing has been set alight by the deeds of two members of the female society in Perfect Reflection and Delicacy.

Next year the sales will include progeny of 83 top stallions including proven sires that have produced the winners of such races as the Melbourne Cup, Golden Slipper, Magic Millions two-year old Classic, the William Reid Stakes, the Coolmore Stud Stakes and all of WA's feature events, Among the pedigree highlights of the sale include at least half-relations to Group winners, including Bel Sprinter, Choice Bro, Delicacy, Playing God, Conservatorium, Dances on Waves, Famous Roman, God Has Spoken, Good Serpent, King Saul, Lords Ransom,

● Damien Oliver. Photo by SLICKPIX, phone 9354 5754 stakemoney from her five wins.

The favorite in the Kingston Classic, Magic Artist, was beaten by the conditions after his Rohan and WA Guineas winner, Man Booker. rider, Damien Oliver, gave him ever chance, Stakes winning mares including Belle Bizarre, and finished third last in the Classic.

Card Queen, Madame Shinko, Moodometer, Native Song, Paradise Park, Playcidium Mint, All Friared Up, Bella Valentina, FlyingAffair, ForYour Eyes Only, Ma Chienne, Rosie Rocket ■ Prominent Bendigo business leader, Margot Falconer, is the new Chair of the Bendigo Jockey and Scuffs have yearlings catalogued.

Plenty of interest will surround the first Aus- Club succeeding Brendan Dreschler, who voltralian crops of freshman sires including locally untarily stood down having served as a passionbased stallions Frost Giant and Gingerbread ate and dedicated Chairman of the Club since Man who respectively have nine and 15 year- 2007.

Mrs Falconer, who has served on the Comlings catalogued.

Other first season sires represented in the mittee of the Bendigo Jockey Club for 11 years, sale include Excelebration, Mulaazem, Ouqba was elected unopposed.

Brendan really put the Jockey Club on the and Your Song. map with his versatility and dedication, and I for one, will be sad to see him leaving the top spot.

Observer Racing

New chair at B’go

How good is she?

■ Good judges of horseflesh feel they have unearthed another first class racehorse in three year-old Perth filly, Perfect Reflection.

Beautifully bred by leading sire, MoreThan Ready, she is out of Reflected Image.

Perfect Reflection has put together five on end since making her debut, having won on all type of tracks.

A lot of critics felt it was too much taking on all the older smart horses at her first start over 1800 metres in the Kingston Classic in Perth.

After kicking away in the straight another top mare, Delicacy cut the margin to a nose, but what an effort, considering the track was downgraded during the day to a Heavy 8.

She is trained by Grant Williams at Karnup, in West Australia, with a total of $812,000 in

● Hugh Bowman. Photo by SLICKPIX, phone 9354 5754

Spot of bad luck

■ Connections of boom Sydney colt, Regimental Force, were disappointed with the run of the two-year-old colt, but learned later that he had sustained a hairline fracture in a foreleg.

He finished a gallant third at his only start.

On what he had done on the track he was the early favourite for the Golden Slipper next year.

He is beautifully bred by former great galloper now leading sire, Sepoy, from the brilliant Magic Millions winner, Regimental Gal. I am sure under the care of top trainer, Gerald Ryan, when right will be back better than ever.

It is certainly bad luck.

Magic Joe continues ■ One of the greatest jockeys ever to grace the turf, Joe Moreira, continues to stun racegoers with his ability.

He has an enormous strike rate of 27 per cent a win in an average of every four rides.

I had the pleasure of meeting him at Flemington when he won the Newmarket Handicap on Brazen Beau, for leading trainer, Chris Waller.

One of the most humble men I have ever met, and deserves all the accolades.

His recent five winners at Sha Tin made him the fastest rider to reach 50 wins in a Hong Kong season.

The next time we will see Joe back in Australia will be in the autumn, with races like the Lightning and Newmarket at Flemington and the Golden Slipper etc. in Sydney.

Special thanks to the team at Slickpix, for their great help throughout the year with the generosity in supplying all the racing pics.

A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everybody. Thanks for supporting us.

- Ted Ryan

■ It is good to see that sanity prevails after authorities decided to wait and have further discussions with the various jockey Associations before trying to bring in a new style of helmet.

Most of the jockeys complained that the helmets were too big and cumbersome and didn't provide enough protection for jockeys.

Craig Williams, Stephen Baster and Glen Boss were three that were not happy among other top riders around Australia.

- Ted Ryan ■ From Page 36

Sulky Snippets

■ Bunbartha's John Newberry landed a stable double at Geelong on Thursday - seven year old Courage Under Fire/Shez Madam Jasper gelding On Fire Within taking the Geelong Cup 2nd Jan Claiming Pace over 2100 metres and 6-Y-0 Monarchy/Shine On Alisha gelding The Majestic the Trotter Of The Year Alabamas Invasion Trotters Handicap for T1 or better class over the same journey.

On Fire Within ran home from mid-field to defeat a death-seating Threestones and Sophies Shark (one/one) in 1-58.6.

The Majestic raced by the Newberry family, stepped cleanly from 20 metres to lob mid-field, before going forward in the middle stages to park outside the leader Celtic Rose which had crossed Good Job. Outstaying his rivals, The Majestic had one metre to spare on the wire over Celtic Rose and Im Notta Trotter in a rate of 205.7.

■ Graham McDermott combined with John Caldow to land the A Rocknroll Dance Great Foals Pace for C0 class over 2180 metres at Kilmore on Thursday with Lucky Lombo, a 4-Y-0 Major In Art/Isabella Lombo gelding.

Going forward from outside the front line, Lucky Lombo led for the greater part of the journey, proving too strong at the finish for Feel The Buzz and Shakcoco in a rate of 201.3.

Heathcote part-owner/trainer Michael Mannix's consistent 8-Y-0 Conch Deville/ Bonniele mare Conchs Critter is always hard to roll when she leads and did exactly that to land the Like Us On Facebook Trotters Handicap for T1 or better class over 2150 metres at Kilmore with Tanya Cavallaro in the sulky, just lasting to prevail by a nose over Girls Go First (one/one) and Kains Boy which trailed in a rate of 2-06.

■ Bolinda trainer Brent Lilley and Melton based stable reinsman Anthony Butt snared a stable double at Tabcorp Park Melton on Wednesday - 4-Y-0 Art Major/Starry Rainbow mare Rainbow Sue taking the Join The Pegasus Club Pace for R0 class over 2240 metres and 5-Y-0 Mach Three/Reine Guinevere gelding Racer the Carbine Chemicals Pace for R2 to R4 class over the same journey.

- Len Baker

Page 50 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, December 16, 2015

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