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STRICTLY WINNERS Four Green Room awards for Aussie show ● Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom scooped the Green Room Awards at the Comedy Theatre on Monday night.
● Winner: Baz Luhrmann. File Photo: Ash Long
The Australian show, which played at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne, won gongs for Production, Set and Costume Design (Catherine Martin), Female in a Supporting Role (Heather Mitchell), Lighting Design (Hugh Vanstone) The 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award was made to the late Malcolm Robertson. • More on Page 6 • Full list on Page 12
Shiralee rocks the boat
● Shiralee Hood stars in a unique Comedy Festival show this year, titled Rock the Boat - a showcase of female Aboriginal comedians. ■ Shiralee Hood features in an extended headline set, supported on alternate weeks by Denise McGuiness, who performs with her deadpan daughter Dawn; and Nina Kirby. All three, Shiralee, Denise and Nina, are previous winners of the Festival’s Deadly Funny Indigenous new talent competition. Australia is embracing a new wave of Black Australian comedy across stage and screen. Shiralee is currently on a major national tour of The Aboriginal Comedy Allstars and arrives in Melbourne this week. Developed with Nazeem Hussain, Meshel Laurie, Brad Oakes and Dom Romeo. Venue: Victoria Hotel, 215 Little Collins St, Melbourne. Dates: Thursday March 24 – Sunday April 17 (Previews Thursday March 24 – Sunday March 27). Time: Tuesday – Saturday 6pm, Sunday 5pm. Tickets: Full $22.00; Concession, Group (4+)
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It’s All About You!
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Spiders Wearing Party Hats at Tuxedo Cat
In This 100-Page Edition
‘You don’t have to be able to sing and dance, we can teach you’
● Lee Geraghty ■ Leading the team behind the Cardinia theatre. Performing Arts Company’s terrific bi-anOf course CPAC’s casts also feature expenual musical shows at the Cardinia Cultural rienced performers, and in the past some have Centre, is company founder and theatrical dy- travelled long distances from Ballarat, namo, Lee Geraghty. Collingwood and Maribyrnong to Pakenham A secondary school teacher for more than for rehearsals and performances. 40 years in Phys Ed, Special Education, Creating successful shows from working Teacher Librarian and Maths, Lee established with assorted standards of performance abilCPAC in 2002 in response to a need for more ity wouldn’t happen without the dedicated talartistic outlets in the Cardinia Shire. ent, passion and patience from Lee and her Lee had been presenting school shows for creative and technical teams. years, and it was an exciting prospect to beAs well as her directorial and organisational come the resident company at the new work with CPAC and directing school musiCardinia Cultural Centre. cals, Lee also volunteers at a school in CamIn true community theatre style, Lee says bodia. she can make anything work around people’s When Lee eventually retires, it will be her capabilities. wonderful core group of loyal friends and fam“I encourage people to come and be part ily who will assist her to keep the Cardinia of the auditions,” she says. Performing Arts Company running while Lee “You don’t have to be able to sing and manages a hotel in Vietnam, commuting bedance, we can teach you. tween the two countries. “It gives people self-confidence and we Lee points out that modern technology can are inclusive of everyone.” make work happen from afar by using the Don’t be fooled for a moment though that computer. Lee’s productions are anything but first-class, Congratulations to Lee Geraghty on her as proven in the 2016 Lyrebird Awards. splendid achievements in community theatre, Lee and her team, including choreographer particularly encouraging young people to beRobert Mulholland, won eight awards in- come involved. cluding Best Production of the Year for LeThe definition of community theatre can gally Blonde. be truly recognised in the ethos of Lee’s work This is what makes CPAC so special – qual- – ‘theatre made by, with and for the commuity results are achieved while still giving nity.’ a fair go to all who want to be involved in - Cheryl Threadgold
● Lisa Skye ■ Lisa Skye’s Spiders Wearing Party Hats can be seen atThe Tuxedo Cat from March 24 – April 5. This all-new solo show is said to feature “outrageous stories so ridiculous they must be true, with an occasionally heartbreaking sting in the tail.” Queer, polyamorous, kinky femme daddy Skye is said to be not normal. This leads to wild adventures, but comes with its fair share of judgement, from family and strangers alike. Everyone has an opinion on Skye’s life, from her pocket-Machiavelli mother to the 23-year-old’s beautician. Meanwhile, Skye wants to have fun and ensure everyone around her is having the best time. This includes her audiences: Skye’s shows have been enjoyed by audiences in Berlin and Helsinki to soldout shows interstate, and in her home town of Melbourne. What does it mean to be alternative? Why is difference so confronting?And, most importantly, is her long-suffering husband only enduring her eccentricities because dividing up the blu-rays is too onerous a task? Based on her 2015 MFringe work in progress show, Skye knew she was onto something special when people returned to see the show three nights in a row, when it was simply her reading from a notebook of ideas. And now she brings the controlled anarchy to MICF. Skye is a voice for the unique, the weirdoes, the sexually diverse and anyone else who unapologetically lives their most fun-filled life. Venue: The Tuxedo Cat, 293-299 La Trobe St, Melbourne Dates: Thurs March 24 – Tues April 5 (no show Wed 30 Mar) Time: 9:45pm (8:45pm Sun) (55 mins) Tickets: Full $21.00, Concession $17.00, Group 3+ $16.00, Preview $15.00, Tuesdays $16.00 Bookings: Tixnofee or at the door - Cheryl Threadgold
News: Ning Boy wages underpaid .......... Page 6 Theatre: Legends of the Skies .............. Page 7 Yvonne Lawrence: Life and Style .......... Page 8 Melb. Confidential: Couples’ issues ....... Page 9 Photos: Bushrodders’ weekend ........... Page 10 In The Picture: Country People ........... Page 11 Dine-Out: At Yianni’s, Kew ................ Page 13 Gavin Wood: West Hollywood latest ..... Page 15 Nick Le Souef: The Outback Legend ..... Page 16 Nation Review: News flashback .. starts Page 17 Observer Trader - 52-page lift-out Oldest Comedian Radio Column Country Music Local Theatre
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Latest News Flashes Around Victoria
Duck season slows ■ Fewer shooters shot fewer birdss on the opening weekend of the Victorian duck season, according to protester Laurie Levy, interviewed by the Ballarat Courier.
In the poo: paper ■ Wayne Luttet, 46, charged with a range of offences, has been remanded in custody after refusing to speak with lawyers and covering himself in faeces, reports the Geelong Advertiser,
Collecting for RCH ■ Volunteers around Victoria will be collecting for the Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal. Observer Editor Ash Long will be at the 7-Eleven Coolaroo, 1350 Pascoe Vale Rd, from 9am-12.30pm.
Crime up in Colac ■ Staking, harassment and threatening behaviour offences in Colac district have increased by more than 82 per cent, reports the Colac Herald.
Armed home attack ■ Two carloads of armed men set upon a Flora Hill home, says the Bendigo Advertiser.
Weather Forecast ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
Today (Wed.). Mostly cloudy. 16°-27° Thurs. Partly cloudy. 13°-22° Fri. Mostly sunny. 11°-22° Sat. Partly cloudy. 14°-25° Sun. Scattered showers. 14°-26°
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THE T OP 5 PERK S TOP PERKS POLITICIANS HA VEN'T HAVEN'T THOUGHT OF YET YET.. 5. Business Class for pet packs. 4. Travelling with their parish priest so they could claim Frequent Friar Points. 3. MPs "Express Lanes" at supermarkets. 2. Corporate boxes at school sports. 1. A "Bludging Away from Home" allowance.
Page 6 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016
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■ Two Taiwanese workers in Melbourne were short-changed thousands of dollars when they were wrongly paid as traineees, a Fair Work Ombudsman investigation has found. The workers were undepaid by $9466, after being paid $13 per hour as trainees, but never being enrolled for formal training. The offending shops were at Northland and in the Melbourne CBD, said the FairWork Ombudsman. The franchisees were reported to say that $10 per hour was the going rate for Chinese restaurants.
Priest in firing line
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with Ash Long, Editor “For the cause that lacks assistance, ‘Gainst the wrongs that need resistance For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do”
CEO sues Councillor
● Rasiah Dev ■ City of Darebin CEO Rasiah Dev is suing one ■ The Mordialloc-Chel- of his Councillors, Cr sea Leader has published Gaetano Greco, alleging a story about parents want- defamation. ing the removal of Fr John The matter was due in Walshe from the Men- the Supreme Court on tone-Parkdale Parish. Monday this week. Parents told the newspaper that they had been stonewalled by the Catholic Education Office.
Out for 6 months ■ Springvale taekwondo coach Yun Jung Bang has been suspended for six months after complainst that he used a bamboo cane to stike two teenage girls at the Yun Jung Taekwondo Centre at Ormond. He was found guilty last month by the Member Protection Tribunal. The suspension was put into force by Sports Taekwondo Australia. Bang has been deregistered.
What’s in a name? ■ The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal has been the venue for a dispute for a mother and father who cannot agree on the surname for their child. The Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages has been ordered to re-issue the Birth Certificate.
Wrong numbers
■ Radio station 3AW last week broadcast the previous week’s Lotto numbers. Standards have dropped markedly at the ‘Talking Melbourne’ radio station.
Happy Easter ■ There is no Melbourne Observer published on March 30. Our next issue will be on the news-stands on Wednesday, April 6.
Observer Treasury
Thought For The Week ■ “Integrity is doing the right thing even when noone is watching.”
Observer Curmudgeon ■ “Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister, and now wish to withdraw that statement.” - Mark Twain
Text For The Week ■ Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. - John 12:23-25 Contents of Court Lists are intended for information purposes only. The lists are extracted from Court Lists, as supplied to the public, by the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria, often one week prior to publication date; for current Court lists, please contact the Court. Further details of cases are available at www.magistratescourt.vic.gov.au The Melbourne Observer shall in no event accept any liability for loss or damage suffered by any person or body due to information provided. The information is provided on the basis that persons accessing it undertake responsibility for assessing the relevance and accuracy of its content. No inference of a party’s guilt or innocence should be made by publication of their name as a defendant. Court schedules may be changed at any time for any reason, including withdrawal of the action by the Plaintiff/Applicant. E&OE.
● Brianna Williams ■ The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is underway, abd this week’s Melbourne Observer has plenty of details. Brianna Williams is presenting Little Mountain Goblin in her debut solo MICF show. Cheryl Threadgold has more details on Page 7.
Showbiz luncheon ■ Jeff Joseph advises that the Australian Marquee Entertainment Luncheon Club will hear from international concert and theatrical entrepreneur Harley Medcalf at its March 30 meeting. Harley has presented many major theatrical and concert attractions both in Australia and overseas over the years including Elton John, The Supremes, Temptations, BB King, John Mahall, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Doobie Brothers and in the theatre, Pennsylvania Avenue, Burn The Floor and many more.
Louis Theroux here ■ The BBC's fearless film-maker, Louis Theroux, lifts the lid on his explosive explorations of sex, drugs, death and the universe, in a two-hour on-stage show with Julia Zemiro. There will be two Melbourne performances (3pm and 7pm) on Sunday, September 25 at Hamer Hall.
Short Shots ■ Circus Oz is returning to Melbourne to kick off the Big Top premiere of its raucous new show: TwentySixteen. ■ The Victorian Artists' Society last night (Tues.) launch ed their Building Restoration Appeal in conjunction with the 2016 ContemporaryAwards Presentation. The function was held at the historic headquarters at 430 Albert St, East Melbourne. ■ Arts and broadcasting groups will address the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications and the Arts this week in Melbourne for its inquiry into broadcasting, online content and live production to rural and regional Australia. Committee chairman is Bronwyn Bishop. ■ Nick Le Souef’s Lightning Ridge Opals has moved to 63 Elizabeth St, Melbourne.
Cookie Monster ■ The Cookie Monsterwas a surpise visitor at ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) this week to promote ACMI’s Games Lab Version 2.0 - a free, permament games laboratory.
● Cookie Monster and six-year-old Max played one of the new games Once Upon A Monster at ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image)
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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016 - Page 7
Grand news for Jill
Showbiz News
Legends of the Skies Briefs 8 years
■ Minh Quang Lam, 51, the main supplier of methylamphetamine to a Wangaratta drug syndicate has been sentenced to eight years’ jail, reports the Wangaratta Chronicle.
Drinkers
● Young Jamie Miller McBeth and Robbie Sheedy are intrigued by Robin Austen’s medals as they rehearse Legends of the Skies Series 3 at the Australian National Aviation Museum. ■ Legends of the Skies returns to the Australian NaCo-directors this year are Jim Williams and Maggie tional Aviation Museum for a third performance series Morrison. with new content, paying tribute to Australian aviation Maggie sums up the project: “We are presenting legends and flying machines, opening on April 14. local history by local people, but also featuring great Presented by LOTS Theatre, co-director Maggie moments of aviation history.” Morrison says this year the actors’ ages range from Performance Details: April 14, 15, 16, 21,22 and 23 seven to 70-plus. at 8pm “The concept for the LOTS series began about four Venue: Australian National Aviation Museum, Secyears ago after I happened to read a local newspaper ond Ave., Moorabbin Airport story about early feminist Gertrude McKenzie, who Tickets: $22 had her own flying school at MoorabbinAirport, with Bookings: trybooking.com/KDHCor 9580 2387. a fleet of eight planes,” says Maggie. A collaborative community theatre performance project then evolved between co-directors and writers Jim Williams, Maggie Morrison and Cheryl Threadgold, and technical director Alan Crispin. The first Legends of the Skies production in 2013 received a terrific response from patrons, so LOTS 2 ■ After a successful run at Perth Fringeworld, improviser, actor and sketch comedian Brianna Willwas also successfully presented in 2014. ■ A 68-year-old Maggie says it is very exciting to see the aircraft iams presents Little Mountain Goblin in her debut Stratford woman was solo MICF show. hangar at the Aviation Museum dramatically lit by Alan among more than 250 With a mixture of sketch, audience interaction, Crispin, with various aircraft sounds emanating from Victorian drivers who story-telling, improvisation and songs, Williams aims all corners. tested positive for alco“This year the writer base has grown and includes to show the lighter side of despair, humiliation, and hol during a state-wide irretrievable awkwardness. Bayside U3A writers Geraldine Colson and Jan Storey, Police blitz this month. Little Mountain Goblin is a show about embarthe Editor of the National Historical Aviation QuarThe woman allegrassment, anxiety and the small things that stop us terly, Neil Follett, as well as original writers Cheryl edly blew 0.099 when achieving the things we want to achieve. Threadgold and myself.” she was pulled over for They’re the sorts of feelings that follow Brianna Included in Legends of the Skies Series 3 is a perfora random breath test in mance segment from a new angle on the restored Williams like a lost puppy, demanding attention when Stratford about all she wants to do is get on with her life. The snivelWirraway, and a story about the first Skywriter who 7.45pm Friday as part ing goblins that everybody has, but some people can’t operated out of Moorabbin Airport. of Operation Arid quite get rid of. The legendary Beaufighter features prominently, which took place durNo stranger to the sadder side of things, Williams Bert Hinkler is missing, there’s a tribute to ace WWII ing the Labour Day has a unique outlook on the moments in our life that haunt pilot and former Prime Minister of Australia, John long weekend. us, and the litany of woes that we creGorton, and more. ate for ourselves through self-doubt. She’s negotiated with her inner goblins to create this show, to help with Matt Bissett-Johnson others feel better about those moments of humiliation in life that just can’t be forgotten. Brianna Williams is a main player with The Big Hoo-Haa! Melbourne ensemble, has competed in the National Theatresports Championships and has improvised everywhere from New York City to Rottnest Island. She has also appeared in the ABC Fresh Blood series The Write Stuff, as part of sketch troupe Good Show, and in theDemand ACommanderads during the cricket. Little Mountain Goblin is promoted as comedy with heart and opens on March 22. Venue: Belleville. Dates: March 22 –April 2l. Time: 8.30pm. Tickets: $20 full/$17 concession/$15 preview/ Bookings: www.trybooking. com/KQGW - Cheryl Threadgold ■ Warrnambool Police have nabbed seven drink-drivers in seven days. A Warrnambool man, 27, will attend court after he recorded the highest blood alcohol reading of the week – at 0.198 – about 1.15am Sunday.
‘0.099’
Little Mountain Goblin in Festival
Melbourne Observations
● Jill Page ■ Melbourne Observer theatre reviewer Jill Page became a grandmother for the first time earlier this month. Aria Valerie Page was born at Sandringham Hospital to Jill’s son Ben, and wife Laura. Valerie is a tribute to Laura’s grandmother, and Jill says she received a pleasant surprise when hearing her love of opera had been acknowledged by Ben and Laura in Aria’s first name. “It is such a joy and privilege to have joined the ranks of grandparents, and I look forward to introducing Aria to the wonderful world of music and theatre,” says Jill.
Sister Cities
■ Colette Freedman’s play Sister Cities is currently being performed at the Q44 Theatre in Richmond. With founder of Q44 Gabriella Rose- Carter playing the older uptight sister Carol (Carolina) and director Suzanne Heywood also a cast member, I had high expectations this would be a well presented, brilliantly acted piece of theatre. It had moments of this. Freedman’s script, set in the US is topical, provoking thoughtful discussion around government laws, moral decisions and confronting human behavior as four sisters reunite to discuss their mother’s death. Whilst I had some problem with the script itself overall it makes interesting reading (listening). It is wordy and offers some black humour. The story is very personal and intimate, yet this production was not. Rather than feel like an intruder, a voyeur in the lives of this family I was constantly reminded this was a play, the characters were loud, not just when in argument, the set was sterile and crowded with a very naturalistic design. There were only few moments of quiet reflection. As much of the staging was front on, I was constantly reminded this was a performance, unable to be completely immersed in the journey. It is a small venue so perhaps sitting in the front row was not ideal. There were some stand out moments, particularly with regard to Nicole Melloy’s thoughtful, engaging performance. I was brought to tears as details of her dilemma was unravelling. Overall the other actors had worthy moments yet not consistently .There were three ‘false endings’ when the audience thought the show was over. All more powerful than the actual ending. Whilst I have been critical, this show is worthy of an audience. It is a style of theatre that may appeal to many and a story well worth considering from a company making a place for talented Victorian actors. Performance Season: Until April 3 Venue: Q44 Theatre, 1st Floor, 550 Swan St., Richmond Tickets: $35/$30 Bookings: www.q44.com.au - Review by Elizabeth Semmel
Page 8 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016
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Note the phone number of this man
Yvonne’s Column
■ If you are elderly, living alone, or even one of those people who is not handy in the home, then you need a handyman that you can rely on. Everyone should have the name and number of a handyman glued on their speed dial. I consider it so important that you should even have it stuck on the door of your fridge. You never know when you might need one, particularly if it is something urgent. They are like hens teeth to find. You’d be surprised how many little jobs that need doing around the house that takes a bit of strength, know-how and/or one of those Bunnings allpurpose tools. It’s usually not a huge job, but too much for rheumatic fingers, or someone still recovering from a broken hip. In some cases, there is only one person living in the house, and all those odd jobs that their partner used to do in a wink now needs a handyman.
Polite refusals ■ If you do discover one who takes their job seriously hang on to him or her with all your might. Even think of making a batch of scones to feed him with your special blend of tea when he completes the job. It seems to me that as one gets older, it’s not safe to do those little jobs that you or your partner would fix before breakfast. I’d like a penny for every story I hear about men who fell off the ladder when they thought they were still a chipper young fellow and merrily went up to clean the gutters. I think of Molly Meldrum who tried just that with an almost tragic result. Finding a handyman takes a bit of perseverance, but it’s worth every minute of your time. There are jobs that some workman find too small, or in words that send me spare, is “ not worth my time.” In a couple of cases, I’ve heard of rude wretches who don’t even have the grace to make a polite refusal before hanging up the phone.
‘Call Charlie’ ■ When I was a youngster, before we hired Charlie who became our general factotum, an itinerant roustabout usually called asking for any odd jobs that needed doing.
with Yvonne Lawrence
yvonne.lawrence@bigpond.com Fortunately for us Charlie called as a result of another farmer recommending him. It didn’t take long for the decision maker to realise that Charlie was a gift from the gods. Charlie could turn his hand at anything. He was offered a permanent job. I loved Charlie, and would follow him around and listen to stories he used to tell me about his seafaring days. I never did find out why he left the sea, but he became a valued member of the group of workmen who lived on the property. If the tractor wouldn’t start, call Charlie. When the house cow decided to give birth and she looked as if she was in difficulties, call Charlie. We called the calf “tiny Charlie”, and she grew to be as canny as the “midwife” who delivered her. I used to get into trouble when I’d take Tiny Charlie to where her mum was grazing so that she could have a drink of fresh “cows milk.” This didn’t suit mum because she wanted milk for the house,
Bob’s your man ■ I didn’t care that I would be sent to the barn because Tiny and her mum would have been put away in the barn for the night. I would tell them stories and eventually I’d fall asleep. It was usually Charlie who carried me into the house.
I don’t know what eventually happened to Charlie. I came home from boarding school one year, and Charlie was gone. Everyone was disappointed because he was an important person who kept everything shipshape. Mum never told me, but I think she knew the reason. I liked to think that he had returned to his family. I loved Charlie so much this was the best explanation I could think of because I believed that he would never leave us for any other reason. However, get ready for the announcement of the year. I’ve found a handyman, or maintenance man for you that has my seal of approval. His name is Bob.
Keeps his promises
■ He arrives on time and ready for work, and more importantly he arrives on the day that has been promised. When I found Bob, it wasn’t a huge job that needed doing, but it needed fixing. The door to my studio, which is in the back garden decided to stick and only partially open. Trying to get through the door that was stuck ajar needed either an immediate diet on my part, or learning to breath in so that I could get through. Bob came to the rescue. He phoned me to find out what needed doing. Then he called to look at the job.
It was a small but difficult job, and Bob assured me that he could fix the problem. We made a time and day for Bob to work his magic on the door.
Bob means business
■ It was unfortunate that it was 40 degrees in the shade, but Bob meant business and began. I was watching him work, and as I watched the way he went about fixing the problem I was mentally writing a list of other things that Bob could do. What a find. Go for it..Repair it.. Fix it. is the logo on his business card. Bob is a general maintenance man, and his telephone number that should be on your speed dial is 0487 918 497. The door to the studio now swings to and fro at will. Every time I enter I think of Bob, working away in incredible heat whistling while he worked. I just wish that his general maintenance C.V included fixing computer problems. Perhaps I can explore that with him. Remember the number. No job too small or too large. Bob is your man.
I’m making a list
■ I’m making a list of things in the house that we have neglected because they weren’t big enough to call in a builder, but a general maintenance man such as Bob is just the ticket. Isn’t it a shame that the nonsense we are seeing in Parliament could not be fixed as easily as Bob fixed my jammed door. If you are going away for Easter and it requires driving, please be careful. The bad driving that I have seen by women driving in and out of the local supermarket has been breathtaking. Not only women, although the ones I have encountered have been women. They must have a death wish to text while they are driving through the Exit entrance onto a main road. Enjoy your few days break, Just a warning before I go, As hard as it will be, do not be swayed by the brown pleading eyes of your much loved pooch, and keep in mind that chocolate Easter eggs, or chocolates of any kind are a definite no-no for dogs.
After a well lubricated lunch ... Fawlty Towers launched
■ The Fifth Beatle, George Martin, and Peter Sellers were good mates and every now and then enjoyed long lunches. On one occassion they left the restauarant well lubricated. They strolled past a funeral parlour, Sellers walked into the unoccupied front office, found a velvet cloth, fell to the ground, covered himself with the cloth and yelled 'Shop'
Next move ■ After 10 years as top sales gun Peter Wiltshire has resigned as Chief Revenue Officer at Nine Network. Prior to Nine, he was Director of Sales at Southern Cross Boadcasting between 2001-2006. Watch this space for his next landing.
Radio awards
■ The 28th annual Australian Commercial Radio Awards 2016 are on the horizon, so get cracking with your entry. The Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre has been booked for October 8 - entries close May 20. You could be a winner, so dust off your penquin suit.
Smokin’ Tony ● John Cleese and Steven Hall at Monday’s launch of Fawlty Towers. Photo: Kevin Trask
■ 3AW's Tony Moclair was filling in as host on Australia Overnight. Last week, come 3.30am, Tony got an attack of the munchies - popcorn
● Tony Moclair sounded good - so during an on-air break he placed a pack of popcorn in the studio microwave. Within seconds the pack exploded, popcorn everywhere, flames, alarms ringing and the firey's arrived - drama all around. A red-faced Tony did'nt miss a beat and continued on amid the smoke. Where's there's fire, there's Tony.
Dead air
■ Steve Penk is from the UK and considers himself a radio station entrepeneur. He devised an online format where the only material played on-air is by deceased artists - so lots of air-play for the likes of David Bowie and Frank Sinatra - Justin Bieber and other living legends don't get a look in. Guess what the call sign is for the station ? Dead Radio. - John O’Keefe
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Melbourne Obser ver - Wednesday, March 23, 2016 - Page 11
Melbourne
Confidential Talk is cheap, gossip is priceless
Dressed for the British summer
● The Kagools, Nicky Wilkinson and Claire Ford. ■ Award-winning physical comedy double-act from the UK, The Kagools, are performing as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2016. Their show, Dressed For The British Summer, is a physical comedy show combining film and mimed sketches, which is suitable for all ages and nationalities. There are no language barriers as The Kagools don't speak. The Kagools are actress and stand-up comedian, Nicky Wilkinson (finalist So You Think You’re Funny and New Act of the Year 2013) and comedy character actress and film-maker, Claire Ford. The show was developed through playing with interactive media and using pre-recorded footage to create unique visual effects when combined with live action. Last year was busy for The Kagools, touring festivals in the UK and Europe to rave reviews and a ‘Best Show’Award at Buxton Fringe. In 2016 they’re excited to be making their Melbourne debut. Venue: Roxanne - Downstairs, 2 Coverlid Place, Melbourne. Dates: March 24 – April 17 (no show Mondays). Times: Tue-Sat 7.15pm, Sun 6.15pm (50 mins). Bookings: comedyfestival.com.au or 1300 660 013. Tickets: Full Fri & Sat $22, Concession Fri & Sat $20. Full Wed-Thu & Sun $17, Concession Wed-Thu & Sun $15 Group (6+) $14 (N/A Fri & Sat), Laugh Pack $14 (N/A Fri & Sat) - Cheryl Threadgold
A night with Monty Python legends
● Melbourne entertainment industry stalwart Natalie Grosby was looking after Monty Python legends John Cleese and Eric Idle at Hamer Hall on Sunday. They are pictured backstage.
Couples reveal their issues
● From left: Dani Capron, Shelby Fisher, Ash Kearns, Katie Lee, Alice Krieger, Phillip A Mayer, Krissi Creighton, Lucas Thomas, Karina Byrne and John Reisinger in Couples, presented by Here There Everywhere. Photo: Andrew Hood ■ Gippsland based theatre com- the audience a glimpse into their pri- not to enter into a relationship lightly. Performance Season: March 29 pany Here There and Everywhere vate worlds. Will the couples survive coun- – April 2 at 8.30pm. Venue: The presents Couples as part of the Melbourne International Comedy selling, or will the developing cracks National Theatre. St Kilda. Tickets: $20 Festival, at the National Theatre, be too deep? Based on real life events, the proA second performance will take St Kilda, from March 29 – April 2. Making its Melbourne Interna- duction focuses on realistic relation- place April 12 – 16 at 7pm at the tional Comedy Festival debut, and ships, and explores the universal Last Jar. Two performance venues: starring all regional performers, the themes of commitment and love. Under the guidance of their coun- www.comedyfestival.com.au/2016/ show discusses married bliss … or cillors, the couples interact to re- season/shows/couples hit and miss .. Four vastly different, yet relat- veal their issues, with the aim of ■ National Theatre, St Kilda able couples, descend on the peace- strengthening their individual unions, (March 29- April 2, 8.30pm shows) ful country setting of the Paradise resulting in some touching mo- Phone Bookings: 9525 4611 / Online Valley Couples Retreat, for a week- ments, many comical situations and www.nationaltheatre.org.au ■ Police were un■ Last Jar – (April 12-16, 7pm surprising revelations. end of relationship therapy. sure as to the idenShows) Online www.trybooking. The show aims to relate to anySharing their stories and situatity of the man whose tions, events unfold to explore their one who has ever been in a rela- com/JSPV body was found at - Cheryl Threadgold relationships warts and all, giving tionship, and to serve as a warning Strath Creek Falls at the weekend. They were awaiting a Coroner’s Report before releasing a cause of death.
Whispers
Mystery
Concerns about school money
■ The Australian Securitioes and Investments Commission has accepted an enforceable undertaking from Barakah Properties Pty Ltd arising from concerns as to how the company raised money to build a school in Melbourne. Since 2009 Barakah has raised money from the local community for investment in the Al Siraat College, an Islamic school at Epping. Late last year, ASIC made enquiries regarding the company’s fundraising, its structure, and the nature of the information that it had provided to potential investors. ASIC’s enquires indicated, among other things, that: ■ Barakah had obtained funds without providing investors with the necessary disclosure, and had exceeded the maximum number of shareholders for a private company. ■ The company’s representatives had made recommendations to potential investors that may have amounted to providing financial advice without a license to give that advice. ■ The company had bought back its own shares without following the necessary share buy-back procedures. After ASIC raised these concerns with Barakah, the company offered, and ASIC accepted, an undertaking in which Barakah agreed: ■ not to offer securities without providing the necessary disclosure to potential investors. ■ not to purchase its own shares without following the correct procedures ■ to remove from its website any advertising of securities that required disclosure to investors ■ write to all current investors alerting them to the EU and its terms.
Rumour Mill
In Court
Hear It Here First
Liquidators on job
■ The Federal Court of Australia has made orders appointing liquidators to companies associated with Jamie McIntyre and 21st Century land banking companies. McIntyre is publisher of the Australian National Review newspaper.
● Jamie McIntyre
Limits on auditor ■ The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has imposed conditions on the registration of company auditor, George Georgiou of Brighton. ASIC identified a number of concerns with the audits conducted by Mr Georgiou of two Australian Stock Exchange listed entities for the financial year ended June 30, 2014. He has voluntarily agreed to the conditions.
E-Mail: Confidential@MelbourneObserver.com.au
■ Salesian College Chadstone has reqested a Dandenong Magistrates’ Court Registars’ Hearing tomorrow (Thurs.) at 11am when it is due to make a civil claim against Angelo Veerasingham, alleging “monies due”.
Strife ■ Murrindindi Shire Council CEO Margaret Abbey is in the spotlight as her Council attempts to re-appoint her, bypassing the conventional procedure of advertising for other applicants. Her Council is accused by residents of overspending.
Page 10 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Country People
● Carol and Russell Hogg
● Celeste White with her father Brett White
● Marley Leatham, Ivy Leatham and Lola Leatham
● Mindi Kaur of Mindi’s Traditional Home-Made Indian Food
Twilight Market, Yea Run by Rotary Club of Yea Photos: Ash Long
● Rodney Ridd and Peter Tull
● Max May from Alexandra and District Woodworkers Guild
● Laura Van Den Bogaard from Devour
● Bob Carroll and John Zerafa from Alexandra and District Woodworkers
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● Tom Walsh and Nick Walsh from Mansfield Brewing Company
● Music at the Twilight Market. This photo: Facebook/Ian Williamson
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People
Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016 - Page 11
Bushrodders and Customs Show Photos: Ash Long
● Jo Dignam and Susan Spagnolo on the Homewood CFA stall
● Zoe Alldrick (18 months), Emily Lang, Kathleen Alldrick, Barbara Alldrick
● Kaye Gibb, Gary Gibb and Michele Gleeson
● Homewood CFA volunteers John Purvis and Gary Cocks
● Andrew Jones, Mark Blekic, Dennis Watson. At front: Casey Jones, 6.
● Heather Austin and Linda Hardy
● Jarred Milsom and Aaron Jansen, both of Healesville
● Bob Hughes and Vivienne Erikson
Page 12 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016 Melbourne
Observer
www.MelbourneObserver.com.au
Green Room Awards
Mary Lou honoured at Green Room Awards
■ The Green Room Awards were presented on Monday Night (Mar. 21). CABARET Production Briefs Artiste Sheridan Harbridge Songs For The Fallen Ensemble Briefs Fez Fa’anana, Mark ‘Captain Kidd’ Winmill, Dallas Dellaforce, Evil Hate Monkey, Louis Biggs, Lachy Shelley and Thomas Worrell Writing Daniel Tobias The Orchid and The Crow Musical Direction Daryl Wallis Strange Bedfellows Original Songs Jude Perl Is It Just Me? Outstanding Contribution to Cabaret John Thorn CONTEMPORARYAND EXPERIMENTALPERFORMANCE Innovation in Contemporary Performance for Young People Separation Street Polyglot Theatre with The Suitcase Royale (Polyglot Theatre and Darebin Arts at Melbourne Fringe) Innovation in Site Specific Work MASS Zoe Scoglio (Field Theory) Innovation in Contemporary Circus Bodies over Bitumen Skye Gellmann, Naomi Francis, Alex Gellmann and Kieran Law (at Melbourne Fringe) Curatorial Contribution to Contemporary Performance Site is Set Field Theory Design and Realisation in Contemporary Performance (TIED) Endings Ben Cobham, Peter Knight, Tamara Saulwick, Paddy Mann and Nick Roux (Arts House and Tamara Saulwick) AND Captives of the City Sarah Kriegler, David Young, Jethro Woodward, Dave Jones, Jacob Williams, Ben Grant, Rainbow Sweeny, Mark Cauvin, Adam Pierzchalski and Matthias Schack-Arnott (Chamber Made Opera, Lemony S Puppet Theatre and Arts Centre Melbourne) Puppetry Performance Captives of the City Chamber Made Opera, Lemony S Puppet Theatre and Arts Centre Melbourne Performance (by an individual or ensemble) in Contemporary and Experiment Performance Nicola Gunn Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster (Arts House and Mobile States) Contemporary Performance Text Oedipus Schmoedipus post (post, Arts House and Belvoir) Contemporary and Experimental Performance Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster Nicola Gunn (Arts House and Mobile States) DANCE Concept and Realisation Antony Hamilton and Alisdair Macindoe MEETING Duet and Ensemble Performance Cast of Quintett and Frame of Mind Sydney Dance Company Shirley McKechnie Award For Choreography Antony Hamilton MEETING (Antony Hamilton and Alisdair Macindoe) Female Dancer Jesse Scales Quintett (Sydney Dance Company) Male Dancer David Mack
● Mary Lou Jelbart received the Geoffrey Milne Memorial Award Quintett and Frame of Mind Male In A Leading Role (Sydney Dance Company) Martin Crewes Design Sweet Charity Ben Cobham (Arts Centre Melbourne in association with The Boom Project Luckiest Productions, Neil Gooding Productions, (Rosalind Crisp/Omeo Dance) Tinderbox Productions and Hayes Theatre Music and Sound Composition Co) and Performance Male In A Supporting Role Alisdair Macindoe Josh Piterman MEETING Cats (Antony Hamilton and Alisdair Macindoe) (Lunchbox Theatrical Productions, David Atkins INDEPENDENTTHEATRE Enterprises And Base Entertainment Asia; in Male Performer Association With The Really Useful Group) Brian Lipson Female In A Supporting Role EDMUND. THE BEGINNING Heather Mitchell (Arts House and Antechamber Productions) Strictly Ballroom Female Performer (Gerry Ryan and Carmen Pavlovic On Behalf Jillian Murray Of Global Creatures; Baz Luhrmann and L'amante anglaise Catherine Martin On Behalf Of Bazmark; in (La Mama) Association With Stage Entertainment, Michael Ensemble Watt, James L Nederlander, Terry Allen Kramer Cast of SHIT and Peter Arvanitis) (Dee & Cornelius as part of Neon Festival for Ensemble Independent Theatre) Cast of Cats Set and Costume Design (Lunchbox Theatrical Productions, David Atkins Marg Horwell Enterprises And Base Entertainment Asia; in SHIT Association With The Really Useful Group) (Dee & Cornelius as part of Neon Festival for Betty PounderAward For Excellence In Independent Theatre) Choreography Lighting Design Michael Ralph Amelia Lever-Davidson Loving Repeating Body of Work (Vic Theatre Company and Glenn Ferguson) Sound/Music Musical Direction/Supervision Christopher De Groot Kellie Dickerson Dream Home City Of Angels (Darebin Arts Speakeasy) (Life Like Company) Direction Lighting Design Luke Kerridge Hugh Vanstone Dream Home Strictly Ballroom (Darebin Arts Speakeasy) (Gerry Ryan and Carmen Pavlovic On Behalf Production Of Global Creatures; Baz Luhrmann and SHIT Catherine Martin On Behalf Of Bazmark; in (Dee & Cornelius as part of Neon Festival for Association With Stage Entertainment, Michael Independent Theatre) Watt, James L Nederlander, Terry Allen Kramer Writing and Peter Arvanitis) Patricia Cornelius Sound Design SHIT John Scandrett, David Tonion and Julian Spink (Dee & Cornelius as part of Neon Festival for West Side Story Independent Theatre) (The Production Company) Geoffrey Milne Memorial Award Set and/or Costume Design For contribution to the development of Catherine Martin Contemporary and Experimental PerforStrictly Ballroom mance or Independent Theatre (Gerry Ryan and Carmen Pavlovic On Behalf Mary Lou Jelbart Of Global Creatures; Baz Luhrmann and MUSICTHEATRE Catherine Martin On Behalf Of Bazmark; in Female InA Leading Role Association With Stage Entertainment, Michael Verity Hunt-Ballard Watt, James L Nederlander, Terry Allen Kramer Sweet Charity and Peter Arvanitis) (Arts Centre Melbourne in association with Direction Luckiest Productions, Neil Gooding Productions, Jason Langley Tinderbox Productions and Hayes Theatre Loving Repeating Co) (Vic Theatre Company and Glenn Ferguson)
Production Strictly Ballroom (Gerry Ryan and Carmen Pavlovic On Behalf Of Global Creatures; Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin On Behalf Of Bazmark; in Association With Stage Entertainment, Michael Watt, James L Nederlander, Terry Allen Kramer and Peter Arvanitis) OPERA Direction Roger Hodgman The Flying Dutchman (Victorian Opera) Production Le nozze di Figaro Opera Australia Conductor Guillaume Tourniaire Madama Butterfly (Opera Australia) Female Lead Milijana Nikolic ‘Eboli’ Don Carlos (Opera Australia) Female In A Supporting Role Jessica Hitchcock ‘Flinch’ The Rabbits (Opera Australia and Barking Gecko Theatre Company) Male Lead Giacomo Prestia ‘Phillip II’ Don Carlos (Opera Australia) Male In A Supporting Role Carlos E. Bárcenas ‘Steuermann’ The Flying Dutchman (Victorian Opera) Design Jenny Tiramani Le nozze di Figaro (Opera Australia) Lighting David Finn Le nozze di Figaro (Opera Australia) Special Award for Orchestral Excellence The Australian Youth Orchestra The Flying Dutchman (Victorian Opera) THEATRECOMPANIES FemaleActor Melita Jurisic I Am a Miracle (Malthouse Theatre) MaleActor Ben Prendergast Dead Centre/Sea Wall (Red Stitch Actors Theatre) Ensemble Cast of North by Northwest (Melbourne Theatre Company and Kay + McLean Productions) Lighting Design Katie Sfetkidis Meme Girls (Malthouse Theatre) Set and Costume Design Marg Horwell (Set and Costume) and Paul Jackson (Set) I Am a Miracle (Malthouse Theatre) Sound Design and Composition David Chisholm and Marco Cher-Gibard I Am a Miracle (Malthouse Theatre) Writing/Adaptation for theAustralian Stage (TIED) Declan Green I Am a Miracle (Malthouse Theatre) AND Dan Giovannoni Jurassica (Red Stitch Actors Theatre) Production I Am a Miracle Malthouse Theatre Direction Leticia Cáceras Birdland (Melbourne Theatre Company) Technical AchievementAward Laurel Frank Lifetime AchievementAward Malcolm Robertson
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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016 - Page 13
Melb. Comedy Festival launches ■ Melbourne audiences will be treated to a plethora of comedic talent from Australian and International artists in the 30th Melbourne International Comedy Festival, which runs from March 23 to April 17. Celebrating its 30th year, MICF brings together more than 2000 artists and 530 live shows sure to be enjoyed by all tastes and all ages. From humble beginnings, when in 1987 the festival was launched by Peter Cook and Barry Humphries aka Sir Les Patterson with little more than 50 shows, it is now one of the world’s largest and most respected comedy events. Special events this year include 30th Birthday Bash, the Great Debate and Class Clowns – National Secondary School competition.
● Judith Lucy Rod Quantock will also be leading a guided tour on an entertaining exhibition of memorabilia, photographs, footage and discussions at the Gallery in Melbourne’sArt Centre. International talents such as Rich Hall, Tim Vine, Al Murray, Igor Meerson, Bridget Everett, Jen Kirkman and many others will be gracing our venues. Comedy fans and late night revelers can-
ttend The Festival Club, which will be running at Max Watt’s with shows starting from 11.15pm. Free family entertainment is part of The (Very) Big Laugh Out, which will be featured at Federation Square and City Square. This will be a feast of comedy, mime, acrobatics, juggling, vaudeville and more. New comedy talent has been unearthed each year in the RAW Comedy event. This is an open mic event with heats and state finals taking place nation-wide. Finalists will perform at the National Grand Final in Melbourne. Deadly Funny is a program fostering talent in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Workshops on story-telling, joke writ-
ing and performance provide a supportive environment to nurture new talent. One of the original acts, the Doug Anthony All Stars will be returning to be part of the 30th celebration with two special shows on April 1 and 2 at Melbourne Town Hall. Other Australian favourites such as Dave Hughes, Judith Lucy, Frank Woodley, Celia Pacquola, Akmal, Carl Barron, Tom Gleeson and Joel Creasey will all be back this year. Seasoned and novice performers are excited to be performing for Melbourne audiences. Tickets are sure to sell fast to many of these shows. For a full list of performances go to comedyfestival.com.au - Lyn Laister
Page 14 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Mittagundi teaches values of simple healthy living
● Volunteers and staff at the cheque presentation to Mittagundi, with Star of the east Lodge's Peter Sandy and Stephen Richards. ■ Omeo Star of the East Lodge's Stephen Richards and Peter Sandy visited the Mittagundi Outdoor Education Centre in Glen Valley to hand over a cheque for $4376.00 from the Freemasons Victoria Foundation. The Mittagundi Outdoor Education Centre is situated on a 400-acre property near the old gold mining town of Glen Valley on the Upper Mitta Mitta River, north of Omeo. Mittagundi is a home away from home each year for more than 500 young people aged between 15-17 years. The centre exists to provide young people from a variety of backgrounds educational opportunities and activities designed to foster self-reliance, independence and the capacity to fit in and contribute to a community. Its aim is to impart basic knowledge of agriculture and horticulture with an extended outdoor experience in a remote, environmentally responsible 'pioneer' farm and mountain setting. Mittagundi programs are like no other in that they provide a unique chance for young people to actually live without their phones, computers or indeed any electricity or modern conveniences. This builds resilience, capabilities and confidence and allows for some much needed "time out". Mittagundi is a not-for-profit organisation that has been running for almost 40 years with trained and volunteer staff. Staff unite in their passion to enrich the lives of young people and impart values of: ■ respect, for themselves others and the environment; ■ responsibility, for their actions and their achievements; ■ appreciation, of their environment; ■ awareness, and being mindful of knowing oneself and sensitive to others; ■ fun, a great part of life created during the Mittagundi experience. Mittagundi ,in partnership with Deaf Children Australia, aims to provide a unique opportunity for personal development for four hard-of-hearing young people, aged between 15-17 years, and their four mates to attend a seven-day Mittagundi Winter Program in July 2016. The grant, provided by the Freemasons Foundation, will support these young people to experience activities including X-country skiing, snow camping, High Country Huts, time on Mittagundi farm chopping wood, baking bread, milking cows by hand, mixing with horses and chickens, working with steel in the forge and wood in the joinery- all without electricity. The atmosphere at Mittagundi is simple, honest and happy. This special opportunity, for young persons with hearing difficulties, will allow them to experience simple healthy living with a friend. It is an opportunity to live and work together in an environment where people matter more than anything else. Freemasons Victoria and the Omeo Freemasons feel privileged to be able to assist and support Mittagundi to provide this unique opportunity for hearing impaired young people. Support for the Mittagundi Program is always needed. Donations can be made by emailing info@mittagundi.org.au Young people aged 14-17 are encouraged to book into Mittagundi Programs all year round online by visiting www.mittagundi.org.au
PROMOTIONAL FEATURE
Don Gray, RoCan champ ■ Don Gray of City of FootscrayWyndham Lodge has just completed his first charity ride. Don, who has been raising funds for RoCan (Rotary Ovarian Cancer Research), a not-for-profit organisation supporting the sufferers of ovarian cancer, has been prepping for months for this bicycle challenge which saw him and other riders complete a 1000 km ride around Victoria's coastline. "We rode for seven days straight averaging around 150km per day. This being our first ride we didn't know what we were in for …" Don tells us that the ride was an emotional roller coaster. "I sometimes found myself wondering 'Why am l doing this?' and 'This really is a great way to raise support for a needy cause, as well as do something I enjoy'". The team, made up also of riders from Rotary, travelled from the Great Ocean Road to the aerated Otway Forrest where, as Don says “you gulp the air thinking you're on another planet”. "We then rode to Port Fairy, through the country side of Hamilton and Horsham and then over the magnificent Grampians which was a real highlight".
● Don, second from the right, with his RoCan cycling buddies. Don said he is now giving the legs "Seeing wonderful towns like St Arnaud and Macarthur, and endur- and backside a well-earned rest, but ing the agony of pouring rain and head is already talking about next year's winds on Day 6, then experiencing ride. All funds raised from the RoCan Bendigo on bikes was truly amazing", Cycle Challenge will support the deDon said. velopment of a new Wellness Centre "This has been a fantastic experi- in Hoppers Crossing for the families ence and l would like to thank all of of sufferers of Ovarian Cancer. the Freemasons involved in helping For more information about RoCan to raise funds". visit www.rocan.com.au
Freemasonry to the fore
■ While Melbourne celebrated Moomba this month, Freemasons from SEAVic Lodge, their partners and friends, rallied at the South East Asian Festival in multi-cultural Lygon St, Carlton to put Freemasonry to the fore. …and what a display, what a Lodge, what great camaraderie and the exercise proved safer than Federation Square that Saturday night. The South East Asian Festival, the brain-child of Albert Lim, was centred on the attraction of gourmet Asian cuisine and was supported by consulates and cultural organisations drawn from the whole South East Asia region, including Brunei, Cambodia, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Samoa, Singapore, Vietnam and 'Australian Migration'. Thousands of spectators drifted through during the day and interest in the SEAVic Freemasonry display was continual. For most it was indeed a 'brand new world'. ● SEAVic Lodge's oldest member Keith Thornton SEAVic Lodge's presentation enat the stand, at the SE Asia Festival. joyed a prime position and showcased material from Freemasons Victoria's Member support ranged through all sons like Dev Boparoy, Roger Chong 125th Anniversary historical display, ages and all experiences, from and Sourabh Malandkar. serving to introduce a young and en- SEAVic's most senior mentor, Keith It certainly was a case of 'Freemathusiastic face to Freemasonry. Thornton to newly initiated Freema- sonry to the Fore'.
Masons continue BlazeAid support ■ Ballarat District Lodges continue to assist BlazeAid in fence removal and reconstruction across the Scotsburn and more recent Dereel and Mt Bolton fire areas. BlazeAid is a volunteer-based organisation that works with families and individuals in rural Australia after natural disasters such as fires and floods. Working alongside rural families, volunteers help to rebuild fences and other structures that have been damaged or destroyed. Equally important, volunteers also help to lift the spirits of people who are often facing their second or third flood event after years of drought, or devastating losses through bushfires. BlazeAid volunteers work in disaster-affected areas for many months, not only helping individuals and families, but also helping to rebuild local communities. Some 10 members from five Freemasons Lodges have contributed 24 days to the project and their assistance is greatly appreciated by BlazeAid and the farmers they are assisting. Central Highlands Task Force Co-ordinator Ron Fleming said that the further we get from the actual fire dates it is so easy to forget the need of these communities. "The real impact of these fires is with those residents each day. For those who lost homes, life is vastly different especially for the children". Many community organisations, businesses and individuals are quietly working to re-establish farms, homes and communities. Freemasonry is proud to be part of this vital project. To find out more about how you could volunteer for BlazeAid visit: blazeaid.com/volunteering-information
● Ballarat District Lodge Freemasons L-R: Ron Fleming, Ross Charles, Bruan Ehlert and Daryl Kopke with BlazeAid volunteers Kevin and Ray at the end of another productive day at a Scotsburn property.
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, March 23, 2016 - Page 15
West Hollywood
We’re officially on Route 66
■ Hi everyone, from my suite at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites comes this week's news.
Frank Sinatra Jnr dies ■ Singer and son of music legend Frank Sinatra had a heart attack in Daytona Beach, Florida Frank Sinatra Jr. has died at the age of 72. Born Francis Wayne Sinatra, the singer and songwriter was the son of music legend Frank Sinatra and his first wife, Nancy Barbato Sinatra. Famously, Sinatra was kidnapped from Lake Tahoe at the age of 19 in December 1963, and was released after his father paid the ransom of $240,000.
Mother Road passes door
■ The often-romanticised Mother Road inspires in many of us a nostalgic bone, which niggles at something buried deep within us. While some may see Route 66 as a link to our parents and grandparents, others perhaps feel the sense of freedom that the road provided to those early travellers. And then, for those of us that live continuously in the nostalgic past, the Mother Road is, but yet, the next adventure beyond the Santa Fe Trail. Whatever the reason, the Mother Road is an experience, a feeling, a perception, a taste of sight and sound, and a mystery that can only be resolved by driving the pavement itself. The "super-highway," as it was thought of in 1926, represented unprecedented freedom to travel across the American West. Spawned by the rapidly changing demands of America, entrepreneurs, Cyrus Avery of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and John Woodruff of Springfield, Missouri, conceived of the grand idea of linking Chicago to Los Angeles and began lobbying efforts to promote the new highway. While other East/West highways existed at the time, most followed a linear course, leaving out the rural communities, dependent upon transportation for farm products and other goods. No doubt a daunting task for the pair, the Federal Government finally pledged to link small town USA with metropolitan capitals in the summer of 1926 and designated the road as 66. Unfortunately, shortly after work began on November 11 that year, the depression came, halting progress on the new "SuperHighway". However, in 1933, thousands of unemployed men were put back to work and road gangs paved the final stretches of the road. By 1938 the 2300-mile highway was continuously paved from Chicago to Los Angeles. John Steinbeck, in 1939, proclaimed Route 66 as the Mother Road in his classic novel The Grapes of Wrath. When the movie was made just a year later, it immortalized Route 66 in the American consciousness. Shortly thereafter, more than 200,000 people migrated to California to escape the Dust Bowl of the Midwest, symbolising the highway as the "road to opportunity." Opportunity sums up Hollywood. The Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites proudly displays the official Route 66 poster at the front entrance of the hotel.
Phone hacking charges
■ A Pennsylvania man has been charged with hacking the Apple and Google accounts of more than 100 people, including celebrities like actress Jennifer Lawrence, between November 2012 and September 2014. Ryan Collins, 36, allegedly sent fake emails pretending to be a representative from the companies and got victims to hand over their log-in information. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Worst traffic in America
■ Once again, Los Angeles tops the list for having the worst traffic in America, according to a study just released. The LA metro area was ranked as the nation's most congested region with motorists spending an average of 81 hours sitting still on the road in 2015.
New Cannonball Run
■ That sound you hear is the creaking of the vault door as yet another catalogue title is plucked from storage, dusted down and handed to a new filmmaking team. This time, it's the turn of The Cannonball Run, which now has Ethan Cohen writing and directing a new version. The three Cannonball Run films (which screeched into cinemas in 1981, 1984 and 1989 from a variety of studios) featured sprawling casts of actors, but were primarily driven - for the first two, at least - by Burt Reynolds' cocky J.J. McClure and Dom DeLuise's luckless Victor Prinzim. Based on real-life cross-country races, the films found the competitors trying anything to win. Warner Bros, which nabbed the rights from its current holders, is saying this won't be a remake, but intends to relaunch the idea. Cohen, who had screenplay credits on films such as Idiocracy, Tropic Thunder and Men In Black 3 before turning writer/director for last year's Will Ferrell/Kevin Hart comedy Get Hard, will marshall the madness. Given his comedy connections, we'd expect a healthy clutch of funny people in the new one, whatever it turns out to be.
● Pictured at this historic site is Alan Johnson, Managing Director, Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites, with Gavin Wood, President and CEO of Countdown Motion Pictures.
● Frank Sinatra Jnr
Willy-Wonka inspired
GavinWood
From my Suite at the Ramada Plaza Complex on Santa Monica Blvd
Love at first sight for Tom
■ "If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it" Universal Studios Orlando is opening a new restaurant that is sure to delight anyone with a sweet tooth. Although it's not officially affiliated with either Willy Wonka movie, Toothsome Chocolate Factory will immerse visitors in a setting very similar to the candy maker's quirky dessert laboratory. The new attraction promises to "transport you into a 19th century-inspired Steam punk chocolate factory" featuring "towering smoke stacks, funky gadgetry, and staff wearing unique Steam punk fashion," according to the theme park's official blog. While Toothsome won't exclusively serve desserts, the eatery's sweet treats look to be one of its main draws. The park has unveiled details about a few of its creative confections, including several delicious-sounding milkshakes and sundaes: "The sundaes are anything but ordinary with flavors like Salted Caramel Flan and Chocolate Brownie Bark,". "This extreme twist on a summer favorite features layers of chocolate ice-cream, chocolate sauce, marshmallow cream and graham crackers."
Indiana Jones 5
■ Disney has just announced that Harrison Ford will be reprising his iconic role as Indiana Jones in the fifth instalment in the series with Steven Spielberg returning to the director's chair. The pic will hit screens on July 19, 2019. Spielberg directed the previous four pics, and this one has yet to be titled. Franchise vets Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall will produce. ● Tom Hanks " is one of the greatest heroes in cinematic history, and we ■ It was love at first sight for Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson - or can't wait to bring him back to the screen in 2019," Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn said. "It's rare to have such a perat least for one of them. Hanks, 59, revealed that the first time he laid eyes on his fect combination of director, producers, actor and role, and we future wife was when she guest-starred as a cheerleader on The couldn't be more excited to embark on this adventure with Harrison and Steven." Brady Bunch in 1972. At the time, Spielberg expressed that he was interested in "I was actually at a friend of mine's house when it aired and I remember thinking 'that girl's cute,' " Hanks told reporters at the Chris Pratt joining. That casting is still to be determined. New York City premiere of My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, which the couple co-produced. While the lovebirds didn't meet until years later, one could say The Brady Bunch made them Bosom Buddies - at least in the ■ If you are considering a move to Los Angeles or just coming over for a holiday to see the sights or to check out the fabulous mind of the future Oscar-winner. Hanks and Wilson, also 59, tied the knot in 1988. Now, after restaurants or see how the movies are made then I have got a nearly 28 years of marriage, the two admit that they rarely fight special deal for you. We would love to see you at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and - except when one of them is behind the wheel. Suites, 8585 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood. "Usually when driving," Wilson said when they butt heads. I have secured a terrific Holiday deal for readers of the "That is hilarious. She's actually telling you the truth right now," Hanks chimed in. "I am driving, what I always say is, 'Just Melbourne Observer. Please mention 'Melbourne Observer' when you book and don't you worry your pretty little head. All you have to do is sit there and ride and I will decide how to get there,' " he said, you will receive the 'Special Rate of the Day'. making them both burst out in laughter. Please contact: Joanna at info@ramadaweho.com "It's hilarious," the Bridge of Spies actor said, and his wife Happy Holidays, finished his sentence by saying, "We have a routine now." Gavin Wood.
Come, stay with us
www.gavinwood.us
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Page 16 - Melbourne Obser ver - Wednesday, March 23, 2016
■ Henry Fonda won only one Academy Award for Best Actor during his career which is surprising when you consider the body of work and the quality of his performances in many of the classic Hollywood films. My first recollection of seeing him onscreen was in Mr Roberts in 1955. It was before the days of television and my local picture theatre, The Grand in Coburg, did not show the old films often. I had to wait a few years to catch up with the fabulous work by this screen legend when his films were shown on television. Henry Jaynes ‘Hank’ Fonda was born in 1905 in Grand Island, Nebraska. In his teenage years he joined the Omaha Community Playhouse and acted in plays before joining a Summer Stock Company. Henry made his debut on Broadway in 1929 in a play titled The Game of Love and Death. In 1931 he married his first wife Margaret Sullavan and during his lifetime Henry was married five times. He was a father to three children. When Henry was starring in the Broadway play The Farmer Takes a Wife in 1935 he was offered the opportunity to be in the screen version and that is how his film career began. He starred in 10 films before playing ‘Preston Dillard’ in Jezebel opposite Bette Davis in 1938. Henry had worked with director John Ford on several films and was cast as ‘Tom Joad’ in
Whatever Happened To ... Henry Fonda
By Kevin Trask of 3AW and 96.5 Inner FM
The Grapes of Wrath in 1940. This was one of his finest films and Henry was nominated for an Academy Award. After making The Ox Bow Incident in 1943 Henry enlisted in the Navy. He was commissioned as a Lieutenant Junior Grade in Air Combat Intelligence and was later awarded a Bronze Star for his bravery and meritorious service. After the war ended Henry was in several films and then returned to Broadway where he starred in Mr Roberts and won the Best Actor Tony Award. In 1955 he returned to Hollywood to make the film version of Mr Roberts. Two years later he received another Academy Award nomination for his role as the juror in Twelve Angry
● Henry Fonda Men. He never received his deferred salary for this film because it did not go into profit but he always regarded Twelve Angry Men as one of the best films he ever made. Henry Fonda starred in two television series The Deputy and The Smith Family. He made films and worked in many television productions including a role in the mini series Roots in 1979. Some of his other films included My Darling Clementine, The Longest Day, In Harm's Way,
Spencer's Mountain, Once Upon A Time In The West (playing a villain) and The Cheyenne Social Club. In his time he also made a few "shockers" His lifelong friend was fellow actor, James Stewart. Although Henry Fonda was nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Actor he finally won for his performance in the film On Golden Pond. In 1982 he was too ill to attend the award ceremony and Jane Fonda accepted on his behalf. She commented that her dad would probably quip, "Well, ain't I lucky." Henry was the oldest actor to win the Award for Best Actor in the history of the Academy. Henry Fonda passed away at his home in Los Angeles in 1982 from a heart disease. He was surrounded by his family and at his own request a funeral was not held. A theatre on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California, was renamed in his honor in 1985 and is now known as The Fonda Theatre Kevin Trask The Time Tunnel - with Bruce and Phil Sundays at 9.20pm on 3AW That's Entertainment - 96.5FM Sundays at 12Noon 96.5FM is streaming on the internet. To listen, go to www.innerfm.org.au and follow the prompts
The reason why I buy the ‘War Cry’ ■ "Regrets, I've had a few", warbled Mr. Sinatra in his heyday. Lately, I thought about this from a practical point of view. One of the biggest such situations has everything to do with timing and not actual downfalls on my part. Last week I mentioned a couple of old mates, George and Sid Graham, at Lightning Ridge.
On my first hot February day in town, I decided that the best place for any information was the pub. And an old-timer. So I found Sid, and spent the afternoon with him. "Go and see my brother George he's digging in the shallows at Angledool," he advised me. So next morning off I scuttled to Angledool, about a mile or so from the town.
And that began a 20-year relationship with my two old mates. My regret here is that the cassette recorder hadn't yet been invented. I've sat with them for hour upon hour, listening to their tales of the Outback of the early 20th Century. I could have recorded all our chats - I would have had several important volumes of Australia's history.
The Outback Legend
■ Another one I missed out on was Tinnie. He was Norman B Tindale, one of my Dad's best mates. He was Curator of Anthropology in the South Australian Museum, but also an avid entomologist, and Dad had known him for years before my arrival, as they collected butterflies together. Tinnie spent his first eight years living with his family in Tokyo, and hence was fluent in Japanese. So when war broke out, the local Allied Powers were desperate to find someone to translate any captured documents for intelligence purposes. So they discovered Tinnie - from an obscure scientist he was suddenly catapulted to be head of Allied Intelligence in Canberra. After that conflict ended he returned to his scientific activities, and when I first encountered him he was at the museum, being the foremost expert on Aboriginal tribal boundaries in Australia, and the three of us often ventured out on expeditions chasing rare butterflies. I was only a kid, so had no curiosity at all about anything much. Now, having spent the past 20 years or so intimately involved with Aborigines in Central Australia, I would just love to sit down with him and pepper him with questions. Alas, too late.
with Nick Le Souef Lightning Ridge Opals 63 Elizabeth St, Melbourne Phone 9654 4444 www.opals.net.au
■ Over the years that I've operated various retail opal establishments in Coober Pedy, Alice Springs, Melbourne and Lightning Ridge, I've employed many dozens of employees for salespeople for my beautiful gemstones. Because about 90 per cent of my customers have always been international, it's generally been the case that most of my employees have been the same. Because the largest and busiest store was in Alice Springs, I had the most international people there, usually girls and ladies, either backpack-
ers or wives or partners of men working in town. It amazed me how these beautiful and sophisticated European girls would fall for these bush Aussies - good blokes, but not much sophistication. They were mainly from Germany and Switzerland, because the majority of my customers would be German speaking. Younger Germans and Swiss always spoke English, but the older ones, most of whom were my customers, didn't. Then we had French and Italian and British and Polish and Japanese and Dutch girls. Almost without exception they were exceptional employees, and they became close friends with all the family. Every week I spent time with them in restaurants or pubs, and I often took them down on a working holiday to Coober Pedy to look around. Even now, in Melbourne, we have a Canadian, a Uruguayan, French and Irish and English young ladies. Our US representative left a couple of weeks ago. ■ I have often mentioned my 30
acres on the Avon River in Gippsland. It's a magical spot with about a k of river frontage, with roos and wallabies and emus and wombats trotting around - there was even a deer and a fawn last winter. And a platypus in the creek. But in the crystal clear water of the river there is another aquatic creature lurking - the carp. I have often spoken to mates about this particular creature, to be met with disdain from all quarters. "Vermin, aquatic pigeons or rabbits!" "What about eating them?" I've enquired. "No way!" Then I wonder why they're regarded as a delicacy in Europe and Asia. My mate Geoff Stock caught several on a visit a few years ago, and gave them to his Italian mate: "Delicious!" was the response. "Usually they're muddy, but yours were clean as a whistle!" ■ Michael and Elizabeth Johnson are off. They were posted to Alice Springs five years ago to run the Salvos. Michael ran the 35 volunteers, and Elisabeth managed all the seven social programs - emergency welfare and accommodation, drug and alcohol services, and the Waterhole, a community centre. And of course a thrift shop. I have always been a fan of the Salvos. Once on my way back from our first opal field foray to Andamooka, Mike Headberry I were penniless on the streets of Adelaide. Although we had our return train tickets, it was midday and we were hungry, so we decided to check out the People's Palace in the city. We perused the lunch menu, and ordered, assuming that it applied to us penniless and hungry. So we dined royally, and the waitress then popped along with a bill. "We thought this was all free!" we remonstrated. "Oh no!" she responded. She wasn't rude, but not so kindly either, so she summoned the Major to handle the situation. "Don't worry, boys!" he said, and dived into his own wallet for the required cash. Now he may have gone to the petty cash box and recompensed himself later - I dunno. But every time I'm in a pub, and a War Cry vendor trots in, I'm the first customer.
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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016 - Page 17
Nation Review
‘One for the price of two’ Rediscovering Nation Review: An independent media voice in Australian political and cultural affairs, from 1970 to 1980 Author: David Olds Flinders University Submitted as Thesis for the completion of a Doctorate of Philosophy in English Literature An examination of the Nation Review newspaper, an independent media voice in Australian political and cultural affairs, from 1970 to 1980. Part 3 Continued from last week EXIT SUNDAY OBSERVER The Sunday Observer was facing hostility from many quarters. The Victorian government disliked its tendency to reveal awkward aspects of conflicts of interest, while the established Press resented threats to their own circulations. Ash Long says ‘Nigel Dick, a former General Manager of GTV-9 Melbourne, will be able to tell you of how Newton was able to get cash advances from the Packer family’s Australian Consolidated Press, which took over distribution of the [Melbourne] Observer under Newton’. Given the significant losses being incurred by Barton, it is not surprising that the Sunday Observer should collapse in the face of relentless opposition from powerful quarters. The Sunday Observer met its demise March 7, 1971.As a token gesture, its memory was kept alive for two issues of the Sunday Review (numbers 25 and 26, March 28,April 4, 1971) through a subtitle below the page 1 banner, ‘Incorporating the Sunday Observer’. Some reorganisation of the Sunday Review became inevitable. The expensive Goss press continued to be used for a short period, but it was under-utilised for production runs of 40,000 per week, and was auctioned off. Subsequently, printing was farmed out to a succession of printers, usually otherwise engaged in the production of suburban weeklies. In something of a coup, Maxwell Newton recruited half of the Sunday Observer staff and writers for his own Melbourne Observer (as discussed earlier). Some Observer staff, and some features, migrated to the Sunday Review. The distribution network remained intact and was pressed into service as the main core of Sunday Review distribution. Of greatest significance, John Crew left the organization, and his position (Managing Director) was taken by Richard Walsh, under the new title, Managing Editor. A new position, Assistant Editor, was created, and filled by Richard Beckett. Beckett’s background was primarily as a freelance journalist; at the Sunday Review his duties tended to cross boundaries, sharing the editing and layout tasks with Walsh, although, according to Walsh, Beckett’s strengths were in the areas of layout and design rather than
The final column of the article concerns reports that imposters have been making bookings in Beckett’s (real) name, hoping for preferential treatment. He writes ‘I have asked the said restaurant owner to let me know when these people attend his establishment. I have also asked him, if I am present, to point myself out to me, so I may speak to me, and so that I might be able to tear off my arms, overturn my table and spit in my face.’ THE REVIEW Over time, the text-heavy front page gave way to larger images, more free space and attention-catching headlines, as Walsh experimented with ways to understand and express the newspaper’s image and identity. A very important element of that identity had made a quiet debut in the January 31 issue (no 17, 1971), on page 503. A large coupon for ordering subscriptions was printed, with the heading ‘A good newspaper is like a ferret: lean and nosey’. The line was accompanied by Leunig’s first attempt at drawing the ferret, a somewhat bedraggled and manic-looking creature. The ferret made sporadic promotional appearances thereafter, before finally becoming ‘official’ when the ferret and the ‘lean and nosey’ line were adopted as the permanent header for the imprint page.80 As discussed in Chapter 3, Richard Walsh had devised the notion of raising revenue through running classified advertisements. He cleverly linked this initiative with a raised finger to Establishment bureaucracy by naming them ‘D-notices’, in reference to the use (and, in the mind of Sunday Review,
● Maxwell Newton copy-editing. He tended to look after who has a passion for onion soup, the arts review section while Walsh chose that, and it’s not a bad test of dealt with the news section at the these dumps.’ front. Following a critical assessment Beckett was a gregarious, larger- of the food and service, occupying than-life bon viveur, familiar with three columns, Orr writes ‘Perhaps many of Melbourne’s restaurants, this criticism is a little over-harsh. I and with an authoritative knowledge don’t think so. And anyway, the mugs of cuisine. had the temerity to advertise in this Walsh recognised an opportunity, paper, so they must expect full judgeand encouraged Beckett to take on a ment.’ permanent column as a restaurant reviewer. To circumvent the possibility of preferential treatment, Beckett decided to write under a nom de plume. Thus was born one of Nation Review’s enduring characters, Sam Orr. Over time, Sam Orr developed his own identity and character, as a misogynistic, foul-tempered, rude individual lacking any of the social graces normally associated with fine dining. The reviews could be savage, but they were based on a discerning palate and good judgment, and there were kudos to be gained from a Sam Orr visit, even if the review was unkind. Sam Orr’s approach to restaurant reviews is typified by his March 9, 1973 review of Sydney restaurant La Bonne Boeuf. Orr had selected this restaurant on the basis of an advertisement placed by the restaurant in the paper’s classified advertisement section. The first column of the article is spent in describing a failed attempt to visit a different restaurant. The second column consists mostly of a complaint about standardisation of menus, to ‘international’ cuisine, and the preponderance of French provincial styles in Sydney: ‘Now menus at these socalled French provincial places— which are growing like wild fennel all over Sydney—are becoming almost as standardised as that old enemy of mine, the international menu.’ Orr continues: ‘The Scarlet Lady [Orr’s regular dining companion], ● Bob Ellis
abuse,) by the Australian government of ‘Defence Advisory Notices’ as a means of gagging news stories deemed to be not in the interests of the nation’s security. Sunday Review D-notices became the first official duty of the ferret. A short-lived notion - Ferret Corner - was used to invite the first classified advertisements, in issue 36, June 13, 1971. By the following week, however, it had become ‘Ferret’s D-notices’, with the ferret in a heading banner above the advertisements. By June 1971 various long-distance distribution matters had been resolved, and the newspaper began to feel itself to be truly a national newspaper. Logistics required however that print runs be concluded by the Friday evening of each week, allowing some distribution to be done on Saturday, while more distant locations may not receive their copies before Monday. With newsagents stocking issues for the full week, the specifically Sunday element was becoming less relevant. The issue of May 1, 1971, (No. 34), replaced the motto 'The independent quality Sunday Newspaper' with 'The independent national quality weekly'. The same substitution was applied to the front page baseline on June 13, 1971 (No, 36). An eerie disappearing act of the word Sunday began to occur. The six issues from June 6, 1971 used a banner containing The Review in large print, with a very small Sunday hovering above it. For the issue July 9, 1971, No. 39, the publishing date was changed to reflect the Friday of each week. The word Sunday came and went over the next few issues, reduced sometimes to an almost invisible light grey, both on the front page and in the imprint panel. Sunday finally disappeared from the imprint panel for issue 37 (June 20), and from the front page for issue 40 (July 16). The Sunday Review had quietly become simply The Review, a telling indication of its acceptance as a familiar part of life. To complete the development of the newspaper’s character, clarification was provided in issue 29 (April 25, 1971), of a house style as applied to capitalisation. ‘In essence, capitalisation will be kept to a minimum. Most titles will not be capped.’ This quirky style makes for some slightly confusing reading, and, of course, in cases where upper-case characters are used for headlines and titles, implied use of capitals cannot be determined. This brief period from May to August, 1971, may be considered as the ‘definitive’ version of the newspaper that established The Review as a viable, authoritative alternative voice in Australian media. Early in August Barry Watts was appointed, being acknowledged as Business Manager in the imprint panel for August 6, 1971 (no. 43). Presumably Watts had some significant input into The Review’s business model, for the cover price doubled (to 30 cents) on August 27 (no. 46). ● Turn To Page 18
Page 18 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016
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Nation Review ● From Page 17 In the language of Sir Humphrey, this move was ‘courageous’. The price of the Sunday Observer had been increased, six months before its demise, from 12 cents to 15 cents, and sales had dropped catastrophically. Something quite drastic needed to be done to arrest the haemorrhaging of money out of IPEC, and it irked IPEC management that this money was being used to support what they saw as not only a rather perverse side-interest by Barton, but also a directly damaging one. The stance often taken by The Review (and its predecessors) was at odds with the political affiliations of most of IPEC’s customers, and threatened to damage business relationships. It is conceivable that John Konstas pressured Watts into advocating for a price increase. From the perspective of Konstas, there was nothing to lose; either the newspaper would fail, in which case a thorny problem would have been removed, or it would begin to turn a profit, thus at least ameliorating the damage it caused. In any case, such a dramatic price hike signalled significant changes. Walsh took two lines of defence: he published a ‘One for the price of two’ editorial comment, emphasising the scale of production cost increases thus far absorbed within the cover price, and pointing out that advertising revenues continued to be low. He also attempted to sow the seed that, rather than being a newspaper, The Review was in fact a magazine, and ought therefore to be priced as a comparable magazine would be. To emphasise this point, Walsh changed the front-page baseline to read ‘The magazine that lurks within a tabloid’. The front page was adjusted to simulate a magazine appearance, with large, full-page images, overlaid with large headlines and a list of major contents in some varying form. Furthermore, the ‘One for the price of two’ line was a shrewd engagement with the bold, nose-thumbing attitude engendered by The Review, and helped take the sting out of the price increase. Certainly Walsh had a point; the quality of The Review’s content was as good as could be had anywhere, and addressed a wider range of topics than many alternatives. The equivalent Bulletin for August 28, 1971, for instance, consisted of 72 pages, but many of these were used for advertising (around 27 pages). The Review’s tabloid-sized pages held perhaps twice the content of The Bulletin’s quarto-sized pages. There were seven feature articles, and five sections containing regular columns, addressing news and arts reviews. The business section is more comprehensive than that of The Review, whereas the review section is slimmer. The Review’s price increase to 30 cents brought it into line with The Bulletin’s cover charge. Overall, Walsh’s claim is valid. It cannot be ascertained, of course, whether the price rise had long-term deleterious effects, but it is likely to have inhibited any growth in circulation figures for some time. The overall effect of the price increase on financial performance is also indeterminate. Barry Watts issued a circular to the distribution network, explaining the background for the price in-
● John Hepworth crease. anniversary of The Review. Watts too pointed out that The ReThe event was acknowledged in view was comparable in price, con- the October 8, 1971 issue (Vol. 1, No. tent and quality to the major news 52) in three ways. magazines. Richard Walsh reiterated the purBluntly, Watts writes ‘We expect pose of The Review, in ‘Four foundto lose sales as a result of this move, ing principles’. of course.’ He goes on to say ‘I trust John Hepworth penned the ‘retthat you fully realise the significance rospective memoir’ ‘Not quite roses, of the increase to The Review’s fu- roses all the way’. ture and, indeed, to your own assoMichael Leunig drew the office ciation with us as a part-time mem- cartoon already alluded to. ber of our team. Do whatever you Walsh’s four principles were: ‘To can to keep the loss of sales to a provide as free a forum of ideas as minimum.’ has yet been produced in Australia; The tone of Watts’ circular sug- To produce a unique publication gests that he was not comfortable rather than a faint echo of some halfwith the price increase, and fully an- remembered alien exemplar; To exticipated damage to the paper’s cir- plore the possibilities of being Ausculation figures. tralian; To develop a more intimate Although it is likely that it was form of journalism.’ the IPEC finance team that perHepworth’s memoir is evocative suaded Watts of the inevitability of of the adrenaline-charged terror ride the price increase, it seems to have necessary each week to meet the gone against his instincts as the front- print deadline, and the seemingly line circulation manager. unlikely survival of the newspaper Bob Ellis is clear about the ef- for an entire year. fect of the price increase: ‘For want Hepworth writes at the head of of 8 cents a week, we lost an entire the article ‘There is a fey and dreamcivilisation.’ like quality about the thought that not FAREWELL TO THE only have we reached the arrogant YELLOW SUBMARINE maturity of our first anniversary, but In terms of ‘tradition’, another that - by all the irreverent gods we momentous event took place at this hold dear - we may well live fortime. The ‘yellow submarine’, at ever.’ 822 Lorimer Street was abandoned These commemorative reflecin favour of a new location at 113 tions indicate the high degrees of opRoslyn Street, West Melbourne, ‘a timism and commitment engendered two-storey anonymous building in a by what was seen perhaps more as a pretty anonymous part of town’. mission than a commercial venture. This was to remain the Ferret’s Richard Walsh says of this moMelbourne address until 1975. ment: Our circulation and readership Watts, in his August 20 circular, ad- were more than satisfactory, particuvises distributors of the impending larly given our limited capacity to auction of all of the printing equip- promote ourselves and our perennial difficulties in achieving efficient disment. Attempting a positive interpreta- tribution. We had made the bold jump tion, Watts adds ‘We will be in our to 30c in August and the combinaown building – an indication of our tion of this improved revenue stream confidence of The Review’s future.’ plus the success of the D-Notices This upheaval heralded the first seemed to provide us with a mea-
sure of financial security, particularly given the lower overheads at our new Rosslyn Street quarters. We had been ‘thrashed with a feather’ [allusion to Walsh’s appearance before the Senate following the leaking of a senate select committee report on drugs] and were the talk of what passes for the intelligentsia in Australia. Walsh at this stage was not only editing The Review; he was also managing Gordon Barton’s recently-purchased Angus & Robertson book publishers, from an office in the same building as The Review. This necessitated a punishing schedule of commuting between his Sydney home and the Melbourne office. Barton had been somewhat elusive for much of this period, but emerged in November 1971 to give an extended interview (to an unnamed interviewer), that was published in The Review as ‘Gordon Barton in review’. Barton is introduced as ‘chairman of Ipec [sic], Tjuringa, Angus & Robertson et al, publisher of The Review and national convenor of the Australia Party’. At the end of the first year, The Review Index was published. This much-awaited innovation provided serious Review readers with a comprehensive index of all articles, letters and features published to date. Items were indexed under topic titles, such as Conservation, Bolivia, and Nader, Ralph. Unfortunately, authors’ names are not listed. For the most part, the folio page-numbering system allowed page-number references to be sufficient, but the initial issues required issue numbers as well, not having folio numbering. Approximately 7000 entries were listed in the index. Specifically excluded from the index were entries for books that had been reviewed, apparently for reasons of cost rather than policy or legal constraints. This information was, however, readily available by writing to The Review librarian (Michael Morris), as suggested in the introduction to the Index. The November 27, 1971 issue of The Review included a questionnaire insertion, intended to inform The Review about its readership, to invite criticism, and to solicit suggestions for improvements. It appears that, just prior to this, the newspaper began to engage the services of Roy Morgan, on a regular basis. Morgan conducted a series of polls to quantify the level and nature of support for The Review. For a few issues, starting February 5, 1972, small panels appeared, headed ‘Reviewlations’. Each panel announced some aspect of Review sales and the readership profile. For instance, the first in the series reported ‘45 per cent of Review purchasers are aged between 25-39 years; 32 per cent of Review purchasers are married, and 43 per cent have university degrees.’ The February 12, 1972 issue noted: ‘The Review has more readers in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania than either the Financial Review or the National Times.’, and that: ‘50 per cent of Review purchasers do not watch commercial television during their average day; 58 per cent of Review purchasers spend between 1 and 2 hours a day reading newspapers or magazines.’ These statistics were most likely published in the hope of attracting better levels of advertising, by drawing potential advertisers’ attention to the demographics of the readership.
Beyond that though, a phenomenon was beginning to make itself known—the emergence of the ‘Review type’. This aspect of Nation Review’s culture appears to have sprung spontaneously from allusions that began to surface in the correspondence pages, and it attempted to categorize the type of reader likely to engage with Nation Review and its predecessors. Readers began to identify with the newspaper, and to feel good about their association with the sorts of opinions and stances being aired in The Review. Phillip Adams says: But then, almost all of us who were writing, certainly the journalists who were columnists, but all the pundits were of the Left. I said ‘This is a problem Graham [Perkin, of The Age], we’ve got to get a couple of rightwing columnists in.’ And Graham said, well, ‘Find me one that’s got a sense of humour,’ and we couldn’t – we really tried. Of course now, the opposite is true – all the punditry, almost without exception, are Right, Hard Right, Ultra-Right, pseudo-right, - they either fake it or they believe it, so the opposite is true. So at the time Nation Review was the only place (Nation of course had vanished, and had never had the same sort of energy). So here’s the Oz era, and all these extraordinary people putting their hands up for Nation Review. And for the first time – I mean people always feel as if they ‘own’ a piece of media – they identify with it, and they feel proprietorial about it, and that’s one of the reasons – well I really push that on Late Night Live, you know, as a notion by inventing the Gladdies and ‘the listener – beloved listener’ So, what happened was, Nation Review has suddenly got a raft of people of progressive views, old and young, and that was the other thingthere was a couple of generations of them. From February 19, 1972, to March 18, 1972, Richard Beckett is no longer credited as Assistant Editor, in the imprint panel. For the next five issues no Assistant Editor is credited. There seems to be no specific explanation for this period without an Assistant Editor. Beckett continued in this interval to provide occasional book reviews, and restaurant reviews in the guise of Sam Orr. Leunig began to build on Orr’s persona during this period, in a series of cartoons amplifying Orr’s sociopathic, sinister and unpleasant character. Reflecting social values of the time, (or politically incorrect perspective,) Leunig’s offering for March 18, 1972, showing a lecherous, bearded and dark-glassed Orr, is captioned: ‘Mr Sam Orr, gourmet of 12-year-old girls, lunches in Martin Place.’ The origin of the Sam Orr alias is unknown. There may be a reflection of the notoriety surrounding University of Tasmania Professor Sydney Sparkes Orr, accused in 1955 of having an illicit liaison with a student. The accusation occurred in the midst of a particularly turbulent episode of university politics that had led to a Royal Commission. Richard Davis, investigating the episode, says ‘W.H.C. Eddy, in his monumental book on the case, argues strongly for an anti-Orr conspiracy. There is no doubt that Orr's enemies were determined to crush him if they could find evidence against him; whether any of that evidence was fraudulently concocted has not been proved.’ Whether this episode lingered in the mind of either Beckett or Leunig is not known, but the characterisation presented by Leunig seems apt, and would reflect an underlying intellectual playfulness compatible with Nation Review.
Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016 - Page 19
Observer Classic Books
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‘The Invisible Man’ by H.G. Wells Continued From Last Week “This blessed gift of smoking!” he said, and puffed vigorously. “I’m lucky to have fallen upon you, Kemp. You must help me. Fancy tumbling on you just now! I’m in a devilish scrape — I’ve been mad, I think. The things I have been through! But we will do things yet. Let me tell you — ” He helped himself to more whiskey and soda. Kemp got up, looked about him, and fetched a glass from his spare room. “It’s wild — but I suppose I may drink.” “You haven’t changed much, Kemp, these dozen years. You fair men don’t. Cool and methodical — after the first collapse. I must tell you. We will work together!” “But how was it all done?” said Kemp, “and how did you get like this?” “For God’s sake, let me smoke in peace for a little while! And then I will begin to tell you.” But the story was not told that night. The Invisible Man’s wrist was growing painful; he was feverish, exhausted, and his mind came round to brood upon his chase down the hill and the struggle about the inn. He spoke in fragments of Marvel, he smoked faster, his voice grew angry. Kemp tried to gather what he could. “He was afraid of me, I could see that he was afraid of me,” said the Invisible Man many times over. “He meant to give me the slip — he was always casting about! What a fool I was!” “The cur! “I should have killed him!” “Where did you get the money?” asked Kemp, abruptly. The Invisible Man was silent for a space. “I can’t tell you to-night,” he said. He groaned suddenly and leant forward, supporting his invisible head on invisible hands. “Kemp,” he said, “I’ve had no sleep for near three days, except a couple of dozes of an hour or so. I must sleep soon.” “Well, have my room — have this room.” “But how can I sleep? If I sleep — he will get away. Ugh! What does it matter?” “What’s the shot wound?” asked Kemp, abruptly. “Nothing — scratch and blood. Oh, God! How I want sleep!” “Why not?” The Invisible Man appeared to be regarding Kemp. “Because I’ve a particular objection to being caught by my fellow-men,” he said slowly. Kemp started. “Fool that I am!” said the Invisible Man, striking the table smartly. “I’ve put the idea into your head.” Chapter 18 The Invisible Man Sleeps Exhausted and wounded as the Invisible Man was, he refused to accept Kemp’s word that his freedom should be respected. He examined the two windows of the bedroom, drew up the blinds and opened the sashes, to confirm Kemp’s statement that a retreat by them would be possible. Outside the night was very quiet and still, and the new moon was setting over the down. Then he examined the keys of the bedroom and the two dressing-room doors, to satisfy himself that these also could be made an assurance of freedom. Finally he expressed himself satisfied. He stood on the hearth rug and Kemp heard the sound of a yawn. “I’m sorry,” said the Invisible Man, “if I cannot tell you all that I have done to-night. But I am worn out. It’s grotesque, no doubt. It’s horrible! But believe me, Kemp, in spite of your arguments of this morning, it is quit a possible thing. I have made a discovery. I meant to keep it to myself. I can’t. I must have a partner. And you. . . . We can do such things . . . But to-morrow. Now, Kemp, I feel as though I must sleep or perish.” Kemp stood in the middle of the room staring at the headless garment. “I suppose I must leave you,” he said. “It’s — incredible. Three things happening like this, overturning all my preconceptions — would make me insane. But it’s real! Is there anything more that I can get you?” “Only bid me good-night,” said Griffin. “Good-night,” said Kemp, and shook an invisible hand. He walked sideways to the door. Suddenly the dressing-gown walked quickly towards
H.G. Wells him. “Understand me!” said the dressing-gown. “No attempts to hamper me, or capture me! Or —” Kemp’s face changed a little. “I thought I gave you my word,” he said. Kemp closed the door softly behind him, and the key was turned upon him forthwith. Then, as he stood with an expression of passive amazement on his face, the rapid feet came to the door of the dressing-room and that too was locked. Kemp slapped his brow with his hand. “Am I dreaming? Has the world gone mad — or have I?” He laughed, and put his hand to the locked door. “Barred out of my own bedroom, by a flagrant absurdity!” he said. He walked to the head of the staircase, turned, and stared at the locked doors. “It’s fact,” he said. He put his fingers to his slightly bruised neck. “Undeniable fact! “But — ” He shook his head hopelessly, turned, and went downstairs. He lit the dining-room lamp, got out a cigar, and began pacing the room, ejaculating. Now and then he would argue with himself. “Invisible!” he said. “Is there such a thing as an invisible animal? . . . In the sea, yes. Thousands — millions. All the larvae, all the little nauplii and tornarias, all the microscopic things, the jelly-fish. In the sea there are more things invisible than visible! I never thought of that before. And in the ponds too! All those little pond-life things — specks of colourless translucent jelly! But in air? No! “It can’t be. “But after all — why not? “If a man was made of glass he would still be
visible.” His meditation became profound. The bulk of three cigars had passed into the invisible or diffused as a white ash over the carpet before he spoke again. Then it was merely an exclamation. He turned aside, walked out of the room, and went into his little consulting-room and lit the gas there. It was a little room, because Dr. Kemp did not live by practice, and in it were the day’s newspapers. The morning’s paper lay carelessly opened and thrown aside. He caught it up, turned it over, and read the account of a “Strange Story from Iping” that the mariner at Port Stowe had spelt over so painfully to Mr. Marvel. Kemp read it swiftly. “Wrapped up!” said Kemp. “Disguised! Hiding it! ‘No one seems to have been aware of his misfortune.’ What the devil is his game?” He dropped the paper, and his eye went seeking. “Ah!” he said, and caught up the St. James’ Gazette, lying folded up as it arrived. “Now we shall get at the truth,” said Dr. Kemp. He rent the paper open; a couple of columns confronted him. “An Entire Village in Sussex goes Mad” was the heading. “Good Heavens!” said Kemp, reading eagerly an incredulous account of the events in Iping, of the previous afternoon, that have already been described. Over the leaf the report in the morning paper had been reprinted. He re-read it. “Ran through the streets striking right and left. Jaffers insensible. Mr. Huxter in great pain — still unable to describe what he saw. Painful humiliation — vicar. Woman ill with terror! Windows smashed. This extraordinary story probably a fabrication. Too good not to print — cum grano!” He dropped the paper and stared blankly in front
of him. “Probably a fabrication!” He caught up the paper again, and re-read the whole business. “But when does the Tramp come in? Why the deuce was he chasing a tramp?” He sat down abruptly on the surgical bench. “He’s not only invisible,” he said, “but he’s mad! Homicidal!” When dawn came to mingle its pallor with the lamp-light and cigar smoke of the dining-room, Kemp was still pacing up and down, trying to grasp the incredible. He was altogether too excited to sleep. His servants, descending sleepily, discovered him, and were inclined to think that over-study had worked this ill on him. He gave them extraordinary but quite explicit instructions to lay breakfast for two in the belvedere study — and then to confine themselves to the basement and groundfloor. Then he continued to pace the dining-room until the morning’s paper came. That had much to say and little to tell, beyond the confirmation of the evening before, and a very badly written account of another remarkable tale from Port Burdock. This gave Kemp the essence of the happenings at the “Jolly Cricketers,” and the name of Marvel. “He has made me keep with him twenty-four hours,” Marvel testified. Certain minor facts were added to the Iping story, notably the cutting of the village telegraph-wire. But there was nothing to throw light on the connexion between the Invisible Man and the Tramp; for Mr. Marvel had supplied no information about the three books, or the money with which he was lined. The incredulous tone had vanished and a shoal of reporters and inquirers were already at work elaborating the matter. Kemp read every scrap of the report and sent his housemaid out to get everyone of the morning papers she could. These also he devoured. “He is invisible!” he said. “And it reads like rage growing to mania! The things he may do! The things he may do! And he’s upstairs free as the air. What on earth ought I to do?” “For instance, would it be a breach of faith if — ? No.” He went to a little untidy desk in the corner, and began a note. He tore this up half written, and wrote another. He read it over and considered it. Then he took an envelope and addressed it to “Colonel Adye, Port Burdock.” The Invisible Man awoke even as Kemp was doing this. He awoke in an evil temper, and Kemp, alert for every sound, heard his pattering feet rush suddenly across the bedroom overhead. Then a chair was flung over and the washhand stand tumbler smashed. Kemp hurried upstairs and rapped eagerly. Chapter 19 Certain First Principles “What’s the matter?” asked Kemp, when the Invisible Man admitted him. “Nothing,” was the answer. “But, confound it! The smash?” “Fit of temper,” said the Invisible Man. “Forgot this arm; and it’s sore.” “You’re rather liable to that sort of thing.” “I am.” Kemp walked across the room and picked up the fragments of broken glass. “All the facts are out about you,” said Kemp, standing up with the glass in his hand; “all that happened in Iping, and down the hill. The world has become aware of its invisible citizen. But no one knows you are here.” The Invisible Man swore. “The secret’s out. I gather it was a secret. I don’t know what your plans are, but of course I’m anxious to help you.” The Invisible Man sat down on the bed. “There’s breakfast upstairs,” said Kemp, speaking as easily as possible, and he was delighted to find his strange guest rose willingly. Kemp led the way up the narrow staircase to the belvedere. “Before we can do anything else,” said Kemp, “I must understand a little more about this invisibility of yours.” He had sat down, after one nervous glance out of the window, with the air of a man who has talking to do. His doubts of the sanity of the entire business flashed and vanished again as he looked across to where Griff-
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Observer Classic Books From Page 19 in sat at the breakfast-table — a headless, handless dressing-gown, wiping unseen lips on a miraculously held serviette. “It’s simple enough — and credible enough,” said Griffin, putting the serviette aside and leaning the invisible head on an invisible hand. “No doubt, to you, but — ” Kemp laughed. “Well, yes; to me it seemed wonderful at first, no doubt. But now, great God! . . . But we will do great things yet! I came on the stuff first at Chesilstowe.” “Chesilstowe?” “I went there after I left London. You know I dropped medicine and took up physics? No; well, I did. Light fascinated me.” “Ah!” “Optical density! The whole subject is a network of riddles — a network with solutions glimmering elusively through. And being but twoand-twenty and full of enthusiasm, I said, ‘I will devote my life to this. This is worth while.’ You know what fools we are at two-and-twenty?” “Fools then or fools now,” said Kemp. “As though knowing could be any satisfaction to a man! “But I went to work — like a slave. And I had hardly worked and thought about the matter six months before light came through one of the meshes suddenly — blindingly! I found a general principle of pigments and refraction — a formula, a geometrical expression involving four dimensions. Fools, common men, even common mathematicians, do not know anything of what some general expression may mean to the student of molecular physics. In the books — the books that tramp has hidden — there are marvels, miracles! But this was not a method, it was an idea, that might lead to a method by which it would be possible, without changing any other property of matter — except, in some instances colours — to lower the refractive index of a substance, solid or liquid, to that of air — so far as all practical purposes are concerned.” “Phew!” said Kemp. “That’s odd! But still I don’t see quite . . . I can understand that thereby you could spoil a valuable stone, but personal invisibility is a far cry.” “Precisely,” said Griffin. “But consider, visibility depends on the action of the visible bodies on light. Either a body absorbs light, or it reflects or refracts it, or does all these things. If it neither reflects nor refracts nor absorbs light, it cannot of itself be visible. You see an opaque red box, for instance, because the colour absorbs some of the light and reflects the rest, all the red part of the light, to you. If it did not absorb any particular part of the light, but reflected it all, then it would be a shining white box. Silver! A diamond box would neither absorb much of the light nor reflect much from the general surface, but just here and there where the surfaces were favourable the light would be reflected and refracted, so that you would get a brilliant appearance of flashing reflections and translucencies — a sort of skeleton of light. A glass box would not be so brilliant, not so clearly visible, as a diamond box, because there would be less refraction and reflection. See that? From certain points of view you would see quite clearly through it. Some kinds of glass would be more visible than others, a box of flint glass would be brighter than a box of ordinary window glass. A box of very thin common glass would be hard to see in a bad light, because it would absorb hardly any light and refract and reflect very little. And if you put a sheet of common white glass in water, still more if you put it in some denser liquid than water, it would vanish almost altogether, because light passing from water to glass is only slightly refracted or reflected or indeed affected in any way. It is almost as invisible as a jet of coal gas or hydrogen is in air. And for precisely the same reason!” “Yes,” said Kemp, “that is pretty plain sailing.” “And here is another fact you will know to be true. If a sheet of glass is smashed, Kemp, and beaten into a powder, it becomes much more visible while it is in the air; it becomes at last an opaque white powder. This is because the powdering multiplies the surfaces of the glass at which refraction and reflection occur. In the sheet of glass there are only two surfaces; in the powder the light is reflected or refracted by each grain it passes through, and very little gets right through the powder. But if the white powdered glass is put into water, it forthwith vanishes. The powdered glass and water have much the same refractive index; that is, the light undergoes very
little refraction or reflection in passing from one to the other. “You make the glass invisible by putting it into a liquid of nearly the same refractive index; a transparent thing becomes invisible if it is put in any medium of almost the same refractive index. And if you will consider only a second, you will see also that the powder of glass might be made to vanish in air, if its refractive index could be made the same as that of air; for then there would be no refraction or reflection as the light passed from glass to air.” “Yes, yes,” said Kemp. “But a man’s not powdered glass!” “No,” said Griffin. “He’s more transparent!” “Nonsense!” “That from a doctor! How one forgets! Have you already forgotten your physics, in ten years? Just think of all the things that are transparent and seem not to be so. Paper, for instance, is made up of transparent fibres, and it is white and opaque only for the same reason that a powder of glass is white and opaque. Oil white paper, fill up the interstices between the particles with oil so that there is no longer refraction or reflection except at the surfaces, and it becomes as transparent as glass. And not only paper, but cotton fibre, linen fibre, wool fibre, woody fibre, and bone, Kemp, flesh, Kemp, hair, Kemp, nails and nerves, Kemp, in fact the whole fabric of a man except the red of his blood and the black pigment of hair, are all made up of transparent, colourless tissue. So little suffices to make us visible one to the other. For the most part the fibres of a living creature are no more opaque than water.” “Great Heavens!” cried Kemp. “Of course, of course! I was thinking only last night of the sea larvae and all jelly-fish!” “Now you have me! And all that I knew and had in mind a year after I left London — six years ago. But I kept it to myself. I had to do my work under frightful disadvantages. Oliver, my professor, was a scientific bounder, a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas — he was always prying! And you know the knavish system of the scientific world. I simply would not publish, and let him share my credit. I went on working; I got nearer and nearer making my formula into an experiment, a reality. I told no living soul, because I meant to flash my work upon the world with crushing effect and become famous at a blow. I took up the question of pigments to fill up certain gaps. And suddenly, not by design but by accident, I made a discovery in physiology.” “Yes?” “You know the red colouring matter of blood; it can be made white — colourless — and remain with all the functions it has now!” Kemp gave a cry of incredulous amazement. The Invisible Man rose and began pacing the little study. “You may well exclaim. I remember that night. It was late at night — in the daytime one was bothered with the gaping, silly students — and I worked then sometimes till dawn. It came suddenly, splendid and complete in my mind. I was alone; the laboratory was still, with the tall lights burning brightly and silently. In all my great moments I have been alone. ‘One could make an animal — a tissue — transparent! One could make it invisible! All except the pigments — I could be invisible!’ I said, suddenly realising what it meant to be an albino with such knowledge. It was overwhelming. I left the filtering I was doing, and went and stared out of the great window at the stars. ‘I could be invisible!’ I repeated. “To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man — the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks I saw none. You have only to think! And I, a shabby, poverty-struck, hemmed-in demonstrator, teaching fools in a provincial college, might suddenly become — this. I ask you, Kemp if you . . . Anyone, I tell you, would have flung himself upon that research. And I worked three years, and every mountain of difficulty I toiled over showed another from its summit. The infinite details! And the exasperation! A professor, a provincial professor, always prying. ‘When are you going to publish this work of yours?’ was his everlasting question. And the students, the cramped means! Three years I had of it — “And after three years of secrecy and exasperation, I found that to complete it was impossible — impossible.” “How?” asked Kemp. “Money,” said the Invisible Man, and went again to stare out of the window.
He turned around abruptly. “I robbed the old man — robbed my father. “The money was not his, and he shot himself.” Chapter 20 At the House in Great Portland Street For a moment Kemp sat in silence, staring at the back of the headless figure at the window. Then he started, struck by a thought, rose, took the Invisible Man’s arm, and turned him away from the outlook. “You are tired,” he said, “and while I sit, you walk about. Have my chair.” He placed himself between Griffin and the nearest window. For a space Griffin sat silent, and then he resumed abruptly: “I had left the Chesilstowe cottage already,” he said, “when that happened. It was last December. I had taken a room in London, a large unfurnished room in a big ill-managed lodginghouse in a slum near Great Portland Street. The room was soon full of the appliances I had bought with his money; the work was going on steadily, successfully, drawing near an end. I was like a man emerging from a thicket, and suddenly coming on some unmeaning tragedy. I went to bury him. My mind was still on this research, and I did not lift a finger to save his character. I remember the funeral, the cheap hearse, the scant ceremony, the windy frost-bitten hillside, and the old college friend of his who read the service over him — a shabby, black, bent old man with a snivelling cold. “I remember walking back to the empty house, through the place that had once been a village and was now patched and tinkered by the jerry builders into the ugly likeness of a town. Every way the roads ran out at last into the desecrated fields and ended in rubble heaps and rank wet weeds. I remember myself as a gaunt black figure, going along the slippery, shiny pavement, and the strange sense of detachment I felt from the squalid respectability, the sordid commercialism of the place. “I did not feel a bit sorry for my father. He seemed to me to be the victim of his own foolish sentimentality. The current cant required my attendance at his funeral, but it was really not my affair. “But going along the High Street, my old life came back to me for a space, for I met the girl I had known ten years since. Our eyes met. “Something moved me to turn back and talk to her. She was a very ordinary person. “It was all like a dream, that visit to the old places. I did not feel then that I was lonely, that I had come out from the world into a desolate place. I appreciated my loss of sympathy, but I put it down to the general inanity of things. Reentering my room seemed like the recovery of reality. There were the things I knew and loved. There stood the apparatus, the experiments arranged and waiting. And now there was scarcely a difficulty left, beyond the planning of details “I will tell you, Kemp, sooner or later, all the complicated processes. We need not go into that now. For the most part, saving certain gaps I chose to remember, they are written in cypher in those books that tramp has hidden. We must hunt him down. We must get those books again. But the essential phase was to place the transparent object whose refractive index was to be lowered between two radiating centres of a sort of ethereal vibration, of which I will tell you more fully later. No, not those Roentgen vibrations — I don’t know that these others of mine have been described. Yet they are obvious enough. I needed two little dynamos, and these I worked with a cheap gas engine. My first experiment was with a bit of white wool fabric. It was the strangest thing in the world to see it in the flicker of the flashes soft and white, and then to watch it fade like a wreath of smoke and vanish. “I could scarcely believe I had done it. I put my hand into the emptiness, and there was the thing as solid as ever. I felt it awkwardly, and threw it on the floor. I had a little trouble finding it again. “And then came a curious experience. I heard a miaow behind me, and turning, saw a lean white cat, very dirty, on the cistern cover outside the window. A thought came into my head. ‘Everything ready for you,’ I said, and went to the window, opened it, and called softly. She came in, purring — the poor beast was starving — and I gave her some milk. All my food was in a cupboard in the corner of the room. After that she went smelling round the room, evidently with the idea of making herself at home. The invisible rag upset her a bit; you should have seen
her spit at it! But I made her comfortable on the pillow of my truckle-bed. And I gave her butter to get her to wash.” “And you processed her?” “I processed her. But giving drugs to a cat is no joke, Kemp! And the process failed.” “Failed!” “In two particulars. These were the claws and the pigment stuff, what is it? — at the back of the eye in a cat. You know?” “Tapetum.” “Yes, the tapetum. It didn’t go. After I’d given the stuff to bleach the blood and done certain other things to her, I gave the beast opium, and put her and the pillow she was sleeping on, on the apparatus. And after all the rest had faded and vanished, there remained two little ghosts of her eyes.” “Odd!” “I can’t explain it. She was bandaged and clamped, of course — so I had her safe; but she woke while she was still misty, and miaowed dismally, and someone came knocking. It was an old woman from downstairs, who suspected me of vivisecting — a drink-sodden old creature, with only a white cat to care for in all the world. I whipped out some chloroform, applied it, and answered the door. ‘Did I hear a cat?’ she asked. ‘My cat?’ ‘Not here,’ said I, very politely. She was a little doubtful and tried to peer past me into the room; strange enough to her no doubt — bare walls, uncurtained windows, truckle-bed, with the gas engine vibrating, and the seethe of the radiant points, and that faint ghastly stinging of chloroform in the air. She had to be satisfied at last and went away again.” “How long did it take?” asked Kemp. “Three or four hours — the cat. The bones and sinews and the fat were the last to go, and the tips of the coloured hairs. And, as I say, the back part of the eye, tough, iridescent stuff it is, wouldn’t go at all. “It was night outside long before the business was over, and nothing was to be seen but the dim eyes and the claws. I stopped the gas engine, felt for and stroked the beast, which was still insensible, and then, being tired, left it sleeping on the invisible pillow and went to bed. I found it hard to sleep. I lay awake thinking weak aimless stuff, going over the experiment over and over again, or dreaming feverishly of things growing misty and vanishing about me, until everything, the ground I stood on, vanished, and so I came to that sickly falling nightmare one gets. About two, the cat began miaowing about the room. I tried to hush it by talking to it, and then I decided to turn it out. I remember the shock I had when striking a light — there were just the round eyes shining green — and nothing round them. I would have given it milk, but I hadn’t any. It wouldn’t be quiet, it just sat down and miaowed at the door. I tried to catch it, with an idea of putting it out of the window, but it wouldn’t be caught, it vanished. Then it began miaowing in different parts of the room. At last I opened the window and made a bustle. I suppose it went out at last. I never saw any more of it. . “Then — Heaven knows why — I fell thinking of my father’s funeral again, and the dismal windy hillside, until the day had come. I found sleeping was hopeless, and, locking my door after me, wandered out into the morning streets.” “You don’t mean to say there’s an invisible cat at large!” said Kemp. “If it hasn’t been killed,” said the Invisible Man. “Why not?” “Why not?” said Kemp. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” “It’s very probably been killed,” said the Invisible Man. “It was alive four days after, I know, and down a grating in Great Tichfield Street; because I saw a crowd round the place, trying to see whence the miaowing came.” He was silent for the best part of a minute. Then he resumed abruptly: “I remember that morning before the change very vividly. I must have gone up Great Portland Street. I remember the barracks in Albany Street, and the horse soldiers coming out, and at last I found the summit of Primrose Hill. It was a sunny day in January — one of those sunny, frosty days that came before the snow this year. My weary brain tried to formulate the position, to plot out a plan of action. “I was surprised to find, now that my prize was within my grasp, how inconclusive its attainment seemed. As a matter of fact I was worked out; the intense stress of nearly four years’ con-
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Healthy Living
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Business
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Caravans,Camping,Touring
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FULL RANGE OF CAMPING & FISHING EQUIPMENT
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Observer Classic Books From Page 20 tinuous work left me incapable of any strength of feeling. I was apathetic, and I tried in vain to recover the enthusiasm of my first inquiries, the passion of discovery that had enabled me to compass even the downfall of my father’s grey hairs. Nothing seemed to matter. I saw pretty clearly this was a transient mood, due to overwork and want of sleep, and that either by drugs or rest it would be possible to recover my energies. “All I could think clearly was that the thing had to be carried through; the fixed idea still ruled me. And soon, for the money I had was almost exhausted. I looked about me at the hillside, with children playing and girls watching them, and tried to think of all the fantastic advantages an invisible man would have in the world. After a time I crawled home, took some food and a strong dose of strychnine, and went to sleep in my clothes on my unmade bed. Strychnine is a grand tonic, Kemp, to take the flabbiness out of a man.” “It’s the devil,” said Kemp. “It’s the palaeolithic in a bottle.” “I awoke vastly invigorated and rather irritable. You know?” “I know the stuff.” “And there was someone rapping at the door. It was my landlord with threats and inquiries, an old Polish Jew in a long grey coat and greasy slippers. I had been tormenting a cat in the night, he was sure — the old woman’s tongue had been busy. He insisted on knowing all about it. The laws in this country against vivisection were very severe — he might be liable. I denied the cat. Then the vibration of the little gas engine could be felt all over the house, he said. That was true, certainly. He edged round me into the room, peering about over his German-silver spectacles, and a sudden dread came into my mind that he might carry away something of my secret. I tried to keep between him and the concentrating apparatus I had arranged, and that only made him more curious. What was I doing? Why was I always alone and secretive? Was it legal? Was it dangerous? I paid nothing but the usual rent. His had always been a most respectable house — in a disreputable neighbourhood. Suddenly my temper gave way. I told him to get out. He began to protest, to jabber of his right of entry. In a moment I had him by the collar; something ripped, and he went spinning out into his own passage. I slammed and locked the door and sat down quivering. “He made a fuss outside, which I disregarded, and after a time he went away. “But this brought matters to a crisis. I did not know what he would do, nor even what he had the power to do. To move to fresh apartments would have meant delay; altogether I had barely twenty pounds left in the world, for the most part in a bank — and I could not afford that. Vanish! It was irresistible. Then there would be an inquiry, the sacking of my room. “At the thought of the possibility of my work being exposed or interrupted at its very climax, I became very angry and active. I hurried out with my three books of notes, my cheque-book — the tramp has them now — and directed them from the nearest Post Office to a house of call for letters and parcels in Great Portland Street. I tried to go out noiselessly. Coming in, I found my landlord going quietly upstairs; he had heard the door close, I suppose. You would have laughed to see him jump aside on the landing as came tearing after him. He glared at me as I went by him, and I made the house quiver with the slamming of my door. I heard him come shuffling up to my floor, hesitate, and go down. I set to work upon my preparations forthwith. “It was all done that evening and night. While I was still sitting under the sickly, drowsy influence of the drugs that decolourise blood, there came a repeated knocking at the door. It ceased, footsteps went away and returned, and the knocking was resumed. There was an attempt to push something under the door — a blue paper. Then in a fit of irritation I rose and went and flung the door wide open. ‘Now then?’ said I. “It was my landlord, with a notice of ejectment or something. He held it out to me, saw something odd about my hands, I expect, and lifted his eyes to my face. “For a moment he gaped. Then he gave a sort of inarticulate cry, dropped candle and writ together, and went blundering down the dark passage to the stairs. I shut the door, locked it, and went to the looking-glass. Then I understood his terror. . . . My face was white — like white stone.
“But it was all horrible. I had not expected the suffering. A night of racking anguish, sickness and fainting. I set my teeth, though my skin was presently afire, all my body afire; but I lay there like grim death. I understood now how it was the cat had howled until I chloroformed it. Lucky it was I lived alone and untended in my room. There were times when I sobbed and groaned and talked. But I stuck to it. . . . I became insensible and woke languid in the darkness. “The pain had passed. I thought I was killing myself and I did not care. I shall never forget that dawn, and the strange horror of seeing that my hands had become as clouded glass, and watching them grow clearer and thinner as the day went by, until at last I could see the sickly disorder of my room through them, though I closed my transparent eyelids. My limbs became glassy, the bones and arteries faded, vanished, and the little white nerves went last. I gritted my teeth and stayed there to the end. At last only the dead tips of the fingernails remained, pallid and white, and the brown stain of some acid upon my fingers. “I struggled up. At first I was as incapable as a swathed infant — stepping with limbs I could not see. I was weak and very hungry. I went and stared at nothing in my shaving-glass, at nothing save where an attenuated pigment still remained behind the retina of my eyes, fainter than mist. I had to hang on to the table and press my forehead against the glass. “It was only by a frantic effort of will that I dragged myself back to the apparatus and completed the process. “I slept during the forenoon, pulling the sheet over my eyes to shut out the light, and about midday I was awakened again by a knocking. My strength had returned. I sat up and listened and heard a whispering. I sprang to my feet and as noiselessly as possible began to detach the connections of my apparatus, and to distribute it about the room, so as to destroy the suggestions of its arrangement. Presently the knocking was renewed and voices called, first my landlord’s, and then two others. To gain time I answered them. The invisible rag and pillow came to hand and I opened the window and pitched them out on to the cistern cover. As the window opened, a heavy crash came at the door. Someone had charged it with the idea of smashing the lock. But the stout bolts I had screwed up some days before stopped him. That startled me, made me angry. I began to tremble and do things hurriedly. “I tossed together some loose paper, straw, packing paper and so forth, in the middle of the room, and turned on the gas. Heavy blows began to rain upon the door. I could not find the matches. I beat my hands on the wall with rage. I turned down the gas again, stepped out of the window on the cistern cover, very softly lowered the sash, and sat down, secure and invisible, but quivering with anger, to watch events. They split a panel, I saw, and in another moment they had broken away the staples of the bolts and stood in the open doorway. It was the landlord and his two step-sons, sturdy young men of three or four and twenty. Behind them fluttered the old hag of a woman from downstairs. “You may imagine their astonishment to find the room empty. One of the younger men rushed to the window at once, flung it up and stared out. His staring eyes and thick-lipped bearded face came a foot from my face. I was half minded to hit his silly countenance, but I arrested my doubled fist. He stared right through me. So did the others as they joined him. The old man went and peered under the bed, and then they all made a rush for the cupboard. They had to argue about it at length in Yiddish and Cockney English. They concluded I had not answered them, that their imagination had deceived them. A feeling of extraordinary elation took the place of my anger as I sat outside the window and watched these four people — for the old lady came in, glancing suspiciously about her like a cat, trying to understand the riddle of my behaviour. “The old man, so far as I could understand his patois, agreed with the old lady that I was a vivisectionist. The sons protested in garbled English that I was an electrician, and appealed to the dynamos and radiators. They were all nervous about my arrival, although I found subsequently that they had bolted the front door. The old lady peered into the cupboard and under the bed, and one of the young men pushed up the register and stared up the chimney. One of my fellow lodgers, a coster-monger who shared the opposite room with a butcher, ap-
peared on the landing, and he was called in and told incoherent things. “It occurred to me that the radiators, if they fell into the hands of some acute well-educated person, would give me away too much, and watching my opportunity, I came into the room and tilted one of the little dynamos off its fellow on which it was standing, and smashed both apparatus. Then, while they were trying to explain the smash, I dodged out of the room and went softly downstairs. “I went into one of the sitting-rooms and waited until they came down, still speculating and argumentative, all a little disappointed at finding no ‘horrors,’ and all a little puzzled how they stood legally towards me. Then I slipped up again with a box of matches, fired my heap of paper and rubbish, put the chairs and bedding thereby, led the gas to the affair, by means of an india-rubber tube, and waving a farewell to the room left it for the last time.” “You fired the house!” exclaimed Kemp. “Fired the house. It was the only way to cover my trail — and no doubt it was insured. I slipped the bolts of the front door quietly and went out into the street. I was invisible, and I was only just beginning to realise the extraordinary advantage my invisibility gave me. My head was already teeming with plans of all the wild and wonderful things I had now impunity to do. Chapter 21 In Oxford Street “In going downstairs the first time I found an unexpected difficulty because I could not see my feet; indeed I stumbled twice, and there was an unaccustomed clumsiness in gripping the bolt. By not looking down, however, I managed to walk on the level passably well. “My mood, I say, was one of exaltation. I felt as a seeing man might do, with padded feet and noiseless clothes, in a city of the blind. I experienced a wild impulse to jest, to startle people, to clap men on the back, fling people’s hats astray, and generally revel in my extraordinary advantage. “But hardly had I emerged upon Great Portland Street, however (my lodging was close to the big draper’s shop there), when I heard a clashing concussion and was hit violently behind, and turning saw a man carrying a basket of sodawater syphons, and looking in amazement at his burden. Although the blow had really hurt me, I found something so irresistible in his astonishment that I laughed aloud. ‘The devil’s in the basket,’ I said, and suddenly twisted it out of his hand. He let go incontinently, and I swung the whole weight into the air. “But a fool of a cabman, standing outside a public house, made a sudden rush for this, and his extending fingers took me with excruciating violence under the ear. I let the whole down with a smash on the cabman, and then, with shouts and the clatter of feet about me, people coming out of shops, vehicles pulling up, I realised what I had done for myself, and cursing my folly, backed against a shop window and prepared to dodge out of the confusion. In a moment I should be wedged into a crowd and inevitably discovered. I pushed by a butcher boy, who luckily did not turn to see the nothingness that shoved him aside, and dodged behind the cab-man’s fourwheeler. I do not know how they settled the business, I hurried straight across the road, which was happily clear, and hardly heeding which way I went, in the fright of detection the incident had given me, plunged into the afternoon throng of Oxford Street. “I tried to get into the stream of people, but they were too thick for me, and in a moment my heels were being trodden upon. I took to the gutter, the roughness of which I found painful to my feet, and forthwith the shaft of a crawling hansom dug me forcibly under the shoulder blade, reminding me that I was already bruised severely. I staggered out of the way of the cab, avoided a perambulator by a convulsive movement, and found myself behind the hansom. A happy thought saved me, and as this drove slowly along I followed in its immediate wake, trembling and astonished at the turn of my adventure. And not only trembling, but shivering. It was a bright day in January and I was stark naked and the thin slime of mud that covered the road was freezing. Foolish as it seems to me now, I had not reckoned that, transparent or not, I was still amenable to the weather and all its consequences. “Then suddenly a bright idea came into my head. I ran round and got into the cab. And so, shivering, scared, and sniffing with the first inti-
mations of a cold, and with the bruises in the small of my back growing upon my attention, I drove slowly along Oxford Street and past Tottenham Court Road. My mood was as different from that in which I had sallied forth ten minutes ago as it is possible to imagine. This invisibility indeed! The one thought that possessed me was — how was I to get out of the scrape I was in. “We crawled past Mudie’s, and there a tall woman with five or six yellow-labelled books hailed my cab, and I sprang out just in time to escape her, shaving a railway van narrowly in my flight. I made off up the roadway to Bloomsbury Square, intending to strike north past the Museum and so get into the quiet district. I was now cruelly chilled, and the strangeness of my situation so unnerved me that I whimpered as I ran. At the northward corner of the Square a little white dog ran out of the Pharmaceutical Society’s offices, and incontinently made for me, nose down. “I had never realised it before, but the nose is to the mind of a dog what the eye is to the mind of a seeing man. Dogs perceive the scent of a man moving as men perceive his vision. This brute began barking and leaping, showing, as it seemed to me, only too plainly that he was aware of me. I crossed Great Russell Street, glancing over my shoulder as I did so, and went some way along Montague Street before I realised what I was running towards. “Then I became aware of a blare of music, and looking along the street saw a number of people advancing out of Russell Square, red shirts, and the banner of the Salvation Army to the fore. Such a crowd, chanting in the roadway and scoffing on the pavement, I could not hope to penetrate, and dreading to go back and farther from home again, and deciding on the spur of the moment, I ran up the white steps of a house facing the museum railings, and stood there until the crowd should have passed. Happily the dog stopped at the noise of the band too, hesitated, and turned tail, running back to Bloomsbury Square again. “On came the band, bawling with unconscious irony some hymn about ‘When shall we see His face?’ and it seemed an interminable time to me before the tide of the crowd washed along the pavement by me. Thud, thud, thud, came the drum with a vibrating resonance, and for the moment I did not notice two urchins stopping at the railings by me. ‘See ’em,’ said one. ‘See what?’ said the other. ‘Why — them footmarks — bare. Like what you makes in mud.’ “I looked down and saw the youngsters had stopped and were gaping at the muddy footmarks I had left behind me up the newly whitened steps. The passing people elbowed and jostled them, but their confounded intelligence was arrested. ‘Thud, thud, thud, when, thud, shall we see, thud, his face, thud, thud.’ ‘There’s a barefoot man gone up them steps, or I don’t know nothing,’ said one. ‘And he ain’t never come down again. And his foot was a-bleeding.’ “The thick of the crowd had already passed. ‘Looky there, Ted,’ quoth the younger of the detectives, with the sharpness of surprise in his voice, and pointed straight to my feet. I looked down and saw at once the dim suggestion of their outline sketched in splashes of mud. For a moment I was paralysed. “‘Why, that’s rum,’ said the elder. ‘Dashed rum! It’s just like the ghost of a foot, ain’t it?’ He hesitated and advanced with outstretched hand. A man pulled up short to see what he was catching, and then a girl. In another moment he would have touched me. Then I saw what to do. I made a step, the boy started back with an exclamation, and with a rapid movement I swung myself over into the portico of the next house. But the smaller boy was sharp-eyed enough to follow the movement, and before I was well down the steps and upon the pavement, he had recovered from his momentary astonishment and was shouting out that the feet had gone over the wall. “They rushed round and saw my new footmarks flash into being on the lower step and upon the pavement. ‘What’s up?’ asked someone. ‘Feet! Look! Feet running!’ “Everybody in the road, except my three pursuers, was pouring along after the Salvation Army, and this blow not only impeded me but them. There was an eddy of surprise and interrogation. At the cost of bowling over one young fellow I got through, and in another moment I was rushing headlong round the circuit of Russell
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Observer Classic Books From Page 29 Square, with six or seven astonished people following my footmarks. There was no time for explanation, or else the whole host would have been after me. “Twice I doubled round corners, thrice I crossed the road and came back upon my tracks, and then, as my feet grew hot and dry, the damp impressions began to fade. At last I had a breathing space and rubbed my feet clean with my hands, and so got away altogether. The last I saw of the chase was a little group of a dozen people perhaps, studying with infinite perplexity a slowly drying footprint that had resulted from a puddle in Tavistock Square, a footprint as isolated and incomprehensible to them as Crusoe’s solitary discovery. “This running warmed me to a certain extent, and I went on with a better courage through the maze of less frequented roads that runs hereabouts. My back had now become very stiff and sore, my tonsils were painful from the cabman’s fingers, and the skin of my neck had been scratched by his nails; my feet hurt exceedingly and I was lame from a little cut on one foot. I saw in time a blind man approaching me, and fled limping, for I feared his subtle intuitions. Once or twice accidental collisions occurred and I left people amazed, with unaccountable curses ringing in their ears. Then came something silent and quiet against my face, and across the Square fell a thin veil of slowly falling flakes of snow. I had caught a cold, and do as I would I could not avoid an occasional sneeze. And every dog that came in sight, with its pointing nose and curious sniffing, was a terror to me. “Then came men and boys running, first one and then others, and shouting as they ran. It was a fire. They ran in the direction of my lodging, and looking back down a street I saw a mass of black smoke streaming up above the roofs and telephone wires. It was my lodging burning; my clothes, my apparatus, all my resources indeed, except my cheque-book and the three volumes of memoranda that awaited me in Great Portland Street, were there. Burning! I had burnt my boats — if ever a man did! The place was blazing.” The Invisible Man paused and thought. Kemp glanced nervously out of the window. “Yes?” he said. “Go on.”
Melbourne
Chapter 22 In the Emporium “So last January, with the beginning of a snowstorm in the air about me — and if it settled on me it would betray me! — weary, cold, painful, inexpressibly wretched, and still but half convinced of my invisible quality, I began this new life to which I am committed. I had no refuge, no appliances, no human being in the world in whom I could confide. To have told my secret would have given me away — made a mere show and rarity of me. Nevertheless, I was halfminded to accost some passer-by and throw myself upon his mercy. But I knew too clearly the terror and brutal cruelty my advances would evoke. I made no plans in the street. My sole object was to get shelter from the snow, to get myself covered and warm; then I might hope to plan. But even to me, an Invisible Man, the rows of London houses stood latched, barred, and bolted impregnably. “Only one thing could I see clearly before me — the cold exposure and misery of the snowstorm and the night. “And then I had a brilliant idea. I turned down one of the roads leading from Gower Street to Tottenham Court Road, and found myself outside Omniums, the big establishment where everything is to be bought — you know the place: meat, grocery, linen, furniture, clothing, oil paintings even — a huge meandering collection of shops rather than a shop. I had thought I should find the doors open, but they were closed, and as I stood in the wide entrance a carriage stopped outside, and a man in uniform — you know the kind of personage with ‘Omnium’ on his cap — flung open the door. I contrived to enter, and walking down the shop — it was a department where they were selling ribbons and gloves and stockings and that kind of thing — came to a more spacious region devoted to picnic baskets and wicker furniture. “I did not feel safe there, however; people were going to and fro, and I prowled restlessly about until I came upon a huge section in an upper floor containing multitudes of bedsteads, and over these I clambered, and found a restingplace at last among a huge pile of folded flock mattresses. The place was already lit up and agreeably warm, and I decided to remain where I was, keeping a cautious eye on the two or
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three sets of shopmen and customers who were meandering through the place, until closing time came. Then I should be able, I thought, to rob the place for food and clothing, and disguised, prowl through it and examine its resources, perhaps sleep on some of the bedding. That seemed an acceptable plan. My idea was to procure clothing to make myself a muffled but acceptable figure, to get money, and then to recover my books and parcels where they awaited me, take a lodging somewhere and elaborate plans for the complete realisation of the advantages my invisibility gave me (as I still imagined) over my fellow-men. “Closing time arrived quickly enough. It could not have been more than an hour after I took up my position on the mattresses before I noticed the blinds of the windows being drawn, and customers being marched doorward. And then a number of brisk young men began with remarkable alacrity to tidy up the goods that remained disturbed. I left my lair as the crowds diminished, and prowled cautiously out into the less desolate parts of the shop. I was really surprised to observe how rapidly the young men and women whipped away the goods displayed for sale during the day. All the boxes of goods, the hanging fabrics, the festoons of lace, the boxes of sweets in the grocery section, the displays of this and that, were being whipped down, folded up, slapped into tidy receptacles, and everything that could not be taken down and put away had sheets of some coarse stuff like sacking flung over them. Finally all the chairs were turned up on to the counters, leaving the floor clear. Directly each of these young people had done, he or she made promptly for the door with such an expression of animation as I have rarely observed in a shop assistant before. Then came a lot of youngsters scattering sawdust and carrying pails and brooms. I had to dodge to get out of the way, and as it was, my ankle got stung with the sawdust. For some time, wandering through the swathed and darkened departments, I could hear the brooms at work. And at last a good hour or more after the shop had been closed, came a noise of locking doors. Silence came upon the place, and I found myself wandering through the vast and intricate shops, galleries, showrooms of the place, alone. It was very still; in one place I remember passing near one of the
Tottenham Court Road entrances and listening to the tapping of boot-heels of the passers-by. “My first visit was to the place where I had seen stockings and gloves for sale. It was dark, and I had the devil of a hunt after matches, which I found at last in the drawer of the little cash desk. Then I had to get a candle. I had to tear down wrappings and ransack a number of boxes and drawers, but at last I managed to turn out what I sought; the box label called them lambswool pants, and lambswool vests. Then socks, a thick comforter, and then I went to the clothing place and got trousers, a lounge jacket, an overcoat and a slouch hat — a clerical sort of hat with the brim turned down. I began to feel a human being again, and my next thought was food. “Upstairs was a refreshment department, and there I got cold meat. There was coffee still in the urn, and I lit the gas and warmed it up again, and altogether I did not do badly. Afterwards prowling through the place in search of blankets — I had to put up at last with a heap of down quilts — I came upon a grocery section with a lot of chocolate and candied fruits, more than was good for me indeed — and some white burgundy. And near that was a toy department, and I had a brilliant idea. I found some artificial noses — dummy noses, you know, and I though of dark spectacles. But Omniums had no optical department. My nose had been a difficulty indeed — I had thought of paint. But the discovery set my mind running on wigs and masks and the like. Finally I went to sleep in a heap of down quilts, very warm and comfortable. “My last thoughts before sleeping were the most agreeable I had had since the change. I was in a state of physical serenity, and that was reflected in my mind. I thought that I should be able to slip out unobserved in the morning with my clothes upon me, muffling my face with a white wrapper I had taken, purchase, with the money I had taken, spectacles and so forth, and so complete my disguise. I lapsed into disorderly dreams of all the fantastic things that had happened during the last few days. I saw the ugly little Jew of a landlord vociferating in his rooms; I saw his two sons marvelling, and the wrinkled old woman’s gnarled face as she asked for her cat. I experienced again the strange sensation of seeing the cloth disappear, and so I came round to the windy hillside and the sniffing old clergyman mumbling ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ at my father’s open grave. To Be Continued Next Issue
Observer Crossword Solution No 19 A D U L T E R E R
D J U ND D R E R OS
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U S P E R I A T Y E E P E R B U ON N E Y R E I N A D S I X E D A I S Y N A T F
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S CRUNCH I NG S H R O M O A A GR A B B E D D E R E R I D L GA R U S A B L E YOD E L E K E S S E A L S A DD S S S COOP E A D H Y DR A N T S I DO DOE R E L A D Y ME D A L S Y E A H N E T H U S K EW NO T A F T S AWN M V OA D TWO T I M E S C AM E S S OBOE L I E D B S AGO D A R I E N Y L ON R B R I P E OA T H M I N T GNU S P A NG A D O I NG B U L L I ON T S MA N E T H S L I NO D I V A ROS S D A N N J E T S F ORGE D I E S S I D E L L L K I NGDOMS T ME L E E E MA L L S MAMA MA I L S MA P F A NN Y HOOP L A I N S E R E R N A L UGGAGE E I L U S R
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Nation Review
‘Magazine part-funded by CIA’ ■ The March 4, 1972 issue contained an innovation - Ferretwatch a regular column devoted to criticism of the Australian Press. This was an important step. Besides its primary role of invigilation, there was an implied role of self-criticism, as well as a considerable risk of retaliation from other media. Initially Ferretwatch restricted its criticism to the political bias being expressed by the main dailies, but would go on to highlight inconsistencies, inaccuracies and general silliness. Given its idiosyncratic house style, its vocal partiality and its self-conscious larrikinism, The Review would have made an easy target, but other media outlets seemed keen to avoid acknowledgement of its presence. In the February 19, 1972 issue, The Review printed a Leunig cartoon with the title ‘The Sceptic’s Think Tank. A paragraph summarised the aspirations of The Review at the time: ‘The Review is conceived as a potpourri of dissenting fact and opinion. It provides the kind of facts you won’t read anywhere else and a forum for critical political and social comment. It is aimed at the analytical minority who want straight facts and uncompromised opinions.’ Another ‘Reviewlation’ noted ‘Only 2 per cent of Review purchasers do not see a need for change in the world around them.’ This was the lofty height from which Ferretwatch judged. From May 13 1972, ‘The Sceptic’s Think Tank’ supplanted ‘The magazine that lurks within a tabloid’ in the front-page baseline, remaining until the formation of Nation Review. Another touch of tongue-in-cheek bravado arrived on the cover for June 17, 1972, with the addition of the slogan ‘Est. 1970 Still going strong’, maintained until July 8, 1972. NATION From March 25 to June 24, 1972, John Hepworth was appointed Assistant Editor. Most likely, Hepworth took over responsibility for the Arts/Review section of the paper, while Walsh continued to edit the news section and contribute a column (‘Continuity’), as had been the case with Beckett. This situation was the precursor to perhaps the most significant moment in the history of the newspaper—the purchase of Tom Fitzgerald’s Nation journal, and its amalgamation with The Review to form Nation Review. Ken Inglis, one of Nation’s longest-serving contributors, has edited a representative collection of articles from the journal, and provided some background history. In brief, Barry Humphries introduced Tom Fitzgerald to George Munster in 1958, and the pair conceived the notion of publishing an independent journal that would add a level of quality, depth and reasoned opinion to existing news coverage, thus encouraging more useful and informed political debate. Fitzgerald had already established a reputation as the most respected Australian finance and economics journalist, in his role as financial editor for The Sydney Morning Herald. Such was his value to Rupert Henderson, Fairfax’s Managing Director, that Henderson persuaded the
● Tom Fitzgerald company to allow Fitzgerald to continue in his role at the Herald, while simultaneously starting up Nation. Munster, in the meantime, simply impressed all who met him as ‘genius’. Prior to his involvement with Nation, Munster had taught himself several languages, co-edited a magazine, and tried to write a novel, while producing incisive book reviews. Munster had never wanted to put himself under the control of an employer, so the degree of independence offered by Fitzgerald was perhaps attractive to him. The first issue of Nation was published September 26, 1958. It was 14 years later that the merger with The Review took place, an impressive run for a journal that was always under-funded and that refused to pander to sensationalism, shallow analysis or populism. From the outset, Nation offered a fresh outlook for Australians who were dissatisfied with the torpor induced by the Menzies era, with its adherence to US-directed policy, its tired approach to national aspiration, and its parochial perspective. As was the case for The Review in later years, Nation was able to attract contributions from writers who wanted to air new ideas, to explore alternative world views, and to address matters that conventional newspapers chose to suppress. Nation was printed by Francis James, himself a colourful and enigmatic character. James had been injured during his wartime role as a Spitfire pilot. His sense of adventure had taken him into a multitude of activities, culminating somewhat bizarrely in
the creation and production of The Anglican weekly newspaper (his father was an Anglican clergyman). James was enthusiastic about Nation, and was prepared to hold off printing other material if there was an urgent need for Nation to be printed. James, along with Professor John Anderson, holder of the Challis chair of philosophy in the University of Sydney from 1927 to 1958.107 was a recurring eminence grise behind the scenes, influencing the philosophical stance, and the sense of iconoclasm shared by contributors to both Nation and Nation Review. Nation, although considered by some to be ‘Sydney-centric’ (the column addressing events in Melbourne was called ‘The Melbourne Spy’, implying an outsider’s perspective on that city), was able to assemble every fortnight an impressive array of international material and comment, as well as contributions from across the nation. Inglis points out that, despite its fortnightly publishing cycle, Nation was often very prompt with its coverage of developing stories, an indication of the robust network of contributors who enthusiastically posted their copy to Nation’s post-office box for Munster to collect. The problems with distribution endured by The Review echoed earlier trials encountered by Nation. In addition to the normal postal delays for interstate readers, some postal interference in Sydney resulted from Catholic agitation against criticism of the Catholic Church. About 25 per centt of sales were via subscription, suggesting that the value of a subscription list, included
● Bob Santamaria
in the eventual sale of Nation to Barton, was less than substantial, assuming that not everyone would choose to renew subscriptions to the new entity. By August 1962 Nation had survived, and thrived, to publish its 100th issue. By then it had become wellestablished as a journal, not only of ideas and opinion, but also of culture, through its arts reviews, and the quality of the writing it featured. At this time there was a small surge in interest in culture and the arts, with a parallel focus on political life. Robert Menzies had narrowly survived a 1961 election, won despite an absolute majority vote for the Labor Party. Internationally, Cuba was in the spotlight, following Fidel Castro’s ascent to power and the advent of communism. The virulent US response had culminated in the chaotic Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961, and the dire threat of nuclear war was about to materialise (with the missile crisis in October 1962). With the notion of the Domino Theory of creeping communism driving US paranoia, the CIA was stepping up operations in South America and south-east Asia, largely through funding for right-wing politicians, corporations and publishers of anti-communist and anti-socialist newspapers and magazines. In Australia, one such venture was the establishment of Quadrant, a quarterly magazine, funded, in part, and in secret, by the CIA through its Australian Association for Cultural Freedom (a suitably Orwellian name). Richard Krygier, acting for Michael Josselson, head of CIA’s Berlin office, had been criticised for supporting rabid anticommunists, rather than courting left-leaning intellectuals and artists. Krygier sought advice from Irving Krystol, editor of the British Encounter magazine, another CIA-supported organ. Krystol proposed the introduction in Australia of a magazine similar to Encounter, funded in the same way. Quadrant was the result, with James McAuley as editor, on the recommendation of arch-anticommunist Bob Santamaria. As a convert to Catholicism, and an intransigent cold-war warrior, McAuley was an unsurprising choice, given his reputation as a poet. The main target of Quadrant was Meanjin magazine, established in 1940 by Clem Christesen, as a literary journal, but seen by Krygier as pro-communist. Meanjin, its owners and contributors, were in turn targetted by ASIO, acting under instruction from the CIA. CIA agents John Hunt and Robbie Macauley were responsible for coordinating editorial and strategic policy for the group of CIAfunded magazines, including Quadrant. In 1962 Donald Horne suggested to Hunt and Macauley the notion of a seminar for the editors of CIA publications, to be held in Sydney and hosted by Quadrant . This proposal was accepted, and the seminar happened to coincide with Nation’s 100th issue. Inglis records that Fitzgerald omitted any mention of the seminar in the 100th issue, and was ‘cool’ (in ● Turn To Page 32
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Nation Review ● From Page 31 the older sense) to the notion. Fitzgerald had been assiduously wooed by Peter Hastings (editor of The Bulletin after Donald Horne) and John Kerr (ex-spy and eventual Governor-General), since the underwriters of the seminar were keen to ‘legitimize’ their venture by including what they saw as left-wing voices in the organizing group. Fitzgerald rather cheekily suggested that Meanjin ought to be included in the organising group, a suggestion not surprisingly ignored by theAACF. Fitzgerald, clearly understanding the purpose of Quadrant, rejected any part in proceedings, and the editors of other left-leaning magazines boycotted the seminar, on the grounds that involvement would add unmerited prestige to Quadrant. It is evident from this episode that Fitzgerald had a canny sense about political intrigue, and explains to some extent the firmly independent stance of Nation throughout its life. Sensitivity to, and interest in, the machinations of ASIO and the CIA in Australia, would persist into the Nation Review period, although, under the Nation Review banner, this attention became more concerned with the apparent imbalance in ASIO’s interest in left-leaning individuals and organisations. Circulation of Nation rose to around 11,000 in the mid-1960s. Fitzgerald declined two generous offers for funding, the first from PeterAbeles (Barton’s opposite number with his Alltrans trucking company, eventually to become TNT), and then from Rupert Henderson, of Fairfax. Wary of the loss of complete independence, Fitzgerald preferred to struggle on in the face of insufficient funds and a precarious existence. In 1964 Fitzgerald faced another effort to buy him out, the offer coming again from Rupert Henderson. This time Henderson wanted to buy out Nation and close it down, while appointing Fitzgerald as editor of the Financial Review. This would have resulted in a superb financial newspaper, and would have allowed for better use of Fitzgerald’s talents within the Fairfax empire. An added attraction was the potential removal of an irritating voice often critical of Fairfax papers. Again, Fitzgerald refused. In his account of this incident, Inglis makes no mention of the proposed fate of Munster in this scenario. If Munster were not properly looked after by Fairfax, Fitzgerald would most likely have refused, regardless of his own advantage. Nation had spawned a number of writers, journalists and editors by the mid-1960s. Several of them were enticed by the glamour of Murdoch into joining the staff of Murdoch’s new national daily, The Australian. Notably, Maxwell Newton, whose complex path would cross that of Barton’s Sunday Observer and Sunday Review, and who had developed his skills at Nation, became the first editor of The Australian, but was unable to settle to role and the constraints of the position, leaving after eight months. Indeed, Inglis notes that a major criticism by Murdoch against the early Australian was that it resembled a daily Nation. Towards the end of the 1960s Tom Fitzgerald was tiring. Nation had been in circulation for 10 years, having built up respectable circulation figures, and a fine reputation for achieving its stated goal of
even before Fitzgerald got his feet under the editorial desk; news of Deamer’s sacking reached him indirectly. Fitzgerald had burned his boats; he needed Murdoch’s salary payments to cover Nation’s debts. Fitzgerald gave serious consideration to contacting Gordon Barton for some unformed notion of assistance, following an offer already made by Barton, but the elusive entrepreneur was not easy to find, and Fitzgerald struggled miserably on under the Murdoch thumb. Ironically, Barton’s new Sunday Review now formed a major competitive threat to Nation, sharing as it did a sense of the importance of ideas, and a not insignificant overlap of contributors. The Sunday Review had the benefit of a patron with very deep pockets, a strong sense of connection with new attitudes emerging in Australian society, and access to some of the best contributors on offer, including connections with international news sources. Visually, Nation looked rather drab and old-fashioned in the light of The Review’s large photographs, Leunig’s cartoons and a bolder approach to design and layout. The pressures of shrinking finances, strong competition for a limited number of readers, Fitzgerald’s inability to bolster the enterprise because of personal commitments, tiredness, and perhaps a spirit rather broken by his subservience to Murdoch, were bound to prove terminal. The final issue of Nation went to press July 22, 1972, and re-emerged, if only in spectral guise, with the new Nation Review of the following week. In the last issue of Nation, Fitzgerald penned a farewell editorial that restated the journal’s mission, and the urgent necessity of that mission in the face of ‘reactionary tendencies’ shown by the Menzies government. He wrote ‘Sir Robert Menzies had shrewdly reared a banner with the name “Liberalism” to characterise his forces. Sir Robert has always been a man of parts, but his fatal reaction-
● Peter Abeles: offered to fund Nation Despite these pressures on his life, publishing ideas and informed opinion. On the face of it, Nation might Fitzgerald was courageous enough be seen as a safe institution, an in- in 1970 to make a significant careerherent element of Australian intel- change. He was uneasy about Warwick lectual, financial and political thought, as well as an astute evalua- Fairfax’s increasing meddling, as the ‘Committee of One’. tor of national arts and culture. Meanwhile, Murdoch had reA closer examination though would have revealed some cracks. newed his perennial offer of an ediFitzgerald had kept the cover price torial role within News Ltd, this time at 20c, despite steep rises in produc- as editorial director. Inglis notes that, despite the evertion costs, lest he lose subscribers. The difference was made up extending list of editors broken on partly through Fitzgerald’s own mort- the wheel of Murdoch’s editorial gage, but more disturbingly, by not dictatorship, and despite Munster’s warnings, Fitzgerald accepted the always paying contributors. Inglis notes that academics in par- offer when it was sweetened by ticular, slow to deliver promised ar- Murdoch allowing Fitzgerald to conticles at the best of times, tended to tinue publishing Nation indepenput writing for Nation low on their dently, and when Adrian Deamer priority lists, and fell lower on the added his encouragement. Murdoch showed his colours payment schedule. For a variety of reasons, some of the longer-standing correspondents were dropping away, and competition for upcoming talent was lively, given the number of new magazines and journals being floated by the major newspaper publishers, and by smaller special-interest communities. Ironically, some of this competition was the consequence of other publications taking Nation as inspiration to improve the quality of their own offerings, giving readers more options in the search for informed opinion. Both Fitzgerald and Munster had taken on the challenge of tertiary studies, over and above their respective commitments, to Nation, and to The Sydney Morning Herald. The earlier scintillating sessions in restaurants gave way to study, and even to some rest. Most likely, a certain esprit de corps had been lost on the 10-year journey. Nation was suffering from the same phenomenon that The Review would have to face: television advertising was making a significant incursion into advertising budgets for many companies, with equivalent reductions in funding for print-borne advertising. These factors combined to make for a rather tired journal, lacking in the earlier sparkle, although perusal suggests that the quality of most contributions continued to be high. ● Adrian Deamer
ary tendencies had been shown in the Suez affair and in his Government’s attitudes on China and Indonesia.’ He identified something of a changing of the Guard, as the generation that ‘was conscious of the margin by which it had escaped Hitler and Hirohito’ gave way to ‘others who had no political affiliations of any kind [who would] do what was possible to resist excesses and the enduringly obtuse, though influential, strain among the conservatives’. Fitzgerald’s incisive ability to identify the ideas and real issues underlying political skirmishing is clear in his farewell, many of them applying with equal urgency today. Also clear is his spirit of generosity, as he thanks those who contributed to Nation, and wishes well for the new Nation Review, with the message ‘The combination of The Review and Nation holds out the prospect of a new dimension in resources, energy and organisation for independent journalism in a setting where the qualities are desperately needed.’ NATION REVIEW Barton’s purchase of Nation appears primarily to be an act of charity, given that the journal was already well into a terminal spiral. The subscription list was small and of no great value, and there were few assets, other than the goodwill associated with the name, which would become submerged in any case. Fitzgerald, to Richard Walsh’s recollection, was most concerned to ensure that a role would exist for George Munster within the new entity. Munster might be considered Nation’s most valuable asset, so it would have been surprising if no avenue for the exercise of his talent could have been found. Walsh echoes Ken Inglis’s account when he suggests that the merging of Nation with The Review was a ‘long-term Gordon Barton project, which finally came to fruition in July 1972.’ Everingham on the other hand suggests that the purchase occurred as a consequence of Fitzgerald approaching Barton. Confirmation of rumours that had begun to appear in the Press, about the merger, was provided when Review readers encountered a preview of the new Nation Review banner, revealed in the July 8, 1972 issue. Anticipation was further fed on July 15 1972 by the addition to The Review banner of the caption ‘Nation Review is coming’. July 29, 1972 marked the publication of the first issue of Nation Review. The new organ was not significantly different, compared to immediately-preceding issues of The Review. No headline was used; instead, a large image dominated the top half of the page, while a large-type paragraph below it provided some explanation of the significance of the image (Developments in the ongoing Aboriginal Embassy episode). The new Nation Review banner had essentially the same appearance as The Review’s banner, except that a new typeface was used, resembling a stylised version of typefaces made popular during the 1930s Art Deco period. Perhaps ingesting some of Nation’s dignity, the new issue replaces the baseline ‘The sceptic’s think tank’ by the acknowledgment ‘incorporating Nation and The Review’. This reverted to the ‘lean and nosey’ line from August 19.
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Melbourne Obser ver - Wednesday, March 23, 2016 - Page 33 e urn lbo Me
Every Week in the Melbourne Observer
ver N ser O Ob TI C SE 3
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Radio: 3AW’s Andrew Bolt on TV too .................. P age 34 tr e: Next Wave Festival details ........................ P age 34 Thea heatr tre: Country Music: Musos add their voice ......................... Page 34 Jim and Aaron: Easter holiday viewing ............................ Page 36 Cheryl Threadgold: Local theatre shows, auditions .......... Page 37 US THE LLO OVATT”S MEGA CRO PL PLUS CROSSSWORD
OLDEST STAND-UP COMEDIAN Bright World
By CHERYL THREADGOLD
Hamlet and Juliet
● Elsie Hearst and Andrea James ■ From Austria to Australia, from a Deb Ball in Benalla to a Brighton Bat Mitzvah, theatre company Arthur presents the premiere of Bright World, a genre-bending trip into the heart of our history making. On December 6, 1938, Aboriginal activist William Cooper led a deputation to the front door of Melbourne’s German Embassy in protest against the mounting Nazi persecution of European Jews. Almost 80 years later, two playwrights – Andrea James, a descendant of William Cooper, and Elise Hearst, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors come together to tackle an epic legacy. Directed by Paige Rattray, the cast includes Elise Hearst, Andrea James, Kevin Kiernan-Molloy, Shari Sebbens and Guy Simon. Where: Theatre Works, 14 Acland Street, St Kilda When: April 13 – 30 Time: Wed to Sat 8pm and 1pm Wed April 20, Thu 21, Fri 22, Wed 27, Thu 28, Fri 29 Preview: Wed April 13 and Thu April 14, 8pm Prices: $35 Full/ $26 Conc, Under 30, Groups 8+ / $20 Preview (plus $2.50 booking fee per ticket) Bookings: theatreworks.org.au / 9534 3388 - Cheryl Threadgold
Media Flashes
■ A memorial wake for Melbourne musician Johnny Hawker was held in Werribee on Sunday afternoon (Mar. 20). Condolences to Anne and family. ■ Go Show promoter Dennis Smith appeared on the Mike Till Midnight (Mike Brady) radio program on 3AW on Saturday (Mar. 19). ■ Fairfax Media has announced it will cut costs up to the equivalent of 120 full-time jobs from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. ■ Richard Freudenstein is stepping down from his position as CEO of Foxtel at the end of April. Taking his place will be News Corp Australia CEO, Peter Tonagh. ■ Nine Entertainment Co. has agreed to acquire a 9.99 per cent stake in Southern Cross Media Group Limited from Macquarie Group. ■ Medical Observer will move from a weekly to monthly publication in May. ■ News Corp is seeking an Editor for Alice Springs paper the Centralian Advocate. ■ Crikey Editor Marni Cordell has been appointed the first Head of News for BuzzFeed in Australia. ■ Social Affairs Writer Rick Morton has relocated to The Australian’s Melbourne bureau from Sydney. ■ Madi Apps has a new role as a Producer with A Current Affair. ■ Caitlin Knight has joined Southern Cross Ten as the News Presenter for the network’s regional Victorian markets.
● UK comedian Lynn Ruth Miller ■ At 82 years of age, Lynn Ruth Miller claims to be the oldest stand-up comedian in the world right now. UK-based Lynn’s debut at the Melbourne Cabaret Festival last year went over well, and so this time she is debuting in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with her show This is Your Future. Lynn is a self-confessed late-bloomer to the comedy and cabaret circuit, starting her comedy career when she hit 71 years old. Over the years she has also been an author, professor, newspaper columnist, and TV writer. Fiercely independent and naturally vivacious, she is as infectiously feisty as she is witty. And with show titles like Not Dead Yet, nothing is off the table for discussion. Born in Toledo, Ohio, USA, and now resident of Brighton, England, she has ap-peared on numerous stages worldwide. She is an author of 15 books, holds two Masters degrees and even managed to make Simon Cowell laugh during her TV appearance on Britain’s Got Talent. It sounds like with so many feathers to her cap, there’s not a lot she can’t do. Lynn can be seen at The Butterfly Club from March 23 – April 17. Tickets: $38 full, $34 concession, $31 members, or Group Bookings (8+) $30 via www.thebutterflyclub.com For more information, visit www.lynnruthmiller.net
● Patrick Hercamp and Ryan Adam-Wells in Hamlet and Juliet. ■ I reckon Will would’ve enjoyed Hamlet and Juliet, probably enjoyed it more being in it. The cast of three are travelling players from outa town. They are a mini-version of The King’s Men. Off to the next town, set up barrels in town square, throw planks on top and start treading the boards. Have props, will act. There is no fourth wall and there are full house lights so it’s the Globe meets the Blackfriars. The plot is simple. Romeo’s out and Hamlet’s in - in like Flynn. Cross-dressing, terrible puns, in-jokes and intended unintended euphemisms abound. It’s a performance where too much over-acting is never enough. The actors - Tom, Big Dick and Harry - swap roles, accents and sight gags with aplomb although Aplomb is not credited in the program. There is no program. The dialogue is delivered by trigger-happy thespians who unashamedly enjoy themselves. The cast is amazingly even in talent although only one uses a razor. The company is so poor, even a flyer with details is not provided. But who would want to own up to such lines as, ‘My father’s uncle is my funcle’, and ‘Let’s play a bad game of Sodom Says’. When one character says he’s written a song in Turkey, you kinda expect he’ll gobble the lyrics. There are 419 gags in the 45 minutes show and even Francis Bacon gets a mention. Will would’ve liked that one. For Australians, it’s a one-off to hear three septics from LA refer to a mother as Mum. The show played at Chapel off Chapel. - Review by Cenarth Fox
Page 34 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Observer Showbiz
LOCAL THEATRE
Radio
Next Wave Festival
News around Victoria
Bolt on TV
Country Crossroads info@country crossroads.com.au Rob Foenander
Musos add their voice ■ Local musicians and singers have joined forces to record a new song. The proceeds from Rise - To Share The Dignity will contribute to the purchase of accommodation to help women fleeing domestic violence and homelessness. The team of Michael Cavanagh, Adrian Scott Cindy Warren Bek Brown, Nia Robertson, Rhianna Tones and Michael Cavanagh are the force behind the project. More info at niarobertsonmusic.com/share-thedignityGood Friday A
Eddie to sing Tom ■ Melbourne singer and tribute artist Eddie James will perform a Tom Jones and Friends show at the Marquee Lounge on Wednesday, April 20, commencing 8.30pm Eddie is a music veteran around the club scene with his work that covers gospel, country and rock n roll themed performances.
Peninsula Folk Club ■ The Peninsula Folk Club Club nights are held on the first Sunday of each month 5.30pm-9.30pm at the Frankston Bowling Club rooms. Informal jam session commences 5.30 pm- 6.30pm, then concert, 6.30pm - 9.30pm Members $5. Visitors $7. www.peninsulafolkclub.org.au/index.html - Rob Foenander
Fawlty Towers onstage ■ Stephen Hall will be playing Basil Fawlty in the production of Fawlty Towers announced by John Cleese and Eric Idle in Melbourne on Monday. Sybil will be played by Blazey Best. Stephen told Monday’s media call that he just about had Cleese’s ‘Silly Walk’perfected. Fawlty Towers - Live onstage will open at The Comedy Theatre on October 26 and tickets will be on sale from May 5. - Kevin Trask ■ Expect to hear excerpts of the media conference, when Kevin Trask sepaks with John Cleese, on That’s Entertainment at 12 Noon Sunday on 96.5 Inner FM.
r Obser vbeiz On This Day Show
Wednesday Thursday March 24 March 23
■ Joan Crawford, American actress, was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1906. She died aged 71 in 1977. It would have been the late Australian actor’s Norman Yemm birthday US TV personality and blogger Perz Hilton was born Mario Lavandeira in 1978 (38).
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■ Harry Houdini (Ehrich Weiss) was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1874. He died aged 52 in 1926. Silent film comedian Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle was born in 1887. He died aged 46 in 1933. Actor Steve McQueen was born in Indiana in 1930.
■ Evenings have become a whole lot busier for 3AW commentator Andrew Bolt. Bolt, who appears from 8pm-9pm with AW’s Steve Price, will now also present The Bolt Report on Sky News at 7pm. Monday-Friday, from May. The News Corp / Telstraowned broadcaster will carry Bolt’s TV program. Bolt writes for News Corp publications including the Herald Sun. “It’s a bit scary,” Bolt told News Corp. “Sky has been brilliant at news. Now it’s beefing up the views. Five nights with the radio show as well, so it will be full on — but it’s an election year, so why not?” The Bolt Report will be produced from Sky’s Melbourne studio.
New-look breakfast
■ RSN927 have this week launched a new-look breakfast program called Sports Heaven. Program Manager John Thwaites says. “RSN927 has been working hard behind the scenes over the last few months to construct a team to take the program to a whole new level. “We will have a heavy AFL focus for the entire 2016 season” Hosts Michael Christian and Mick McGuane will be joined in studio each week by a “who’s who” of the AFL including:Marc Murphy, Carlton captain; Travis Cloke, Collingwood; Brett Deledio, Richmond, Drew Petrie, North Melbourne; Paul Chapman, Geelong; Brad Johnson, Fox Footy/Western Bulldogs champ; Brian Lake, Western Bulldogs/Hawthorn; Tom Rockliff, Brisbane captain; Ted Richards, Sydney; Nathan Jones, Melbourne captain; Jimmy Bartels, Geelong; Ken Hinkley, Port Adelaide; Scott Gullan, Herald Sun; and Mark Stevens, Channel 7.
● Andrew Bolt
Briefs ■ Kyle Sandilands, KIIS personality, has lost his father Peter, who lost his battle with cancer. ■ The Hit Network, which includes Fox 101.9, is the number one radio network when it comes to web traffic, with more than 30,000 daily browsers ahead of its nearest competitor. ■ Community station 3CR has a Current Affairs Coordinator position available. The role is to maintain and resource current affairs programming blocks and special broadcasts at 3CR, on a part-time (25 hours per week) basis until April next year. ■ Leigh Drew is enjoying assembling his weekly Showbiz program on Casey FM. ■ Claire Bowditch’s afternoon program on 774 ABC is sounding less mainstream every week. ■ The Coodabeen Champions have returned for another year on 774 ABC.
Pre-record?
■ A Facebook contributor states that 3AW’s new Saturday morning House of Wellness, featuring Larry Emdur and Michelle Bridges, is actually pre-recorded on a Thursday with pre-arranged talkback callers. Is this so?
■ The Next Wave Festival 2016 will see 36 world premiere works featured across Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung lands of Kulin country in Melbourne, Thursday May 5 until Sunday May 22. Next Wave Festival is Australia’s biennial festival of the new generation in art. In 2016 Artistic Director Georgie Meagher has gathered together artists from across Australia to amplify quiet voices and bring diverse perspectives to the fore. “There are many issues facing society which can be difficult to understand and live comfortably within; we are embracing confusion and disagreement in this Festival, bringing together artists that push us to think about the relations between our lives, our politics and our universe,” says Georgie. Curated in clusters of free and ticketed activity across Melbourne, the 2016 Festival brings together the best of new art in Australia. In 2016, 75 per cent of all projects will be led by women, while strong representation of First Nations artistic voices will also continue, with 20 per cent of projects led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. Festival highlights include: A-97. An video-operatic exploration into the year 1997, led by composer Daniel Jenastch (Vic.), and performed by poet Autumn Royal, singer Sarah Byrne and dancer Atlanta Eke. ACMI Decolonist. Visual artist Katie West (WA) reflects on the impact of colonisation upon her sense of self as an Aboriginal woman, presenting a personal meditation practice and series of delicate artworks created from local flora. West Space Ecosexual Bathhouse. Perth artists Pony Express turn Royal Botanic Gardens-Victoria Melbourne’s Domain House into an immersive labyrinth of intimate encounters and sensory interactions – because if we can learn to love the Earth, maybe we can save it. The Fraud Complex. Curatorial duo Johnson+Thwaites (NSW) question authenticity in life and art, with renowned local and international artists Abdul Abdullah, Abdul Rahman Abdullah, Hany Armanious, Tully Arnot, Bindi Cole, Megan Cope, Bindi Cole, Beth Dillon, Sara Morawetz, Técha Noble, Yoshua Okón and Tyza Stewart. West Space Ground Control. Part science experiment, part love-story, the award-winning team behind Angry Sexx (Melbourne Fringe 2014) present a furious experimental sci-fi comedy about violence, technological singularity and long-distance relationships. Northcote Town Hall The Horse. Dylan Sheridan (Terminal, Next Wave Festival 2014) returns with The Horse – innovatively mapping star patterns and turning them into a dreamlike concerto. Arts House, North Melbourne Mummy Dearest. Sydney writer, performer and queerrights activist Annaliese Constable presents a hilarious and brutally honest take on parenting and childhood. Arts House, North Melbourne Passing. Dancers Amrita Hepi (NSW)and JahraWasasala (NZ) join forces in Passing, combining hip-hop prowess, contemporary dance and spoken word poetry in a physical dialogue between two daughters of diaspora. Northcote Town Hall The Second Woman. A 24-hour performance epic with artist Nat Randall (NSW) repeatedly performing a single scene inspired by John Cassavetes’ cult film Opening Night opposite 100 different male leads, explore the trade of emotion, intimacy, chemistry and authenticity in performance. ACMI Still I Rise. Queensland artist Hannah Brontë presents a politically charged, fiercely feminist rap and music video environment that explores an alternate Australia with an entirely female parliament including an indigenous woman Prime Minister. Blak Dot Gallery Under My Skin. Ground-breaking dance company The Delta Project (VIC) explores what we choose to hide and reveal in a cross-cultural work by deaf and hearing dancers that uses both Auslan and English, with dance as a universal communicator. Arts House, North Melbourne ● Turn To Page 37 Melbourne
Observer
Friday March 25
Saturday March 26
■ Good Friday. ■ The late Australian wildlife expert Harry Butler was born in Murray Bridge, SA, 86 years ago. The late Bernard King, flamboyant entertainer, was born in 1934. He died aged 68 in 2002. Singer Aretha Franklin is 74 today.
■ Australian actor Chips Rafferty was born as John Goffage in Broken Hill in 1909. He died aged 62 in 1971. Playwright Tennessee Williams was born in 1911. He died aged 70 in 1982. Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy was born 85 years ago. US actor James Caan is 77 today.
Sunday March 27 ■ American actor David Janssen was born in 1930. He died aged 49 in 1980. English actor Michael York is 74. German actress Maria Schneider was born in 1952. She died aged 58 in 2011. Singer Mariah Carey was born in New York in 1970 (46).
Monday March 28
■ Michael Parkinson, English TV talk-show host, is 81. He was born in Yorkshire. Reba McEntire, American country singer, is 62. She was born in Oklahoma. Ian ‘Dicko’ Dickson (Perrygrove) was born in Birmingham in 1963 (53). ‘Dicko’ has returned to television.
Tuesday March 29 ■ Eric Idle, one of the Monty Python team, was born in County Durham, England in 1943 (73). Model and actress Elle MacPherson (Eleanor Gow) was born in Sydney in 1964 (52). New Zealand actress Lucy Lawless (Xena) is 46.
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
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ShowBiz!
Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016 - Page 35
Observer Showbiz
Four Last Names
● Blake Freeman and Murphy McLachlan ■ Great mates and even greater comedians, Blake Freeman and Murphy McLachlan, say they have four last names, three outstanding public transport fines, two foolish dads, and one killer stand-up show titled Blake Freeman and Murphy McLachlan Have Four Last Names for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Blake (fresh from the Triple J Raw Comedy 2016 State Final) and Murphy combine to deliver a slick stand-up show that maintains their unique and unpredictable style. Blake Freeman and Murphy McLachlan Have Four Last Names showcases the young comics’ best material, taking turns to jump on stage and share their favourite jokes, insights, and anecdotes. Their refreshing combination of solid proven content with improvisational antics and clever banter might encourage audiences to want to hang out with the likeable lads at the bar afterwards. The guys are not strangers to comedy festivals, having previously mounted shows in MICF, Melbourne Fringe,Adelaide Fringe and Perth Fringe. When they aren’t busy performing stand-up comedy around Australia, they are hosting podcasts (Beer Eye With Your Mates Guys, Double Dipcast), running comedy rooms (Club Voltaire Comedy, Comedy at the Wilde), and producing and performing on television (Live on Bowen, About Tonight). Bookings are highly recommended. Venue: Belleville, Globe Alley, Melbourne. Dates: Tuesday March 22- Saturday, April 2 (no show Sunday). Time: 9:45pm. Tickets: $10-$15. Bookings: www.trybooking.com/JWGI - Cheryl Threadgold
Jude’s debut album ■ Singer-songwriter-comedian Jude Perl has finally succumbed to the natural progression of the music industry, and sold her music, her brand, and her ability to make decisions to SugarHope Records - the company responsible for Sugar-Oh’s.Putting smiles on faces for over 65 years! SugarHope Records presents Jude Perl’s debut album Modern Times – produced by GrammyAwardwinning engineer Brian Paturalski in LA. Paturalski also mixed Jude’s last single Girls And Boys from her debut EP 3am, which received regular airplay on commercial radio (including on Fox FM and 2Day FM). Following a sell-out season of her debut comedy show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2015, Jude will also be performing her new show, Part Of This Complete Breakfast at the 2016 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The show details her exciting journey from a humble jingle writer, to a wannabe pop singer. Her inspirational story just goes to show that anything is possible if you work hard, believe in yourself . Dreams really can come true. Performance Season: Wednesday March 23, Sunday April 17 Venue: The Butterfly Club, Carson Place, (off Little Collins St), Melbourne Tickets: $32 full, $28 concession, $26 members or Group Bookings Bookings: www.thebutterflyclub.com - Cheryl Threadgold
TV, Radio, Theatre Latest Melbourne show business news - without fear or favour
Jessica returns
Gentlemen’s Agreement ■ Work Hard, Live Weird and Short Fuse Productions present Gentlemen’sAgreement with LisaSkye and Nick Caddaye in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Lisa-Skye has spent the last decade performing comedy both in Australia and abroad, gaining rave notices for her storytelling in the heartfelt Songs My Parents Taught Me, stand-up for her show Ladyboner, and cross-platform hosting of LisaSkye’s Lovely Tea Party in multiple festivals, including Edinburgh Fringe, Adelaide Fringe, Perth Fringeworld and Midsumma. Nick Caddaye has been Australian Comedy’s reclusive genius for nearly20 years, appearing only occasionally, be it as founder and head-writer for of comedy group The Anarchist Guild Social Committee, co-creator of yuletide musical/panto The Terminativity, or host of the sell-out festival success Late Night Letters and Numbers. Venue: Tuxedo Cat 293 La Trobe St, Melbourne. Dates: April 7 - 17 (no show Monday or Wednesday). Time: 9.45pm. Tickets: $22.00 full / $18.50 conc. Bookings: www.tixnofee.com and at the door - Cheryl Threadgold
Destiny Racer ● Jessica Pratt ■ Australian soprano Jessica Pratt has di Lammermoor tells of Lucia’s forced returned home to perform her career- marriage to ensure her family’s future. defining role in Victorian Opera’s proLucia’s lover Edgardo is the swornduction of Lucia di Lammermoor. enemy of the Lammermoor family and The world’s leading Lucia, she has despite their vow to marry, Lucia’s sung the role in more than 20 produc- brother Enrico manipulates his sister to tions and was only the third Australian marry another man. after Dame Nellie Melba and Dame Joan His actions set in motion tragic and Sutherland to sing this role at La Scala bloody consequences. in Milan. This marks her first production The production is conducted by Vicin Australia. torian Opera’sArtistic Director Richard “I’m very excited to sing Lucia in Mills and will be directed by award winAustralia. It’s my favourite role and the ning director , who was recently nomirole I’ve sung the most all over the nated for a 2015 Green Room Award for world,” says Jessica. his production of Victorian Opera’s The “After singing it from Peru to La Grumpiest Boy in the World. Scala, I finally get to sing it at home. My Reflecting on Donizetti’s 1835 masMum is very excited because she can terpiece, Menzies notes that: “Lucia di finally bring all of her friends.” Lammermoor was the first opera to break Jessica continues her ascent in the from tradition by not bringing its leading United States. In December, the colora- lady back from the brink of madness. tura soprano makes her debut at The Met“Previously the insane woman would ropolitan Opera as The Queen of the return to sanity through love or through Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. the guidance of a man, however Lucia is Reunited with baritone José Carbó, first not to follow suit. who performs the role of her brother the“This finality for Lucia and for the Enrico, Pratt also performs alongside former Victorian Opera emerging artist audience to experience is something that Carlos E. Bárcenas as her lover I feel is one of the many reasons this opera and the character of Lucia still fasEdgardo. cinates people today.” This production marks Bárcenas’ first Performances: April 12, 14, 16, 19, major lead role with the company, having appeared alongside Pratt in both La 21 at 7:30pm Venue: Her Majesty’s Theatre traviata (2014) and I Puritani (2015). Tickets: from $65.50. VOyage 30 and His casting reflects Victorian Opera’s commitment to the development under $30 Bookings: 1300 795 012 or online at of emerging artists. A tragic love-story featuring one of ticketek.com.au - Cheryl Threadgold opera’s most iconic mad scenes, Lucia
Review: Splendour ■ Think of an instrumental quartet. Each instrument has its own individual voice yet works in harmony with the others. Together they repeatedly visit the composer’s leitmotif finding new expressions and forms. Such is Abi Morgan’s Splendour. Four women find themselves experiencing the last moments of a dictatorship’s demise. Micheleine (Belinda McClory), the dictator’s wife, her friend, Geneveive (Olga Makeeva), the international photographer, Kathyrn (Rosie Lockhart) and the translator, Gilma (Olivia Monticciolo)
are trapped by the encroaching revolution. What ensues is an exploration of their individual concerns, their hopes and regrets and the tragedy of a failed state and its impact on a population. Morgan’s assuredness as a playwright enables her to give each character a personal voice, an inner voice that can be shared with the audience as an aside and a voice articulated through dialogue. Added to the mix is the ability to transcend time and revisit moments in the play – the leitmotif – to find another nuance or expose a character flaw. Turn To Page 37
● Simon Godfrey ■ Award-winning comedian and one-man character machine Simon Godfrey fires up the engines for a new show, Destiny Racer, at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival from April 7. Destiny Racer is the high-octane tale of a legend’s return to the track. In the wild days of 1950s motorsport, racing genius Jean Shaffer is lured out of retirement for one last race - the deadly Le Mans 24-hour. To win, Jean must beat the odds and a cowboy competing on horseback. In a time where throwing a few hay bales on the corners were the limits of track safety, can Jean resist the sponsor's push for more speed? The race has it all - money, corruption, fast cars and disguised Nazi rocket scientists. Simon Godfrey's writing credits include BBC's Newsjack, The Glass House, Good News Week and The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting. He was the recipient of the 2012 Moosehead Award for Boneshaker, 2013 Weekly Best Comedy Award Adelaide Fringe, 2013 Best Script Award Short+Sweet Sydney and is the moustachioed half of the sketch duo This is Siberian Husky. His inventive comedy has been compared to South Park and The Mighty Boosh. Simon’s new adventure will transport audiences to a world of turbocharged silliness, where the characters fly at you as fast as mimed race cars. Venue: Tuxedo Cat, (Big Cat) 293 -299 La Trobe St, Melbourne. Dates:April 7 – 17 Time: 7.15pm (6.15pm Sunday) Tickets: 22 Full / 19 Concession / 19 Group (6+) Bookings: trybooking.com or at the door - Cheryl Threadgold
Page 36 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Observer Showbiz What’s Hot and What’s Not in Blu-Rays and DVDs
● He Named Me Malala, an exceptional documentary feature on an extraordinary young girl. FILM: HE NAMED ME MALALA: Genre: Documentary/Drama. Cast: Malala Yousafzai, Ziauddin Yousafzai, Toor Pekai. Year: 2015. Rating: M. Length: 88 Minutes. Stars: **** Verdict: An extraordinary look at the events leading up to the Taliban's 2012 attack on Pakistani schoolgirl, Malala Yousafzai, for speaking out on girls' education followed by the aftermath, including her speech to the United Nations, the private girl and the relationship with her family who are equally intriguing. The "He" in the title is Ziauddin Yousafzai, father of the Pakistan's teenage Nobel peace winner named her Afghan folk heroine Malalai, a Joan of Arc figure who rallied Pashtun fighters against the British in 1880. Director Davis Guggenheim has created a compelling and insightful look at an extraordinary and inspirational young girl who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her "struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education." As the film jumps back and forth between her childhood in Pakistan and present day, with animated sequences that add even more emotional life, you can't help but be entranced by this enchanting young girl in this film of a real heroine to millions. FILM: ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS - THE ROAD CHIP: Genre: Family/Animation. Cast: Jason Lee, Jesica Ahlberg, Josh Green, Bella Thorne, Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting. Year: 2015. Rating: PG. Length: 92 Minutes. Stars: **½ Verdict: As the story goes, through a series of misunderstandings, Alvin, Simon and Theodore come to believe that Dave (Jason Lee) is going to propose to his new girlfriend in New York City, and dump them, so they have three days to get to him and stop the proposal. This fourth film in the popular "Chipmunk" series is about as silly as Children's movies get over the silly season. Though a slight step-up from the previous effort, "Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked," this may entertain the kiddies, but will test the patience of adults, like escorting your daughters to a "One Direction" concert. The animation is superb, however, the visual effects that blend them into the real world is sometimes hit and miss, the jokes generally misfire, the pacing frenetic, but nonetheless, this noisy, ear thumping, eye-popping moan inducing adventure is mostly harmless. FILM: COLOSSUS - THE FORBIN PROJECT: Genre: Science Fiction/Thriller.. Cast: Eric Braeden, Susan Clark, William Schallert, Gordon Pinsent. Year: 1970. Rating: PG. Length: 100 Minutes. Stars: ***½ Verdict: Dated but nonetheless fascinating and ultimately gripping scifi thriller of a sophisticated computer programmed to run all of America's nuclear defences, but shortly after being turned on it detects its Soviet counterpart (Guardian) and both computers insist that they be linked, and as soon as the link is established the two become a new Super computer and threaten the world with the immediate launch of nuclear weapons if they are detached. Intelligently written for the screen by James Bridges (The China Syndrome) and well directed by Joseph Sargent (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three), the cast all give solid performances, most notably Eric Braeden as Dr. Charles Forbin as the creator of Colossus in this thought provoking Cold War "Frankenstein," son of "Hal" and father of "Demon Seed," "War Games" and "Skynet" tale. A special mention must go to legendary voice artist Paul Frees for his chilling and intelligent work in voicing Colossus.
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Movies, DVDs With Jim Sherlock and Aaron Rourke
The Boy And The Beast ■ (PG). 119 minutes. Now Showing at Cinema Nova. Writer/director Mamoru Hosoda continues his winning streak with The Boy And The Beast, a gorgeously animated, densely structured fantasy that combines drama, action, and humour to sensational effect. Like his previous films, this also concentrates on fractured family conditions and the effect it has on a young child. Here it is nine year-old Ren, running away from home after the sudden death of his mother. His father is absent due to a sour divorce, and Ren's relatives are lessthan-helpful. While trying to avoid a couple of street cops, Ren meets and then follows a bear-like creature into the parallel world of Jutengai, a realm populated by a fantastic array of beasts. The loud, arrogant bear is Kumatetsu (voiced by the one-andonly Koji Yakusho, most recently seen in the disturbing thriller The World Of Kanako), a much-disliked warrior who is currently up against fellow combatant Iozen (Kazuhiro Yamaji), as both have the opportunity to become the next Lord of Jutengai. To stay in competition, Kumatetsu must take in a pupil, and he forcibly makes the highly reluctant human child his new student. As time passes, the two learn a great deal about each other and ultimately, themselves. As Ren develops into a young man, he will also befriend high school student Kaede (Suzu Hirose), a quietly intelligent girl who'll help him find his own path. For those who loved Hosoda's last three films, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) (****), Summer Wars (2009) (****½), and Wolf Children (2012) (****½), they will not be disappointed with The Boy And The Beast. Exhilarating and touching, the film imaginatively integrates spectacular action set-pieces with moments of genuine humour and tenderness, allowing the audience to become fully immersed in the story being told. Hosoda again displays incredible affection and care towards his fascinating gallery of characters, and his interest in a united 'family', and especially the journey of the young, certainly brings up comparisons to legendary director Hayao Miyazaki (Howl's Moving Castle / My Neighbour Totoro). In fact, this would make an exceptional double bill with Spirited Away. With Miyazaki in apparent retirement, Hosoda looks like he has now been crowned the new king of Japanese feature film anime. After the phenomenal The Boy And The Beast, there isn't much doubt that he deserves it. RATING - ****½.
The Mermaid (M). 94 minutes. Now Showing at Hoyts Melbourne Central. Having recently passed the incredible tally of $500 million at the Chinese box-office, making it the highest grossing film in that country, The Mermaid is currently enjoying a successful run in Australian cinemas, even
though the advertising campaign has been a lot more low-key. A pity, since this is not only writer/ producer/director Stephen Chow's best film since his mega-hit action/ comedy Kung-Fu Hustle in 2004, but it is flat-out one of the funniest to be released in recent years. The story introduces us to reckless billionaire Liu Xuan (Chao Deng), a rags-to-riches businessman who owns various coastal islands. Using sonar technology that his company have designed, as well as striking a deal with the sexy, ruthless Ruolan (Yuqi Zhang), he will be able to lay claim to a particular island, one that is protected because of the local marine life. The devices cause dolphins and other species to retreat from the area, but if they do remain they will suffer an explosively bloody end. Another sea community affected are the local mermaids, who devise a plan to woo and then kill the womanising Liu. The scenario will involve pretty, innocent Shan (Yun Lin, who at times resembles a young Shu Qi), but the mission backfires when Liu and this would-be assassin fall in love. There is so much to enjoy in The Mermaid. The pacing is breakneck yet fluid, and the visual effects are cartoonish in the best possible way, giving the whole premise a largerthan-life feel. The comedy is razor-sharp, and whether the gags are physical or verbal, the execution is split-second perfect. With so many comedies today feeling bloated and lazy, it is tremendous to see such a movie written, played, and cut with such refreshing precision. Performances play a large part in the film's success. Chao Deng walks a brilliant line between obnoxious excess and street-level charm, and his character arc is both funny and endearing. Show Luo scores well as Octopus, the original devisor of the assassination plot, and a running gag that evolves between he and Liu's bodyguards is hilarious. The standout however is Yun Lin, who is completely enchanting as Shan. Exuding an honesty and sincerity that is positively infectious, Lin also displays immaculate comic timing, and a number of her facial expressions are priceless. This should catapult her into the big time the same way Amelie did for Audrey Tautou. As already stated, this is a major return to form for Stephen Chow (King Of Comedy / Shaolin Soccer / Forbidden City Cop), whose past two directorial efforts, the mildly entertaining CJ7 (2008) and the overly familiar Journey To The West (2013), were both below the star's usual high standards. Here all cylinders are firing, and it is a treat to watch a film-maker hitting a cinematic home-run. For those that miss The Mermaid in theatres, please keep an eye out for it when it hits DVD, as you will experience a unique blend of energetic comedy and environmental treatise. RATING - ****. - Aaron Rourke
Top 10 Lists THE AUSTRALIAN BOX OFFICE TOP TEN: 1. ZOOTOPIA. 2. LONDON HAS FALLEN. 3. DEADPOOL. 4. THE LADY IN THE VAN. 5. 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE. 6. GRIMSBY. 7. HOW TO BE SINGLE. 8. THE DAUGHTER. 9. BROOKLYN. 10. SPOTLIGHT. NEW RELEASES AND COMING SOON TO CINEMAS AROUND AUSTRALIA: MARCH 24: A BIGGER SPLASH, AMBARSARIYA , BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, EYE IN THE SKY, KUNG FU PANDA 3, MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 2, OUR LAST TANGO. MARCH 31: LABYRINTH OF LIES, SHERPA. THE DVD AND BLU-RAY TOP RENTALS & SALES: 1. THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY - Part 2 [Action/ Jennifer Lawrence]. 2. SPECTRE [Action/Thriller/Daniel Craig, Monica Bellucci, Christoph Waltz, Lea Seydoux]. 3. BRIDGE OF SPIES [Drama/ Thriller/Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Alan Alda]. 4. HE NAMED ME MALALA [Feature Documentary/Malala Yousafzai]. 5. SECRET IN THEIR EYES [Thriller/ Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts]. 6. KNIGHT OF CUPS [Drama/Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman]. 7. THE PROGRAM [Drama/Ben Foster, Dustin Hoffman, Chris O'Dowd]. 8. THE MARTIAN [Sci-Fi/Adventure/Drama/Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain]. 9. THE DRESSMAKER [Drama/ Comedy/Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth]. 10. MAN UP [Comedy/Romance/ Simon Pegg, Olivia Williams]. Also: BLACK MASS, HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: GHOST DIMENSION, THE WALK, NO ESCAPE, MISS YOU ALREADY, BURNT, CRIMSON PEAK, LEGEND, SICARIO. NEW RELEASE HIGHLIGHTS ON DVD THIS WEEK: ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: ROAD CHIP [Comedy/Jason Lee, Josh Green]. ROCK THE KASBAH [Comedy/Bill Murray, Zooey Deschanel]. THE GREAT GILLY HOPKINS [Comedy/Kathy Bates, Julia Stiles]. CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES [Crime/ Drama/Mystery/John Travolta]. NEW RELEASE HIGHLIGHTS ON BLU-RAY THIS WEEK: ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: ROAD CHIP [Comedy/Jason Lee, Josh Green]. ROCK THE KASBAH [Comedy/Bill Murray, Zooey Deschanel]. CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES [Crime/ Drama/Mystery/John Travolta]. THE SHANNARA CHRONICLES. NEW RELEASE AND RE-RELEASE CLASSICS ON DVD THIS WEEK: None Listed for This Week. Turn To Page 43
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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016 - Page 37
Observer Showbiz Eleanor’s Story
Local Theatre With Cheryl Threadgold
Passion Play
Melbourne
Observer UNLIMITED COMEDY BATTLE SPIRIT
SHOWS
● Ingrid Garner ■ Eleanor’s Story: an American Girl in Hitler’s Germany was a gripping and terrifying tale of a young girl's experience growing up in war-torn Berlin during WWII. Beautifully written and performed, this extraordinary true story presents a unique perspective that not only highlights the devastating effects of war, but the atmosphere of fear and distrust that threatened the lives of anyone who spoke out against Hitler's Nazi regime. The play is based on Eleanor Ramrath Garner’s autobiography adapted by her granddaughter Ingrid Garner, who also stars in this one-woman show. The emotional connection heightens the significance of Eleanor’s story and survival. Eleanor was only nine years old when her father accepted a lucrative job in Berlin that promised to save them from the depression. The family, her parents and older brother, were or en route from New York to Germany in the autumn of 1939 when Hitler declared war on Poland. Unable to return to America they had no choice but to continue on to Germany. It’s remarkable that Garner was able to convey so much in one hour - from the uncertain but almost normal beginnings in Berlin to the increasing hardships and dangers that threatened the family as the war progressed. During the story telling Garner takes on many convincing roles and at times with humour. She portrays Eleanor’s austere and emotionally distant parents to great effect. With just a trunk and two chairs for props and projected images displayed on a screen, Garner is able to evoke the terror, hardships, hopes and struggles of war through a young girl’s eyes – hunger (food became increasingly hard to get), threats from the Gestapo, air raids and carpet bombing, horrendous treatment of Jews and the harrowing brutality of the Russian occupation. Garner’s exceptionally powerful and emotional performance about the young life of her grandmother is incredibly moving, as his her amazing story. Eleanor’s Story played at Chapel Off Chapel. - Review by Beth Klein
■ Melbourne Passion Play: The 20th Annual Melbourne Passion Play will be presented at Ruffey Lake Park, Doncaster at 10.00am on Good Friday, March 25. Enquiries: 0466 211 744. ■ Off the Leash Theatre: Next to Normal April 2 Latrobe Performing Arts Centre; April 8, 9 West Gippsland Arts Centre, April 23 The Gem Players Community Theatre, Emerald. Director: Nicholas Kong. Bookings and further details: www.offtheleashtheatre.com.au ■ Panorama Theatre Company: Grease April 8 - 17 at the Frankston Arts Centre. Director: Mark Raynes; Musical Director: Maddy Corbel; Choreographers: Tara Kabalan and Natasha Harvey. Bookings: www.panoramatheatrecompany.com.au ■ Five Women Wearing the Same Dress (by Alan Ball) April 7 - 16 at the Bradshaw Street Community Theatre, Bradshaw St., Essendon. Director: Natasha Boyd. Tickets: $20/$18. Bookings: www.essendontheatrecompany.com.au ■ The 1812 Theatre: The Haunting of Daniel Gartrell (by Reg Cribb) April 7 - 23 at The 1812 Theatre, 3-5 Rose St., Upper Ferntree Gully. Director: John Bishop. Tickets: $27. Bookings: 9758 3964.. ■ Sunshine Community Theatre: Wake Me Up Before I Burgie (by Paul Rourke), April 8 - 23 at Dempster Park Hall, 82 Phoenix St., North Sunshine. Director: Faye Lockwood Rourke. Tickets: $20/$15. Bookings: 0432973381. ■ ARK Theatre: The ARKadian Authentic All Women Old Time Music Hall (by Colin Mockett) April 8 - 16 at 17 Nelson rd., Lilydale. Director: Fiona Carter. Tickets: $20/$18. Bookings: 0491 151 340 ■ Peridot Theatre: One Act Play Season. 'A Suitcase Uncleared' (by Chris Hotson); 'Committed' (by Alison Knight); 'Rain' (by Jessica Messenger) April 14 - 17 at the Unicorn Theatre, Lechte Rd., Mt Waverley. Directors: Lisa McNiven, Alison Knight and Alastair Rice. Tickets: $15. Bookings: 9808 0770. ■ Frankston Theatre Group: The Odd Couple, Female (by Neil Simon April 15 - 24 at the Mt Eliza Community Hall, Canadian Bay Rd., Mt Eliza. Director: Roy Thompson. Tickets: $28/ $25/$15 Bookings: 1300 665 377. ■ Heidelberg Theatre Company: Twelve Angry Men (by Reginald Rose) April 29 - May 14 at 36 Turnham Ave., Rosanna. Director: Gavin Williams. ■ Heidelberg Theatre Company: God of Carnage (by Yasmina Reza) July 1 - July 16 at 36 Turnham Ave., Rosanna. Director: Terese Maurici-Ryan. ■ Heidelberg Theatre Company: A Streetcar Named Desire (by Tennessee Williams) September 9 - 24 at 36 Turnham Ave., Rosanna. Director: Karen Wakeham.. ■ Heidelberg Theatre Company: One Man Two Guvnors (by Richard Bean) November 18 - December 3 at 36 Turnham Ave., Rosanna. Director: Chris Baldock.
BOUTIQUE THEATRE
AUDITIONS
■ Off the back of a successful Melbourne Fringe show, Boutique Theatre presents its first foray into original Australian works with two one-act plays: Madame Bast by Matthew Sini and Don’t Tell The Women by Samantha Cunningham, playing March 23 – April 2 at Brunswick Mechanics Institute. In a bid to develop new Australian work, Boutique Theatre presents two stand-alone performances, different in tone but sharing female-centric themes and diverse characters. Madame Bast is the story of the sassy, outspoken rationalist Jaz. She doesn’t believe in a god or ghosts or any of that ‘newage mumbo jumbo’. But when she jokingly attends a séance hosted by an outrageous psychic medium calling herself Madame Bast, Jaz becomes increasingly haunted by a voice from her past, and struggles to maintain her rationality in the face of the dead not quite staying dead. Written by Matthew Sini, the play is a quirky comedy about belief, death and psychics obsessed with ancient Egypt. Matthew has written several short plays and was highly commended in the Queensland State Library’s Young Writers Award. Madame Bast is his first full-length theatrical work to be staged. The second show of the double bill, Don’t Tell The Women, is an exploration of relationships from a male perspective. Three men walk into a bar, or so the joke goes; however, no one is laughing all that much in this examination of how men feel about the women in their lives and how they talk to other men about them. Don’t Tell The Women takes a look at what could have been, what might have been and what never was in an honest and sometimes uncomfortable chat at the bar. Written by Samantha Cunningham (By Any Other Name, The Long Walk Theatre) the piece explores male perspectives on relationships, communicating with women and opening up to male friends. Performances: March 23 – April 2 at 8pm. Venue: Brunswick Mechanics Institute. Tickets: $28.50/$26. Bookings: www.try booking.com/Booking/BookingEventSummary.aspx?eid=181169
■ Heidelberg Theatre Company: A Streetcar Named Desire (by Tennessee Williams) April 2 at 6.00pm, April 3 at 1.00pm at 36 Turnham Ave., Rosanna. Director: Karen Wakeham. Enquiries: 0489 552 043. ■ Malvern Theatre Company: And Then There Were None (by Agatha Christie) April 3 at 2.00pm, April 4 at 7.00pm at 29 Burke Rd., Malvern. Director: Nicholas Opolski. Enquiries: home@malverntheatre.com.au ■ Playhouse Players Inc: Measure for Measure (by William Shakespeare; Adaptation by Jonathon Bate and Eric Rasmussen) April 10 and April 17 from 2.00pm at East Malvern RSL, Stanley Grose Drive, East Malvern. Under the direction of Playhouse Players and Melbourne Shakespeare Society. Audition kit available from playhouseplayers@hotmail.com
NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL ● From Page 34 The Voices of Joan of Arc. Actor and theatre maker Janie Gibson (Vic) creates an intimate performance together with violinist Xani Kolac (The Twoks), giving voice to the prophetess and warrior’s story of resistance. Northcote Town Hall Some 14 projects in the 2016 Festival have been developed through Kickstart, Next Wave’s flagship learning program. Unique to Australia for its multi-faceted approach, depth and scale, Kickstart is money, time and space for young artists to develop ambitious projects – to think bigger than they ever have before. Five projects have been developed through Next Wave’s long running and highly successful Emerging Curators Program, which provides the most comprehensive development opportunity for young curators in Australia. Partner organisations: Gertrude Contemporary, West Space and Centre for Contemporary Photography, alongside new partners for 2016, Liquid Architecture andArts Project Australia.
● Bart Freebairn ■ Bart Freebairn's new show Unlimited Comedy Battle Spirit, opens this week at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Now Melbourne-based, Bart has been performing comedy for 10 years and has popped up on the Comedy Channel, writer on Good News Week, heard on RRR FM and as a regular on Triple J. Bart’s performing style is not only funny but can be bizarre, whimsical, gentle and surreal, while at other times his Queensland roots emerge, displayed by his faultless impersonations of the Average Aussie Bloke. This particular show touches lightly on the themes of belonging, comfort and … being fancy. True to his dedication to the Unlimited Comedy Battle Spirit, Bart will be performing every single night of the comedy festival. Venue: The Imperial Hotel. Dates: March 23 – April 17. Time: 9.15pm. Tickets: $15-$25. Bookings: bartlol.com
REVIEW: SPLENDOUR ● From Page 35 This is craftsmanship of the highest order. The demands on the cast are extraordinary. They have to switch effortlessly between these states and literally talk with the audience one moment and exchange dialogue the next. All the while they must maintain the stories momentum and continuity. This requires an inordinate degree of rapport between the cast and a confidence in their own personal performance. They all succeed. The set is simple and stark. The sound effects sparse but appropriate with the lighting subtly changing to accentuate a particular moment or character. The director (Jenny Kemp) keeps movement purposeful but efficient. Red Stitch have a coup on their hands with this production. It is the most assured piece of theatre I have seen in a long time and they have a company of players to do it justice. Until April 16. Red Stitch Theatre. Bookings: 9533 8083 / redstitch.net - Review by David McLean
REVIEW: REDEMPTION ■ The La Mama Courthouse has been transformed, the stage is as red as Hell’s fires. Smoke hangs in the air, as does nostalgia, in the form of a crackling Irish ballad. There is a deep sense of foreboding. The stage’s edges are burnt and frayed - reminiscent of an institution unraveling. So begins the play Redemption which delves into the difficult issue of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. A young priest, Ben (Anthony Crowley), returns to his home town to assist the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse. He meets with his childhood mentor and priest Terry (Tom Considine). Throughout the course of their interaction the complex nature of their relationship is laid bare. The legacy Ben lives with is visceral and painful to behold. But it’s the aging Terry’s indifference which is most deeply disturbing. He whiles away his time listening to the footy and ripping off the collection plate to pay for his pepperoni pizza. Written by Anthony Crowley, Redemption is a passionate and thoughtful attempt to expose the ongoing effects of this terrible issue. It asks if remorse plays a part in redemption, but also explores the absence of remorse and its implications. The acting is excellent and the script plausible and measured (if a little confusing at the beginning). There are moments of humour at the outset, which create empathy for Terry, leaving one feeling deeply unsettled when his dark, repellent secrets are revealed. Redemption is not an easy play to watch, but is a timely and thought-provoking night at the theatre. Season: Until March 27 Times: Thu-Sat 7:30, Sun 4pm Duration: Approx. 60 mins Venue: La Mama Courthouse, 349 Drummond St, Carlton Tickets: Full $25/ Concession $15 Bookings: www.lamama.com.au or 9347 6142 - Review by Catherine McGergor
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Page 38 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016 Melbourne
Observer
Lovatts Crossword No 19 Across
1. Able to be modified 6. Run away (4,3) 10. Crumpling 16. Drunkard 17. Canary Islands port, ... Palmas 19. Endure 20. Sheep fibre 21. Brass instrument 22. Snatched 23. Wallop 26. Church senior 28. Alliance 30. Smiles 31. Recite 33. Composer, Sir Edward ... 35. Serviceable 37. Wild grass 38. Fork point 39. Espionage agents 41. Mountain call 43. Supplement, ... out 44. Fragrant flower 45. Scornfully disobey 46. Corrosive substance, ... soda 48. Aquatic mammals 50. Contributes 51. Devout 52. Small fenced-in area 53. Sore secretion 55. Ice-cream server 57. Respectful 60. Ethnic bigots 62. Young man 64. Fire-fighting fixtures 67. Mass 68. Damages (bodywork) 69. Public pool 71. Achiever 72. Endorse (motion) 74. Camouflage colour 75. Italian farewell 77. Naked rider, ... Godiva 79. Bravery badges 82. A single entity 83. Peruses 85. Betray, ... on 87. OK (informal) 89. Tennis barrier 90. Ashen 91. Epsom annual horse race 92. Actor, ... Gibson 94. German Mrs 96. Distort 98. The N of NB 99. Synagogue scholar 100. Send back 102. Sort (through) 104. Cut (timber) 106. Gets 107. Tout 109. Cargo 111. Be unfaithful to (3-4) 112. Nothing 113. Milkshake ingredient 114. Ship's spine 116. Fraud 118. Frog relatives 119. ... of Carpentaria 121. Incursion 123. Woodwind instrument 125. Fibbed 127. Can metal 128. Excursion 130. Sunbeams 132. Truck compartment 134. Palm cereal 136. Tanzania's ... es Salaam 137. Squalid 139. Large racing yacht 140. Tennis ace, ... Nastase 141. Fishing-line fibre 143. Convict's ball & ...
Across 145. Mortuary table 147. Lawyer's charge 148. Wound with dagger 149. Ready for picking 150. Pledge 152. Put strain on 154. Writer, ... Blyton 156. Basketball shot, ... dunk 158. Flavouring herb 159. Oxlike antelopes 161. Acorn bearer 163. Prince Edward, ... of Wessex 165. Spicy lentil dish 167. Hunger pain 169. Restate 171. Fabric join 173. Cropping up 175. Silver bars 177. Pet's parasites 179. Ills 181. Nipples 182. Lion's neck hair 183. Honey wine 185. Positive replies 187. Dismiss 189. ... & downs 190. Kitchen flooring 191. Female opera singer 192. Cloth remnant 194. Security lapses 196. Non-clergy 197. Antarctic inlet, ... Sea 198. Judo level 199. Beijing's former name 202. Deplete 204. Cycled 205. Fast planes 206. Counterfeited 208. Auction 210. Knight's mount 212. Filled pastries 213. Sports team 214. Infant babble (4,4) 216. Happily ... after 217. Contactable (2,4) 219. Realms 221. Devonshire tea cake 223. Red-rind cheese 225. Perform 226. All-in fight 227. Open tart 230. Long films 232. Snowfields elevator (3,4) 235. Shopping precincts 236. Mother 238. Smash into 240. Anaesthetic gas 242. Exclusive group 243. Dispatches 244. Town plan 245. Physician 246. Attacked (3,2) 247. City, ... Angeles 248. Nursemaid 249. Ring-throwing game 251. Hallucinogenic drug (1,1,1) 253. Electricity power source 255. Greener 256. Revise (text) 258. Cash disc 259. Cases 260. Belonging to us 261. Beer 262. Divorce order (6,4) 263. Gizmos 264. Armless (dress)
Down 1. Marriage cheat 2. Vibrates 3. Pixie 4. Very eager 5. Radiant 6. Destines to grim fate 7. At summit of 8. Smoke vent 9. Tale 11. False pretences 12. Push for 13. Unrefined 14. Partook of liquor 15. Aphrodite & Athena 16. Moved to & fro 18. Regrettably 24. Clue 25. Low platform 27. Swollen heads, big ... 29. Yes vote 30. Tile mortar 31. Potatoes 32. Even so 34. Stretch 36. Alias (1,1,1) 38. Cheap booze 39. Indian gowns 40. Drink delicately 42. Windies batsman, Clive ... 45. Pasture 46. Desert plants 47. Kill selectively 49. ... & Gomorrah 51. Dried plum 52. Jerks 54. Voyage 56. Primp & ... 58. Peeper 59. Black wood 60. All set 61. Neck warmer 63. Date of offensive (1-3) 65. Cosmetics boss, Elizabeth ... 66. Israeli city, ... Aviv 68. Sheikhdom, Abu ... 70. Dedicatory verses 72. Cloyingly sweet 73. Duress 74. Roadway edgings 76. Rowing aids 78. Jabbers 80. Vaporised 81. Removes whiskers 83. Resist openly 84. Half 86. Fox brush 88. High temperature 91. Actor/singer, Sammy ... (5,2) 92. Fade (away) 93. Touch with tongue 95. Flying saucers (1,1,2) 97. World Wide Web (1,1,1) 99. Cheese skin 100. Entertainer, ... Harris 101. Layers 103. Mexican food shell 105. Carol, The First ... 107. Common seasoning 108. Afternoon meal 110. Gentle strokes 113. Humdrum 115. Lawful 117. Groaning 118. Close-fitting 119. Cunning 120. Polishes (car) 122. Tibet's ... Lama 124. Pyramids country 126. Blowpipe missiles
Down
129. Commercials 130. British flying force (1,1,1) 131. Produce 133. Overalls, ... & brace 135. Bullfight cry 137. Big cricket hit 138. Unique model (3-3) 142. Persona ... grata 144. African anteater 146. Inclination 148. Clever 149. Betrothal token, engagement .. 151. Scrutinising (accounts) 153. Every day 155. Sketched 157. So! 158. Provides with personnel 159. Squall 160. Obtain (support) (4,2) 162. Bend to pray 164. Mekong valley nation 166. Holidays owed, time in ... 167. Coal mines 168. In attendance (2,4) 170. Abated 172. Breakfast or dinner 174. Enervates 175. Forbids 176. One, numero ... 178. Browns (meat) quickly 180. Disfigure 182. Feel the loss of 184. Michaelmas ... 186. Skim on ice 188. Environmental treaty, ... Proto col 190. Plenty 191. Challenged 193. Midges 195. Filter 197. Cotton spool 198. Avoid 200. Age 201. Candied 203. Requires 205. Abandon (lover) 206. Financial penalties 207. Shady tree 209. Flee to wed 211. Duck's mate 212. Agreement 213. Window ledges 214. Confused 215. Fuses (of bones) 218. Coffee lounge 219. Surfer, ... Slater 220. Sailors 222. Troop formations 224. Flour factory 226. Yacht's principal canvas 228. Antiquated 229. Crooner, ... King Cole 231. Hardens 233. Leo animal 234. 'Tis (2'1) 235. Death in Venice author, Thomas ... 236. China's ... Zedong 237. Pacify 239. Portable 241. Horse-riding show 243. NE US state 244. Corpse repository 248. Fixes with hammer 250. Ayatollah's land 252. Former Italian currency 253. Castle ditch 254. Model, ... Macpherson 257. Used spade
Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016 - Page 39
Solution on Page 30
MEGA
CROSSWORD No 19 1
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Page 40 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016
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Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, y March 23, 2016 - Page 41
Victoria Pictorial
Nostalgia Photo Collection Bendigo
● Bendigo. 1920s.
● Bendigo. Circa 1925.
● Gold mines, Bendigo. 1861.
● Bendigo Gardens. 1907.
● Charing Cross, Bendigo
● E S & A Bank, Charing Cross, Bendigo
● Pall Mall, Bendigo. 1901.
● The Mall, Bendigo. 1906.
Page 42 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016 Melbourne
Observer
www.MelbourneObserver.com.au
Sport Extra
‘Disgraceful’ treatment of Club ■ Warrnambool Greyhound Racing Club President Phillip Mitchem has branded Greyhound Racing Victoria'streatment of his troubled club a "disgrace". The club currently operates from the Warrnambool Showgrounds, however their lease expires in June and negotiations with the Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources for a 25year extension to the lease have not been finalised. Club officials and industry participants are frustrated at the lack of action on the issue, which continues what has been a turbulent year for greyhound racing at Warrnambool. Warrnambool Greyhound Racing Club Manager, Matt Ansell, died suddenly in January, while Greyhound Racing Victoria sacked the club's voluntary committee on March 11, replacing it with an administrator. Those within the club feel that relations have become strained with GRV after the committee expressed some fortright opinions regarding the performance of the controlling body. Club President Phillip Mitchem told the Warrnambool Standard that GRV has made a commitment to provide administration support and assistance with a lease renegotiation, but that he feels that support has not been forthcoming. "There has been a complete lack of process in the way GRV has acted," Mitchem said. "Warrnambool has been one of the most successful clubs in Victoria. The way the club had been treated is a long way short of disappointing. It's a disgrace.”
Greyhounds
with Kyle Galley Leading trainers Rob Britton and Jason Thompson have also spoken out in favour of the club, expressing their amazement that the committee had been sacked. Greyhound Racing Victoria have stated that they are seeking a local professional to manage the club, as part of reforms across the state. Greyhound racing has been conducted in Warrnambool for 80 years, and the club currently has more than $700,000 in the bank.
New record ■ Sandown's long standing 515 metre track record was lowered last Thursday night. Unlawful Entry broke the mark set by Bekim Bale five years ago by winning in a time of 28.951 seconds - taking 0.009 seconds off the previous mark. Unlawful Entry dashed out of the boxes and went straight to the front, to win by over eight lengths. “He’s a fast little dog so it’s not surprising he ran that time, but it was
surprising that he’d jumped that well," trainer Kelly Bravo said. Unlawful Entry can show a lot of speed in his races, but its perhaps a promised post race reward that keeps him trying hard - a trip to McDonalds. “We usually give them a vanilla thick shake and three nuggets after a run. I might have to order a few extra nuggets tonight!," Bravo said after Unlawful Entry's record breaking effort. Unlawful Entry will most likely return to Sandown on May 5 for the Bill Collins Speed Star event.
Easter feast
■ An Easter feast of feature racing will keep greyhound fans entertained over the long weekend. Sandown's Launching Pad Final kicks off proceedings this Thursday night (March 24). The race carries $220,000 in prizemoney, with the final field as follows: 1) Buck Forty, 2) Major Jackpot, 3) Carjack Arrest, 4) Pagan Midnight, 5) Hukanui, 6)Dundee Osprey, 7) Dream Edition, 8) Demon Bale, 9) Fantastic Roxy (reserve), 10) Zipping Zeus (reserve). As well an excellent racing card, Sandown has a host of activities for the kids with free showbags, prizes and giveaways, a jumping castle, face painting, a chance to race the Easter Bunny and of course a giant Easter egg hunt. One lucky patron will also win a chance to be a greyhound owner for a night. Entry is free to patrons at Sandown this Thursday night. Sydney's famous Golden Easter
Egg meeting is staged at Wentworth Park this Saturday night (March 26). The Golden Easter Egg itself has drawn a superb field, while the support card of feature racing also stacks up exceptionally well. Bendigo's Gold Rush Carnival also winds up with an excellent meeting on Easter Sunday afternoon, giving greyhound fans plenty of quality racing to watch over coming days.
Exciting era
■ Western Australia enters an exciting era tonight (March 23) with the opening of a new track at Cannington in Perth. The new facility is next door to the original metropolitan venue opened in the mid 1970s, and closed almost 12 months ago when the lease held by the greyhounds ran out. They have subsequently secured new land where a $15 million complex has been built, including a first class track with four sets of starting boxes and an hydraulic lure. A two-storey grandstand building will welcome a big crowd to tonight's opening meeting, after trials in recent weeks. The first major test for the new facility will come in April with the staging of the Perth Cup series.
Cancelled ■ Following on from last week's report on the "wrong box" blunder in a Ballarat Qualifying Trial, Greyhound Racing Victoria cancelled the March Trials at Ballarat to be held last Saturday (March 19).
● Phillip Mitchem In a brief statement on their website, Greyhound Racing Victoria explained they "are undertaking a full review of the operational processes associated with Qualifying Trials." Shot To Glory wore the wrong coloured rug and started from the wrong box at the last Ballarat Trials in February.
Upcoming race meetings ■ Wednesday: The Meadows (Day), Bendigo (Twilight), Cranbourne (Night), Ballarat (N); Thursday: Shepparton (T), Sandown Park (N), Bendigo (N); Friday: Good Friday - no racing; Saturday: Bendigo (T), The Meadows (N); Sunday: Sandown Park (D), Bendigo (D), Sale (T); Monday: Ballarat (D), Traralgon (T), Shepparton (N); Tuesday: Geelong (T), Horsham (T). - Kyle Galley
www.MelbourneObserver.com.au
Observer Victorian Sport
Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016 - Page 43
Showbiz Extra
Melbourne
■ From Page 36
Top 10 Lists
BMW ready to roar ■ The time honoured BMW Classic is ready to roar into action next Saturday at Randwick with yet another good field to contest the event. Victoria Derby winner, Preferment, a last start winner of the Australian Cup at Flemington, albeit on protest - which didn't go down well with a certain racing journalist with a leading newspaper, who declared the loser of the protest,Awesome Rock, as the one to beat well before the big day. Under the astute leading trainer, Chris Waller, Preferment has come back well after a first fourth to champion mare, Winx, in the Chipping Norton Stakes at Randwick. He shows the way in the markets on the BMW being quoted at around $6 for the big one. On the second line is the Lee and Anthony Freedman trained ex-international, Ourivanhowe, who I felt was very disappointing in the Australian Cup, finishing with a group of them behind the winner. Caulfield Cup winner, Mongolian Khan, is next, being quoted at $10, but is yet to show something like his great run in the Caulfield Cup. Another disappointing run in the Australian Cup was that of the favourite, Bow Creek, who missed the start by a couple of lengths, but was always well back and showed nothing in the run home. The champion mare, Winx, going for eight on end, is an interesting acceptor, as she is also in the Doncaster, she is at the big odds of $11, but at the time of going to press, connections where still pondering which way to go. Of the others, the Murray Bakertrained Turn Me Loose is very smart, and is at the big odds of $13. He was a most impressive winner of the Futurity Stakes at Caulfield on February 27 and is a very good type. He is a stablemate of Mongolian Khan. If the stable goes with Winx she will be very hard to beat in the
NEW RELEASE TELEVISION, DOCUMENTARY AND MUSIC DVD HIGHLIGHTS: CALL THE MIDWIFE: Season 5. CALL THE MIDWIFE: Seasons 1 - 5. THE SHANNARA CHRONICLES. THE LAST MAN ON EARTH: Season 1. D-DAY: OPERATION OVERLORD - Collector's Set. HUNTING HITLER. BATTLEFLEET: Collector's Set. iCARLY: Season 2. SAM & CAT: Volume 2. THE COLOUR OF WAR: Collector's Set. WEAPONS OF WAR: Collector's Set. GREAT MILITARY COMMANDERS: Collector's Set. COUNTRY HOUSE RESCUE: Collector's Set. AFL Classics: Carlton. AFL Classics: North Melbourne. AFL Classics: Hawthorn. AFL Classics: Essendon. - James Sherlock
Sulky Snippets
● Preferment. Photo by SLICKPIX, phone 9354 5754 ing runner is the first winner, when she Darren Weir-trained, scored a dashing win Australian Guineas in the $200,000 Magic winner, Palentino, Millions Adelaidetwo who is very promising, year-old classic at but the reverse way of Morphettville on their galloping could be Cup Day. against him. The exciting youngster has been brought to hand quickly under the diligent care of Tony, one of the most likeable ■ On behalf of our blokes in racing and Editor, Ash Long, the deserves another staff and myself; a good one, and he has very special thanks to had plenty. the Slickpix ComThe filly showed pany - Ross, Brett, outstanding pace out Mark, Gary and Sa- of the barriers and led rah - for their great throughout to win by support in supplying all just under two lengths. our racing shots over She was ridden sua long time. perbly by his son Jake, Racing Victoria is who also deserved a taking over the photo- change of luck wingraphic side of things ning a big one. from the end of Jake, as you may once in her 12 start March. recall, had a shocking I am presently ne- fall at Flemington career, having won five races with six gotiating with RV some time ago when minor placings, and them to supply our rac- he fell head first into the 1600 metre trip is ing shots. the turf in a straight right up her alley. race. Champion mare, The favourite, Winx, who is also enDam Ready, who had tered, which way she ■ M o r n i n g t o n won well at Moonee goes will be decided, trainer Tony Noonan Valley at her last out is back in the winner's weakened to run a this or the BMW. Turn Me Loose is circle with a ven- dead-heat in fourth also a dual nomination geance, after his star spot. for this and the BMW. filly She's Positive It's a welcome Another interest- provided her sire his change of luck for
Ted Ryan
Special thanks
would stick with Preferment on his home turf.
Dash
■ Top class Sydney three-year old, Press Statement, a winner of the Caulfield Guineas, is all class and circumstances were against him at his last start. Forget that run he rules the roost for the Doncaster at $ 6, to be run on April 2. Classy mare, First Seal ,prepared by John Thompson in Sydney is on the second line, but her form can be up and down. The Victorian galloper, Azkadellia, prepared by leading young trainer Ciaron Maher at Caulfield was a bit unlucky when a very good second to Peeping at her last start. She is a model of consistency haven't been unplaced only
Luck
● Press Statement Photo by SLICKPIX, phone 9354 5754
young Jack, as he has had his ups and downs since that bad fall at Flemington. She's Positive joined the Noonan Stable after being purchased by her owner, Frank Carnovale for $180,000 at last year's Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sales from the draft of Yarraman Park Stud. Her win delighted jockey Jake Noonan who said after her big win: " She's definitely got a bit of an attitude". "The stable has done a magnificent job to get her to this stage and make her controllable". His father Tony was delighted to learn he also picked up a $10,000 sales credit voucher to spend at the sales in Adelaide. Tony said: "We didn't plan to ride the filly like that, but full credit to Jack for a clever ride and we got the chocolates. It's a great result". She's Positive, who earned black type in her previous run when second in the Cinderella Stakes, is the initial winner for her sire, Group One winning Elusive Quality stallion, Sepoy. She is from the Group Three winner, Be Positive and is a half-sister to the stakes placed, Mr Optimistic.
■ Kilmore's Joshua Benson provided a winner at Tabcorp Park Melton on Wednesday, when 7-Y-0 Armbro Operative/Inclination gelding Future Operator greeted the judge in the Join The Pegasus Club Pace for R2 to R4 class over 2240 metres. Settling one/one from gate five, but a long way off the leader Illawong lively, Future Operator was sent to face the open by Zac Phillips prior to the bell. Surging to the front on the final bend, Future Operator just lasted by a half head over Eljulio (one/two) and Olivia Rockstar, returning a mile rate of 1-58. ■ Monegeetta trainer David Miles combined with Melton based concessional reinsman Alex Ashwood to land the Hygain Vicbred Pace for C1 class over 2080 metres at Cranbourne on Thursday March 17 with 5-Y-0 Art Major/Nellirama gelding Artarama. Despite having to race parked outside the polemarker Caledonian Attack from gate three, Artarama was too strong at the finish for the leader, scoring by a metre in a rate of 2-02.6, with Tidapar running home late from mid-field to finish third. ■ Moama duo Tony Peacock and Damian Wilson were winners at the Stawell fixture held at Tabcorp Park Melton on Friday, when 8-Y-0 Bettors Delight/Lombo Light Speed gelding Lombo Flashlight was successful in the DNR Logistics Claiming Pace over 2240 metres. Having his first start for the stable, Lombo Flashlight a winner of 15 races from 89 outings going into the race, Lombo Flashlight was always well back in the field after starting from gate three on the second line, with Beach Boy Adios going forward from the extreme draw to obtain the lead. Setting off three wide solo at the bell, Lombo Flashlight sustained a long run to register a strong victory over the pacemaker in a rate of 1-59.1, with Shanghai Knight third after always being handy.
At Toc.
■ Junortoun trainer Scott Dyer's highly promising Pegasus Spur/Maori Sunshine gelding Marvellous Max registered his third victory in seven outings after leading for most of the 2240 metre journey of the Anytime Fitness Melton 3-Y-0 Trotters Mobile for 3T0 to 3T2 class at Melton. With regular reinsperson Ellen Tormey in the sulky, Marvellous Max was always travelling boldly to easily account for Aldebaran Ay M from the tail of the field by 9.3 metres. Shetland which led up the outside division was a head away in third place. The mile rate 2-05.3. - Len Baker More harness racing on Page 44
■ On Easter Saturday, I will be joining course race caller, Nigel Killip, for the running of the Tocumwal Cup. - Ted Ryan
■ “Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.” - William James
The Last Word
Page 44 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 23, 2016
www.MelbourneObser ver.com.au
Observer Victorian Sport Melbourne
Racing Briefs
Lovely trip for Gavin ■ Veteran Meltonian Graeme (Daddy) Lang snared the Skyvalley @ Aldebaran Park Vicbred Trotters Mobile for T1 & T2 class over 2190 metres at Maryborough on Thursday with Safely Kept/ Tupenny Bit 4-Y-0 gelding Save Our Pennys in a rate of 2-04. Driven by son Gavin, Save Our Pennys enjoyed a lovely trip one/one from gate four trailing Kapitan Claire which did all of the work outside the pacemaker Soaked. Running home best, Save Our Pennys prevailed by 3.7 metres over Kapitan Claire and Opia along the sprint lane after following the leader. The victory would have been an ideal tonic for part-owner Robert Sleep who hasn't been in the best of health recently.
Well deserved win ■ Gordon part-owner/trainer/driver Tim McGuigan scored a well deserved victory with 5-Y-0 Four Starzzz Shark/Classic Amy mare Classic Shark at Cranbourne on Thursday, taking out the Blue Hills Rise Vicbred Pace for C1 class over 2080 metres, leading all of the way from gate two in a rate of 2-05 to score from Sentimental Life which trailed and a death-seating Punchinello.
Top night for Melton ■ Meltonians had a good night at Cranbourne on Thursday - eight year old Pegasus Spur/Faint Hearted gelding Left Right Andcentre overcame a 30 metre backmark to snare the Aldebaran Park Trotters Handicap for T1 or better class for trainer Steve Alexandrou and driver Allan McDonough. Captain Bronzie (Art Major/Run To Live) used the sprint lane to land the Seelite Windows & Doors Pace for C2 & C3 class over 2080 metres with Gavin Lang in the sulky. Andy and Kate Gath captured the Mark Gurry and Associates 3-Y-0 Pace over 2080 metres with Bettors Delight/Le Tricky gelding My Valaroso, leading throughout from the pole to gain the day from Christian Major and Sargent Black in 2-02.5.
Never headed ■ Strathfieldsaye trainer/driver Glenn Douglas was successful with former Kiwi Bernie Winkle in the Jims Mowing Pacers Handicap for C1 or better class over 2100 metres at Geelong on Tuesday March 15. Taking over from barrier three shortly after the start, Bernie Winkle a 3-Y-0 gelded son of Rock N Roll Heaven and Dolly McD, was never headed in defeating Chestervale Jet from mid-field and Hollys Miss Molly (three wide last lap) from the rear in 203.5.
Broke maiden status ■ Veteran Bridgewater owner/trainer Col Redwood was in the winners stall at Tabcorp Park Melton on Wednesday, when 4-Y-0 Yankee Spider/Bay Ebon gelding Yankee Bon Spider (Chris Alford) led throughout from gate four to land the Eynesbury Golf Club Trotters Mobile for TR0 class over 2240 metres, breaking his maiden status at start number 23 to defeat Fill My Pockets and Mavericks Wagon in a rate of 2-03.4.
Sweet passage ■ At Maryborough on Thursday, Marong's Ken Taylor combined with Lisa Miles to land the AG Electrical Breeders Crown Pace for C0 class over 1690 metres with 4-Y-0 Grinfromeartoear/Lils Dream mare Lils Angel. Enjoying a sweet passage on the back of the leader Drunk Artist, Lils Angel came away from the inside approaching the home turn and finished best to score by 2.7 metres from Flick MeAn Ace (one/one) and Drunk Artist in a rate of 1-57.7. - Len Baker
Top combo lands first heat
■ Long Forest partowner/trainer Trent Medcraft combined with Melton based reinsman Clinton Welsh to land the 1st Heat of the Pirtek Geelong Eureka Series for C0 class over 2100 metres at Geelong on Tuesday March 15 with 4-Y-0 Sportswriter//Riverina Chelsea mare Writeaboutchelsea. Settling mid-field in the moving line from gate three, Writeaboutchelsea was sent forward racing for the bell to park outside the pacemaker Sir Kapitar for the final circuit. Doing best in the straight, Writeaboutchelsea outstayed Sir Kapitar to prevail by 1.2 metres in a rate of 2-02.1, with Another Derek (four wide home tirn) coming from last to finish third.
Forward ■ Bacchus Marsh duo Alan and Amy Tubbs were also Geelong winners when smart Million Dollar Cam/Im Making Waves 4Y-0 gelding Milliondollar Wave scored in the Australian Pacing Gold Pace for C3 & C4 class over 2100 metres. Going forward from outside the front line to settle outside the well supported leader Gozo Lighting (gate three), Milliondollar Wave was used mid-race to cross the leader when Modern Bliss was sooled with a rush from the tail of the field to tackle for the lead, leaving him in the open. Bounding clear prior to the home turn, Milliondollar Wave was ulta impressive in registering a 14 metre victory over Trison (three back the markers at bell) and Gozo Lighting in a mile rate of 1-58.5.
Brilliant ■ Maree and John Caldow produced a former New Zealand gelding by the name of Stagger Lee to capture the Happy Birthday Marg Jones Pace for C1 class over 2100 metres in 2-00.8. Beginning brilliantly from gage five, Stagger Lee a 4-Y-0 son of Major In Art and Let's Go Cullen led throughout to easily account for Rollon Jack (one/two) and Pantheon which raced in the open from the bell.
Victory ■ At Horsham on Monday, Long Forest husband and wife - Andy and Kate Gath scored a big victory with ex-Kiwi 5-Y-0 Muscle Mass/Kazzle Dazzle mare K D Muscles, taking the prestigious $20,575
Baker’s Delight
Harness Racing
This Week’s Meetings
■ Wednesday - Melton/Mildura, Thursday Maryborough/Ballarat, Saturday - Ararat (Cup), Sunday - Warragul (Cup)/Echuca, Monday Charlton, Tuesday - Kilmore.
Horses To Follow
Melbourne
Observer
len-baker@ bigpond.com
with Len Baker
Pegasus Spur @ Woodlands Tontine Trotters Final for T0 or better class over 2700 metres. Responsible for a terrific second in her heat at Terang a week earlier when first up in Oz, K D Muscles (10 metres) raced outside the leader Shared Interest for the entire journey, showing a great deal of heart over the concluding stages to score by a head over Tryncatchme (one/one) which switched down to the sprint lane on turning, with the roughie Left Right Andcentre (three wide last lap from the tail) third. The mile rate 205.7.
Scooped ■ The Melton/Bacchus Marsh area scooped the pool at the Tabcorp Park meeting on Wednesday, winning six on the nine events on the card. Brett Cargill combined with Chris Alford aboard 4-Y-0 Tinted Cloud/Soky Rose mare Autumn Joy in the Benstud Pace for R0 class over 2240 metres, leading throughout to score from Sir Liberty (three back the markers) and Im The Jokers Ace which sat on the back of the pacemaker. Paul Grech's consistent 4-Y-0 Sundon/Queens Rhapsody gelding Mister Oz showed his rivals a clean pair of heels in the Rayner Real Estate Trotters Mobile TR1 & TR2 class over 1720 metres, accounting for Mallee Trapper and Illawong Sunny in 1-58.7. Four year old Modern Art/Island Beach mare Milady Grace snared the Pridmore Electrics Pace for R1 class over 2240 metres in 1-59.2 for Springbank's Danny Simpson. Trained and driven by Danny, Milady Grace despite doing plenty of work from gate four, outstayed her rivals in defeating a game Ace Duigan which worked to take over the lead from the extreme
draw. Mister Bellisimo was third after leading out, then taking a trail. The mile rate 1-59.2.
On fire ■ Ken Tippet has been on fire of late and was successful with Gotta Go Cullect/Phoebe Mae 5-Y0 gelding Barnbougle Jack in the HRTC Bendigo Pace for R1 class over 1720 metres in 1-56.7, leading all of the way from the pole to account for Shadow Of Fortune which trailed, with Impressive Guy third. ■ Popular Rockbank trainer/driver Freddy Spiteri's 10-Y-0 Pacific Fella/Going Shopping gelding Kai Star Fella was a surprise winner of the DNR Logistics Pace for C1 class over 1720 metres in 1-57.2. Settling mid-field in the running line from gate two, Kai Star Fella swamped his rivals out wide to blouse the leader Somedreamsomewhere by 2.5 metres. Real Knucky (one/one) was third. Blissful Hall/Stunning Impact filly Stunning I Am making her third appearance at the races, scored in the Alabar Bloodstock 3-Y-0 Pace over 1720 metres. With ChrisAlford in the sulky, Stunning I Am first up since September last year, ran home strongly despite being three wide for the last lap to gain the day by a half head over Diamond Jasper which led and Wasmeantobe in 2-00.4.
By a head ■ Andy and Kate Gath's 4-Y-0 Shadow Play/ Ensign's Dream mare Shadow Flag chalked up her 6th victory when successful in the McPhersons Printing Group Pace for C2 & C3 class over 1680 metres, leading virtually throughout from gate two in accounting for Artoc by a head from mid-field with
■ Limestone Bay, Rule Of Thumb, Rocknroll Eyes, Eljulio, Gollahgirl, Impressive Guy, Kapitan Claire, Artoc, Punchinello.
Started from outside
■ Great Western based Michael Gadsden did punters no favours at the Geelong fixture on Tuesday March 15, when 7-Y-0 Wagon Apollo/Hickory Chick gelding Gee Why Jack saluted the judge in the 1st Heat of the Devon Properties Vicbred Platinum Country Series M for Trotters T0 class over 2100 metres, paying Supertab odds of $71.60. Driven by Denbeigh Wade who actually holds a share in the horse, Gee Why Jack starting from outside the front line, led the outside division for much of the race and proved to be too strong at the finish for Illawong Peppa along the sprint lane after trailing the heavily supported pacemaker Val Gardena which weakened to finish third. The mile rate 2-02.9.
Settled three back
■ At Mildura on Wednesday, Horsham's Barry Dunn landed the Sportswriter Now @ Alabar Pace for C0 class over 1790 metres with sometimes unruly Shadow Play/Miss Potential filly Nikkibadwagon. Driven by son Aaron, Nikkibadwagon starting from the extreme draw settled three back in the moving line, with the first start polemarker Fon Ideal leading. Moving three wide for the final circuit, Nikkibadwagon sustained a long run to register a neck victory over Soul Desire which joined the leader from one/one on the home turn, with Flojos Gold 3 metres away in third place after trailing the front runner and having to come around the leaders late. The mile rate 1-57.2.
Josh swiftly away
■ Avenel trainer David Aiken's 4-Y-0 Angus Hall/ Leithe Ellen mare One Yankee Hall was an easy all of the way victor of the Garrards Horse & Hound Trotters Mobile at the Stawell meeting held at Tabcorp Park Melton on Friday. With son Josh in the sulky, One Yankee Hall was swiftly away from the pole and after getting things his own way, scored by 8.2 metres in advance of Button Brigade which trailed in a mile rate of 202.2. Kimmywho which followed the pair finished third 1.4 metres away.
Angled into clear ■ Wayne Potter and Mark Lee combined to land the Hygain Feeds Pace for C1 class over 1720 metres with smart 4-Y-0 Falcon Seelster/Bendall Rose mare Runfortheroses in a mile rate of 1-59.1. Given a sweet passage from the pole trailing the leader Immortal Jet drawn next to her, Runfortheroses raced by ex-Kilmore resident Jack Knight when angled into the clear on straightening, finished her race off well to score by 4.1 metres over Ruth Shinn's Machli (one/one - three wide last lap) and Ctheballerina (four wide home turn) from last.
Over 2190 metres ■ Armstrong based Brooke Hansen and partner Tim O'Brien were successful with Courage Under Fire/Lombo Socialite filly Social Fireball at Maryborough on Thursday, taking out the Aldebaran Park 3-Y-0 Vicbred Trotters Mobile over 2190 metres. - Len Baker
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