As I walked through the centre of Sydney tonight two things came to mind: first, how warm it was; and second, how fantastic it is to have the renovations on the Pitt Street Mall close to completion. For such a long time, the Pitt Street Mall has been under renovation, I’d all but given up shopping in the CBD. And although I didn’t venture inside tonight, I quite enjoyed the view, and I noticed lots of people were stopping to admire the new look Westfield.
I went shopping with a purchase in mind – I’d like a digital radio/fm usb tuner to use with my desktop/netbook (depending on my mood) – and although I’ve done some online research, and thought I could pick up something in the city, failed to find exactly what I’m after. In terms of geekdom, it’s a reasonably obscure purchase, but it’s something which would certainly serve me well. I’m heading off to Darwin for work in a couple of weeks and would like an FM tuner (digital radio is only under trial there) without needing to take a separate radio, but figured throwing in a digital radio tuner would be good. I’ve noticed a fair few which combine digital radio/fm and digital tv, but I’ve noticed most of the TV tuners say they require an external antenna which is not something I want. I want a simple radio for my netbook for travel, and for listening/recording at my computer at home. Can it be that hard?
So in the end I didn’t buy one. Instead I ended up at Hum on Oxford Street looking through the CD collection. I was pleased, once again, to see a CD I was involved in http://shop.abc.net.au/browse/product.asp?productid=320222 on sale in an actual, real record shop (very exciting). I was also somewhat surprised to see the CD of http://www.kristinathemusical.com/ on sale. In terms of Australian musical tastes it’s reasonably obscure. It’s a musical written by Bjorn and Benny from ABBA, based on a Swedish novel about immigrants to America in the 19th century. There are some great tunes on it, but it’s only recently been translated into English from Swedish, and it’s only so far been performed in English as a “concert” at Carnegie Hall. But there it was on the shelf before my eyes at Hum.
That’s how I’ve spent the night since arriving home. Listening to Kristina. Very enjoyable.
Here’s a song from it, in case you’re interested. This is the big show stopper where Kristina sings about her relationship with God, questioning His existence, as she faces another death of a child, another miscarriage and faces her own possible death.
In case you’re interested, here’s the original in Swedish…. a little more dramatic IMHO.
And here’s another song from Helen from the movie, Sa som i himmlen, As It Is In Heaven
Here’s a few of the things I’ve been sharing on other platforms. Not worth a whole blog post on their own, but still quite interesting.
December 4 : Lovely piece about an awesome producer Peter McCormack who, towards the end of his radio career, was an awesome trainer. https://radioinfo.com.au/news/vale-abc-producer-peter-maccormackDecember 11 : Spent the day in the ABC Boardroom (woo-hoo) which has great views over Sydney, including the crane currently in charge of construction work. (Note the use of ABCSans Regular)
December 18 : Fun day at work #abcpride#mandaclausDecember 18 : Last Saturday, a friend gave me a gift of some lovely fruit mince pies. I’m proud I didn’t eat them all at once, as I would normally do, and made them last until Wednesday. The last one… gone!December 21 : Police operation underway in Surry HillsDecember 21 : Sign of the timesDecember 24 : Twas the day before Christmas, when all through the ABC. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. It’s just me and Big Ted left in the office today.December 24 : #surryhillsDecember 26 : The Leaning Christmas Tree of LismoreDecember 27 : Checking out the laneway art of Lismore. How great is this?
I had a vision today of my latter years when an ambulance arrived in my street. There was no siren to indicate its arrival, but somehow I knew there was something worth watching, so I got up off the couch and headed to the balcony for a peak. Damn, the phone rang, and so I didn’t really get to see which house they’d gone into and whether or not they’d taken someone away. In my neighbourhood, it could have been everything from a drug overdose to a heart-attack.
It might even have been an older person returning home from a stay in hospital, I thought. And that’s when I had visions of my latter years, sitting on the balcony looking down the street, keeping an eye on the events of my neighbourhood. I had visions of my mum and granny who were inveterate “ambulance watchers”. My granny, in particular, would sit at the front window watching the world go by.
But that was a long time ago, as it’s now more than 20 years since mum died. And it was also a different time and place, when women didn’t work (except during the war), when they made their own house dresses, when lunch was called dinner, and dinner was called tea, when they didn’t re-marry after the death of their husbands, and when people died within just a few years of retirement. In some ways, there’s a certain Ruth Park quality about it all.
Odd then, that I should go from being raised in a fairly basic working class environment in a mid-sized country town, to living a fairly middle-class environment in the inner city. But although I’ve changed and although Surry Hills has changed, there’s still a “Poor Man’s Orange” element about the place.
Down the road, for example, there’s a couple of older women who remind me of mum and granny in some ways. I first noticed them about ten years ago, soon after moving into my street. Like mum and granny, I’d often see them sitting on the front steps, watching the world go by. I could never decide at the time, and I still don’t know, if they’re two old friends, a lesbian couple, or maybe a couple of sisters. While at the time they were old, now they’re OLD, relying on walking frames to get about. And while ten years ago they’d respond with a “good morning and a smile”, they now to seem a little afraid when you say hello, possibly finding life a little more hard-going and fearful with the passing of time.
Despite the change, they still spend a fair bit of time watching the world go by, especially in the mornings during winter, as the sun warms their bones. Although I can’t be 100% sure, I’m pretty sure they’d have also been peering out the window today, wondering what was going on with the ambulance.
Retrosexual - the reading matter on our table at the pub tonight
It’s been a bloody busy week at work,
I actually left a little bit early today – about 4.30 – because I needed to clear my head a little.
That’s one of the things about working with sound. Sometimes you just need a little quiet.
So I wandered around the city for a while not thinking about work, looking in shop windows, and generally chilling out a bit.
But even though I was totally bloody exhausted after and could have easily gone straight home to bed, I sent Graeme a text, asking if he felt like catching up for a drink. I’d seen him on Wednesday when he related some tales about his time in Sweden which was great. He told me a few other things also.
Oddly enough, we ran into a few people who joined us for a chat along the way, including The Other Andrew, and a bloke who used to be a barman at the pub we frequent. It was a lovely night of chatting and watching the world go by.
On arriving home, Sue and I chatted about our forthcoming holiday to NZ. We’re thinking South Island is probably the far more interesting option for this trip.
“We hope you’re fit”, an older couple (maybe in their late 60s) said to us as we walked towards the Yarrangobilly Caves. “A bit steep, is it?”, I replied, prompting a further response from the woman that they were “just taking a little rest”.
The caves are about eighty kilometres from Tumut, in the Kosciuszko National Park. As we headed out this morning, we didn’t really pay much attention to how long it took to get there, as we stopped along the way to take in the sites. There are parts where you can drive at a normal pace, but also parts where you need to slow down significantly, due to the narrow winding road.
Our first stop was roughly halfway, at the small town of Talbingo. Famously, Talbingo is home to a power station, parts of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, and is located on the shores of Lake Blowering. The town has a police station, a school, a caravan park, and a small shopping centre.
As you enter the “main store”, there are lots of signs outside declaring they sold “fat bait” for fishing. “Even if the power station closed down, I think there would still need to be a place for tourists to camp and shop”, I said to Sue, though I can’t be sure.
As I stopped to pay, I noticed there was a sign on the counter that one of the co-owners of the store was running as an Independent in the forthcoming local council elections. Maybe the town’s future is something the big bloke with the bushranger beard behind the counter, making coffee, will be running on?
It was great to see the author, Miles Franklin (born here) had the main street of Talbingo named after her.
After this brief stop, we headed off again, taking in the extraordinary sites of the landscape.
As we drove, we noticed the line-markings on the road transitioned from white to a golden yellow, which presumably is easier to see when there is snow on the road.
The road down into the Yarrangobilly Caves is narrow and winding. When the woman at the National Parks & Wildlife Service office told us there was only one way in and only one way out we were relieved. There are moments when you’re driving along, almost hanging off the road of the mountain, and the idea of having another car coming around the corner would have been too much to consider.
Only about 500 metres from the parks office is the entrance to the South Glory Hole (yes, really) Cave. Due to COVID, this was the only cave open to the public. Additionally, it’s not school holidays right now, and there weren’t all that many people in the park anyway.
We were the only ones walking through the caves, so it was wonderful to be able to experience this without the presence of others. “There are no sounds of screaming kids”, Sue noted.
The only sounds you hear are the sounds of dripping water.
You step in puddles of water from time to time. I held tightly to the guard rail, as I slowly walked through the cave. We stopped to read the signs, take photographs, and chat about our experiences.
There were a few moments when I felt slightly claustrophobic. I don’t have many fears in life, except small enclosed spaces. I remember once having dinner with friends who LOVE going into caves, and when they began to describe going into an especially small hole within a cave, I had to tell them to stop, as it made me feel very uncomfortable.
The first moment I felt this way was when went into the first “dark enclosed spot”. We were headed upstairs into a space where only one person could walk through. The second moment was when I began to contemplate drowning in the event of a rush of water coming through the caves. And then finally, there was another “dark enclosed spot” towards the end.
Despite those dark spots, the cave is well-lit. I’m not talking “Hollywood” lighting. Rather small lights (LEDs?) which turn on and off according to where you walk. A sign along the way declares the artificial lighting in the caves has a negative impact on the environment. It was reassuring, nonetheless, to be able to walk along and be able to see where you were walking.
Truly, a wonderful experience, and highly recommended. We spent about 30 minutes walking through.
From there we headed down to the river and thermal pool. As we walked down the 700 metres from the caves, we chatted briefly with an older American couple. “We’ve been to Kosciusko many times”, the woman told us, adding they had never been to the caves before and never to the pool. “We have our own mobile home, so we have our swimwear with us”, she told us.
Though I had brought swimwear with me on this trip to the area, I hadn’t bothered to pack it today. I thought it would be too cold to swim but was wrong. We dipped our feet in the pool, while about ten others actually jumped in. There was the American couple, other people similarly aged to us, and a group of early twenties who all seemed nervous at first about jumping in, but very quickly adapted to the surroundings.
There are two pools. One is very shallow and quite warm, but the floor was covered in moss. The other (main) pool is over two metres deep and has an average temperature of around 27 degrees celsius, warmed through the rocks deep within the ground.
Also nearby, there’s a river walk and a campground, and you could easily imagine how people could spend the whole day there.
As we walked back up the hill we stopped from time to time, to take in the sights, the wild-flowers, and to catch our breaths, much like the couple who we chatted to on our way down to the caves and pool.
When I was in Brisbane the other week I walked past “The Alliance Hotel” on Boundary Street. As I peered through window, I noted it seems like a very modern “boutique” hotel these days. However, I remember it back in the 80s when it was a fairly down-market gay bar.
“Down-market” is probably the wrong phrase to use, as it’s a venue I remember with fondness. They had $3 meals on a Monday night, as I recall, which was a very attractive offering to an impoverished university student living such as myself.
But it was the Sunday nights I remember the most. There was a “Sunday Session” from roughly four until ten, which was always a wonderful opportunity to catch up with friends for a beer or two. And they had a wonderful drag show which seemed to go on for hours. Although there were lots of drag legends in Brisbane at the time such as Toye de Wilde (who once ran for the Queensland Parliament) and Destiny Devine (who we named our cat after), the “star” of the show was a character called Freda Mae West. Freda Made was, probably, in her 70s, and her “star turn” was an inability to lip-sync properly. Most famously, the line “I see you shiver with anticipation” from Rocky Horror had the crowd in rapturous laughter.
In some ways, the Sunday night show at Sydney’s Stonewall reminds me of those days at The Alliance. Hosted by Polly, the show is all about having a fun time, having a few drinks with your mates, and in preparation for the week ahead, not taking life too seriously. A treasure.
“These are the reason I haven’t worn a watch in about twenty years”, I told Sue, as we wandered around the ABC Studio at Old Parliament House, now the “Museum Of Australian Democracy”.
I was referring to something commonly known as a “bulk eraser”, though they probably had a more formal name. In the days before extensive digital storage, audio (and video) tape was commonly re-used. That’s part of the reason why many episodes of classic radio and television programs no longer exist.
“You must have it in the archives somewhere?” is a sentence I commonly here. “No”, I have to tell people, adding, “We never kept it”. We couldn’t afford to keep everything, and in a very practical way, there was never enough room to store it.
A big part of my early career involved recording things, putting them to air, and then recording over that item the very next day. To speed up the process you used a “bulk eraser” which, in effect, was a big magnet which erased the magnetic tape, allowing it to be freshly used.
One of the side effects of having a “big magnet” was that it played havoc with analogue watches. So, you either a) removed your watch while you used it; b) “did a dance” which involved keeping your watch hand as far away from the eraser as possible or c) stopped wearing a watch. I stopped wearing a watch, and in the years since, the mobile phone, of course, has replaced the watch anyway.
Bulk eraser at the ABC Studio at Old Parliament House
I think it was the first time I’ve been to the old ABC Studio at Old Parliament House in Canberra. The move to the new parliament house occured before I joined the ABC. And although I’ve visited Old Parliament House a few times, I don’t ever recall seeing that part of the museum before. It was fascinating to see the video showing at the museum of people like a very young Barrie Cassidy reporting from the studio there.
“It’s so much smaller than the new parliament house”, I said to Sue as we wandered around. There was an exhibition of political cartoons which we enjoyed very much, as well as an exhibition about press freedom which was also very good.
And of course, there were the chambers themselves.
House of Representatives at Old Parliament House, CanberraLocated outside Old Parliament House is the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, and the wonderful “Sovereignty” sign
Our visit to Canberra was a brief one : less than twenty-four hours. I was really keen to catch up with a colleague who was recently made redundant, and a school friend that both Sue and I had known from Lismore. Awesome catchups. It was also part of our return to Sydney.
As we had both extensive knowledge of Canberra (Sue had lived there for three or four years, and I have visited extensively over many years), we struggled to think of what else we might do.
We both love the National Portrait Gallery, and so we visited there.
National Portrait GalleryNational Portrait Gallery
“I’d like to visit the War Memorial”, Sue said, noting that despite having lived in Canberra, she’d never actually visited it before. The last time I visited was in 2014. https://thelimbshift.com/2014/08/roll-of-honour/
Photograph taken by Kerry Alchin Order reference: PAIU2014/152.28 Contact: esales@awm.gov.au
In 2013 and 2014 (and later), I managed a project for the ABC (in conjunction with the Australian War Memorial) which saw school children from all over the country come into ABC studios to record the names of those who appear on the Roll Of Honour. Honestly, it’s one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever done, as the children learned about the history of the names they were due to recite, how to pronounce them, and often travelled long distances to record them.
I was so touched the names were still being recited as we walked along the Roll Of Honour.
Roll Of Honour at the Australian War Memorial
The Australian War Memorial is truly remarkable. In fact, it’s almost overwhelming. After about an hour of walking around, we realised we’d only touched the surface, had only just completed the area concentrating on World War I.
Australian War Memorial
Due to time restraints, we spent less time on the following conflicts which is a shame. “You could spend two or three days here,” I said to Sue.
One of the highlights for me of the Australian War Memorial was the current exhibition which looks at tattoos, and their significance for service men and women, particularly since the Gulf and Afghan Wars.
And with that, we went to the petrol station, filled up, grabbed some chocolates, and headed back home.
