“I’m sorry, we’re fully booked”, the maitre’d told us as we made our way into Hobart’s “The Glasshouse”. “However, we could offer you some seats at the bar or a couch”, she added. We looked over at the couches near the window. Two longish couches which could have seated six, with a low table in the middle. “Perfect”, we all decided instantly.
Though table dining is a lovely thing, for the gathering we had (work colleagues, sharing plates and wine), it was absolutely perfect. The food was excellent: oysters, king fish, lamb, deep fried mushrooms, and the BEST eggplant I’ve had in ages. There was lots of oohing and ahhing. And we all felt absolutely happy with the portions. The service was also excellent: there when you wanted it, and not in your face when it wasn’t there.
The restaurant was recommended by my ex and his wife, who are regular visitors to Hobart (they’ve bought a house here), and I’m glad he did. It was night, and we were deep in conversation, so we probably didn’t take in much of the water views, but I think it would be especially good around lunchtime or sunset. Though it’s a little expensive for “ordinary tastes”, it was a terrific night, and I’m happy to recommend it also.
“Marlborough House” is a building I’ve walked past possibly hundreds of times, and yet have had no idea what was located inside. A bit of googling reveals this massive building is home to fashion graphic designers, fashion designers, furniture designers etc.
I only really discovered it today when I went walking along Marlborough Street as part of my ongoing photographic project, Surry Streets. I actually thought it was one of those massive residential apartment blocks springing up around Surry Hills, but apparently not.
It absolutely dominates one end of Marlborough Street which stretches from Cleveland Street right up over the hill to the other side of Devonshire Street.
As you walk along the street you pass interesting old terrace houses, interesting businesses, Ward Park, and St Peter’s Catholic Church to name but a few of the sites you encounter.
“Feel like a beer?” was the text message I sent Graeme this afternoon.
I love a Sunday afternoon/evening beer. It extends the weekend just that little bit futher. And so long as you’re sensible, you can get up on Monday morning and head off to work without a care.
Instead of coming over my way, Graeme suggested I join Grant and him at the Petersham RSL.
Graeme was especially proud of his new membership card, and in particular at how cheap membership was ($8 for the year). Nowhere near as good as the Lismore Workers Club, I told him, which gives you drinks tickets every year, and if you pay into the Mortality Fund, will make a contribution towards your funeral. It’s the reason I’ve been a member since I was 18, I’m sure.
Picture Frame
As we sat and chatted about life the universe and everything a young bloke came up to us. “Would you like some tickets?, the young bloke asked us.
And so we bought some tickets in the usual Sunday night Prize Night.
They had a tv, a washing machine, a dryer, and miscellaneous smaller prizes in a 45 minute “frenzy” of numbers being called out. Although we all decided we would like the television, though would happily settle for a new washing machine, Grant and I also eyed off the electronic picture frame. “It’s the kind of thing you’d never buy for yourself”, Grant mentioned at one point, and I agreed. Luckily, Grant’s number was the first called out, and he chose the picture frame.
After sitting around for a while longer, Graeme and I then headed off to a nearby pub where we ran into The Other Andrew, who seemed in good spirits after an afternoon of knitting, and then an evening attending an underwear party. Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write before.
“Tom Hughes was Lucy Turnbull’s dad”, I whispered into the ear of my friend Graeme. Though it wasn’t specifically mentioned on the Mardi Gras History Walk, it was something I knew which added to the story. Historian, Robert French was talking about a meeting of the Liberal Party of NSW held in the early 1970s. Tom Hughes, as Attorney-General was considering a range of homosexual law reform, Robert explained, and was being opposed by conservative forces in the Liberal Party. The irony of the situation now facing Lucy’s husband, the Prime Minister, and the similarity to the situation facing her father almost fifty years ago was not lost on me.
There’s all manner of phrases about “learning from history” and how “history never repeats”. But, honestly it does. And if you look to history about how different types of people have reacted to issues/situations in the past, you can better understand human nature, and some of the human motivations for current issues.
And that’s why I like history in general, and the annual history walk for Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, organised the by Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, in particular. I’ve been on a few of these walks previously, and they’re always very interesting.
Robert French is a gifted tour leader, providing the perfect combination of anecdote and understanding, locating the issues of the past within a contemporary context.
Drawing upon the work of some terrific people like Gary Wotherspoon and Lex Watson, Robert really makes history “live”. Even my friend who came with me on the walk, who was somewhat sceptical about why he should get out of bed earlier on a Sunday morning, said he really enjoyed the tour.
Next year marks forty years since the first Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and undoubtedly there’ll be lots of commemorations (and celebrations) around the event to be held in the first week of March 2018, and rightly so. But before Mardi Gras, there was a lot of other activist activity, and so while I think Mardi Gras is important, I think it’s worth recognising the previous work of lots of others, and that’s what you learn on walks like this. Fabulous stuff.
Today, my friend Kate and I spent quite a few hours at Dance Rites, a celebration of First Nations culture at the Sydney Opera House.
Though we didn’t stay around for tonight’s performances (we’re not as young as we used to be), we were there for the massive opening “contemporary corroboree” as Rhoda Roberts called it, and for the dance “competition” featuring lots of “grass roots” groups, mostly from the East Coast and from the Torres Strait. They performed in a range of traditional, as well as contemporary styles. It was an awesome insight into the many different cultures around the country.
URAB DancersDance Rites
As well as the dancers from Australia, there were also performances by other First Nations people from Canada, the United States and Aotearoa (New Zealand). The dancers from the US were especially warmly welcomed, with their fantastic outfits, energetic performances, and thumping musical beats.
For me, a great discovery came in the music of many of those performing from the Torres Strait, and North Queensland islands. “You love the drums, don’t you?”, Kate said to me, when I mentioned this to her. “Absolutely”, I told her. Great vocals, great drums. This is definitely going to be an area of musical exploration for me.
A particular call out from today was the MC who was informed, funny, and knew everyone in the audience it seemed!! We’ll be heading back tomorrow night (Sunday) for the finals, being held at the Sydney Opera House from 6.00pm. It’s highly recommended.
Post Script – Some Pics from Sunday
Maori Dance GroupFirst Nations dancers from North America
And here’s some animations, which hopefully show some of the movement of the activity.
I left the house reasonably early today, and didn’t get home until about ten-thirty tonight. When I left the house, it was fine and sunny and I was wearing shorts, thongs and a polo-shirt; and when I arrived home, I was still wearing shorts, thongs and a polo-shirt, but Sydney was in the midst of a torrential rain storm.
We don’t cope well with rain storms in Sydney, do we? And this was a particularly heavy, tropical-style rain storm, with thunder and lightning. There was one moment, tonight, standing at Taylor Square when there was a massive bolt of lightning (seemingly not too far away) which literally made me jump and run for cover.
“Big thunderclap and lightning on oxford street. That would have been a dramatic way to go!”, I tweeted at one point tonight, which resulted in a couple of great comments, including “And if it happened to you, you’d know you’d really annoyed someone ‘upstairs’!”; “especially if a church spire came hurtling towards you! Is Fred Nile practising summoning weather for March 2?” and “passed dramatically & quickly over us (obviously on way to you) – oooh! and again! Would be preferred manner of demise.”. “Made it home safely. No threat of Omen II Damien lightning scenes, thank goodness”, I later replied.
Work kept me busy for the first few hours of the day, as I had some things to do around our coverage of the 70th Anniversary of the Bombing Of Darwin. From there it was a bus trip to Bondi Junction to have my dressing done (almost fully healed – yay), and then a bus trip back over to Newtown to see a play at the New Theatre.
The Temperamentals at Sydney's New Theatre
As part of Mardi Gras, New Theatre is presenting a play called The Temperamentals. A bit like the phrase “A Friend Of Dorothy”, “Temperamental”, apparently, was a euphemism for homosexual. The play documents the founding of the “Mattachine Society”, the first “sustained” gay rights organization in America, years before Stonewall and the gay liberation movements of the 1970s.
Back in the late forties and early fifties it can’t have been easy to be gay in America. As well as all of the usual issues you might expect, you also had McCarthyism. Not only was it difficult for communists, it was also difficult for gays. Harry Hay, one of the lead characters in this true story was both a communist and gay, and later, a “radical faerie” who saw cross-dressing as a political statement.
At the beginning of the play, however, Harry was a married man who was meeting Rudi Gernreich (a refugee from Nazism who was a famous fashion designer) for casual sexual liaisons at a local church. Harry becomes politically motivated, and along with Rudi and two others form The Temperamentals, whose aim is to improve the visibility and “acceptability” of homosexuals. Rudi, by the way, supports the organisation but remains firmly in the closet, thanks, according to the play, to the advice of Judy Garland’s husband, Vincent Minelli (a gay man) that power comes through money and prestige.
The group takes on and wins a court case of one of its member who was caught/entrapped by a police officer. They soon realise, despite the win, it’s not reported in any of the newspapers, and thus it’s a win in name only.
I really enjoyed the play. It hummed along nicely with a compelling narrative, and well-developed, thoughtful characters. I thought the actors were excellent. I’d highly recommend it for both the temperamental and not so temperamental readers of this blog.
Wearing the gear she is in, it looks like Pru Goward was about the give the other bloke a karate chop on The Drum
Another exhausting day, which of course had nothing to do with a late night last night :)
After work today, the best I could do tonight was watch a bit of television, listen to the radio for a while, chat on the phone briefly, and then have a snooze.
I even lost interest half way through watching one of my favourite regular shows, “The Drum”. Waleed Aly was hosting tonight, along with Pru Goward, Glen Milne, and the other bloke whose name I kept missing. After they talked about WikiLeaks and the National Broadband Network, I kinda lost interest. It’s probably a reflection of how tired I was feeling, rather than the lack of intellectual stimulation.
After last night’s dinner and drinks of “The Boozehounds” (my regular dinner companions), I had a mini sleep-in this morning. It was one of those mornings where you wake, think you’ll just have five minutes more thanks to the snooze button, and then you suddenly realise it’s an hour later.
As I continued my sleep-in, I had a dream about having a job interview (which is what I’m doing tomorrow). I’m going to have to look up a dream interpretation site to make sense of it. But anyway, the bottom line is they asked me in my “interview dream” a difficult maths question along the lines of “if you take the total cost of running the rural department, divide by the number of people in the rural department, what’s the cost per minute of their programming output?”. How weird. But anyway, I think I’m going to do the sum just in case it was premonition.
I hardly had time to scratch myself today, as I seek to meet a number of self-imposed deadlines before Wednesday. I’m heading off to see my family for a few days and I’d like to get as much off my plate before-hand.
I’m also mentally preparing myself for my once-every-two-years appearance on radio. I’ve drawn the short straw and am presenting Overnights on Boxing Day. In a strange twist of fate, the bloke who I produced thirty years ago on 2LM Lismore will, in turn, be my producer for this program.
