I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve walked past Sydney’s “Mortuary Station” and wanted to jump over the fence and take a closer look.
In the days before the car became popular, people (both the living and the dead) would travel to Sydney’s Rookwood Cemetery by train, leaving from what was known as the Regent Street Station, or Mortuary Station.
Long closed to the public, about the only time I’ve ever heard of it being “open” was for Ian Thorpe’s twenty-first birthday. Apparently, you can hire it out, though I can’t imagine it would come cheap.
Fortuitously this morning, as I made my way to the White Rabbit Gallery (another post to follow), I noticed it was open, as part of the 150th anniversary of Rookwood Cemetery commemorations.
“Do you want a lift over town?” is one of the phrases most commonly used by my family in Lismore. Even though we live only a few hundred metres from the main shopping centre, there’s a level of confusion, even suspicion when I tell members of my family, “No it’s okay, I’ll walk”.
In Sydney, every day I walk several kilometres to and from work and the shops. For me, it’s nothing to walk those distances, and to not even think about it, unless of course it’s raining.
But in Lismore, like many country towns, where public transport is in short supply, the car is king. You get in the car, you drive to town, and even then, when you’re in town, if you need to go to another shop around the corner, you get back in your car, and you drive again. It’s one of the contributing factors to higher levels of obesity in regional areas, I’m sure.
The other day I accepted the offer of a lift to Lismore Shopping Square, but said I’d be walking home. It’s about two kilometres from my house, and an easy walk. I was given those confused, suspicious looks again.
As well as being able to help save the planet, and get a little exercise, it was also a wonderful opportunity for me to take a walk around town and take a close look at the places of my childhood with a viewpoint you just don’t see from car window.
As I walked back from the shopping square, I walked past my old high school tennis courts. They’re named after the one set of traffic lights which Lismore had and which existed for a decade or so nearby. There was much excitement in the late 70s when they were introduced, though they were eventually replaced by the roundabout, Lismore’s great contribution to road transport infrastructure in NSW. The courts don’t appear to have changed much in the last thirty years.
I also walked past the Gollan Hotel. Famously, the Queen stayed there on her visit to Australia in 1954. It’s part of local folklore the Queen was spotted drinking a beer on the hotel balcony, and that her visit “caused the big flood of 1954”. A friend of mine’s uncle and aunt owned the hotel at the time, and he claims to have in his posession the pillows from the Royal Bed. “The stories they could tell”, he would often say. As I walked past the Gollan, I noticed they’ve begun to commemorate this visit with a window display of photographs, which was lovely to look at.
And then I wandered down the street and noticed Shoppe 117, once just a tiny little giftware store had expanded dramatically. Their sign, “Pretty to look at, pleasant to hold, but if you should drop it consider it sold”, haunted me as a child as I looked their for mother’s day presents, and remains in my mind thirty years later.
I would never have noticed these things if I’d travel to town by car.
When I read in the paper yesterday you could go along to the Australian Idol auditions at the Australian Technology Park at Redfern, and it was free, I thought to myself, “Why not?” Although I haven’t regularly followed the program, I thought it could be a bit of fun to see what happened behind the scenes at the audition process. So I jumped off the train one stop early, at Redfern, when coming back from my trip to Eastwood.
As I walked towards the park, I passed a number of groups of young people, mostly late teens and early twenties, carrying guitars looking fairly forlorn. They’d obviously missed out. “I was better than Celine Dione”, I overheard one of them say without any sense of self-awareness or irony, as she walked out defiantly.
And then as I walked towards the shed where auditions were undertaken there were even more, standing around, chatting, smoking, and doing vocal exercises.
Inside, there were hundreds of people sitting around waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting for their 30 to 60 seconds to audition.
Without wishing to over-generalise, these kids were “the arty ones”, “the overweight ones”, “the non-conformists”, the kids I could relate to. If I’d grown up in Sydney twenty years later, I probably would have been there myself!
It must have been a long and emotionally exhausting day for these kids. Good on ’em, I say, for giving it a go, despite the odds against them.
One of the fun things about coming home for Christmas each year is going through old family photographs. This year, an elderly aunt found a biscuit tin full of photographs, mostly of me, and mostly ones I’ve never seen before. These are my three favourites. Almost fifty years later, they’re still my stock standard poses!
The graffiti on the wall of the men’s toilets at Ching-a-ling’s is way cool.
I don’t recall the graffiti from the last time we visited one of Sydney’s new “cool, small bars” which was maybe six months ago.
That time, we entered from the back door on Little Oxford Street which, oddly enough was the main entrance then.
But due to resident’s noise complaints which temporarily forced its closure, this time we entered from Oxford Street.
The night started off quietly enough with just a friend and I catching up for a post-work debrief. I had a reasonably important meeting, and she was keen to buy me a drink as a post-meeting de-stress.
After a couple of glasses of wine, two other friends who were in the area texted me, and they joined us at Bentley Bar for a drink or two.
Just as we had all decided it was time to get home and to “keep ourselves nice”, we decided one final glass of something was necessary, and that it was the duty of my first friend and I to introduce our other friends to Ching-a-ling’s.
Once again, we were the oldest people there. Well, aside from one really old bloke (read: five years older than me). I suspect there were probably one or two there born in the 1990s (gulp), though I think most were in the 25-30 year old age group.
Interestingly, though, none of us had hangups about being “the old people” in the bar. After a while in life you gain a certain confidence that you might not otherwise have expected to develop. And so we sat and chatted, and entertained I’m sure, a group of people around us.
The bar was packed.
And best of all? We all got home and kept ourselves nice.
Sepsis caused my amputation, and each year in Australia, 84000 people get it and 12000 die.
The bloke wearing the shirt told me each year in the NTFL they have a round in memory of a young player who got it and died.
Hopefully this helps create awareness.
If you think you’ve got Covid (like me) or the flu (like some amputees I’ve met), it’s a great reminder of asking a question about a condition which is often undiagnosed.
“Has Mikkelsen ever been so good?” was the headline in the Swedish newspaper, Aftonbladet this week. Mads Mikkelsen (who is also featured in the film currently screening, “Chaos Walking) is the main actor in the film, “Another Round”.
In Danish, the film was called “Druk”, which means binge-drinking. Partially funded by the Swedish Film Institute, I was surprised to see the film premiered only this week in Sweden, the same week it premiered in Australia.
Normally we have to wait months, sometimes years, for Scandianvian films to turn up on Australian cinematic screens. The film premiered in Denmark in December, so seeing it so soon was a welcome surprise. The wonders of the modern cinematic world!
Another Round in Swedish newspaper, Aftonbladet
The film tells the story of a group of friends (all school teachers) who decide to “push the limits” of alcohol consumption. Their experiment is based on the contention of the Norwegian psychiatrist and psychotherapist Finn Skårderud “that when humans are born they have a blood alcohol level 0.05 per cent too low”.
So they start “day drinking” to improve their confidence and their performance. Initially, their levels of consumption are hardly noticeable to the students and fellow staff members, but eventually, they become evident. Their consumption also starts to impact their daily lives.
Their overconsumption also begins to expose problems in their personal lives. And so it’s not only about alcohol, it’s also about a group of men in their 40s/50s needing to confront their own “personal demons”.
It’s a roller-coaster of emotions, as the actors confront with extreme honesty many of the issues so many of us face in this life period, whether it’s alcohol or relationship difficulties.
I enjoyed the film very much. It was interesting to hear how the reaction of the audience in the cinema changed, as they laughed in the film’s earlier moments, and they were much quieter in the deeper, darker moments.
The headline in Aftonbladet is accurate. The performance by Mads Mikkaelsen is very good. Though older in real life than the character he plays in the film, his performance is totally believable.
There are a couple of references in the film which non-Scandi audiences may not understand, such as the scene where he jumps into the lake, and the scenes with the high school students wearing what appear to be “sailors hats”. The “sailors hats” are fairly common throughout Scandinavia, a hang-over (no pun intended) to the days of school uniforms. The scene where he jumps into the lakes is often referenced in Scandinavian pop culture as a sign of release, not suicide or misadventure, as it may be interpreted.
I’d highly recommend the film.
The film from the song is also very catchy!!I popped into one of my local restaurants tonight, Viet Eatery, Crown Street, Surry Hills and enjoyed the stuffed chicken wings. Meanwhile, construction continues at the Surry Hills Shopping Village.
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I’m envious. I saw it when on a train to Central and I have written about it. Melbourne had two or three cemetary train lines but not a dedicated station for departure.
I’m envious. I saw it when on a train to Central and I have written about it. Melbourne had two or three cemetary train lines but not a dedicated station for departure.
I thought about you as I posted, actually.
Didn’t realise this was on until it was over. Thanks for the recount.