WRITIN

G

THIS PLA

CE

MADE IN PRESTONMELISSA REEVES

CAPP/ROBINSON RESERVE, PRESTON

END OF THE FAÇADEHANNAH DONNELLY

3KND RADIO

THE INCURIOUS WOMAN WHO WENT TO THE LIBRARYDENISE SCOTT

CARNEGIE LIBRARY, NORTHCOTE

4ORE WALLS KUTCHA EDWARDS

THORNBURY THEATRE

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE: A CLOSER LOOK AT LARUNDELJAMES BUTTON

LARUNDEL ASYLUM SITE BUNDOORA

I WANNA WALK THROUGH THE PARK IN THE DARKPONCH HAWKES

DAREBIN CREEK

RUCKER’S HILLSAL KIMBER

RUCKER’S HILL

MERRI CREEK – A BIG STINK IN ITS TIMENICK RICHARDSON

MERRI CREEK

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS AT THE NORTHCOTE LIBRARYCHRIS GOOCH

NORTHCOTE LIBRARY

A ROADCATH FERLA

HIGH STREET RESERVOIR

What did I know of Larundel? When I was a kid it was a term of abuse for the loony bin. “Hey mate, you should be in Larundel.” That’s all I knew.

A Google search reveals that since the asylum in Bundoora closed 20 years ago, the derelict, red-brick buildings on the hill are haunted by graffitists and ghost hunters as they await a final metamorphosis into a shiny housing development. The thrill seekers who steal through the ruin at night say you can hear screams; a girl in a nightdress is said to walk the floors winding her music box. A jerky video shot by two jerky guys brings such insights as, “This must be the observation room. The insane guy sits here, the doctor asks him questions and the whole audience watches – woah!”

I asked Facebook friends for help. A creepy place, was the common response. A former journalist said he went there to write a story and saw a woman tied to a chair. The visit gave him nightmares.

This is Larundel in our collective memory. But was it really a modern Bedlam, the London hospital of Dickensian horror, where the wild-eyed mad were locked up, living ghosts? Or are we spellbound by some undying idea of madness, and of the unfathomable cruelty of the past?

The writer Sandy Jeffs sits in a café in Eltham, smiles and sighs, as if this subject is a little large for one coffee. “What can I tell you about Larundel? Where do I start?”

She starts with cigarettes. Everyone smoked. The walls were brown with smoke. Penniless patients were always botting cigarettes from staff and other inmates. This was hard for Sandy, who says she’s the only schizophrenic she knows who doesn’t smoke. But she saw how a cigarette could calm people in great distress. Nurses smoked with patients as a way to talk and bond. Some women also swapped cigarettes for sex, and some men would drive onto the grounds to take advantage of that. There were always two sides to Larundel.

Sandy was 24 when she was first admitted, in 1978. Diagnosed with her illness two years before, she arrived in a state of high anxiety, her hopes for a normal life crumbling around her. One moment she felt the Virgin Mary sitting on her left shoulder, the next her limbs were being torn off, her brain eaten by maggots. She once wrote that her thoughts were flying out of holes in her head “like a frenzied flock of birds”.

She had a single room in B Ward in the main building, and was comfortable. But at night blood-curdling screams would come from A Ward, the admissions ward directly below. When the phone rang in B Ward, the male nurses would often jump up in a group and rush downstairs.

Sandy was over-medicated and overwhelmed. The place was so big and she felt so small. Larundel shared 1200 acres with two other asylums, on a site people called “the psychopolis”. In the 1970s it had 19 wards and 750 beds. It had doctors’ residences, a school of nursing, a cricket oval, tennis courts and a pool. The grounds were a balm for sore minds, with lawns, roses and towering gum trees in gently sloping fields. But most patients lived in dormitories in tatty and unkempt wards, many of them set in barracks-style blocks. Privacy was a curtain drawn around the bed.

Patients ate flavourless meat-and-three veg meals, and had their dishes and hand-me-down hospital gowns washed for them. They were woken at the same time, told when to go to bed, when to take their meds. Some wards were locked at night, and patients were thrown together in their torment or medicated haze. Someone in full-throated crisis could fire up the whole ward, until a group of nurses might sedate them and wrestle them into the seclusion room.

It sounds grim. Why, then, does Sandy feel so fond of the place? Because, she says, it saved her life. Several times, careful doctors and caring nurses coaxed her back to sanity. Extremely vulnerable people quickly find soul mates, and conversations with her “mad comrades” made her feel less alone. And when she wanted solitude, she walked in the beautiful grounds. Had she not been admitted on one occasion, she is sure she would have killed herself. She was so out of control that the nurses were brutal – the only time that ever happened – and threw her around the room. As she sat on her bed in the dark, sobbing, a woman who spoke no English sat behind her, brushing her hair.

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE: A CLOSER LOOK AT LARUNDELJAMES BUTTON

JAMES BUTTON

Sandy had come to Larundel at a time of exciting developments in psychiatry and mental health. In the 1950s the first anti-psychotic drugs removed the most florid and frightening symptoms of schizophrenia. The liberation movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s spurred people with mental illness to demand the right to live in the community, and to have a say in their own treatment. Language changed: passive ‘patients’ were now active ‘consumers’. A wave of optimism swept the field: mental illness could be treated, perhaps even cured.

These ideas had particular force in Victoria – and at Larundel. In the late 1960s, an innovative psychiatrist superintendent, Dr David Barlow, had the walls around the institution pulled down. He began the process of desegregating the male and female wards – a utopian idea that exposed female patients to the risk and sometimes reality of sexual abuse.

Barlow and others also introduced new treatments, including the group, music and art therapies that Sandy took part in. A chaplain, Len Blair, wrote two pantomimes – Cindy Rella and the Hospital Ball and Alice in Larundel Land – that staff performed, to great hilarity among patients. Bill Lloyd, a psych nurse, created the Larundel Little Theatre Band, a rock band made up of staff and patients that lasted for nearly 30 years. Two artists-in-residence devised a Cinderella wedding procession; patients made costumes and stood along the road as clowns, ruffians and townspeople. Then the whole hospital sat down to a wedding breakfast.

Sandy recalls Larundel’s daily soundscape of misery and laughter, a droning TV, the rumble of the medication trolley, the haunting jangle of keys. The red phone in A ward was the only contact with the outside world and would be ringing all the time. Sometimes a patient would take a call, then wander off and leave the phone swinging in the air. There were many funny moments. A psychiatrist remembers that one Easter Friday she admitted six Jesus Christs. A seventh patient came in saying he was Superman. The exhausted doctor wrote out a script: “Take one rock of kryptonite, three times a day.” The pharmacist wrote back: “I’m out of kryptonite, but will get a batch in soon.”

Sandy says that while some nurses were cruel, most were kind. Most nurses and psychiatrists have happy memories of working at Larundel, but former patients are more ambivalent. Larundel was synonymous with loss: of family, friends, jobs, calm, hope. It meant constant fear – fear of some doctors and nurses, fear of oneself. One patient spoke of “this torture chamber between my ears.” Another said, “my very breathing was fear.”

Sandy says these paradoxes haunted Larundel. They have also haunted her.

Since her final admission there, in 1991, her books of poetry and her memoir, Flying with Paper Wings, have restlessly circled the asylum. Now she and Margaret Leggatt, a sociologist and former occupational therapist, have interviewed 75 former “inmates” and staff and entwined their accounts with Sandy’s own to produce Madhouse: Larundel Psychiatric Hospital – Asylum or Hell-hole? This remarkable manuscript, free of any of the acceptable language used to describe mental illness, teems with stories, characters, ideas and life.

In 1995 a ceremony was held at Larundel to mark its looming closure. Sandy, turned up uninvited and asked if she could say a few words and read some poems. She writes: “After being vetted by an official person I was given permission to speak…I think I was the only former inmate in the room. I told the audience of mainly nurses, some of whom I recognised, that Larundel was like a church that needed to be desanctified to release the tortured souls of the mad who once paced the wards and roamed around the grounds…I am glad I got to say something because the voice of a mad person needed to be heard in that room. It reminded me of the plethora of mad people I had sat with in those shabby wards where we shared our stories and laughed at ghosts.

In 1999, after 50 years of life, the asylum closed. Larundel is a Wurundjeri word meaning ‘camping place’. That’s fitting: for some it provided a haven, and some camped there too long. Arthur Papakotsias says he saw more good than bad during his time there as a psych nurse in the 1980s. Yet he is sure it was right to close the asylum. Otherwise, how would their inhabitants learn the skills to survive in the world? How would the rest of us develop a more understanding and compassionate view of the mentally ill if they were shut away on the edge of town?

Arthur is now CEO of NEAMI, one of Australia’s largest mental illness support services. He says that with the new focus on recovery, most of NEAMI’s clients move through its services after 18 months. “We are no longer saying, ‘Mate, you need to be in an institution for the next 20 years.’ People with mental illness want what you and I have: an income, a social life, a family, a sense of identity. They don’t pine for the days of the institution.”

JAMES BUTTON

Yet funding has been slashed, the psych wards are full, people in extreme crisis have few places to go. Many end up on the streets or in jail. Larundel was like a village from an older world. It had cruelty and hierarchies and so much that was hidden. It also threw people together in their raw humanity and need for contact and sanctuary. Now people are individuals. They have more rights and more dignity, but many are more alone.

Of course, I say this with the voice of Sandy, my guide on this journey, in my head. She would have come tonight but she plays hockey on Wednesdays, without fail. “I love the camaraderie of sport,” she says, laughing. She gets to play hockey and live a full life, and that is something to thank Larundel for. And it raises a question: what did we gain, and what did we lose, when we closed Larundel?

JAMES BUTTON

How many pieces of paperbark

Should you collect to write a history?

About 20 strips of bark would make a vessel to fill with nothing.

Debarking myths.

Collect pieces from the ground,

Find hanging sheets in branches.

Brush it off and count your trees.

In soft wrinkled layers of paper skin

Read the story that was unarchived; history

Obliterated. How to collect your berries;

Find the old red brick police station

Wait at a gate until someone comes along and says

I don’t know this tree take as much as you need.

Lilly Pilly sky blue. It makes great dye.

In cold creek lines

Tapered glossy leaves carry heavy fruit.

Prepare paperbark to write neutral history

Ph level Lilly Pilly archives

Removed by my future.

Boil til soft, watch out for white-tailed spiders

Salt for accuracy and peel between country they degraded.

Lay out to dry and wait.

Wait for past. Past. Gone.

You must be careful of time leeching.

Extracting the future.

If you keep the heat on too long, it’s grey.

Nothing to process your history with.

It’s all in the process.

Soak the past. Stretch it out.

Roots spread like veins through membrane.

Pull them out, history bones.

Starch spread over leathery bark.

Lumps and clag.

Lay it all out again.

Moisten your dry history.

Trying to re-write the archives on gubbas,

Reclaimed them with paperbark

Peeling thin scented strips.

Excavating an old birth.

END OF THE FAÇADEHANNAH DONNELLY

HANNAH DONNELLY

Not many travel past perimeters

Shifting on fringes

Camp under granite shoulders

Not far from Darebin Creek.

We got less now

But same-time more country

Where to from now?

We turn back

To our place

Keep it tight inside.

Take your memories, transmit

Their touch,

That’s where you go when asked,

Where to from here

HANNAH DONNELLY

4ORE WALLSKUTCHA EDWARDS

Travel Up High St

On The 86 Tram

Most People Are Friendly

Some Don’t Give A Damn

We’re All Out There Trying

Trying To Find Our Way

Tomorrow’s Upon Us

But Let’s Live For Today

859 High St 

N’ Slide Open Door

An Amazing Array

Of Rooms To Explore

Played So Many Venues

From Redfern To New York

What Stories Would They Tell

If Only Those Four Walls Could Talk

As I Walk Up That Staircase,

What Is It I See

The Immaculate Ballroom 

In Such Pageantry

Will You Sit There Quietly

N’ Now Pls Close Your Eyes

While The World Keeps Turning

Lets Not Compromise

A Show With Black Santa

Just Look What We’ve Done

So Many Beautiful Moments

Write A Letter To Mum

As We Now Look Back

From The Old To The New

We Must Ask Ourselves 

What This Place Meant To You

KUTCHA EDWARDS

Twas The

Thornbury Theatre In 26

Regent Theatre In 32

Cantina Ballroom In 67

Midas Reception Hall In 2000

859 High St

N’ Slide Open Door

An Amazing Array

Of Rooms To Explore 

Played So Many Venues

From Redfern To New York

What Stories Would They Tell

If Only Those Four Walls Could Talk

KUTCHA EDWARDS

A ROADCATH FERLA

I begin my walk at the reservoirs in the rain. I have an umbrella that keeps threatening to blow out and a chill autumn wind sneaks down my collar and settles into my spine.

It’s a haunted kind of day.

Across the road, to my left as I head north, is Reservoir 1. Behind the chain link fence, and through the rain, I see pine trees, tall and strong.

And then I hear the shouting.

I blink away a raindrop and when I open my eyes the rain has stopped falling and the fencing is gone and the forest is thick.

The cars passing the road are different and dated. I’m in an alternate space. I check the date on my phone and I see it is 1968.

I turn my gaze back to the trees. At the base of the trunks I see beaten up bikes leaned roughly against dark bark, no locks and no helmets.

I let my eyes trace the trunks up to the branches and in them, I see planks and milk crates and children.

There must be at least fifty kids in those trees, busy with kids’ work and chatter.

They drag their planks up high into the pines, hammer away at cubby house platforms while shouting greetings and swear words.

Occasionally I hear the cry, “war!”, and watch as pine cones spin through the air and branches.

On the dirt paths below, others take to their bikes, scooting between the pines like small ghosts on speed.

“Do you like it?”

A young girl is beside me, all freckles and shaggy hair.

“We can build those tree houses 50 feet into the air,” she boasts. “We do it all weekend.”

“Don’t your parents worry?”

The kid shakes her head, points to a street light.

“If we’re home before the lights come on, we can do what we want,” she says. “We’re free.”

I think of my children at home, watching TV, and then the rain drops hit my face and the kids are gone.

I keep walking, pad up the footpath to a small strip of shops.

I see the Royal Khalsa bakery and I recognise the name from google maps. The shop is humble and I see from the peeling paint under the awning that it used to sell plasma and LCD TVs.

“I saw you on google maps,” I say, to the owner and his customer.

“It’s because he’s very famous,” the customer says, patting his friend on the shoulder. “He makes Indian pasties – vegetarian, no egg. People come from all over. Are you from google?”

Outside, in the cold, I bite into the pasty. The pastry is rich and melty, the filling is warm potato, sweet potato and spice.

Across High Street, I see Reservoir train station, first built in 1884, and, nearby it, the level crossing.

They’ve called it hell’s crossing over the years, the spaghetti crossing, the death trap.

I count four separate sets of boom gates.

CATH FERLA

The level crossing is scheduled to be removed by the current government, replaced with either a fly-over or an underpass, but the locals don’t believe it.

“They’ve been saying it’s a death trap for years,” says a woman at the lights. She has prim hair and a tired face.

“C’mon mum, they put a sign up! What more do you want?” jokes the middle-aged man in a hoodie standing near her.

The woman looks at the remnants of my pastie. “Was it good?” she asks, doubtfully.

I nod. “It’s my first time here.”

The woman gestures back to Broadway, which comes off High Street and is pulsing with multicultural groceries and businesses.

“The strip used to be so marvelous,” she says. “People used to get dressed up to go shopping. Broadway seemed so magnificent and everyone knew everyone and there were wonderful butchers.”

She looks again at my pastie and shakes her head. “It’s all changed now.”

The lights flip and I begin to walk. I pull my jacket around me and clasp my umbrella tight but, in the next moment, the sun is out and there’s a horrible screeching in the air.

I peer at the crossing and see the boom gates are gone and that a train and a motorcycle have collided.

It’s summer 1930 and the bike rider, High Street jeweler Theodore Pomanoff*, 38, is about to be dragged 200 metres in the smash.

It’s only six months after The Age headlined a “Crossing Collision” and three years before the Weekly Times runs a story of a doctor killed in a “Level Crossing Tragedy”.

It’s a “Crossing Death Trap at Reservoir”, says The Herald, in 1933.

In 2018, I watch the woman and her son ahead of me. The suburb may have changed around them but the death trap is still there.

I move past the crossing and meet a man with a long black beard and sharp eyes. An old-school camera hangs from a strap around his neck.

At the side of the road, beside him, sits a 1930s motor car. It’s fitted with an odd canvas tent cover and there’s a skull and cross bones on the radiator.

“Jump in,” the man says, catching my glance and opening the door. “My name’s Algernon. Have you ever eaten squab?”

Squab. Definition: young pigeon. I may have eaten pig’s heart on a trip to China, but I’ve never eaten that.

I’m driving up High Street with Algernon Darge: photographer, squab breeder, mechanic, chemist, flyer and cousin of Banjo Paterson.

In the 1930s he was well known in Melbourne, though his dress was described as “grotesque”. I take in his long beard and quirky attire and decide that in 2018 Algernon would fit right in.

He has a property in Reservoir and 19,000 photographic plates that reside, in 2018, at the Australian War Memorial.

“You took photos of soldiers?”

Algernon shrugs. “My moto was photographs taken of anything – anywhere – anytime.”

The car hits a pot hole and Algernon swerves, clings to the wheel. He turns to me. “Did you know I predicted my own death?”

I open the door to the car and Algernon snaps a picture. The flash is blinding and when I shake my eyes open he’s gone and I’m standing at the pedestrian lights across from Ruthven Station.

CATH FERLA

It’s not much to look at. There’s a pedestrian underpass, a passenger safety zone and a platform that is windswept and dull.

I sit on a bench next to an elderly gentleman. He’s a Collingwood supporter; the black and white stripes are wrapped tight around his neck.

“This is mine,” he says quietly, gesturing towards the length of the platform. “I received a Victoria Cross and they gave me this station.”

“You’re a war veteran?” I ask.

“I served in both the great wars,” he says, and I realise I am again talking to a ghost.

“But I received the VC for World War I. Most conspicuous bravery and initiative in action, they said. I just did what I had to. Looked after my men.”

He holds out a hand. “I’m William Ruthven,” he says, easily. “But people call me Rusty.”

“How many people know who you are and what you did?”

Ruthven shrugs tired shoulders. “It doesn’t matter,” he says simply. “I’m no longer breathing, but this place is.”

And then he’s gone and I remain on the bench and look across the tracks to High Street where a procession is taking place.

I take off down the platform and the ramp to the underpass, ignore the broken glass and empty beer bottles, push out to the street and see it is lined with people, including diggers with their hats to their hearts.

“What year is it and whose funeral?” I ask a man standing nearby. He turns, tears streaming down his face.

“It’s 1980 and it’s my friend Robert Clarke. 21. Car accident. They’ve closed the whole street down. Clackers was that good a bloke.”

I watch the procession, hear the crowd talk about Clackers, the tragedy of his death and what a mighty young footballer he was – he hit the big time when he joined the VFA’s Preston club.

And then I hear the pedestrian lights tick over to ‘walk’ and I take in the traffic. It’s the present again and I don’t trust the bundling trucks and speeding cars.

I walk into the centre of the road and, as I do, I see a red sedan speed up from behind the stopped cars heading north. It shoots around a bus and burns for the traffic lights and me.

I stop, frozen on the road, not wanting to die on this excursion.

At the last minute, the driver screams on the breaks, hits the curb, grapples with the steering wheel.

He throws his fist towards me in a gesture that is violent and rude.

It’s a very masculine road.

I think of Algernon predicting his own death and I’m pleased that I haven’t predicted mine.

I think of William Ruthven and his Victoria Cross and know that I am not so brave.

I think of the road, of how it has come to life for me on this walk.

They’re mostly male stories I’ve found. I’d like to walk it again to find female hearts.

I arrive back at Royal Khalsa bakery and dive in for a paneer and onion roll.

I think about how the woman at the traffic lights talked about change as though it were a complaint.

I think about the people who’ve moved north to here, looking for land value.

“How long have you been here?” I ask the owner.

“6 years,” he says.

CATH FERLA

“And where were you before?”

He looks at me, a faint smile on his lips.

“Just up the road in Thomastown,” he says. “I moved south.”

*It was difficult to read the full surname of Theodore P. because of the legibility of the 1930 newspaper article.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thank you to the following people who assisted me with research and stories: Robert Cockerell, Leslie Clarke, Gary Edge, Neil Gardner, Devinder Paji, John Sambolec, Peter Tayles

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY: Smedley, J. “19,000 glass plate negatives: Algernon Darge’s First World War legacy”, A Cultural Cacophony: Museum Perspectives and Projects, Museums Galleries Australia, Sydney, 2016, pp. 165-175

‘Collingwood’s First V.C.’, Bendigonian, 18 July, 1918, p.9

‘Crossing Collision. Remarkable Escapes From Injury’, The Age, 30 June, 1930, p.10

‘Level Crossing Smash’, The Age, 30 December, 1930, p.7

‘Crossing Death Trap at Reservoir, Safety Device Needed’, The Herald, 10 October 1933, p.17

‘Level Crossing Tragedy, Doctor Killed’, Weekly Times, 14 October, 1933, p.7

‘Town Figure of Yesterday Lost to City’, The Herald, 25 January, 1941, p.7

‘Guessed Date of Death’, Townsville Daily Bulletin, 27 January, 1941, p. 4

‘Local Football Loses a Real Champion’, Diamond Valley News, 25 August, 1980

‘South of Tofu Curtain, Shorten has to take a stand on the Adani mine’, The Australian Financial Review, 2 February, 2018

‘Breaches in the Hipster-Proof Fence as Labor hits Greens in the heartland’, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 March, 2018

CATH FERLA

I WANNA WALK THROUGH THE PARK IN THE DARKPONCH HAWKES

“I wanna walk through the park in the dark”

(lyric from Nameless, Faceless by Courtney Barnett)

Thanks to Courtney Barnett and Milk! Records Thank you to: Robin, Shona, Jen, Urszula, Sandy, Jodie, Lucy, Lynne, Cath, Jude, Ian, Snehargo, DJ

My friend Robin was talking about how she had been walking in a park, and suddenly felt very isolated. She wondered about what her response would be if she was attacked. She said, “I’d put my credit card in my bra.” We all fell about laughing but it led me to start thinking again about women and how restricted we are in our ability to use public spaces.

(i) PONCH HAWKES

(ii) PONCH HAWKES

(iII) PONCH HAWKES

(IV) PONCH HAWKES

(V) PONCH HAWKES

(VI) PONCH HAWKES

(VII) PONCH HAWKES

(VIII) PONCH HAWKES

RUCKER’S HILLSAL KIMBER

1. My name is William – I was born far from this land, Sailed to the Derwent - son of a Saxon man I gathered my riches selling whiskey, beer and wine, First banker in Melbourne town wrapped up in borrowed money and borrowed time

2. Grabbing land a Plenty, where Hoddle heads up on High, I could see for miles around, from the bay to mountain sky Built my mansion using brick and blue stone, All you people will remember me standing on this crested throne;

Way up here the air so still, I am the King of this hill

3. Didn’t take long, for my greed to come undone, Brick by brick, stone by stone I lost all I had won In the ashes of my ruin - foreign church bells they do ring, Bickering steeples, displaced people but ancient voices still sing

Way up here where the air so still, I am the King of this hill But it never was, never will, be truly Rucker’s Hill

4. Saturday night on High at the Peacock Inn, Bogans and hipsters and high heel blisters join tribes as they pile in Clutching their colours of the eagles and the crows, Watching the game of Marngrook but the truth they do not know

Old man at the bar – leans over and he groans, In a voice so clear, familiar here, breathing bitter tones “This place it ain’t yours, it never was it never will We are kings the of Rucker’s Hill”

5. You can spend your money building walls, spilling milk and honey, But you will never truly own this land Sign your name on a dotted line, quickly fades just a matter of time, You will never truly own this land

We can spend our money building walls, spilling milk and honey, But we will never truly own this land Sign our names on a dotted line quickly fades just a matter of time, We will never truly own this land

SPOKEN OVER THE TOP OF OUTRO

Jika Jika calls from his camp on Merri Creek, We didn’t sell this land for blankets and handkerchiefs 2000 spans of Wurundjeri watched Na-irm drain then fill, Hunting giant roos and watching Birr-a-rung spill They eyed the land bridge and felt the glacial chill, Wurundjeri country belonging, it was and always will Wurundjeri Willam’s land from up on that sacred hill

You never could – you never will, Truly own the land you call Rucker’s Hill

SAL KIMBER

MADE IN PRESTONMELISSA REEVES

My mother worked part time as a secretary at the Preston Glue and Oil manufacturing works. She met my father at a Company social event. He worked at the Standard leather factory, and on their first date she made a joke that has gone down in family history, I think I’m stuck on you, she said. It was of course, a joke with many meanings, not the least of which was that the famous award winning glue made at her factory, was often used in combination with the leather that my Dad turned out at the Standard Leather Company.

We always had footballs in the house. Dad got given them from work, cause the Standard Leather Company provided leather to Spalding in Collingwood which made Sherrins, and the gammy ones, where the stitching was coming loose, or the shape was a bit off, too long, or too round, or too fat, got given to the workers, some kind of sop maybe for the low wages and long hours, and the nasty noxious work that is tanning and stretching and dyeing dead animals. Take this misshapen football home for your kids. We kicked those footballs up and down our street, which backed onto the brick-works, and was a block away from Zwars Tannery, down-wind of the pigs squealing in pens at Bell Station, every night after school, and all day on weekends, ducking the cars and trucks and bikes, kept in time by the tannery whistles at the start and ends of shifts, we belted along the footpaths, and leapt, and elbowed, and tackled, breathing in the fumy, dusty, smelly, air of our sweaty, smelly, dirty, noisy suburb. We kicked footballs that were made from the hide of cows from farms out past Reservoir, killed in abattoirs up Plenty Rd, scraped, soaked, strung up, soaked again, dunked in acid, soaked again, stretched, and maybe after one more soaking, and dipping, and another stretching, got sent down to Collingwood for cutting and stitching. All local. From the ground up. Grown, killed, tanned, sewn, and bounced, kicked and marked in the north. I ate my vegetables, grown in the the Chinese market gardens along the Merri creek, and my ham and bacon, processed at Hutton’s Bacon factory, and I caught the mania for footy that spread like wild fire in Preston and never went away, ever since Roy Cazaley coached the Preston Football Club to a preliminary final against Northcote in 1931. I had an Uncle that played for the Bullants, and a cousin who played for West Preston. There were multiple leagues in Preston in those days, let alone multiple clubs. In the Preston District Junior Football association, there were the Rivoli stars, the Preston Wanderers, the East Resis, West Resis, North resis, the Resi old boys, Preston swimmers, Preston scouts, and the Preston Police Boys Club, they were a real bunch of thugs. It was all about keeping boys off the streets. With their fathers all gone psycho from the war, pissed all the time and unable to look after them. That was the idea. Big boys, fat boys, dull boys, slow boys, fast boys, rat-faced boys. boys boys boys. boys. boys. My brother was a Rivoli star. He wasn’t fast. They called him the turtle, he was a solid, tree-trunk type full back, so fucking tall he just had to put his hands up to grab a mark, didn’t need speed or smarts, just built for the position. They played at the Harry Swain reserve, behind the Picture Theatre. Harry Swain owned a shoe shop, and was a Mayor. The team I had my eye on was based right next to the Merri creek, three blocks away, at the end of Oakover Rd, two ovals surrounded by gum trees, near a swamp full of birds, a bit of a swimming pool that caught all the water run-off, and underneath the power-lines, so it couldn’t be built over, the perfect spot, it was called the Capp/Robinson reserve. Alexander Hadly Capp had a dairy in West Preston and was a Mayor. Bill Robinson had a menswear shop in High Street and was a Mayor. All the grounds were named after people who had shops and were Mayors. If you had a shop, and got to be a Mayor, you got a sports ground named after you.

As I got older, my mother and father started having a bit of a problem with my football prowess. Before that I was like a performing pony, they showed off my elite marking, and bullet quick hand-passes to all and sundry, but on my tenth birthday, my mother bought me a bathing cap covered in yellow plastic flowers, and a halter neck, flamingo print, one piece bathing suit, and suggested I take up diving, and my father said I had long strong legs and why not join the harriers, and go for long jogs across the suburbs. But I loved football. I was big and strong. I was fast. I could run. I liked being in the scrimmages. I liked all the fighting. I was especially fond of a good melee. I was good at sport, and yes I coulda been a swimmer, or a long distance runner, or a hurdler or a tennis player or a caber tosser, but I liked Football.

The reason I had my eye on the team that played at the grounds by the creek, in amongst the gum trees, was the uniform. They wore a dark navy blue strip, with white vertical stripes, and even though I was pretty much straight as a board, I wasn’t stupid, I knew what was coming, and I thought it best to steer clear of sashes, and very clear of hoops. I found a baggy long sleeved top, like it was a hand-me-down from my older brother, everyone had hand-me-downs then, recycled from other

MELISSA REEVES

clubs, and I cut my hair short, and with the connivance of my brother, who knew I was a champion in the making, and who came along and introduced me so I didn’t have to open my mouth, I fronted up to training. It was piss easy, they needed a full forward, no questions were asked.

It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to think I was a girl. Cause girls didn’t play footy. I was a good player. I was a Dead eye dick, I could do bananas, and drop punts and a torpedo that would sail from Merri Creek, right over Robinson reserve, to the dressing rooms near Halwyn Crescent. I was a tackling machine, with a reputation as a dirty low-down vicious dog of a player. I figured if I played dirty, lots of coat hangers, and knees to the groin, and sneaky little trips, and chicken wings, I would be even less likely to be found out. But really, no one suspected. It wasn’t to be thought of. A girl playing footy. Everyone knew about Tommy McNamara, the coach of the Wanderers, premiers in ‘47, football tragic, how it was the curse of his life, he’d had three girls and no boys, no boys at all, no boys to pull on the jumper, and carry on his great legacy, poor fucker.

I played the whole season. We finished ninth. I came 7th in the goal kicking, and I was voted best clubman. They never suspected a thing. I wasn’t the only one. There was a stocky little rover in the Preston Swimmers who was definitely a girl. And I was pretty sure about a particularly dashing forward flanker in the West Resi’s. But the stress of the deception was getting to me. I was losing my joy in the game. And that had been the whole point of the exercise. So I gave it up. I hung up my boots. I said goodbye to my footy career, and the Capp/Robinson Reserve.

And I thought, one day, maybe, a woman’s team will play on this ground, with their hair tied up in top knots, and pony tails, to get it out of their eyes. Maybe they’ll be a great team, maybe they’ll kick arse, maybe they’ll win seven premierships in a row, and be so chock a block full of champions that the suburban leagues won’t be able to contain them, and they’ll play for a national league with whole teams of women foot-ballers, glamorous, tough, skillful woman foot-ballers, suddenly Women’s footy will make sense to the power brokers in terms of the bottom dollar, and will be shockingly, wonderfully elevated against the grain of society, against the flow of play, and all that desire, and all that skill will get a stage to perform on, and it will change the world, and it will have been made in Preston.

MELISSA REEVES

MERRI CREEK – A BIG STINK IN ITS TIMENICK RICHARDSON

IT WAS the widow: she was the one who got the papers interested. It was a simple tale but it fell on fertile ground.

The poor woman had lost her husband and his brother and was left to run the family abattoir in Northcote. One night, so the story went, in late summer 1880, the nameless widow had taken a walk with her elderly mother but as they returned home, the widow was alarmed to see lights moving around in her factory. The widow sought out her foreman for confirmation that the business had been locked up. Indeed it had, the foreman said.

And so, together, they approached the factory, wondering what they would find. Inside, were four men, each carrying a candle, each of them inspecting the premises…for the source of an overpowering smell.

The four men were members of an organisation called the Northcote Health League, a group of zealous locals intent on ridding Northcote of its putrid smells and toxic refuse. They were led by a stern Scotsman called Duncan Fraser, a minister at the Northcote Presbyterian Church, who had vowed to do something about the alarming smells that permeated the local air. His epiphany had come on a warm Sunday evening when a particularly virulent odour invaded the church and the good reverend felt his flock’s attention start to wane. Later that night, fuelled by passion and no little inspiration, the Rev Fraser, wrote: “Fire and brimstone are good deodorisers.’’

The local newspapers thought the actions of the League in infiltrating the poor widow’s home was a step too far – “..it was wilful trespass without warrant or authority’’- but then again, these were desperate times. The League had a mission and that was to rid Northcote of its stink.

The source of these smells didn’t actually need the cover of nightfall and candlelight to be revealed. They were easy to find: the stink came from abattoirs, piggeries and tanneries that were common throughout the area. Not only were there such things as “scrofulous hogs’’ kept in Clarke St piggeries, but there was the powerful smell generated from boiling down animal carcasses to collect the fat that would become candle wax or soap. This rich brew became a virulent ingredient that mixed with constant effluent to form an ever-present fear of terrible diseases, enteric fever and diphtheria. And the place where all these toxic fluids merged, like some hellish well-spring, was the Merri Creek.

At the time, there were few more maligned waterways than Merri Creek. For more than 40 years, the curves, dips and bends of the Creek was where the distinctive stench seemed to live, flowing from Collingwood, to Northcote and down into Preston. The smell not only seemed to have invaded the water but hovered above the Creek, being pushed around by the prevailing winds. Each of the dirty jobs that sprung up near its banks, whether it was tanneries, the boiling down operations or wool scouring, needed the Creek’s water to make them work: the water came in to the factories and then went back out to the Creek, larded with ripe ingredients.

“Smell!’’, one indignant North Fitzroy resident told the Minister for Health in 1910: “Why it is so strong that it takes the paint off the Merri Creek Bridge!’’ The condemnation became more gruesome. The number of dead bodies found in the Creek had nothing to do with misadventure - far from it. “I believe they [the deaths] were the results of accidents which had occurred through persons falling over the bridge owing to the smell from the filth in the creek,’’ the agitated Fitzroy resident said.

Could the Creek be that culpable? Was the smell from its placid water so overpowering, that it addled the senses of those who went near it?

Such questions about a waterway’s power to offend seem faintly ridiculous now, but back then the Creek had such a bad press, anything might have been possible. An “insignificant stream’’, one newspaper critic noted. “[T]he stinking, filthy scum in the Merri Creek…,’’ observed another. And yet, for many year, the Creek was integral to providing sustenance and shelter for the Wurundjeri-willam clan who had given the Creek its name, meaning “rocky or stony’’ because of its extensive basalt deposits. In time, the basalt would be quarried and used in building Pentridge Prison, which, in turn, would add its own refuse to the mix.

NICK RICHARDSON

But the Creek was quixotic, a waterline that flirted with constancy, shifting between a steady drip to a rolling torrent. For many years, it became a dumping ground, not just for the industrial waste but also for the run-off from the local nightsoil depots. It was then, as the poisonous run-off found its way from the Creek into the Yarra, that the Northcote nuisances became everyone’s problem.

Attempts were made to fix it. Not only did the Rev Fraser and his League agitate to close the businesses generating the smells, but also the appropriately named Inspector of Nuisances, a man charged with investigating the odours and vapours that stubbornly refused to leave the Creek, was pressed into action.

The low-point came in 1880 when the local papers were full of discussions about Northcote and Merri Creek’s dreadful stench. There was an extensive report on the local “nuisances’’ in May 1880 and the board of health warned several boiling down businesses that had not taken “sanitary precautions’’ would face penalties under the health act. There was talk in the papers about the police getting involved and charging the polluters with offences under the Public Health Act. Talk extended to that most potent of motivators – the impact on real estate prices. “So much has been said and written of late respecting these nuisances, that there is very little doubt but that the City fathers will take suitable steps to prevent a recurrence of them, as they must be well aware of the tendency of such continual complaints to cause a marked depreciation in the value of property within the City,’’ one local columnist noted. The logic, on the face of it, was persuasive. The problem was, however, that some of the City fathers on the Shire of Jika Jika, actually had interests in the tanneries, piggeries and boiling-down works. So the smells persisted.

The drainage problem was not only Northcote’s burden. There was plenty of debate across Melbourne about the public health problems generated by the absence of drainage. Melbourne Punch, a publication that cocked a sardonic hat to such issues, thought that the way to solve Melbourne’s smell problem was to send it back to the Merri Creek. After all, Northcote residents were used to the stench. In a rather telling verse that would have undoubtedly provoked some locals, the publication said in May, 1880:

Oh, each respective smeller of drainage! To be sewer You’ve asked the proper feller to hit upon a cure, Tilstop the smells of Melbourne, since nuisances you vote’ em As sure as I’m a swell born, and Council’oslfacto-tum. In closely-covered drainways the city’s refuse may Beneath our noble mainways be carried far away. Despite some local hubbub, let it an outlet seek Near Northcote’s favored subbub, into the Merri Creek; The Northcote lads and wenches have noses of cast iron, And vari-scented stenches the Jika Shire environ; Then let the city’s gutters tow’rd Northern suburbs press- Ne’er heed the local mutters—What’s a smell the more or less ?

But change was on its way. Pressure from the increasingly populated southern part of the Shire, where years of putting up with the smells was wearing thin, started to pay off. By 1883, the Northcote Health League was petitioning Alfred Deakin, the Minister for Public Works, to establish a separate borough, distinct from the Shire of Jika Jika. Deakin agreed and in the aftermath of the establishment of the Northcote Borough in July of that year, meatworks were banned from the southern end of the new district, while other similar businesses moved further north, or closed down. The Northcote Health League, with its job done, closed down.

Later, some of the rocks in Merri Creek were removed and disinfectant tipped in to the water ostensibly to clean it. Finally, a fully-functioning sewerage system that operated across Melbourne would eliminate forever the old-fashioned nuisances. The Creek settled in to repose, putting a few generations between it and the dark days of “pestilent filth’’. But for a while, Merri Creek was the infamous tributary that became a byword for rotten refuse and the stench that went with it.

NICK RICHARDSON

THE INCURIOUS WOMAN WHO WENT TO THE LIBRARYDENISE SCOTT

In 1961 Jackie Kennedy described Queen Elizabeth as “a middle aged woman so incurious, unintelligent, and unremarkable, that Britain’s new reduced place in the world was not a surprise, but an inevitability.”

I know this because I watched the Netflix series ‘The Crown’ and I loved every damn second of it. Oh my godfather, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowden, what a smoldering, sexy, smokin’ hot couple they were. But what has this got to do with The Carnegie Library? Did Margaret and Tony have a quick bonk behind the magazine rack whilst a ferocious librarian, looking over the top of her 1950’s spectacles, sternly told them to: “Sshhh!”

Of course not. If only. Now that would’ve been something to write about.

What does provide the connection, albeit a loose one, between The Crown and The Carnegie Library is that word ‘incurious’. Until Jackie Kennedy uttered it on television I’d never heard it before and suddenly there it was, hitting me like an unexpected slap across the face. “Snap, sister!” I thought to myself, because just like Queen Elizabeth, I too was an incurious woman!

I wasn’t always this way. I used to care about stuff, have opinions, blah-blah-blah, but once I got to sixty I suddenly just felt really tired; I mean really, really tired, and one day I found myself going for a lie down on the bed and well, two years later, I was still kind of just lying there. It was all I wanted to do. Lie on the bed… and drink; not excessively, just a few cheeky glasses of red. And it’s not an easy thing to do, to drink while lying down. As I’ve often been heard to say: “Thank God for bendy straws!”

And so it was that when the lovely Liz, from Darebin Council, rang and asked if I’d like to write something about a place in Darebin, my immediate thought was: “Nuh. Why would I? Just because I’ve lived in the hood for 36 years doesn’t mean I care about it.” But then I gave myself a pep talk: this could be just what I needed; after all there’s nothing like a deadline hanging over one’s head to get a person moving.

A couple of weeks later I found myself at the Thornbury Theatre, where I got to spin the wheel to find out what exciting place I would be writing about. The MC announced: “The Carnegie Library!” as though I’d hit the jackpot. Being a showbiz professional I plastered on a smile and thought: “Carnegie Library? What the? Where’s that? Isn’t it the other side of the river? And who wants to go there?”

Of course, I soon discovered the Carnegie Library was not the other side of the river, but was in fact the jewel in Northcote’s real estate crown. Its original façade is still visible today, sitting in dazzling white splendor, atop Rucker’s Hill, next to ye olde Town Hall.

So why was it called the Carnegie Library? Good question. So glad you asked, because thanks to Google I found the answer and I didn’t even have to get out of bed.

Mr Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, who in 1901 was declared the richest man in the world, having just sold his Carnegie Steel Company for 480 million dollars. Interestingly Mr Carnegie was not your typical rich greedy capitalist bastard - and yes I have lived in the North for 36 years and therefore have always been and will always be an unashamed lefty – anyway Mr Carnegie had a touch of the Mahatma Gandhi about him, vowing to give his wealth away to those less fortunate. In 1889 he wrote his famous essay entitled “The Gospel of Wealth”, in which he declared: “Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.” Note to self: “Must get a copy of that essay and send it to Gina Rinehart.”

One of the things Carnegie was happy to fund was the building of community libraries all over the world, on condition they be free and the building always remain a library.

Meanwhile in the land down under, a group of dour, mustachioed gentlemen known as the Northcote Library Committee attended a meeting, where they were informed the Victorian Government had refused to fund a new library in their district. Upon hearing this news, the Secretary of the Committee, Mr R.J. Whalley, stormed out, yelling: “Bunch of a***holes, I’m going to the Peacock for a drink” or words to that effect; I wasn’t there of course, I’m just guessing.

DENISE SCOTT

One thing I do know for certain was that Mr Whalley went on to use his considerable charm to extricate three thousand pounds from Mr Carnegie, and on the 21st August 1911 the Carnegie Library, on Rucker’s Hill, was officially opened.

It was quite the occasion! The mayor, Mr Ralph Archibald, who had laid the foundation stone some months earlier, rapturously told the capacity crowd: “Beneath this stone we have placed a copy of the Northcote Leader and some budget figures from the council.”

I think I speak for us all when I say: “Good on you Ralph, a Council budget? Gosh that’s going to be a fun find for some lucky archaeologist in the future.”

Sir John Fuller gave the official opening speech. He happily admitted to knowing: “…practically nothing about Australian life.” And fair enough, why would he? After all, Sir John had only just arrived from England to take up his position as the Governor of Victoria!

“I say John, old boy, good news, there’s a governor’s position become available in Australia, do you know anything about the place?”

“Not a damn thing”.

“Marvelous, the job is yours”.

During his speech, Sir John also shared some of his personal thoughts about reading:

“Reading is in itself all very well. Reading might be instructive, or it might be a past-time or… reading might actually be harmful.”

Well done Sir John! One can only imagine the “did he really just say that” expression on the faces of the audience; not to mention the intense bristling of the library committee’s collective moustaches.

Thank goodness for world renowned flautist John Amadio, who got the event back on track with his exquisite rendition of Casta Diva from the Opera Norma by Bellini. He was accompanied by a Mrs R.J. Whalley on the pianoforte and look, call me cynical, but I’m willing to bet an arm and a leg that she only got the gig because she was the wife of the Secretary of the Library Committee. Come on we’ve all been on committees, we know how they work.

The final performer to cater to the entertainment needs of the crowd was none other than Miss Elsie Berry. To be honest my research failed to uncover much about Elsie apart from the fact she was an elocution teacher. Accordingly, I like to think she brought the show home with a good old audience participation round of “Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.”

The Carnegie Library was an instant success. Three hundred new members registered in the first three days. It continued to thrive and eventually in 1985 it moved to its new premises in Separation St.

“There’s some who say this place is jinxed.” That’s what Donna said when I met her recently. Donna is one of the workers in the building that used to be the Carnegie Library. For the past twenty years she has run the small toy library that is still housed there.

“Jinxed?” – My eyes widened to match Donna’s – “Why would this place be jinxed?”

“Because,” – Donna lowered her voice to a whisper and looked around to make sure no-one was in earshot – “one of Andrew Carnegie’s conditions in giving the Council the money was that it always remain a library.”

Of course! Hell’s bells had I forgotten my research already?

I desperately wanted to ask Donna if her life had been beset with uncommon tragedy since starting work there, but it felt too intrusive. Donna’s demeanor certainly gave no hint of her having had a disaster-filled life, and in fact she appeared to be a very happy woman with an extremely sunny and loving disposition.

Nevertheless, maybe there was something to Donna’s ‘jinxed’ theory. Maybe the Darebin Council was also ‘spooked’ by, or at least had some respect for, Carnegie’s original condition and hence the reason the little toy library is still located in the original building.

DENISE SCOTT

Who knows? What I do know is that, by some miracle, the incurious woman had begun to read again, ask questions, and had even for the love of god had actually gotten out of bed and gone to the Carnegie Library.

And as I said Donna: “Look I might be kidding myself but I honestly reckon as long as there’s a few bits of lego, some board games and a little rocking horse in the building, we can all sleep easy at night, knowing the Carnegie Library is, in some small, mysterious way, still doing its job.

DENISE SCOTT