While this man's selling Amway to all his friends, she's been chasing cosmic thrills

Thursday music corner: Melbourne acoustic chamber-pop group My Friend The Chocolate Cake were formed in 1989 by two Not Drowning, Waving members, David Bridie and Helen Mountfort. The band released seven albums between 1992 and 2017, and 10 singles. Their second album, 1994's Brood, was the most commercially successful, reaching number 32 in the Australian album charts and winning an Aria award for Best Adult Contemporary Album. All album lyrics were by singer David Bridie and all arrangements were by the band, apart from the single cover version, of Magazine's 1980 single A Song From Under the Floorboards. The ebullient Throwing It Away was the first single released from Brood. My Friend the Chocolate Cake began an indefinite band hiatus in 2018.

My Friend The Chocolate Cake - Throwing It Away (1994)

See also:

Music: Not Drowning, Waving - Willow Tree (1989)

Music: My Friend the Chocolate Cake - I've Got a Plan (1994)

Music: David Bridie - Hotel Radio (2003)

If the Huns Came to Melbourne

Now another unlisted Australian film makes an appearance. An ironic touch to this entry is that although If the Huns Came to Melbourne was made in that city, it was premiered at the Wondergraph, Adelaide [in May 1916]. When released in Melbourne it did not obtain a city theatre release, but was shown at the Port Theatre, Port Melbourne.

'Imagine, if you can,' directed the advertisement, 'the nameless horror perpetrated on the helpless Belgians in the name of German Kultur. Think for a moment, of a repetition of the dreadful nightmare in Melbourne. Picture those nearest and dearest to you, at the mercy of the Huns.'

Produced by Arthur Coates, it was left to photographer Arthur Higgins to supply details of this dramatic production. Interiors were filmed in an open air theatre in Albert Park. Enlarged photographic miniatures of important buildings were mutilated, to convey the impression of destruction by shell fire, and tobacco smoke was blown across the ruins to create the illusion of a smouldering aftermath. Then portions of old newsreels were superimposed, showing German soldiers marching, and Red Cross workers rescuing the wounded.

During the actual screening in Melbourne, the destruction of Young and Jackson's Hotel [opposite Flinders St Station] caused a bigger stir than the burning of the Federal Parliament House.

- Eric Reade, Australian Silent Films, Melbourne, 1970, p.92

See also:
Blog: Remnants of the band that didn't play on, 31 January 2025
Blog: Fed Square multicultural festival, 25 March 2017
Blog: The heart of Melbourne, 3 November 2016

Not talkin' 'bout religion, no - not talkin' 'bout fashion, no

Thursday music corner: The Dynamic Hepnotics were an Australian soul band formed by "Continental" Robert Susz in Sydney in 1979. Although the band released only one album, 1985's Take You Higher, they achieved considerable chart success with their most memorable single, Soul Kind of Feeling. Written by Susz and appearing as the final track on Take You Higher, the exuberant soul single reached number five in the Australian pop charts in 1984, driven in particular by Susz's dramatic falsetto vocals, and popularised further by numerous appearances in the soap Neighbours. The song charted even higher in New Zealand, reaching number three in March 1985. 

The band had one other Australian charting single, Gotta Be Wrong (Way to Love), which reached number 20 later in 1984. The band split in 1986, but reunited for two music festival shows in 2015.   

Dynamic Hepnotics - Soul Kind of Feeling (1984)

See also:
Music: Hoodoo Gurus - I Want You Back (1984)

Music: Eurogliders - Heaven (Must Be There) (1984)

Music: Pseudo Echo - A Beat For You (1984)

Remnants of the band that didn't play on

One day I had to go and inspect the huge Sitmar Cruises neon at the end of Elizabeth Street on Flinders Street Station. It was about 50 foot long (15 metres) and displayed three different messages, including a great big ship revolving around. It had blown a fuse, and I thought, 'Oh bugger, where's the fuse for this thing?' Because, of course, the railways had bloody switchboards all over the place. So I got on up on the roof. I was walking along the roof following this conduit to one of those little beehives along the side of the railway building. There was an old rusty lock on the thing. I just ripped it off with my screwdriver and I went in. There was a little trapdoor up in the roof and the bloody conduit went up into that and I thought, 'You bastard!'. So I had to go downstairs and get a big pair of steps and drag it up. Got them into the bloody thing, got up, pushed the trapdoor open and stuck my head in.

There was about 100 musical instruments in there. All beautiful silver trumpets and trombones, violins, guitars, banjos. All the glue had come undone and they'd fallen into a heap of three-ply on the floor and all the skins had gone off the drums. And I thought, 'What a strange f***ing thing this is'. So I went down to the man in grey and asked if he had ever lost anything here. [It turned out] the bloke who hid them up there was told to hide the instruments because at the start of the Second World War everybody thought the Japs [the Japanese] were coming. He built a false ceiling in and put all the stuff up there and closed it up. He belonged to the Salvation Army band in Brunswick and they all went away with the Second 21st Australian Brigade [sic.] to Singapore.

"They were all captured by the Japs. As they were getting taken to Japan for forced labour, the troop ship they were on was torpedoed by a Yanky [US] ship. They were locked down in the hold. Two thousand of them went to the 'bottom bank' - one of the biggest Australian losses of life in the War. And he was the bloke that hid them; he'd worked for the railways.

They searched everywhere for these instruments – in Flinders Street, Spencer Street - couldn't find them. And so I said to the man in grey, 'Well, I think I've just found them. Apparently after the Second World War there was a reward of 100 quid for finding them. Well I said, 'I'll expect a cheque'. And I'm still waiting...''

- Ian 'Podgy' Rogers, neon maintenance man, in Stephen Banham, Characters: Cultural Stories Revealed Through Typography, Melbourne, 2017, p.252-3.

Is this some dumb metaphor to tell me you're not hanging round?

Thursday music corner: Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist Deborah Conway was born in Melbourne in 1959 and first came to prominence in pop outfit Do-Ré-Mi. She released her first solo album, String of Pearls, in 1991, for which she won a Best Female Artist ARIA award. That record and her follow-up, 1993's Bitch Epic, were both certified gold records in Australia. 

Alive and Brilliant was the first single from Bitch Epic, and reached number 64 in the Australian pop charts. Conway has released 10 studio albums to date, the five most recent of which have been with her husband, Willy Zygier.

Deborah Conway - Alive & Brilliant (1993)

See also:

Music: Deborah Conway - Today I Am A Daisy (1994)

Music: Deborah Conway - It's Only The Beginning (1991)

Music: Do-Ré-Mi - Man Overboard (1985)

The threat of transportation to the colonies

[T]ransportation overseas, in use from 1717 onwards, remained a major alternative option for British law enforcers. Yet exiling convicts from friends, families and familiar lives as a penalty for minor crimes seemed equally disproportionate. Moreover, this policy too was arbitrary in its implementation. Judicial discretion produced major regional variations in trial outcomes. After their conviction, too many prisoners then died in the insanitary ships - known as the 'hulks'- where they were kept while awaiting transportation. And once they had arrived overseas, people's subsequent experiences were also variegated. Hence this penalty also lacked rationality, proportionality and fairness.

That said, the policy of criminal transportation, initially to the North American colonies (before 1776) and then to Australia, continued for a considerable time. Most transportees were adult males from south-east England; but some women were sent too. One was Hannah Rosse, a Londoner described as 'a sort of a dumb [sic], who was speech-impeded or (possibly) shamming. In 1745 she was sentenced to transportation for a second offence of larceny (non-violent theft of goods worth over 12 pence). Rosse's disability won her no leniency, indicating that she had no incentive to be faking it. In all, some 162,400 convicts were taken to Australia between 1788 and 1868. However, this policy was also being slowed, long before it was finally halted. In its last years, it was more of a threat than an actuality. By 1851 the transportees (a number of whom later returned to Britain) constituted only a tiny proportion of the 27 million inhabitants of Britain and Ireland.

- Penelope Cornfield, The Georgians: The Deeds & Misdeeds of 18th-Century Britain, New Haven, 2022, p.215-6.

UEST ommunit ne ape

Northern Times community newspaper bin, Woodford, Queensland

 

Most people I know think that I'm crazy

Thursday music corner: Manchester-born Billy Thorpe (1946-2007) arrived with his parents in Australia as a child. In 1964 he had his first hits with the Aztecs, which for a time until the emergence of the Easybeats was Australia's preeminent beat group. After a much-publicised bankruptcy and a hiatus for the Aztecs, the band had a new lease of life and adopted a louder, blues-rock style that built a considerable live following and eventually paid major dividends. 

Their most well-remembered track, Most People I Know (Think That I'm Crazy), was popularised by this storming live performance at the January 1972 Sunbury Music Festival (which also featured emigre New Zealanders The La De Das and Max Merritt & the Meteors). The single version of the song reached number 2 in the Australian charts and the August 1972 double live album Aztecs Live at Sunbury reached number 4 in the Australian album charts and was certified gold four times over.

Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs - Most People I Know (Think I'm Crazy) (live, 1972)

I know your secret delight in vice

Thursday music corner: The Triffids were a Western Australian alternative rock group formed in 1978, named for the terrifying science-fiction alien plant species in John Wyndham's 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids. Featuring David McComb as lead vocalist, the band were active until 1989. Of the band's five studio albums released between 1983 and 1989, Born Sandy Devotional (1986) and Calenture (1987) are both regarded as Australian classics. After a 1996 heart transplant and long-term illness, McComb died in 1999 aged 36.

Blinder By The Hour is a sweeping, romantically macabre track from the band's fourth album Calenture; the album title refers to a form of insanity suffered by mariners on long voyages. Bury Me Deep In Love and Trick Of The Light were both successful singles from the album, the former being used to soundtrack a wedding scene in the TV soap Neighbours in which Harold Bishop and Madge Mitchell were wed. 

Don't be ashamed to say

Thursday music corner: Australian singer Renee Geyer has been singing professionally since the early 1970s, and scored six Australian top 40 singles between 1975 and 1984. The lead single from her 1981 LP So Lucky, her seventh studio album, Say I Love You reached number 5 in the Australian pop charts and number 1 in New Zealand. The song topped the New Zealand charts for five weeks. Geyer was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2005.

Say I Love You was written by British reggae artist Eddy Grant, and originally appeared on his 1978 album Walking on Sunshine (the title track of which is a completely different song to the 1985 hit by Katrina & the Waves). Grant had two major smashes in 1982-3 with I Don’t Wanna Dance and Electric Avenue, the former of which also achieved number 1 status in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland and New Zealand.

Renee Geyer – Say I Love You (1981)

Sydney black & white

Multicultural festival: Federation Square, Melbourne

Cook Island dancer

Koori Youth Will Shake Spears

Flinders St

Farm Cove

Farm Cove, Sydney, 5 November 2016 - the site of the first farm of the New South Wales colony, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, established by Governor Macquarie in 1816.

The heart of Melbourne

Street scene at Federation Square, Melbourne, 3 November 2016, featuring the Visitor Centre, a prominent ad for the musical Kinky Boots, Flinder St Station and St Paul's Cathedral.

1st test v Australia, Day 2

Wellington turned on a brilliant day for test cricket yesterday, which was excellent for the many genial visitors from across the Tasman - including Allan Border, who I rubbed shoulders with in the Vance Stand - but perhaps not so brilliant for the New Zealand team, who had to slog through an entire day of perfect batting conditions, picking up only three wickets along the way. It must have been doubly galling to have had to watch Adam Voges' measured, careful ton, given he was spared on 7 in the last over of Day 1 by an incompetent no-ball call from umpire Richard Illingworth. Voges' innings ran on to an impressive 176 not out by the end of Day 2, almost eclipsing New Zealand's feeble first innings single-handed. Class act Usman Khawaja also dominated with a classy 140, the fourth test century he's scored in his last six innings. The only joy for New Zealand supporters was a brief fired-up over from Trent Boult with the new ball, which accounted for both Khawaja (caught LBW by a straightening delivery) and Mitchell Marsh (caught and bowled for a two-ball duck after being denied a wicket by DRS the ball before).

An unsuccessful Mark Craig appeal

Khawaja's ton

Inspecting the wicket block 

Dry summer on the bank

AFL: St Kilda v Carlton

A crowd of just over 12,000 enjoyed the Anzac Day AFL fixture at the stadium in Wellington today, witnessing a come-from-behind victory by Carlton over St Kilda. Having been exhorted to support St Kilda as 'the home team' through some sort of trans-Tasman deal, the crowd witnessed Carlton storming back from 25 points down after the first quarter, to taking the lead midway through the third quarter, and finally stretching out to victory over St Kilda by 40 points. The final score: Carlton 121 - 81 St Kilda. For a novice like me, who has only been to a single match before and that approximately 10 years ago, it was an ideal way to spend Anzac Day afternoon, and for the uninitiated the game is much easier to follow live than it is on TV.   

A long time between visits

It's worth remembering as we look forward to the grand Cricket World Cup final tonight just how out-of-touch Australian cricket is with their New Zealand neighbours:

• In the time since New Zealand last played an ODI at the MCG, there have been 15 ODIs at the ground, 12 of which involved Australia. 
• Since the last time New Zealand played an ODI in Australia (a no-result on 13 February 2009) Australia has played 63 ODIs at home. 
• That total includes 16 matches against England (of which Australia won 14), another 16 against Sri Lanka, 10 against the West Indies, 7 against India, 6 against Pakistan, and 5 against South Africa; there were also one-off pool games against Scotland and Afghanistan as part of the current World Cup. 
• Before the stirring one-wicket victory of New Zealand over Australia in Auckland during the pool matches, Australia's captain Michael Clarke had not played New Zealand in a one-dayer since the previous World Cup in India.

A total of 143 one-day internationals have been played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, but the last time New Zealand was invited to play an ODI there was more than six years ago. That match, on Waitangi Day 2009, saw New Zealand defeat Australia by six wickets: Australia was put in first and only managed 225/5, and then New Zealand knocked off the total with ease, having six wickets and seven balls to spare. Naturally, the parochial panel gave the man of the match award to Australian captain Michael Clarke for his 98 not out, despite being on the losing side. That was the last time New Zealand played at the MCG; six of the current playing XI scheduled to face Australia in tonight's World Cup final played in that 2009 match.

If that's not motivation enough for New Zealand to remind Australia that it doesn't own the game, I don't know what is. Perhaps there's also the additional frisson of just imagining what the Australian fans' faces will look like if New Zealand snatches this most unlikely of victories.

The old rivalry

If you have a long cricketing memory, you will remember that time in 1946 when the mighty Australian cricket team, flushed with the joys of Allied victory in World War 2, deigned to play little New Zealand in a one-off test at the Basin Reserve. It was the first time Australia had been willing to play New Zealand in a test, despite the smaller country having been playing test cricket since 1930. Predictably, given the imbalance in experience and talent, the test was a massacre, with New Zealand dismissed for 42 and 54 and Australia winning by an innings and 103 runs in only two days. There the Allied spirit ended, because following that victory Australia would not play New Zealand in another test match for 27 years, or indeed any sort of international match. New Zealand was simply not worthy of Australia's time. Naturally, the lack of exposure to the world's top team limited the growth of the New Zealand team and was part of the reason it took many, many years for New Zealand to establish any sort of consistency in test cricket.

Now consider today's pivotal ODI at Eden Park between the joint hosts of the 2015 Cricket World Cup, Australia and New Zealand. It will hopefully be a tremendous occasion. But if you examine the record books, it can be seen that increasingly we are returning to the days when Australia avoided playing New Zealand as much as possible. In the last five years New Zealand has played 97 ODIs, and Australia sits low in the table of opponents, alongside Bangladesh and Zimbabwe:

ODIs opponents, past 5 years	No.
Sri Lanka	20
Pakistan	14
India	12
South Africa	10
West Indies	9
England	8
Australia	7
Bangladesh	7
Zimbabwe	7
Canada	1
Kenya	1
Scotland	1

The regular ODI rivalries of old, where New Zealand toured Australia regularly and often popped up in the ODI tri-series, is a thing of the past. Shamefully, New Zealand has not been permitted to play an ODI in Australia since a five-match Chappell-Hadlee series in February 2009, six years ago. (The series was drawn 2-2). And Australia has not played ODIs in New Zealand since a five-match Chappell-Hadlee return series in March 2010, which Australia won 3-2. 

Perhaps this will generate some slight advantage for New Zealand, given that the Australian squad will have comparatively little experience playing New Zealand or playing at Eden Park. But ultimately it seems like a great shame that two neighbouring countries play cricket together so infrequently, and I would argue, to the detriment of both.

See also:

Cricket: NZ v England, Wellington, 21 February 2015

Cricket: Old Young Guns, 16 February 2014

Cricket: 9504 days, 12 December 2011

Great criminal masterminds of our time

Bandits dressed in full-length, hooded onesies, bashed their way into a Geelong West hotel and attacked an ATM with a sledgehammer before escaping in a stolen milk truck. When police closed in, two men burst from the truck on a small stolen motorbike and continued their getaway. But visions of an Italian Job-style movie heist appear to have come to a halt when two men were caught empty-handed a short time later on an overloaded motorcycle. To add to the fiasco, police say the ATM attacked at the Barking Dog hotel about 4am on Saturday wasn't holding any money [...]

- Greg Dundas & Bethany Tyler, Geelong Advertiser, 5 January 2015, via @faganjosh

Mr Putin departs Brisbane

Walking up Elizabeth Street in Brisbane on a furnace-like Queensland Sunday during the G20 conference (16 November 2014) I spotted a collection of crowd barriers and a phalanx of motorcycle cops in the middle of the road, awaiting something important. They were outside the Hilton hotel, and a young chap with a camera nearby informed me that the officers and several dozen spectators were waiting for the departure from the hotel of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had stated that he was departing the G20 conference several hours early in order to catch a few extra hours of sleep on his way back to important business in Moscow.

After about 20 minutes of waiting in the 40-degree Brisbane heatwave, during which time the traffic backed up down the length of Elizabeth Street, the Russian party emerged behind obscuring glass shields placed in front of the hotel parking zone, and boarded a fleet of vehicles. Putin's Mercedes limo emerged swiftly with the Russian leader in the rear right-hand seat; he waved briefly to the crowd and was soon out of sight as the convoy headed to the airport. Despite the icy diplomatic conditions of Putin's visit there was no animosity in the crowd; like me, people just seemed to be keen to spot a world leader in person.  

While waiting for the Russian leader's departure I took a few scene-setting photos in case they turned out well later. One prominent sentry in front of the hotel cut a particularly imposing figure - the man pictured below. I assumed he was a scary Russian secret service officer, trained to snap enemies of the Russian state in two with his bare hands. Upon returning home and examining the image more closely, I noticed from his name-tag that it was in face Officer Mark Fyfe of the New Zealand Police. So for frying for nearly half an hour in direct sunlight in 40 degree temperatures whilst wearing a full business suit and tie, and looking appropriately mean while doing so, I salute you!