Week 27 – Aussie arts

On an autumnal Tuesday Sally and I met up with babies in tow, with the ambitious plan of seeing a new exhibition at the Ian Potter Gallery in Fed Square. It was called ’80s Mix Tape’ and featured the many Australian artists who were active in the 1980s – an interesting education for me, particularly as Sally is such a wonderfully knowledgeable guide. However, Maisie had her own agenda, which included running over all the ‘do not cross’ white lines on the floor that are meant to keep visitors an arm’s length away from the paintings. Surprisingly we weren’t thrown out, but it was a close call!

In the evening, Sue and I went to see the film ‘No’, about the referendum the Chilean dictator Pinochet was forced into staging in the late 1980s as he faced increasing international pressure to step down and end his monstrous regime. The opposition campaign was limited to one brief TV slot a day for a month preceding the referendum, and had to motivate a whole nation of suffering, oppressed and politically divided people to vote ‘No’ in order to oust Pinochet. The young advertising director leading the campaign knew that a positive, upbeat message would draw people in, but this had to frame an expose of all the horrors of the regime. The film included actual footage of the ‘No’ and ‘Yes’ party political broadcasts, and, particularly movingly, a mourning dance performed by mothers and wives of the disappeared. I recognized a couple of the women, who were in a recent (highly recommended) Chilean documentary ‘Nostalgia for the Light’. 30 years on they are still combing the Atacama desert looking for fragments of bones of their loved ones.

Our exercise class takes place not far from Melbourne’s grand Shrine of Remembrance, and there was lots of activity as we were just about to hit ANZAC Day, Australia’s annual commemoration of soldiers killed in battle. There were mobile TV studios, event tents and army bivouacs being set up, and coach-loads of uniformed children being dragged around and involved in impromptu services with army men in their be-medalled khaki. There also happened to be several huge earth diggers and drills in action as they are currently remodelling the Shrine, and that got Maisie excited! We walked down the road to the National Gallery of Victoria, where they’re showing a new sculpture they’ve just purchased by Japanese artist Kohei Nawa. It’s a stuffed deer encrusted with a coat of clear glass baubles – the idea is that it is pixellated, and it is very effective as it is actually quite hard to see it clearly (if you peer through the baubles you can make out the fur beneath).

ANZAC Day is a bank holiday, and everyone is expected to muster for a dawn service (5am) at the Shrine of Remembrance – public transport starts an hour earlier than usual to help people get there. I’m afraid we didn’t make it though! But it was a beautiful morning, crisp and bright. Neil, Maisie and I went for a stroll along the beach promenade (the picture is of a beach-side sea scout hut), which was super busy with families on bikes and scooters and clusters of fit elderly people in lycra. In the afternoon we watched a very educational documentary about the artist Louise Bourgeois (what a haunted, feisty old lady she was!). Maisie was briefly transfixed by the screen at the sight of a couple of art activists who were being interviewed whilst wearing gorilla masks.

On Friday we watched the Jacques Tati film ‘Playtime’ – his epic critique of the modernist aesthetic, set in a futuristic Paris full of identical concrete and glass blocks and grey-dressed people moving around like robots. His character, Monsieur Hulot, bumbles about failing to do things the right way, and as shiny facades crack, and people start partying, the bohemian spirit of Paris gradually returns. It’s an unusual film, there’s no real attempt at a story and no close-ups, instead there are always lots of people doing things, and the viewer has to make their own narrative by picking who to observe. It’s an active form of watching, and pretty tiring to do, and you can’t spot everything the first time you see it!

Maisie built her first Lego tower this week…

On Saturday we went to our first Aussie barbecue. It was Neil’s colleague Michael’s house, in an outer Melbourne suburb (getting there by public transport was a challenge!), and the guests were university friends and their partners and families. We noted the efficiency of the Aussie barbecue – there’s none of the performance of the UK barbecue, I guess because it’s just a convenient and common way of cooking food here! It was a lovely relaxed afternoon, we sat in the sun and had cheese and wine and lots of meat whilst the children played with each other nicely (Vera, Michael’s 2 year old daughter, had an astonishing array of toys – as soon as Maisie spotted them she was off and we hardly saw her all afternoon!).

We added to our repertoire of galleries on Sunday, with a visit to the Ian Potter Museum of Art at Melbourne University. It’s a pleasant space, with a crazy sculpture built into the facade (see picture). There were several exhibitions – our favourite was a collection of Polish posters from the 1950s-1970s advertising cultural events. They were bright, bold, arresting images – simple flat collages of overlapping shapes, figurative but strangely angled and cropped with minimal text. Some of the movie posters were for Western films and it was fun to try and guess what they were (there were two for the film ‘Rosemary’s baby’ – a woman’s torso with a suckling baby swathed in red fabric, and an adult hand holding a devil child’s hand, hairy with blood red nails). There were also two interesting video pieces – a recreation by the Dutch artist Joachim Koester of the Tarantella dance (an ancient European trance dance performed to work out the poison of the Tarantula’s sting), and a feature length film by US artist Frances Stark, using the crudest free animation software to re-stage her free-ranging chatroom conversations with some odd men.

We passed this mural as we made our way through Fitzroy (curious – as I’d seen this image created in sand in Frankston a few weeks back). We visited the CCP gallery, which showcases contemporary photography. There was a great variety of stuff, from lively photos and paintings of children playing in the run-down Melbourne of the 1950s (by noted artist Robert Rooney) to some elegant monochrome collaged sea and landscapes (Jo Scicluna) and a fun slowed down film of a paint-filled balloon bursting (Steve Carr). I popped in to see Sally, Chris and Iggy in their art-filled flat for an early evening aperitif. Chris spends his rare free time perfecting his baking skills and I got to witness his perfect artisan loaf, all golden and crackly, emerging from the Dutch oven! I went on to ACMI, excitedly hoping to catch an Indonesian film. The auditorium was almost full, and there was a big build up with endless sponsor thank-yous, but when they tried to project the film it didn’t work. After 45 minutes of faffing, which they tried to fill with off-the-cuff quizzes on Indonesian film (sadly not my forte, so I didn’t win anything), they tried again and it still didn’t work so at that stage I sadly slunk off home!

Maisie’s new word this week is digger…

A more successful trip to the Indonesian film festival on Monday, and a fascinating and powerful, if over-long and badly edited documentary. It was entitled ‘Behind the Frequencies’ and uncovered the appalling corruption in the Indonesian media. Although there are hundreds of media channels (television, radio, newspaper, online), they are all owned by a handful of businessmen/politicians, and journalists report what they are told to. The film followed one journalist who decided to make a stand when she was sacked simply for questioning the poor pay and conditions. Her struggle, supported by journalist associations, labour groups, human rights groups etc. was complicated, exhausting and hopeless. The other strand of the film was even more chilling. Suwandi, a spirited victim of a horrific mudflow disaster in East Java caused by the unsafe mining carried out by one of Indonesia’s biggest power companies (whose owner also controls 2 TV channels and is running for government), made an individual protest by walking 300km from his destroyed village to Jakarta to ask the President to pay proper compensation to all those whose lives and livelihoods were destroyed. Suwandi successfully raised the profile of the disaster in the media but was ultimately silenced by the owner of said power company/media companies/potential future Indonesian leader, who forced him to make a television broadcast saying that he was lying, and after that no-one who knew Suwandi ever saw him again.

Week 26 – British comedy and a gamelan gig

After a Monday cooped up inside hiding from the driving rain, all the mums were out in the park first thing the following morning, letting the toddlers release their pent-up energy. There were lots of familiar faces, and Maisie formed a bond with a little girl who looked almost identical to her. They ran around together, giggling uproariously, it was very cute to see! We spent a windy afternoon by the beach, Maisie unearthing small treasures (bottle tops, coloured bits of plastic, even the occasional pretty shell) and putting them in her backpack.

At gym class on Wednesday we said goodbye to lovely Norwegian Maria and her little son Anton, who are heading home to Trondheim at the weekend. Our little international clique is shrinking rapidly! Maisie and I strolled home through South Melbourne, and she insisted on walking half the way, stopping every few yards to admire a cement mixer or a yellow car, and holding onto the handle of the buggy with her legs swinging in the air. We popped into the Linden Gallery, to see their new show of local artists work. The projections engaged Maisie the most – a girl in her pyjamas (‘jammies!’ Maisie shouted excitedly) climbing a wall, and a man digging a hole by hand in the icy tundra and burying a box of treasures (this one lulled her to sleep).

In the evening I went to the Town Hall where every room (be it cloakroom, supper room etc.) is currently a comedy venue. I was there to see Josie Long, a thoughtful British comedian who Neil and I have followed for a while. In the past, her shows have tended to be gentle rambles through randomly well-researched subjects (birds, science, self-improvement) but this one was more focussed and political. It centred on turning 30 and wondering what she’d achieved in the great scheme of things, and her passion for social justice and hatred of the evil power of the tory government in cahoots with big business. It was a very London/Kent-based show, covering the hipsters of Dalston, red Ken, the bleak Isle of Sheppey – great for the many Brits in the audience, but mystifying for some of the locals! After the show I joined Claire-Ann, Sam and Maria at a buzzing and oft-recommended city tapas bar, MoVida. They’d just finished eating but the remnants of the food smelled delicious and I had an amazing gooey fudgy chocolate tart and a very fine glass of tempranillo!

On Thursday we had a dress rehearsal for our Saturday gig. It was the first time I got to meet all the students from Jeremy’s gamelan school, and there are a lot of them, of all ages. Even they don’t all know each other exists as they rehearse on different days. It was pretty chaotic, but everyone was very enthusiastic. As I’m writing this (on Friday) I’m being eyeballed from a nearby tree by a tawny frogmouth (a type of owl)!

Friday is always a Maisie-focused day, with Storytime at the library in the morning, and Playgroup in the afternoon. The afternoon session is getting increasingly manic as mums of the slightly older toddlers are gradually returning to the group having recovered sufficiently from the birth of their second children. Luckily Maisie is patient with the boys (mainly) who constantly grab any toy she’s playing with. I had a nice chat with Michelle, mother of baby Sophia, another Brit who’s just got her permanent visa but, unlike us, is required to fly out of the country and stay away for 5 nights before returning (at great expense of course), in order to activate it!

I made up for the day with a culture-packed evening. It started at the cinema, with a film called ‘Rust and Bone’, about the unlikely bonding of a former whale-trainer and a brutish street-fighter, both very emotionally and physically damaged people. I loved the French director’s film ‘A Prophet’, but wasn’t convinced by the characters in his earlier movie ‘The beat my heart skipped’. Unfortunately this one fell into the latter camp – despite the impressive and committed acting by the two leads, it was hard to care about them at all, and the reliance on CGI for key moments (killer whales and severed limbs) was annoying. I have to get over my hatred of CGI as it’s definitely starting to mar my viewing experiences far too much!

I went on to join a huge snaking queue around the Town Hall to get into Jack Dee’s stand-up show. It was a full house – I had no idea he had such a following in Australia! He ambled on with his characteristically grumpy expression and proceeded to make everyone laugh for over an hour, seemingly without making much effort at all. The routine was framed round things that had happened to him the previous week – a burst lightbulb in the garage necessitating dealings with electricians and handymen, episodes with his teenage sons and daughters, the tedious joys of being on the road, and his happy anticipation of becoming a horrible old man. He ended with a song about the many crap jobs he did as a teenager, accompanying himself on a tiny guitar – it wasn’t so funny, but his guitar playing was good!

On Saturday afternoon I had a gamelan gig – it was an informal concert for family and friends of members of Jeremy’s gamelan school, and was held at his base in Thornbury (see picture). Sadly, it was going to be too much noise in an enclosed space for Maisie, so she and Neil stayed at home. We performed a few kebyar pieces (I’m on the back line, as members of Jeremy’s school are learning the faster parts), some salunding classics, and Jeremy and I played a couple of Gender Wayang duets. The audience was appreciative, and we had a nice gathering afterwards over assorted homemade chocolate cakes! I caught up with Natalya, brilliant musician and activist and member of a local women’s DJ collective, and Dan, a classical percussionist. Natalya is helping co-ordinate the Indonesian Embassy kebyar group – excitingly they have a visiting Balinese teacher coming over soon to tutor them, but at the moment the group isn’t really functioning, so she has her work cut out to help get it going again in time!

Neil and I joined our local DVD rental store today (yes, such things still exist in Australia!). We watched two things made in1979 – the first episode of the British TV comedy ‘Minder’ (London looking very grimy) and the cult Australian film ‘Mad Max’, starring an almost unrecognizably young and lively Mel Gibson. It was an odd film, almost bereft of plot but full of endless high-octane car/motorbike chases along barren-looking country roads. The Melbourne University car park was the most atmospheric location (see earlier post!).

A lovely bright Sunday began with pancakes at Leroys and a stroll along the beach. Every five hundred yards or so there was a large group of fit-looking men standing, fully clothed, waist deep in the sea (see behind Maisie!). Apparently they are the Melbourne footy teams – after their big Saturday matches they come here to cool off their muscles in the chilly water for an hour or so. In the afternoon we took Maisie down to Federation Square to see some free comedy. We had high hopes after the impressive line-up a couple of weekends ago, but this show was rather lacklustre – involving lots of long-winded audience participation leading to unspectacular stunts. The German clowns, Hacki and Moppi, who rounded the show off, were in a different league – they did extremely clever and silly and intricate things with ping pong balls and hoops and produced some magical smoke rings from inside a large cardboard box.

In the early evening I wandered along the leafy streets of South Melbourne, and the blossoms in the trees and shrubs glowed vividly as the light gently faded (see the glorious protea!). I was heading to the elegant cream chapel of the Carmelite monastery, the venue for an ambitiously programmed concert by a local semi-pro ensemble, the Astra Choir. There were dense Mahler songs (a bit beyond them with regards to intonation!), some stringent contemporary Romanian and German works (partially successful), and some lush early music – Lassus motets and a St John Passion by Lechner, a predecessor of Bach. The Lechner was beautiful and well performed, and it was nice to hear a Passion, as I’d missed hearing dad’s annual Easter Bach Passion. I was actually at the concert to catch a solo vibraphone piece being performed by one of my colleagues from the gamelan group. By a young Romanian composer, it was a mosaic of melodic, modal and textural fragments, very effective in the sweet acoustics of the chapel.

Later in the evening Neil and I watched a couple of episodes of ‘The Secret Life of Us’ – Australian TV’s version of Friends/This Life/Sex and the City, which aired in the early 2000s (in the UK too). It’s set in St Kilda, and it really was all filmed round there. It was quite odd recognising every street they walked down, and cool to see that it looked glamorous enough to give LA a run for its money!

Week 25 – almost like being back in London…

… due to the quality of the weather (grey and chilly) and the cultural smorgasbord!

Maisie’s been waking up singing and chatting loudly to herself at all hours of the night so she’s thrown all our timing too, particularly Neil’s, as he can never get back to sleep once he’s woken. I benefitted from this on Tuesday as he was too tired to go to his first comedy festival gig, so I went instead! It was the English comedian Simon Munnery, a scruffy deep thinker with lots of madcap ideas. His latest show is framed as a live film (or ‘fylm’ – his term for this novel format). On stage was a large projection screen, and he sat at the back of the audience in front of a tiny camera with two channels – one a ghostly looming image of his face, the other a glass screen on which he created live animations using naïve drawings on little pieces of paper. It was a broadcasted stream of consciousness as much as anything, as he flicked between cardboard Mexican standoffs, dog detectives, a musical rant about distribution companies, and an energetic live action/animated dramatisation of his wife’s swim round a small island in front of their house. Funniest were his twelve ‘stations of Lacrosse’, his surreally logical asides, and his classic Venn diagram illustrating one critic’s comment that his show is ‘where comedy meets modern art’ (using the Venn diagram this implies that it’s either at the edge of comedy or art, i.e. a bad place to be!).

On Wednesday evening I went, with my friend Rachel, to see ‘Leap of Faith’ – the graduate peformance by students from the National Institute of Circus Arts, choreographed by a former artistic director of Cirque de Soleil. The aesthetic was minimal, black, white and grey with a backdrop of textured projections and pumping music, but the stunts certainly weren’t! The hoop work was brilliant – a guy spinning around at all angles within a large ring, and a girl hula-ing multiple hoops whilst others leapt through them and tossed yet more at her (all perfectly caught). There was some breath-taking high trapeze and vertical pole balancing (the strength of the men was just phenomenal). And a tiny girl and a thickset man presented a beautiful and completely assured routine of astonishing acrobatic leaps and balances. Less interesting were the hanging sashes (and there were many of them) – most of the time is spent winding the fabric around the body in order to fall a few feet, and all the bits of sash hanging around always look a mess!

Thursday was a quiet grey day but quite pleasant – despite the gunmetal sky, the sea still glowed an eerie aquamarine. Maisie and I strolled (her first proper directional walk!) along the seafront promenade and were entranced by a little bush alive with blue wrens. The evenings are drawing in early now, so I headed out to my gamelan rehearsal in the dark. There’s a chill in the air but an underlying soft warmness still, and somehow this makes the air especially fragrant with the scent of trees and woodsmoke and outdoor cooking.

Storytime at the library on Friday was led by a different lady, and she brought everything alive. It was amazing to see the transformation in Maisie – usually crawling off or watching the other kids, today she was rapt, even standing up and bouncing in her excitement!

That evening I went to the first of two gigs given by Matthew Herbert at a stunning new classical concert venue, the Elizabeth Murdoch Hall (even the toilets are impressive!). He’s working with a quartet of jazz musicians now, but all of them using electronic devices to process the purely sampled sounds. This first concert utilized one sample – a ten second clip recorded by a journalist of a bomb falling and exploding in Libya. It was crackling, rushing, white noise which he picked apart into different frequency bands – sometimes exploring the sub-bass of the exlosion, sometimes the hiss of the plane engine or the earth shattering. He didn’t ever trivialize the sound by cleaning it up or tuning it so the dark intensity was kept up for a full hour. That in itself was impressive, although it was hard to find a way musically into the constant murkiness.

Toby, a young student I know from the gamelan group, was also there, and I joined him and friends of his from his sound design course for a drink. We talked electronica and travelling and festivals and analogue photography(!) and went on to the Espy bar (once a legendary venue, and still a lively one) in St Kilda where one of their friends was DJing.

Neil curated a busy Saturday afternoon of art. We started in the RMIT gallery, showcasing the architecture of one of their star professors, Peter Corrigan. He was responsible for perhaps the ugliest of RMIT’s astonishing stable of buildings (see picture – it’s the one furthest away) as well as a number of smaller, more sensible fire station, house and church projects and some fun stage design. Typically for an architecture exhibition it was rather a mystifying mess (can anyone apart from architects make sense of technical drawings?!), but some of the sketches and paintings from his collection were interesting – impressive names including Alvar Aalto and Louis Kahn. We went on to a few commercial galleries – one showing video works about military technologies and surveillance (the best piece chillingly synthesized wiki-leaks military data recording ‘insurgent’ deaths, with images from google earth mapping their co-ordinates), another featured some rather lovely collages made of the reflective and holographic film found in smart phones and LCD displays, subtly incised with images of organic forms (which only became apparent from a distance or an oblique angle). Our final stop was at a new gallery space with a focus on contemporary Indonesian/Pacific art. The gallery owner welcomed us in – we were dressed quite smartly, so perhaps he thought we might be art buyers! He had lots of interesting things to say about the Melbourne art scene (still very small and localised) and his experiences of Indonesia (in his ’50s, he lives half the year in Jogjakarta, and is currently converting to Islam in order to marry a local woman!). The artist featured was a Javanese street artist, Darbotz, and the bristling, snaking, tangled limbs of his monochrome murals had a great energy about them. Maise was taken by a rack of large hanging babies, tightly swaddled, each with a shiny sharp knife blade protruding from the bottom of the blanket.

I went back to the Elizabeth Murdoch Hall in the evening, for the second of the Matthew Herbert gigs. This was his controversial project ‘One Pig’. He had sound recorded the 20 week life (and death and subsequent use) of an organically farmed pig, as source material for a soundscape representing the pig’s life on stage. These samples were augmented with a few live ones (crunching straw, the crackling of bacon cooking) and played around with by his electronic jazz quartet on various instruments including a musical pig pen – red trigger/controller wires strung round a square frame – used to trigger the snuffling and grunting noises of the happy pig over a bucolic electronica soundtrack. At the death of a pig (he wasn’t allowed to tape this bit for legal reasons) all the musicians crowded into the pen creating a choas of white noise that faded to silence. Things picked up musically at this point, as the samples became more varied (dripping, machinery, cracking and crackling) and suited to some great dark house tracks. A chef came on stage and cooked up a pork feast and the smell was delicious – a bit of a problem for an anti-meat piece! It ended with a solo voice and piano tribute song to the pig, as the musicians sat down at a laden dinner table.

A Sunday breakfast at our trusty local cafe – Leroys, where I had my two favourite dishes – bircher muesli, and a very fine BELTA sandwich (bacon, egg, lettuce, tomato, avocado – not something I’ve come across in the UK but a standard here!). We took out our polaroid camera (for which we still have some film) and were stopped by a middle-aged couple who were vey excited to see a relic from their youth!

I had the afternoon off to go and see one of the British Museum’s touring exhibitions ‘Afghanistan: hidden treasures’, on at the Melbourne Museum. Based round finds from four C20th archaeological digs, which had been successfully hidden away during the Taliban regime, it was a fascinating, if sparse, collection of objects dating from 2200BC to 200AD. Even without the (good) curation, you could clearly see the extraordinary mix of eastern and western designs and techniques used by craftsmen working at the heart of the Silk route. A huge hoard of solid gold jewellery from a nomadic grave dating between 100BC-100AD was particularly stunning – minute beads and buckles featuring intricate deities and mystical creatures set with glowing turquoise and garnets, including a superbly preserved gold foil crown shimmering with sequins hanging on tiny wires. Another gorgeous curiosity was a metal dish from 100-200AD moulded with fish, with little raised fins attached to tiny weights below the dish which would gently wave when the bowl was filled with water.

I met up with Sally and Iggy for walk through a deluge and underneath a rainbow, and a sophisticated late afternoon glass of wine at a lovely Spanish bar just round the corner from her house (she lives in an achingly hip neighbourhood – I look forward to trying out all the other great bars and restaurants and art galleries that line the street!).

Week 24 – cathedrals of learning and cities of sand

The local library has a very random selection of DVDs, all of which you can borrow for free. This week Neil and I started working our way through them. First was a documentary about the artists Gilbert and George which revealed the political intent and thoughtfulness behind their works, which haven’t always been apparent to me, although I’ve enjoyed their humorous bold high gloss collages. They collect all their images within a square mile around their house in Spitalfields as they reckon all humankind and experience is there (and perhaps it is!). The second was a ridiculous French Canadian film, ‘Heartbeats’, like an extended episode of Hollyoaks, about annoying young hipsters and their obsessional crushes – notable mainly for the 21-year old director (and main actor)’s amazing ego!

On Thursday, at Flinders Street station, en route to my gamelan rehearsal, I treated myself to some churros. Churros are big here – there are outlets selling them everywhere – fatal for my attempted healthy diet! As well as fresh hot ones with gloopy chocolate sauce, they serve churros doughnuts. These are based round a chilled churro, filled with caramel or chocolate or custard and coated with crispy chocolate and nuts and sugar. It sounds odd but they are strangely addictive – I’m gradually making my way through the repertoire.

On Friday Maisie and I trammed up to the smart suburb of Parkville (as leafy as it sounds), to explore Melbourne University. It’s Australia’s best attempt at Oxbridge (founded in 1853) and is full of elegant stone and brick buildings and green quadrangles, interspersed with striking Art Deco architecture, and some bold 1960s and 1970s concrete monsters.

Even the underground car park is stylish, and is notable for being featured in the original Mad Max film. It was very pleasant strolling amongst the well-heeled students, despite Maisie’s screeching which wasn’t going down well!

In the afternoon we met up with Sally and Iggy at the busy library cafe. Sally took me round some of the interesting commercial art galleries in the centre of town. Due to our recalcitrant children (mainly Maisie) we only made it inside one of them, the Tolarno, through an anonymous grand art deco doorway. They were showing photos and paintings by a local artist, David Wadelton. The photos were black and white portraits of rundown shop fronts and street corners, nicely composed and printed, and the paintings were airbrushed versions of the glossy real estate adverts that are posted through our door several times a week (properties are always photographed at dusk, with all the interior lights on, so the houses glow golden against a cerulean sky).

On Saturday we joined Melbourne’s tribe of rich middle-class 30-somethings, many with their young families, at the elegant Royal Exhibition Halls for a big craft fair. Everything on sale was impeccably designed but completely non-essential, and there was a dangerous slant towards cutesiness. There were some gorgeous childrens clothes – but what is the point? Maisie would have mud, vegemite, cottage cheese and tomato down them in minutes! Everything was completely beyond our budget anyway – I wonder what these people do to have such an abundance of disposable income?!

We walked down to Federation Square, where there was a free afternoon comedy and clowning show for kids. An Irish duo, the spangly-suited Lords of Strut, began things, with crazy dancing and (intentionally) wobbly acrobatics. They were followed by a Canadian clown, Mooky, who was energetic, if not funny, but successfully got a stage full of audience members in ridiculous costumes acting out the climactic scene from ‘Lady be Good’! Next on was a German juggler, Hilby, dressed in leiderhosen. He had a broad repertoire of tricks – cups and hats and multiple diabolos, even a bowling ball and a plunger – and a constant stream of occasionally very amusing, if slightly dodgy, patter. The final act was mystifying, a French clowning outfit called ‘Les Chiche Capon’. They looked rather unsavory (one guy with stringy greasy hair was just wearing y-fronts and a flasher mac) and did strange things very seriously – involving stepladder tangles, water down underpants, rubber gloves on an egg whisk etc., and occasionally breaking into strangely effective song (their final number was a Led Zeppelin cover). But they knew what they were doing – the kids were riveted and in fits of laughter, even Maisie (having not been bothered by the earlier acts) was intrigued!

I went on to ACMI to see a 1987 film called called ‘Mapantsula’, a story of the political awakening of a young black gangster living in Soweto during the apartheid regime. Unusually and bravely, it was all filmed in South Africa with a local cast and crew in the late 1980s. The only outsider was the Australian producer, David Hannay, a veteran producer of TV and film, and he was at the screening to talk about it. The adventure of making the film – the passion of everyone involved (black, white and Afrikaans), the careful deception of the authorities etc. – was clearly still very vivid for him, and it was a fascinating story. It was a shame that there were only about 20 people at the screening to hear it. A couple of elderly Afrikaaners left early in the Q&A session, making a point of saying they had to catch a train. When Mr Hannay asked whether they enjoyed the film the wife replied, in a clipped accent, ‘up to a point’ then hurried off.

Sunday was another surprisingly glorious day. At my insistence we undertook a rather protracted journey on public transport down the coast to the suburb of Frankston. It features in the local media mainly as the setting for stories of rape and mugging, so the local council is fighting back with lots of banners proclaiming ‘I love Frankston’, and some fun public art (see picture). We went there to see a sand sculpture attraction. Once we’d swiftly walked through the depressing high street (think Southend or the less pretty bits of Weymouth), the seafront was lovely – a wide strip of golden sandy beach full of families and a rickety boardwalk pier lined with maritime flags, bordering a sea of glittering azure.

Maisie ran around happily in the sand for a bit before caterwauling her way through the sculpture enclosure. The theme was ‘Under the Sea’, and there were some impressive constructions. I loved a fantastical Asian-themed city rising up on the back of a giant sea turtle, and a heroic-looking Poseidon riding a crest of sea-chargers. A steam-punk sea-port was also lovely, like a fairy-tale illustration full of tiny busy little figures. Others were less successful, although more popular – these included large-breasted mermaids (a number of men were trying to photograph them surreptitiously), and comedy penguins. You’ll be glad to hear we made it home from Frankston without incident!

On Monday Myomi, Claire-Anne and I and our babies met up at the MSAC pool. They have a wave pool that in addition has huge shower sprinklers, waterfalls and underwater bubble areas, and a water-based playground. Maisie was utterly thrilled by the whole occasion – recklessly heading into the biggest deluges of water – she really does have no fear, although she should do! Her vocabulary is coming on apace now – she’s parrotting alot, and is good at most forms of transport (tram, train, car, truck, van, bike), parts of the body (tummy, hair, knee, hands) and clothing (her best word currently is ‘cardigan’).

Week 23 – an autumnal Easter

The weather turned this week, became mild and damp and autumnal and extremely windy. Maisie picked her moment to learn to walk in flip flops (or we should say, thongs).

On Tuesday afternoon Guylaine took me round her favourite discount clothes outlets in various malls around Docklands. I’m amazed by the amount of shops in Melbourne and the fact that there appear to be enough people to support them all! There were some lovely, reasonably priced clothes, but the experience was marred by Aurelie and Maisie’s refusal to be quiet and compliant. I did manage one purchase – I spotted it in the window, asked the assistant to find it for me, asked her what size she thought I’d be then just bought it. I guess I may never darken a changing room door again!

That evening I went to see a film with a friend from Playgroup, Rachel, at a new cinema to me, the Brighton Palace – seemingly a popular choice for the white-haired crowd, although they obviously weren’t prepared for the art-house longeurs of the film we were watching – a sparse travelogue called ‘The Loneliest Planet’. It followed two young tourists and their Georgian guide as they climbed the high Caucasus and dealt with some scary encounters that dramatically changed the dynamic between them. The scenery was breathtaking and the story was small in scope, although with a number of well-observed moments that brought back memories of our travelling days. Rachel recalled losing all their tent-poles somewhere in a remote African desert!

Wednesday was Guylaine’s last and Myomi’s first session at bootcamp, and it was an extra hard class involving sprinting up and down steep slopes. Luckily the warm weather held, and we had a picnic courtesy of lots of wonderful bakers (not me – I don’t think I’m ever going to make it as a domestic goddess). It was very sad to say goodbye to Guylaine, who is travelling back to her regular life in Montreal (home and job and childcare etc.) next week after a year of being a mum and doing a Masters Degree in Melbourne.

Maisie and I walked back through Albert Park, being buffeted by a brisk wind that whipped the Albert Park lake up into little splashing wavelets. The sun was bright white, but on the coastal horizon layers of flat pale grey cloud were building.

Thursday was grey and damp and distinctly chilly once it got dark (it was odd to feel cold!). Sam, Maria and I went out for a meal in Federation Square, at a restaurant called ‘Chocolate Buddha’. It was a noisy, Wagamama-style place but the food was immaculately prepared. I’d describe it as Japanese fusion – unlikely takes on Sushi that worked very well (salmon with pickled apple was particularly successful). It transpired that both Sam and Maria are planning their own weddings so there was plenty to talk about!

Neil had several days off over Easter so we had 5 days together which was a treat! The break had snuck up on us rather as the weather’s been all wrong for Easter (although not as wrong as in the UK I guess). On Friday morning, I joined the mothers and fathers from Playgroup in the park for an Easter picnic. A lot of impressive baking and ingenious healthy snack creation had been going on so Maisie and I did well! I had tried to hardboil some eggs in food colouring but they had stayed resolutely egg coloured, so I ended up filling some little hollow plastic eggs with bits of fruit. Maisie had a lovely time climbing and playing football with the boys, and I had an interesting chat with Wilf, Rachel’s husband, who works for a film distribution company. He’d met some amazing people, and is a fellow fan of Steve Coogan (apparently his humour is very popular in New Zealand, but not really appreciated by the Australians).

I had the afternoon off, and headed over to ACMI to see three films by the Iranian director of the wonderful film ‘A Separation’. They were earlier works and it was fascinating to see his themes emerging and style maturing. The first one ‘Dancing in the Dust’ was about a poor young lad forced by his parents to divorce his beloved new wife when they find out that her mother is a prostitute. Attempting to raise money to pay for both of their wedding and divorce debts, he randomly ends up alone in the desert with only a silently grim old snake-catcher for company. The third film, ‘About Elly’, was an impressively polished European-style ensemble piece, about a group of middle-class friends revealing the dark hearts of their natures when a girl they’ve casually invited on holiday with them accidentally drowns. I found the second film, ‘Beautiful City’, the most interesting, and the closest precursor to ‘A Separation’, as all the characters were feeling their way through complex moral dilemmas, whilst wrestling with grief and pain and social expectations and poverty and the machinations of Iranian law. There was no solution, just escalation!

On Saturday we went over to Prahran in the afternoon, found some impressive graffiti (see picture) and arrived at the market at closing time which was a brilliant time to go as all the fruit and veg was being sold off cheap – I got a  bit over-excited and bought lots of things I haven’t eaten since I got here including aubergine (several types), fennel, papaya and 5 different cheeses! Maisie enjoyed a Turkish spinach pizza for tea and a ride on a school bus (see picture). In the evening Neil and I watched ‘Withnail and I’ in memory of Richard Griffiths who died today. The dialogue was as crisp as ever!

On Easter Day we allowed Maisie half a hot cross bun for breakfast and Neil bought me a chocolate egg! We took Maisie down to the new ($4 million dollar!) skate park on the St Kilda sea front. She was straining to get out of the buggy and join in the impressive bike and scooter and skateboard tricks. In the afternoon we went to the Melbourne Museum, an impressive modern building surrounded by grand parkland with a big rainforest greenhouse in the middle of it. We didn’t really get to look at much (this will become the pattern now I fear!) but followed an excited Maisie as she climbed up and down the steps in the dinosaur display, and kept her away from the nasty boys in the children’s activity area.

I went to see a film in the nearby Cinema Nova, which bills itself as the best arthouse cinema in Melbourne. It was certainly the most expensive, and the most unprepossessing. The screening room I was in felt like a horsebox. But the film was excellent, a documentary entitled ‘Mea Maxima Culpa’. It presented a raft of damning evidence exposing the corruption throughout the Catholic Church up to the highest levels, which knowingly has protected generation after generation of paeadophile priests, licensing them to abuse thousands of people all over the world. It focussed, movingly, on the story of a group of deaf men who had been abused at their Catholic school in the 1950s, and who started whistle-blowing in the late 1960s, and have carried on their campaign tirelessly until the present day. The priest who abused them and many others (who admitted to his church superiors that he had done it) was never punished and was buried in a Catholic grave.

On Monday we took Maisie to her, and our, first footy game (the local name for Aussie Rules Football). We’d picked two high profile teams, Hawthorn and Geelong, playing at the huge MCG to a lively crowd of 76,000. It was a struggle to get in the doors and up to the top of the stadium through the throng – we only spotted a couple of other foolhardy families negotiating buggies – but we found a relatively calm spot to stand behind the wheelchair seats, and by continuously plying Maisie with food, we managed to last out for the whole match (it’s long – over 2 hours)! It was an exciting one, the two teams well matched – Hawthorn dominating at the start, but losing their grip for a while and letting Geelong level then get ahead.

It’s a game that is constantly moving as there seems to be very little behaviour that is disallowed – players throw, kick, and run with the ball in any direction around the oval pitch, and with no one player tasked to defend the goal, scores tend to be high. The crowd was high spirited but pretty well behaved – fans aren’t segregated along team lines, and the swearing was nowhere near as extreme as at a Brentford football match I once attended!