Save Flinders Street Station

One morning some decades ago, after a night of depraved and invasive passion, it seems an architect squatted atop a mirror, sketched the gross damage inflicted on a ravaged sphincter, added some walkways and the odd human figure, and then hobbled up to Spring Street, where he sold the then-government of Victoria on the peculiar notion that the image represented a blueprint for a fine, new public building. No doubt he described it as “daring” and “world class”, which would have gone over very well with those in charge of the public cheque book. Nothing brings more comfort to the terminally insecure and provincial than the notion that, elsewhere on the planet, fellow members of BOPAW -- the Brotherhood of Pseuds and Wankers – are inflicting gross ugliness on public spaces.  The end result of this peculiar process was Federation Square (below), which continues to squat at the corner of Flinders and Swanston streets, a jagged and indescribably foul advertisement for the ongoing need to borrow some of those large tip-trucks from Gina Rinehart and load them with a Manhattan Project’s worth of haemorrhoid crème.

Directly across the road from Federation Square is Flinders Street Station which has undergone a number of minor renovations over the last 40 years. Those caught short will know the public toilets, once classic examples of Victorian defecatoriums, are now reeking, stinking, crap-fouled case studies in low-cost plumbing and plastic panelling. The Delft-style blue-on-white wall tiles advising exiting patrons, “Gentlemen adjust your dress” are gone, as are those on the ramps to the platforms, where once commuters were warned, “Do not spit.” Perhaps multiculturalism was to blame for the latter excision; it is, after all, a short walk from Little Bourke Street, where hocking a gaubie or ten is the accepted way to rid the palate of lychee fragments and express one’s appreciation after a satisfying meal. As thick-tongued Greeks and other newly arrived non-English speakers no longer get to announce the departure of trains to Upwey and other locales, the vanished warnings against hanging phlegm off the walls must assure recent arrivals to today’s Australia that diversity is accepted in all its many forms and mucous-rich manifestations.

Still, despite the modern tinkering, Flinders Street remains a handsome and practical example of the Victorian Era’s expansive confidence. A recent guest at the Billabong, a lady visiting from the United States, rated it her favourite Melbourne building and observed in passing that its solid, sober exterior indicts Federation Square’s sprawling eyesore. Alas, unless Melbournians act quickly and with resolve, she may have spoken too soon. Once again, and for no good reason, BOPAW’s agents are planning a massive fix to a building that doesn’t need fixing.

The visions for the new Flinders Street are detailed in today’s Age, where the editor’s sole claim to competence is having once produced a paper in New Zealand on the morning after a large earthquake. We can all expect The Age to support this latest attempt to deface Melbourne because, well, it will be expensive, ugly, pointless and a fine opportunity for journalists and editors at Fairfax’s southern outpost to pause by the bicycle rack and tell each other how much they appreciate the transgressive. Then they will go home to ponder whether it is better to remain for the moment at The Age in hope of a severance cheque, or to beat the rush and get their CVs in early at the ABC.

Victoria has a relatively new Premier, Denis Napthine, who has a greater understanding of his state and its people than his predecessor and recently has been rewarded with more cheerful poll results. Sooner or later, this latest BOPAW project will land on his desk. He needs to be told now, and quite firmly, that it is his duty to roll the artists’ conceptions into a stout, tight tube and stick ’em right up the remodelling advocates’ collective postern gate.

The Premier can be contacted here: premier@dpc.vic.gov.au

Urge him to fix up Flinders Street’s existing ballrooms and other features, and perhaps do some remodelling inside the existing building. But he must never, ever allow anyone, no matter how black-clad they might be or at pains to avoid sitting down, to tamper with the exterior.

Melbourne has endured more than enough damage at the hands of trendies and tossers. Flinders Street Station is where we must draw the line.

   

Perfect for short leg

It should be obvious by now that Australia’s First XI must take the first step toward redemption by sacking Michael Clarke and appointing Kevin Rudd as captain. While he might not be able to match the current leader’s batting average, it speaks in his favour that he has never been romantically involved with Lara Bingle – proof that he is at least somewhat more intelligent than the younger man, who cannot be given out without squandering yet another pointless appeal to the Third Umpire. If Rudd were to don the baggy green, Fairfax and the ABC could then report his every rash and ill-considered stroke as examples of genius. We might (no doubt will) still lose the next Test, but Australians would never have to endure the ignominy of hearing reports that our best had been bettered yet again by a bunch of pasty, hollow-chested Poms raised on diets of warm beer, baked beans and boarding school sodomy.

New captain installed, the next remedial effort must concern Watson, whose propensity for surrendering his wicket to LBWs suggests a solution first tried in baseball.

Yes, let us replace Watson, and Hughes as well, with proper, bona fide, low-to-the-ground midgets, whose tiny little pads will prove almost impossible targets.

Indeed, two potential saviours of Australian cricket have their green-and-gold bags packed and are ready to go.

As with the Rudd cabinet, expect the ABC to announce their inclusion as a further example of the new captain's winning gift for the bold stroke.

Trout infested waters

Tomorrow is Sunday, a good day to thank the Great Bunyip for keeping trout small and restricting their predations to cold, freshwater streams.

Those three slimy lumps are voles taken from the creature's stomach, so never again imagine trout are content with little flies and, the more stupid ones, with a nibble on the Professor's fuzzy bear.

No boat, leaky or otherwise, would be safe if these creatures ruled the deep. 

A literary whale amongst the schooling fish

And while on the topic of the retardeds' ability to amuse themselves and others, what about the upcoming Melbourne Writers' Festival! It's a beaut guest list this year, as Gerard Henderson's smart dog, Nancy, has noticed:

Gay Alcorn, Cathy Alexander, Dennis Altman, Wendy Bacon, The Bedroom Philosopher, Eric Beecher, Larissa Behrendt, Sophie Black, Julian Burnside, Jennifer Byrne, Fiona Capp, Jane Caro, Michael Cathcart, Alison Croggon, Mary Crooks, Sushi Das, Catherine Deveny, Anne Deveson, Charles Firth, Morag Fraser, Anna Goldsworthy, Jonathan Green, Libbi Gorr, Wendy Harmer, Joan Kirner, Ramona Koval, Mark Latham, Benjamin Law, Antony Loewenstein, Amanda Lohrey, Miriam Lyons, Father Bob Maguire, Anne Manne, David McKnight, Peter McPhee, George Megalogenis, Tony Moore, Terry Moran, Denis Muller, Ben Pobje, Henry Reynolds, Peter Rose, Julianne Schultz, Margaret Simons, Peter Singer, Tim Soutphommasane, Jeff Sparrow, Fiona Stanley, Anne Summers, Magda Szubanski, Arnold Zable.

One of Australia's greatest literary stars, Catherine Deveny, already has her publicity shot ready.

As she told her Twitter disciples, "Samuel Townsend took this portrait on a rooftop in Northcote last Saturday for the National Portrait Gallery Canberra." The National Portrait Gallery? Good chance there is some grant money in there somewhere.

Get up. Go to work. Pay tax. And never doubt for a moment that it is in the country's best interests to be spending the confiscated fruits of ignorati labours on snapshots of vulgarians with thighs like Christmas hams.  

Coming soon, Muhammad Versus Tall Buildings

Australia once was afflicted by something known as the Cultural Cringe, but thankfully those days have largely passed for mainstream artistes. Where the work still needs to be done, the self-esteem to be inculcated and elevated, is in the field of sheltered-workshop theatre, or theatricale retardo, as it is known to the footlight set. All leading luvvies are as one in recognising the shameful neglect that stagestruck simpletons have long endured, and the Australia Council has put large sums of other people's money where its mates are (or would prefer to be), which is to say Paris, France, just at the moment, strolling the boulevards with grant in pocket.

The photo above is part of Australia's gift to the French, who might take the imported production at a glance to be reassuring confirmation that Baba Babar the Elephant was as much a collaborator as everyone else, but the elephant is actually the Hindu god Ganesh. The weedy little character to the right is someone from Geelong pretending to be the Austrian Corporal. Here is how the Australia Council's Jenna Hand describes the treat in store for Parisiens:

The unlikely storyline in Ganesh Versus the Third Reich originated with two actors who have since left the company. One was obsessed with the elephant-headed god; the other transformed herself into a neo-Nazi during a rehearsal...

...Three years of improvisation, research, discussion and imaginings resulted in a chimerical narrative about the Hindu deity travelling to Germany to reclaim the swastika, an ancient Sanskrit symbol, from the Nazis.

‘We sat on that storyline for about a year, thinking there is no way that a small theatre company from Geelong made up of six actors with intellectual disabilities can re-write European history, touch on issues such as the Holocaust, the T4 program, represent a Hindu god on stage or a Jew on the run,’ Nash says.

Uplifting stuff, eh! Just the shot to place Australia at the cutting edge of intellectually disabled theatre. Reassuring as well is that luvvie tastes in Australia run very much along the same lines as in other advanced western nations with well-funded arts programs and those who love them. No need whatsoever for that rotten old cringe!

And for just $3 million worth of grants since 2008, a bargain to boot.

Multiculturalism PNG-style: Is long pork haram?

The clock radio went off to herald a wintry Melbourne morn and many catalysts for memory’s crucible, still full with dreaming’s little threads and fragments. Outside it might have been 1963, because this is the way winter was back then, or so an older Bunyip’s recollections now attest. The weather is cold and wet and London damp, the hole outside the bedroom, where the new fish pond will go, a soggy pit. If John Batman had arrived on a day such as this, he would have cut his throat. Today, though, we have the footy for comfort and distraction, and there is hope of a better world as well, for Kevin Rudd has sent  those illegal aliens packing to New Guinea.

Well, “all” to the extent that women and children may or may not be included and  “solved” only to the immediate satisfaction of the Fairfax press and ABC. The rest of us can only be baffled, and not just those still fuzzed with slumber in our sheets’ cosy fug.

It is a year-long deal, and what then? It will cost how much? Can it withstand the courts’ scrutiny? And what will stop Manus inmates hopping in canoes and paddling across the Torres Strait, claims for asylum a good deal stronger for their stays in the country where they quite likely ate a Rockefeller. A Chimbu with an axe and a bone to pick – a standard hazard of PNG life, apparently – makes a very handy argument for the urgent need to live somewhere else. If the post-announcement footage of locals bemoaning their soon-to-be neighbours’ arrival is any indication, it may well be more than Chimbus on the doorstep. Two weeks ago the military rampaged through the university in Port Moresby and beat students senseless with iron bars. While this represents a sound response to the tertiary sector in just about any nation you might care to name, it also testifies to a definite volatility in the local temperament. In a country where the broadcast of last week’s State of Origin contest prompted a riot, a pub burned and a teenager shot dead, the simple fact of being an outsider can reasonably be expected to incur somewhat higher insurance premiums.

That radio by the pillow, however, was burbling with grim resolve. Somehow, in the time between Rudd’s deal with Peter O’Neill, and the skies breaking once again over the Billabong, time had been found to record a series of stern public service announcements, all warning that it would be the height of folly to tempt Australia’s resolve and turn up uninvited. As far as is known the only current victim of political persecution in the greater Port Phillip Bay area is Julia Gillard, and she has indicated her intention to seek asylum not at Christmas Island but at her mum’s Adelaide home (it will be such a comfort to have Tim living on her couch). Even before the coffee kicked in one could only wonder why this urgent need to blitz Melbourne, of all places, with these messages. Jakarta, certainly, but Mentone, Ashburton and Bentleigh?

Unless, of course, Rudd & Co are more keen to assure voters that the queue-jumping crisis is over and solved. That would be putting the public advertising budget at the service of one very cheeky politician’s latest sleight of hand. All the magician needs now is an audience prepared to be duped and a court decision that is not brought down until after the election.

Chip Agonistes

Young Chip Rolley is owed a vote of thanks for reminding one and all that jumping to conclusions about other people, their likely actions and motives can be the height of presumptuous folly. If the Professor were sharing life and bed with Anne Summers, as does Young Chip, the week just passed would have presented a splendid opportunity to spend a lot more time at work, where the sound of gums gnashing -- and dentures grinding in the glass by the bed as well -- would be muted by distance. It cannot be happy times in the Summers household. If Chip has any sense he will not play too noisily with the pots and pans from under the sink. Poor Anne must be so irritable now that Saint Julia has been burned at the stake, she will have the smacking stick handy and be looking for someone, anyone,  on whom to vent her frustration.

Yes, Chip would have been well advised to spend more time at the office, but a quick glance at The Drum confirms that he has been avoiding his desk. No doubt he has secured a doctor's note for presentation to Mark Scott, explaining his absence as essential to the well-being of a disturbed senior  whose tortured brow needs constant mopping.

"Some chicken soup, my Little Love Prune?"

"Get it away from me, you testicle-dangler!"

"You must eat, my Anguished Angel. You simply must!"

[the sound of smashing crockery, followed by the thud of a solid object striking human flesh]

"How many times have I told you GI Joe is banned in this house and not to be hidden under the pillow. You have a perfectly good Tet Offensive Barbie in those nice black pyjamas  Tim Mathieson ran up on his Singer. And don't you dare play with the saucepans again."

Anne's delirium is understandable. She put all that effort into a just-published book decrying Tony Abbott's assaults on Gillard, only to see it rendered comically irrelevant by the misogynists of her very own favoured party. What is the poor woman to do now? If she promotes the book, it draws ironic attention to Labor's hypocrisy. And if she persists in calling on female members of the Rudd cabinet to quit, she'll have no gal cobbers whatsoever. It was all very well and good decrying a Liberal's hateful bias, but far from a good career move when it is the bruvvers' turn to order that their shirts be ironed.

Madness can be Anne's only refuge, Young Chip the sole safe object on which to vent her fury. Yet while Young Chip absorbs another recitation of the stock speech, "Great Moments in Abortion History: D&C Means You and Me", neglect is bringing on a crisis point at The Drum. Over the last few days, stories have been appearing twice on the homepage -- stories like this one, for example. Late last night, three other articles were double-listed.

Moreover, the wonderful post-Crikey zaniness that former editor Jonathan Green brought to The Drum has gone walkabout. No more Alene Compostas, not a sign of Bob Ellis doing to a web page what recent meals have inflicted on the front of his jumper. Not a trace of the fresh and approved opinionists of the sort the ABC sees as its sacred duty to save from lives of endless shuffling in those Centrelink queues. The best the site has been able to manage of late are  Daily Life and the Conversation re-treads, Clementine Ford and Ruby Hamad.

Get back to work, Young Chip. Your patient is beyond sanity and hope. And best of all, Mark Scott will let you play with the Ultimo cafeteria's saucepans.