My Year with Bluestone: Little Gulley

After a rather dry few weeks, it is bucketing down heavily in Melbourne this afternoon. I'm at home on the last day of our Easter break, trying to lock up a paper I'm giving next week, so some shorter bluestone posts over the next little while, I think, as I work on one of my other more medieval projects. I have several loads of washing drying in front of the heater; two cats making a cubby under the sheets; and am still digesting a rare toasty cheesy lunch. On a day like this, water will be rushing down all the bluestone laneways in the city and suburbs and especially down this unusually narrow and deep bluestone waterway between two houses, just down my street.  

I'm often amazed, after quickly snapping pictures like this on my phone, at the amazing patterns that cluster around bluestone. Vertical green corrugated iron: red bricks giving the depth of field here, the new wooden fence and the surprisingly tropical-looking disorder of that plant: is that a monstera deliciosa? (I grew them as a kid and a teenager: perhaps it's time to start with them again?)

My Year with Bluestone: The Real

Sometimes I flatter myself I can tell the difference between "real" bluestone, prised out of the earth, and the fake stuff used for public and private walls and walkways. Sometimes it's more difficult.

This time it's easy. This is a garage of a house not far from my home. The blocks here have the little margin you sometimes see on bluestone blocks...

... but if you were in any doubt about the originality of stone, a quick comparison with the "sandstone" (?) would make it clear: it's the uniformity of the pattern that confirms we are looking at some kind of concrete fabrication. Still, I respect the way the architect has gone for the bluestone at the back, overlooking the bluestone lane. Bluestone in its proper place, in the "service" area of the house!

My Year with Bluestone: Friday House Day (8)

I started Friday House day blogging in the back corner of garden, in the chook shed, and have gradually been moving forward towards the front of the house (though I have sometimes skipped the Friday blog).

But today we go even further backwards, to the bluestone laneway behind the house. It's a gorgeous Melbourne autumn day, and it's very quiet, even close to our main road, because it's Good Friday.  I went round to the laneway to take photos of Joel for an upcoming gig in June (first outing of his new piano trio: a big milestone for a jazz pianist). Like countless other bluestone lanes, this one is used more as a thoroughfare between streets than for access to back gardens. It also has blocks of flats at either end, one with the obligatory "tenants ears only" sign.

So here's the musician in the family, blessedly choosing a bluestone laneway for his promo stills...

My Year with Bluestone: Research and Collaboration and Tom

On various fronts this week I've been thinking about research collaboration. It's one of my roles for my School this year, to think about how to strengthen and develop research groups, networks and partnerships, so I am starting to map the various forms of collaboration we are involved with, in our School, the Faculty, the University and elsewhere in Australia and internationally.

Our research centre for the history of emotions is all about collaboration (you can download our annual report for last year online here). No longer does the typical humanities scholar work in splendid isolation, though this perhaps still persists as a dream. "If only I could just stay at home and write", we sometimes say.

Today we had a meeting with half our centre and an interlocutor helping us think about possibilities for disseminating our work more broadly, and making connections beyond the usual humanities circles, and it was frankly inspiring to hear about everyone's work. Being part of this Centre keeps me very busy — it's not about having quiet writing time at all — but having this other context to work in and speak to produces a different kind of inspiration, or incentive to work.

And then yesterday I sat with Helen and we nutted out various possibilities for the paper I'm writing for Manchester. Having funded research assistance makes all the difference to my work for the Centre. It makes it possible to work across as many projects as I do. There is a white board in the room where Helen and Anne work with all my deadlines written up there: we regularly meet and update and cross things out as they're done and write up more things to do, and they go off and follow various leads for me. It is superb. But they are also collaborators, in that they are brilliant interlocutors for trying out ideas and following trails down rabbit holes, and reading drafts and telling me when things aren't holding together. Yesterday I sat with Helen  and we spent an hour or so following down some threads that took us from Chaucer to Boethius and Machaut to Petrarch, scrambling across Middle English, Old French, Latin and Old English; and together we made a little map of a tiny nugget of an idea that I will develop over the Easter weekend as I write my talk. So all praise for different forms of collaboration. Helen and Anne are also both doing huge amounts of background work for this bluestone project, which will make it possible to start writing this book in second semester, even though I will be teaching two subjects.

One of my other lovely collaborators is my friend Tom. We had some lovely dinners and outings in the course of our previous collaboration, and we are cooking up another project (and heard some good news about it today). But in the meantime, he boldly took up my invitation to investigate the Bluestone Cafe chain when he was last in New York.  He reports:

So we went to one of the outposts (not the flagship location in the Village—it’s way down at the end of Manhattan and we were in Midtown). There were no pics of Bluestone Lanes, but when I asked why it was called Bluestone Lane, the young woman at the register said she didn’t know (but then asked if I knew—I must have had a knowing smile. To be fair, it was her first day). But the Aussie barista said it was to celebrate all the great coffee that was available on the Bluestone Lanes in Melbourne. Flat White—verdict? Really quite good. There were some promo material. I’ll send it via post.

If you click on the second photo, you can see what an Australian-style café menu looks like in New York. The only thing you wouldn't get here in Melbourne is "hot brew"...  And do we use the word "smashed" for avocadoes if we're not talking about Australian breakfasts taking over the world?

 And here is Tom, suffering in the name of my research...

My Year with Bluestone: Discreet building on hipster Brunswick St

Brunswick St Fitzroy is now a very hipster place; full of gorgeous little bars, pubs, restaurants, boutiques, specialist shops, perfumeries, bike shops, etc. etc. There are also heaps of bluestone buildings here as Fitzroy, just north-east of the main city blocks, was Melbourne's first suburb. There are lots of great resources, published and on-line, about its buildings. And I'm the first to acknowledge I've not done my basic research here on this building (with others of the buildings I've looked at, there's more available online), but it's a very striking one, on the north-east corner of King William and Brunswick. There's a faded photograph on the State Library website, but no further information about it. Here's the corner view:

It has the appearance of a warehouse, rather than a shop, given the size of the front windows. Or perhaps it was a rooming house of some kind? Here is the view from King William St:

 And a closeup. I believe this building is now the parish office of All Saints Church:

Here's the church itself, further down King William St. There's rather more written about this church and I'll revisit another day:

 And here's a view from the back of the building on Brunswick St: observe the contrast between the ornate street frontage where the 'quarry cut' is actually rougher (i.e. more fancy) than the smoother, less visible back wall.

And a handsome doorway and two fine lions...

The building is surprisingly anonymous as you walk down the street. It doesn't scream "style", as so many other buildings on the street do; nor does it invite you in for a micro-brew. It's turned, institutionally, to the church on the side road, a little historical pocket in this bustling street. More to come another time. I've had a quick look here at the Fitzroy History Society, but need to look at Tony Birch's history of Fitzroy, too.

My Year with Bluestone: The Rough with the Smooth

After the drama of yesterday's post about the burning of St James church in Brighton and the confusion of feelings about it, now that the police suspect arson, and we know of the church's notoriety, I am going to take a while to try and process that complex situation, but with a streaming headcold, today is not the day. And so a simple one-picture post today: the front of a house in Carlton, with its smooth safe steps for walking up to the front door, and the rough hewn blocks on the side, that are also helping to terrace the garden on this hill (there is only really one hill in Carlton). 

Smooth bluestone today, then, after the torrid fire of yesterday.

My Year with Bluestone: Sad Monday

Oh dear. Woke to the news that St James Catholic church in Brighton has been destroyed by a huge fire, so large it was visible from the West Gate Bridge. The church was build in 1891. 

How does stone burn? All its beautiful wooden interiors....

The Victorian Heritage site says the nave was built in 1891 to the design of architect Edgar J Henderson; the transepts and chancel in 1924, designed by Schreiber and Jorgensen.

 

ABC reporter on radio now says the "beautiful old church" still looks to be standing, but the roof has collapsed and there are sounds of large crashes. It's a huge fire, with many trucks and cranes. Awful.

Update: Apparently this church was the site of lots of complaints about sexual abuse of children. As Jon Faine said on 774 radio this morning, 'it's a church that has given much pain'.  Apparently some folk are glad the church has gone...  Sadder and sadder.

2nd Update: And here is Rachel Griffiths on why so many people feel "elated" the church has gone: the priest turned her mother away after her father left them, and so she feels her brothers were saved the predations of the priests. The community dispersed after the abuses became known.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-30/haunted-house-on-hill-rachel-griffiths-describes-church-abuse/6357960

And here's an astonishing photo from The Age reader Garry Furlong: weird effect of yellow flames lighting up windows designed to bring light inside.

My Year with Bluestone: Measuring Time at Tower Hill

When I visited the Melbourne Museum a few weeks ago, I went to the bookstore and saw an enormous book for over $200 on Victorian geology. I thought about it briefly, but frankly, I was a bit daunted by it. I ended up buying just a small booklet called Volcanoes in Victoria. Easy to understand and read for the non-specialist, but the main thing I could remember was this factoid I have just found again on p.13.

Who first saw the volcanoes?

Some of the youngest eruptions on the Western District plains must have been seen by Aboriginal people. Early historians reported that Aboriginal people told stories of rocks and fire coming from some mountains. Some stone tools have been found buried in layers of volcanic ash near Warrnambool. 

Now that's what I call a memorable fact, especially given our common understanding of Australia as an ancient continent, formed beyond most human memory. Of course I have more questions: which historians? which stories? So there's some more work for me to do here too. (I love this form of research: I use the blog to defer work I'll plan to do later...) There is a picture (too small to reproduce well here) of a stone axe (14 by 12cm) found buried under volcanic ash from the Tower Hill volcano (near Warrnambool) with a Museum of Victoria catalogue number (X72234), though I couldn't find it online to make a good link. But this stone object, lying under ash for thousands of years, is the kind of object that comes to find its own special place in the brain, too.

When did all this happen? The oldest recognisable volcanoes are about 6 or 7 million years old. By contrast, one of the youngest is Mt Napier, near Hamilton, formed around 30,000 years ago. Tower Hill was probably active around 25,000 years ago: http://www.hamiltonvictoria.com.au/Main.asp?_=Volcanic%20Plain

I like to think I have a reason to go back and visit Tower Hill. I've visited on a number of occasions, most recently on a medievalists' road trip, when as we were leaving at dusk, a koala obligingly took her baby for a walk across the car park. Now that was a good day. 

My Year with Bluestone: Bird Bath Time

Not far from my new building is a long shallow pool. Water sits about two or three centimetres above rows of small bluestone squares. The pool is newish, and answers to the longer, deeper, rectangular pool that edges the south lawns and leads down to the Medley Building.

This pool extends from the new Asia Centre building down towards a peculiar knot of buildings, annexes, odd pathways and tight corners: one of those parts of the campus where it's easy to get lost and where there is no direct path from anywhere to anywhere else. The pool has two cafes, one at either end, and is also not far from two others. There are four or five places to buy coffee in this corner of the campus alone...

I was thinking I would take careful photos of this bluestone pool at one time but tonight as I was leaving (it was nearly 7.00 pm on what must surely be one of the last days of daylight saving), I saw how the birds had moved in. There were still a few people about, but it was much quieter than normal, and I took this video of a crow having a wonderful bath.

After I stopped filming, I saw a thrush down at the other end, where the water splashes into another square of stones, and also a pigeon with a funny moptop. And then, as if answering yesterday's post about things that land on bluestone, this perfectly fresh white feather, just landed on the water. Did it come from the crow? from its secret underfeathers? or was it a trace of Phebus's crow in Chaucer's Manciple's Tale, just transformed from white to black?



In any case, a moment of exuberance, then stillness, and then dusk, as the campus settled from the frenetic pace of first semester, into the quiet of evening, and as the birds returned to the shallow, still waters.

My Year with Bluestone: Gleditsia Triacanthos

Perhaps there will be a chapter in my bluestone book that might be a little photo-essay about all the things that fall on or sit on top of bluestone: mostly plants, leaves, flowers, blossoms, but also sand, gravel, rubbish and sometimes rain and hail.

I took this photo today, walking home a different way. (I also fantasise about whether it would be possible to walk to work just walking on bluestone laneways.)

They are seed pods of gleditsia triacanthos. In autumn, lines of these trees light up the streets around here with luminous yellow leaves. It's a North American tree, introduced into Australia in the middle of the nineteenth century. The trees produce these long pods in the first few years of their lives. They are supposed to fall into water, but here they have fallen into a bluestone laneway, garnishes with yellow fragments. The asymmetry of nature and this lavish effusion of seed pods like giant caterpillars onto the beloved geometry of stones