Author Archives: outsidethesquare101

#38 Find your Favourite Museum

Notice anything special about the picture below?

It looks like the entrance to a children’s adventure world, doesn’t it? A fun place to be if you’re young, but not really a site for adults.

I think they’ve got it all wrong. At this stage of life, I’ve finally realised how important it is to

#38 Find Your Favourite Museum

And I’ve now discovered that Science Museums are definitely my favourite museums, despite the implied suggestion from that banner at Scienceworks in Melbourne’s Spotswood that they’re not catering to my demographic.

But I’ll let you in on a secret: when we arrived there mid week – without any children in tow – we were welcomed warmly, albeit with surprise, and ushered in for free like some honoured older statespeople!

…and Science certainly works for me

I’ve visited several of the finest museums and galleries around the world:

The Louvre √
Uffizi √
The Guggenheim √
The Tate √
MONA √
MCA √

Yes, they’re all wonderful, but finding something clever to do and to experiment with rather than something clever to look at and admire is my kind of museum.

Even our own MAMA knows that if you want to get them in the doors, it helps to provide fun and activities for all ages.

Look what the clever folk of Albury recently constructed with nothing more than a big pile of white lego over a few weeks:

and this wasn’t just built by the littlies…

I’ve revelled in visits to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney’s Ultimo several times, but had never quite made it to Melbourne’s equivalent. Could it be because the name Scienceworks at Spotswood doesn’t have quite the same cutting-edge, futuristic sound as Powerhouse at Ultimo?

For starters, where is Spotswood? Is that the same Spotswood of Anthony Hopkins and Moccasin fame?

Turns out, it’s a mere six train stops on the Williamstown Line from Southern Cross station:

The first delight on entering – after finding out that it’s free for honoured older statespeople, of course – was discovering that the next time someone says to me, ‘You’re worth your weight in gold,’ I can put an exact figure on it:

3.03 million! Who’d have thought?

Then there was an opportunity to look into the future. By asking you to choose your interests, skills and preferred work sites, a computer attempts to predict where you’ll fit into society in years to come, and then provides you with your work ID.

My companion discovered she’ll be a teacher – but as a hologram rather than a flesh and blood one – whereas my future job sounded much more exotic:

…move over Homer Simpson

And we’ll all be conveyed in smart little electric concept cars like this GM Holden En-V. It has 2 wheels and self balancing gyroscopic control and drives itself:

if only they’d let us have a go in this little beauty…

Then there’s the fun experiment of using a cunningly designed room to create the optical illusion that a person can change size as they walk across it.

Alas, it didn’t translate as well in the photographs as it did in real life. Perhaps it’s true that the camera never lies…

You can be timed racing against a virtual Cathy Freeman for a few seconds, too, to see how your acceleration rate compares to hers.

The short answer is, it doesn’t.

Probably the biggest surprise was doing the ‘height to armspan’ test. This ratio is supposed to be about equal in adult humans, meaning you’re almost as tall as you are wide when your arms are fully outstretched. This seemed to be the case for all the people who tested themselves in the museum that day. Except for one.

With a height of 157 cm and an arm span of 171 cm, I can’t help feeling I’ve been cheated somehow.

But then, there’s always someone worse off. Consider this hungry seagull, who came to visit us as we sat in the outdoor cafe shortly before departure.

…not happy

So much to experience, so much to ponder. Where did the time go?

Now I’ve found Spotswood, there’s no doubt about it.

I’ll be back…

#37 Cancel January

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This may seem rather drastic, but as I began to look at potential activities for January, it struck me that this is a month that always disappears in a hurried blur. Blink and January has gone.

With the New Year break at the beginning of the long summer holidays, and the Australia Day longer weekend at the end, there’s no time for anything to develop. My best option for the month was clear –

#37 Cancel January

It’s not like it would be missed. Nothing happens in Australia in January.

No one goes to the shopping centres:

Schools are locked, abandoned, unloved:

It’s too hot. It’s too dry. Paradoxically, it’s even too humid.

The long languid days are filled with the sounds of a few highly paid sportspeople on television thwacking balls with racquets or balls with bats while the rest of us sit and watch. And wait. Wait for January to fade.

Favourite shops go on holiday:

…notice the sign implying 2016 will commence at the end of January?

Even trying to buy something as simple as milk from the corner store on the day before the day of the holiday is thwarted:

… January 25th is a holiday now?

Where on earth has Australia gone for the month?

The television networks take away their real shows and replace them with… not another interminable episode of QI.

Four Corners?

…gone until February!

Insiders?

…gone until February!

Q&A?

…gone until February!

So I went looking…

and I finally found us:

Who’d have guessed?

There is one massive upside to cancelling January though. With a birthday late in the month, I’ve been able to avoid getting another year older.

#36 Crowdfund a Great Cause

#35 Unearth Buried Archaeological Skills

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We have a brand new Art Gallery in town, but it’s no sedate country gallery any more.

Known by the acronym MAMA – for Murray Art Museum Albury, it’s a stunningly designed exhibition space with an entrance that excites the moment you step inside – soaring spaces and wonderful use of light on the ground floor…

… with an impressive staircase beside an elegantly curved wall leading to more spacious exhibition rooms upstairs:

Its new name is an inspired choice to attract locals and visitors alike, because we can now be exhorted to ‘Love your MAMA’, ‘Come to MAMA’, ‘Meet your MAMA’ and all the other combinations of warm motherhood emotions that can be evoked:

and the real clincher…

But the one I found irresistible was ‘MAMA needs you!’

Yes, MAMA was looking for volunteers. I was looking to get involved. It was a win, win situation.

So this is how I’ve ended up behind the scenes in the curating section at MAMA helping sort through the buried artefacts unearthed when the new foundations were being laid last year. I’m now officially one of ‘MAMA’S Little Helpers’. Bliss!

After a morning’s training session – admittedly quite a bit shorter than a university archaeology degree – I’m able to pretend to be an archaeologist; and isn’t delving into past civilisations a childhood dream shared by many of us?

Together with two other industrious volunteers, we sit in companionable silence – occasionally broken by one of us pointing out an interesting discovery – cleaning, sorting, grouping, bagging, tagging and recording memories from times past, which in this context, means life around Albury’s main street in the1800s.

Here’s how it works:*

Step One: Take large tubs of clumpy-looking, dirty detritus, which in this example, are called the contents of Spit 1. (A Spit, I can advise, is ‘a unit of archaeological excavation with an arbitrarily assigned measurement of depth and extent’.)

Under no circumstances mix the contents of a Spit with the contents of any subsequent Spits that will be coming your way (which are of course named Spit 2, Spit 3 and so forth).

Exhibit 1: Could this ever divulge hidden secrets?

Step Two: Transfer pieces of this unloved material into tubs of warm water and scrub gently with a soft toothbrush. Take particular care to clean the broken edges too, as these will often help identify the material:

Step Three: Rinse the now-clean items in water then leave to air dry on paper resisting the urge to place the artefacts in the sun or use a hair dryer to speed up the process.

This is where it becomes exciting as ancient Albury civilisations emerge before your eyes. (They do appear to include populations who use a lot of bottles):

Who’d have thought a tub of dirty bits and pieces would end up like this?

Step Four: Sort the pieces into matching colours or material groupings:

Then reconstruct some of the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle!

Step Five: Become excited when you find a piece of pottery with an identifying mark on the back such as this portion from the blue platter:

Become even more excited when you magnify this to realise it reads “Jabez Blackhurst– Asiatic Pheasants, and discover that Jabez Blackhurst (1843 –1914 ) was a well known Staffordshire potter.

Step Six: Commence bagging and tagging all the matching pieces of Spit 1 before moving onto Spit 2, the next layer down in the archaeological dig and which may expose even older artefacts than the contents of Spit 1:

Step Seven: Um … I haven’t been taught Step Seven quite yet, but I’m sure it will be just as satisfying as Steps One to Six.

Here are some great pieces the real archaeologist uncovered earlier, displayed like rare jewels at MAMA:

It was Agatha Christie who, being married to an archaeologist, famously quipped ‘An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.’

Volunteering as an archaeologist when you’re retired is not so different. You keep hoping you may discover some old artefact among the pieces you’re cleaning that will evoke memories of a long gone childhood…

*****
*You can try this at home – but it helps to be under the supervision of a real archaeologist…

#34 Renovate Painlessly

4 Replies

You’re laughing uproariously now, aren’t you? Thinking that the phrase ‘renovate painlessly’ is a supreme example of an oxymoron on a par with ‘government organisation’ or ‘business ethics’.

Of course you’re right, but it seemed a neater title and more likely to catch the eye than the more honest:

#34 Renovate Painlessly (If at all Possible – Which of course, It Isn’t)

Over ten years ago, I did major renovations to my kitchen, moving from its outdated faux-log-cabin-look with incongruous lime green bench tops (what were they thinking?)

to a more streamlined modern look:

But what these cool Before and After shots don’t show is the agony of the weeks and weeks of living like this:

Recently, I decided to give my place a face lift, but being reluctant to suffer in this way again, took the easy approach and went with a simple repaint. And the good news is that you can feel like you’ve moved into a newer, larger home just by painting the ceilings, walls and skirting boards in lighter colours!

For those of us who waited patiently in the wrong queue when the skills for Choosing Design Features were being handed out, the agony of having to decide on a colour scheme has been taken away by the ever-helpful Mr Google.

Type in ‘what is the most popular colour to paint indoor walls in 2015?’ and the number one answer is ‘Antique White (USA)’. If you then ask a couple of knowledgable designer friends and the answer is exactly the same, you know you’re on a winner. Because even if it ends up looking awful, at least it’s the colour du jour and no one will dare criticise.

(As opposed to the delicate peach colour I independently chose for the second bedroom which has resulted in many comments along the lines, ‘Ah, an old fashioned colour. How quaint! It will probably come into vogue again one day’.)

So before long, and relatively painlessly, this:

magically turned into this:

And the dark hallway:

miraculously expanded into lightness and brightness:

…aided and abetted by furnishings and turning on lights, but doesn’t everyone cheat in the after photos?

Of course as everyone knows, once a bedroom has been painted, its fraying carpet and budget curtains scream in unison that they want a makeover too and what began as a relatively painless renovation becomes much more complicated.

However the whole experience of shifting furniture, rearranging ornaments and trying for a minimalist look has taught me that both tidying up and getting rid of junk can also make a home look so much better. Who knew?

If the idea of actually tidying up is enough to give you an attack of the vapours though, I’d recommend buying a very large, flat pack cupboard and finding a very talented person to put it together.

Bet you can’t spot the mess in the laundry any more…

#33 Welcome back Spring!

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Has anyone else felt that Australia’s been in the grip of a rather miserable winter for two long years? A Narnia-esque feeling that we’ve been under the control of someone or something wanting to keep us cold and afraid?

Until suddenly, on the evening of September 14th, it all changed and the country sprang to life again. So it’s time to celebrate and…

#33 Welcome back Spring!

Hallelujah! No more doom and gloom.
Ring the bells…

…because there’s a snowflake‘s chance in hell of continuing to scare us now .

And give Tough Border Protection a new meaning as you work out the best way to stop those sneaky chickens from making it over the border and into the spinach bed…

Worried about bombs in Syria? Put your mind at rest in the knowledge that you can have rockets in the kitchen instead.

And rather than fretting about ‘Death Cults’, watch the streets come alive with blossoms:

If you’re tired of meaningless three-word slogans, create your own, better ones.

Like Magnolias in Bloom…

or how about Asparagus for Lunch?

Finding these in the garden each morning is equivalent to an Easter egg hunt – for grown-ups

We all know that climate change isn’t crap, that the Bureau of Meteorology didn’t fudge their temperature readings, that another hot, dry Summer’s just around the corner.
And we realise that we’ll forget these heady, exciting days of Spring soon enough, but isn’t it great that even for a few, brief weeks, colour has returned to our lives with a vengeance?

So thank you Aslan …or Malcolm …or whichever lion-hearted creature brought this about.

#32 Live the Dream … Revisit the scenes of a Favourite Advertisement

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At the turn of this century, Tourism Victoria was tasked with promoting Melbourne, the State’s capital, by making television advertisements to showcase the city’s beauty and vibrancy.

They did it with such élan that I can still vividly recall it and have been able to rediscover the grainy, black and white footage of that promotion which cemented my love for this beautiful city. Shamelessly romantic, and set to a background of an overwrought, yet perfect rendition of the classic song, ‘Falling in Love Again’, it was a 90 second love story that ended, like so many love stories, in loss and yearning.

With the Hotel Windsor at its heart, I was smitten.

That was nearly 15 years ago. Now comes the sad news that the Hotel may have to close her doors due to financial and planning woes. The time had come for me to rediscover her, along with the best of Melbourne.

And what better way to do it than:

#32 Live the Dream … Revisit the scenes of a Favourite Advertisement

So I booked into the Hotel Windsor and, together with a friend who had generously taken me to the outback a year earlier, we explored this city all over again.

The hotel’s known as the Duchess of Spring Street and as is befitting her class, is surrounded by neoclassical architecture and buildings reminiscent of the grandeur of Europe.

Parliament House with its striking colonnade and portico and elegant street lamps sits opposite

But Melbourne is much more, of course.

Who could resist a trip into the very nucleus of her existence:

The MCG on a Saturday afternoon in August
Richmond v Collingwood.
What says ‘Melbourne’ more than that?

And close enough to see the sweat and hear the thud of toned body on toned body…

We discovered a vibrant deli tucked away just a dozen metres from the hotel:

While a coffee at Pelligrini’s is always an option:

Or a visit to Koko Black for a chocolate or four

Of course, Melbourne shouts its food credentials from on high, so dinner at il solito posto situated – in such a quintessential Melbourne manner – down some twisted stairs, into a basement, that’s off a lane, that’s off a street, was the perfect place to sample heritage and new beetroot carpaccio with mozzarella cheese and roasted walnuts:

And did I mention a meal at The European the previous day?

Of course, you’d never leave the Hotel Windsor without enjoying a cooked breakfast served in the elaborate, high-ceilinged dining room with starched tablecloths and silver cutlery.

How will I ever adjust to my life in the country now?

Oh yes, it’s happened again.

A love affair that’s ended with loss and yearning…

#31 Photograph the Whimsical (and the Wonderful) in your Neighbourhood

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It began as the Humans of New York project and has now been taken up by many around the world. An intrepid photographer chooses random people in their city and takes a shot or two.

In this context, even though the idea came from the US, a ‘shot’ means a photographic one, not the other sort. The photos are then posted online, together with a short autobiographical quote from the subject. They’ve become wildly popular websites.

While the idea of approaching a stranger in this way has its appeal, I sheepishly decided that in a small city where you frequently run into friends and acquaintances, it’s a bit too confronting to attempt.

So instead, I’ve been taking my own snapshots around home but with a slightly different slant.

My latest project is called:

#31 Photograph the Whimsical (and the Wonderful) in your Neighbourhood

Once you begin doing this, you’ll never look at your surroundings in the same way again.

For example, does anyone have any idea why someone would toss two pairs of their discarded running shoes over electricity wires in a busy lane, as I photographed recently?

Urban myth has it that it may signify a place where you can purchase drugs, but wouldn’t that be too obvious? Or is it a way of recycling old shoes by turning them into “street art”, albeit not highly original?

Following this discovery, I noticed that the electronic news headlines which roll around the window of our local newspaper office each day can be inadvertently humourous.

This is either due to a misprint which changes the meaning altogether…

…or because it lacks the gravitas one normally expects from news headlines…

…this is why I love living in a regional area

A further wander around town has highlighted some of the whimsical projects our local council is fostering. In an effort to reduce graffiti, they’re covering the small electricity boxes on various street corners in the CBD with specially-protected anti-graffiti photographic facsimiles of our more iconic buildings.

So not only do we have an attractive post office…

but now we have a ‘mini-me’ post office as well (plus a whippet to help with perspective):

Or if you prefer, you can play ‘spot the imposter’:

versus

While doing some roof repairs to my home recently, workmen found this little gem tucked under the eaves. It will be the envy of politicians everywhere, taking the idea of ‘feathering your nest’ to new, literal heights as the local sparrows collect the feathers of my moulting chickens to weave their plush homes:

Can you imagine how good this would look cradling the starling’s eggs shown in an earlier blog?

Fit for a Disney Princess

And if you walk a dog often enough around Gateway Island, then one day, when the light and the weather conditions are perfect, you may capture a memorable image of Big Ears silhouetted against the lake…

…or the local wildlife might decide to put on a show for you at Noreuil Park:

“Seven Aussie Cockatoos
Each sitting on a post
Having so much fun to find
Who can SCREE…ECH the most”

The real benefit of this retirement activity is that it need never end.
Have smart phone … will shoot!

#30 Do Something Out of Character

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There’s a certain pleasure in doing something out of character, especially when it surprises those closest to you.

I remember some years ago how stunned a friend was to discover I loved Aussie rules football and fanatically supported a – now sadly-disgraced – Melbourne team. Or when another pal found out I boisterously sang along to Patsy Cline on long car trips. I guess nothing in my general demeanour had prepared them for this. Apparently I look more like a theatre-going, classical music lover than a yobbo in the outer who also listens to overly sentimental C&W music.

So recently, when I had another opportunity to

#30 Do Something Out Of Character

I decided to run with it. There I was in Bowral, in the New South Wales Southern Highlands and there was the Bradman Museum. Bingo!

Now I confess to finding cricket yawningly boring, but with so many aficionados of the game out there, perhaps I’m missing something. Could a visit to the museum convert me? My first surprise was discovering that Don Bradman wasn’t a tall man, if his bronze statue is to scale.

Clearly cricket is a great sporting leveller where skill and practice can trump developmental deficits

And the words of the great man were so inspiring that…

…I began to feel my life, and my character, may have missed out on something very important.

Of course, there’s a quaintness about the Don and I don’t just mean his cable-knit jumper. His noble exhortations don’t quite sit with today’s players’ tendency to relentlessly sledge their opponents and to sneer at the losing team. Not to mention all those match-fixing rumours prevalent on the international circuit…

But perhaps if I could get a handle on all the obscure terms used in cricket, like mid-on, mid-off, silly point and leg slip, not to mention cover point, I too could begin to serve my nation with courage, honour and humility.

Delightfully, the museum caters for absolute beginners, and thanks to this magnificent mural, I’ve learnt so much about cricket that I’m almost looking forward to next Summer’s season and the development of some truly magnificent personal character traits.

…almost

But the best bit of the visit?

Mentioning later to a friend who knows me well that I’d been to the Bradman cricket museum and having her say, ‘You? Visiting a cricket museum? You’re joking!’

#29 Discover an Affinity with the Ancestors

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Genetic throwbacks in families can be out-of-the-blue events, and I’m told there was some initial surprise when I was born. In an extended family where everyone was generally dark haired and olive skinned, this new baby with red hair and pale skin, while not unwelcome, was a little unexpected. It seems my mother had forgotten that her late, grey-haired grandmother had once been a redhead.

This has finally led to my investigating my antecedents and in particular, looking to:

#29 Discover an Affinity with the Ancestors

Some years ago, I heard a family rumour that a paternal great-grandfather, despite being of southern Italian stock, was a redhead. Alas, the only photograph I have of him is in sepia hues:

Were you really a Ginger?
(and it’s okay for me to ask – as Tim Minchin says, only a Ginger can call another Ginger, Ginger)

So it seems that great-grandpapa’s genes combined with my Scottish great-grandmama’s genes to produce the unexpected colouring in a wee bairn a few generations later.

But while I have no doubts about my affinity for so many things Italian (think home-grown tomatoes, opera and anything to do with the preparation of, cooking of and eating of food) an affinity for things Scottish has been singularly missing in my life.

Until recently.

Did you know that every April, Bundanoon, a delightful town in the Southern Highlands of NSW turns into Brigadoon?

…to the extent that the sign into town is changed…

…and even the Bundanoon railway platform has a makeover…

And this year, by sheer accident, I happened to be in Bundanoon/Brigadoon on April 9th for the 39th Bundanoon Highland Gathering with my sister who, although not a redhead, has the same Scottish blood and a strange affinity for the bagpipes.

And what can bring a lump to the throat more than hearing a Scottish Pipe Band play Waltzing Matilda? [click on picture]

How quickly one can develop a warmth for one’s ancestors. The moment I spotted the Highland Gathering mascot with his ginger hair and ginger moustache, I felt truly at home.

Some participants took the suggestion to dress for the occasion quite literally…

And who ever said they’re not influenced by advertising…

…has never taken real, buttery, Scottish shortbread home and found it doesn’t last long …

But the best thing about discovering an affinity with Scotland is the news that the Edinburgh Military Tattoo is coming to Melbourne next year.

Bagpipes and Gingers? I’ve booked the tickets already…