Melbourne Leisurefest 2014

October 03, 2014

Today (Thursday 2nd October 2014), reprising my visit from last year

I went to the Melbourne Leisurefest 2014 at Sandown Racecourse, Springvale.

It’s still on until Sunday 4th October 2014.

Things to note immediately, no boom gates on Springvale Road. It’s evident from this statement that I’ve not been up Springvale Road in some time, mostly when I’ve needed to go near that neck of the woods it’s been via the Princes Highway or the Monash Freeway and haven’t actually needed to go into that area for a year or so.

This is notable only when driving to Sandown Racecourse from the south, as I was, and used to being able to turn down Sandown Road to get to Sandown Racecourse, which I don’t think you can do any more. There used to be two places to turn right at the boom gates. One before the train line which would take you down Lightwood Road and another, just over the train line which took you down Sandown Road.

Now to get to Sandown Racecourse for the Melbourne Leisurefest (and I imagine other things held there) you need to go up to Virginia Street (there is a sign on Springvale Road indicating where to turn right) which then becomes Bird Street.

As I noted last year Bird Street doesn’t quite meet Racecourse Drive smoothly, there’s a dirt gap. This isn’t a problem for anyone with a 4x4. I would suggest anyone going who is driving in something that sits lower to the ground to enter Sandown Racecourse from the Princes Highway.

I didn’t really go with any plans to buy anything or to sort anything out at the show this time, unlike last year. Although I did go and see the guys at MGL Sat concerning a satellite phone I’ve had ordered with them, who said it would take 6-8 weeks, which has blown out to 10 weeks. He assures me that it will be in soon.

This time I did take some time to have a look at caravans, which I have little interest in ever purchasing. But have some interest in a general sense.

You can get a caravan, which is nicely kitted out with I think a queen sized bed, kitchen and bathroom with shower, toilet and oddly small washing machine for about $75,000. This one from New Age Caravans, the Big Red range caught my eye in part because I could actually go inside and have a wander (some other exhibitors had theirs fenced off so you could only go to the door). But mostly because they had some red and black matting down and their caravans weren’t the bog standard white.

I actually really dislike the white caravans, the white caravans are the ones you see clogging up the road and making every driver’s life miserable because they’re big, hard to over take and people who have white caravans seem to drive slower than anyone else with differently coloured caravans.

The small washing machine I thought was the most notable thing in the Big Red caravan, it’s an odd touch that I’d not seen in others. It’s certainly a nice touch, I can see how that would be useful to have when you’re off travelling rather than having a washing machine maybe outside of the caravan or having to wash clothes in the sink or maybe at the caravan park / laundromat.

I also saw one of the worst designed caravans, I don’t recall which one, just that it was one of the ones that was fenced off so I couldn’t have a good look around inside. The people there were very prevalent and while some people were unhooking the plastic fencing so they could have a look the staff would rush in and fence it back up.

These caravans (or rather the one I had a look at) had a bed area and a kitchen area...they also had a toilet and shower. Although not a bathroom area.

The toilet was separated from the entrance to the caravan by a waist high partition, with the shower (more like a garden hose) above the toilet. This incidentally was in the kitchen area directly opposite the oven.

I don’t know how much the caravan was, but were I in the market for a caravan it wouldn’t be this one.

I think I would rather shit in the bushes that opposite my cooking / food preparation area.

The other caravan that I had a significant look inside was the Van Cruiser Customline Dirt Road caravan, which they had on sale for $57,490. For this you got a caravan that could go on dirt tracks, and an ensuite, bed, and kitchen / eating area.

This caravan also was black and orange, or to put it another way not another white box.

I think this one would be a better caravan than the Big Red, I think the Big Red is larger, but would it really be worth the $20k more?

I don’t really know, I’m more a swag sort of person, the travel, the journey is what is important rather than the arriving and setting up home, so my requirements are rather different. I would rather not be tethered to towing something, so anything I’m going to sleep in needs to fit in the back of my ute.

One notable thing I did find looking at various caravans was the bathroom sink. It was porcelain. Why that’s notable is the toilets were often plastic, the floor is vinyl, the cupboards chipboard with a wood laminate on them. Everything on a caravan is a choice made to keep the weight down. Yet, the bathroom sink is porcelain. That doesn’t make sense to me, why not have a stainless steel sink or even a plastic sink? You could still have a nice looking sink but save some weight. Those sinks are at least a kilogram or two.

The 4x4 area of the Leisurefest was represented by large ARB and Ironman 4x4 marquees, a slightly smaller Battery World presence and similar sized Opposite Lock marquee.

In this area there was also a small marquee that was dealing with GPSs and radios, which I did somewhat want to ask the guy there something about CB radios. But there was already an older guy standing there asking some questions. He was also loudly (audibly, even against the wind) eating some hot chips. Munching, chewing and generally sounding like a cow munching on grass. The guy running the stall seemed pained by it. I couldn’t abide it so left them to it, but when I came back they were being interviewed by the roving camera crew, they didn’t seem like they were from a TV station, but were obviously documenting the Leisurefest. It wasn’t a huge thing I wanted information about, I can find it just as easily online, but I thought while I was there I might quiz them. Munching chip man irritated me though. If you want to ask lots of questions about something surely you’d wait until you’ve eaten your hot chips before doing so, or maybe go and ask your questions before you stuff your face hole with hot chips. Just a thought.

I went for a quick wonder through the undercover areas, which were mostly ‘market’ style stalls. They were all camping and outdoor related but also had their air of a Sunday market sort of stuff, nothing really unique there, a lot of it had the air of ‘cheap’ to it. I’m sure there was a bargain to be had there, but there was nothing that immediately grabbed me and made me want to buy. With the small exception of the rope stall, but then I remembered that why my associates have utes with a tray that offers lots of tie points for rope when carrying stuff. I have a ute with a tub, and have two tie down points inside the tub. Straps, rather than ropes have thus far proved a better way to secure things when needed within the tub, so rope would only be of secondary use.

Continuing through the Racecourse’s area I didn’t walk out into the tent area very much. Tents wise, regarding the big canvas tents I don’t really have an interest in I have a swag, and that’s really enough for me. A rest stop for the night rather than a base camp. So the tents don’t really interest me all that much.

However in amongst the tents were a few things that did interest me.

The Pod Trailer was an interesting design. If I ever needed more storage space when going off road this is something I would consider. I doubt I’d ever buy one. But it’s a well designed product.

I didn’t look at many camper trailers, which I do like the general design of. A bit more than a tent, a lot less than a caravan. Good for off road. One caught my eye while I was wandering around. The Track Trailer Tvan It looked different, futuristic even. Like someone had redesigned one of those little teardrop caravans with a ruler.

I did have a look inside this one. It looks capable, comfortable and useful. It certainly looks like you can pack a lot in once the tent portion of it is folded away. There appears to still be space for other things. It also looks solidly built.

Finally, on the way out I passed by some motorhomes. There was a nice 1960s Volkswagen Campervan that had been completely restored. But aside from that they’re all practical, but boring. At least with a with a caravan you can unhitch it and drive into town, or go off-roading and then return to your house on wheels.

Campervans just make you compromise every which way. They’re smaller than a caravan and therefore have less features. They’re bigger than a car being based on a van so they’re not as good on the road. Plus they’re a campervan. Which means you can only use it as a campervan. At least with a caravan you have a regular 4x4 or ute when you’re not towing your caravan. You can use your vehicle for non-travelling related things. With a campervan it’s a single-use vehicle.

It Takes 2 To Tango - An ABC2/SBS2 Fan Fic

June 22, 2014

The air was thick with the smell of burnt rubber, the individual responsible for it was currently downing her 30th shot of the night in the back bar. She wrinkled her nose at the thought of that space. Burping competitions and burnouts were hardly how she wanted their meeting to go.
It wasn’t a date, they weren’t on a date. Nothing so boring as that, this was a liaison, a meeting of common minds and interests. You didn’t date. Not this century. They weren’t the dating types.

Looking around the booths she thought she saw the one she was meeting, a flash of orange out the corner of her eye. Alas no. It was him. Talking about his country house again. He was always going on about the house in England he’d renovated and was now taking couples through. Nothing ever happened with him. Maybe the occasional murder in a neighbouring town, but he never really worried. His mate, no, his associate, his chum Barnaby would sort those things out. He preferred to quaff some brandy.

She wondered if she should have a drink, calm her nerves. After so long chatting online, private messages, even, when she’d had too many red wines with her older sister some cheeky snapchats sent she was still nervous meeting in public. Meeting together, for this.

Maybe, she thought it was in the restaurant that she’d find their meeting place. Walking through the gaming area X was there and his younger brother XI. Their younger sibling was probably sharing a yard glass out in the back bar. She wondered if she could do something for them, but, if they were her, she mused there was nothing she could do.

In the restaurant there were two Americans, at least that’s what she thought at first, one loud and brash guy and someone with so much bling she was for a moment dazzled. They were deep in conversation about network rights or something boorish. She shifted her coat around as she passed them.

She walked past them out into the courtyard, a rising worry taking hold. Maybe they’d got their schedules mixed up. Maybe they’d timeshifted the wrong thing.
Out in the courtyard, under an umbrella she saw a smoke trailing away from a lone figure. She was wearing a hat, perhaps against the cold, she wasn’t sure.
Her body, a casual shape of brush marks and curves, it was even more luxurious in real life.
She smiled at her as she sat down, the two of them together at last.
She complimented her on her own outfit.
They’d said something hard wearing, for their date that wasn’t a date.
You didn’t really date like this.
“Are you ready?” Her opposite number asked as she stubbed out what was mostly just a butt into the container on the table.
She nodded. They’d talked about this, not being a date. But they were going to make it memorable.
“Any problems?” She asked nodding to her coat.
No one suspected a thing as she walked through the pub. They’d all mocked them, tried to get in on the action.
“Well, let’s do this.” She grinned and withdrew the semi-automatic from her coat. “Hand in hand?” She asked with a grin.

--//

There were ratings spilling all over the floor as she tossed a grenade into the back bar. Her friend had brought it along just in case. She was glad of it. She didn’t want to go in there.

Stepping outside the pub she was buzzing, her friend had already lit up as their ride pulled up. The big B.
She looked to her friend as they both looked to the big B.
Should we? She looked to her friend.
Her friend laughed. The big B looked nervous.
That expression was the last he had as his contract was terminated.
They’d manage their own. They didn’t need an agent.
They didn’t need anyone.

Explore Australia Expo 2014

June 21, 2014

Not as good as the Melbourne Leisurefest 2013.

Despite the Explore Australia Expo 2014 being touted on their website as being “Australia’s premier touring, 4WD, adventure and fishing expo” it seemed a little lack luster.

View of Melbourne from Flemington Racecourse

Presented over three of the Melbourne Showground’s pavilions and some of the outdoor space it wasn’t amazingly busy.

Although, I was there on the first day it opened; Friday 20th June 2014. It was also a typically Melbourne winter’s day. Windy, the suggestion of rain and overcast.
I parked at Flemington Racecourse and walked in. There was a shuttle bus for those people who couldn’t walk the 700 metres or so that it is from the Flemington Racecourse car park to the Grand Pavilion. Really I think if you’re into any of the things that the expo is about you should be able to walk that distance without any trouble.

I entered through the Grand Pavilion which also held the fishing part of the expo. I think they should have given them a smaller space to use, so they might have had a chance of filling the space as it just seemed a little but...not enough exhibitors for the space.

On through there was a little walk down to the Exhibition Pavilion and its neighbouring pavilion each of which held the 4WD and adventure elements of the expo. Whilst caravans and camper trailers were outside.

‘Adventure’ seemed to be their catchall for anything that doesn’t involve 4WD. There were some quadbikes and other things like that.
Also one thing that did catch my eye was the DTV Shredder. Which is kinda like a jet ski, for people who want to ride off road. It’s got caterpillar racks and is an odd combination of snowmobile, skateboard and tank. The show price for it was $7900.
It was one of the things that at least perked my interest, though only in the same way that jet skis perk my interest. Things that I like the look of, though would never really consider buying. It’s a lot of money on a toy.

The only other thing that really perked my interest was the Mini Jump Starter. It’s a lithium polymer battery that can both charge anything via USB and an assorted 12 V plugs and also jump start your car.
This I had heard of, read about on some gadget sites, but I didn’t think it had made it to market yet. So it was surprising to so here, and seemingly it does work and is good for other things like powering fridges and other things like that. It’s about the size of a paperback book. Holds its charge for 6 months and is relatively well priced.
It won’t jump start a diesel.
Well not the one they had for sale at the show, they did say that they had a larger one that was coming in 4-6 weeks that would be able to do a diesel, so I may keep an eye out for that and possibly get one, as that is one of my worries. Having an auto and it being a diesel if the battery goes flat for some reason I’m buggered.
Of course I could just get one of those larger ones that’s like a small toolbox and put that back or the tub or something but then that’s something extra and large to carry around. With this it’ll fit into the glove box.

SA road trip - Day 5 - Returning home and Reflections

June 20, 2014 in Travel

I woke early, after a night’s sleep that I wouldn’t call amazing. The night before’s antics of the pub’s patrons still fresh in my annoyance.

When I woke it was still dark and it was still early.

I did try, and ultimately fail to roll over and get some more sleep. Trying for about 40 minutes or so to get back to sleep before deciding that sitting in bed wasn’t doing anything useful so I decided to leave.

I did pass one guy in a towel as I was leaving, so I wasn’t the only person to be up at that time.

Downstairs was kinda creepy, empty aside from one person who I only briefly glimpsed and then I had to look around calling ‘Hello?’ before I found a woman who appeared to be cleaning the floors.

Outside it was still dark. The moon was still out and the sun hadn’t risen.

Beginning my drive I left Morgan and had barely gotten down the road when the sun began to rise.

The drive was fairly simple for today.

Morgan-Renmark Road to Renmark, then continue along heading east for Mildura, then very simple. Turn right and continue south.

So basically today was driving across Victoria, and a little bit of South Australia. West to east (for a little bit) then north to south.

I actually felt remarkably good considering the night’s sleep I’d had.

Maybe it was the early start, maybe it was just leaving that pub and the town. But it was rather nice.

I only nearly hit one kangaroo in the early morning twilight.

During my drive south away from Mildura I passed a lot of police going north, it only occurred to me as I passed through Wycheproof that they were heading for Mildura for triple j’s One Night Stand concert. Previous to that I couldn’t fathom what all these police, including one towing a police horse float were doing.

Farm next to rest stop somewhere south of Nandaly

This drive was possibly the most boring. It’s all landscape I’ve seen before, gum trees mostly. Some farms, some towns. In a way I preferred the stark landscape of South Australia, the drive from Port Augusta to Woomera, it’s on first glance flat and featureless landscape was actually a stark landscape full of intricacies.

Returning to Melbourne of course I hit peak hour. That was one of the things I was intending to avoid by staying in Wycheproof so I could coast through Melbourne without needing to tangle with the peak hour mess.

Fortunately it wasn’t that bad, so aside from a little bit of a traffic mess going through Melbourne it was relatively painless.

Reflecting on my trip, South Australia surprised me. Surprised me in what I saw and how much I enjoyed the landscape. Its rich ruggedness in places and how quickly, going across the state its landscape can change.

Prior to this, Tasmania was the only state that really drew me back. I found when I was there that I went thinking that I would have plenty of time, and found I didn’t. The passage through its heart trickier and more fascinating with every stop.

South Australia also makes me want to return, there are more things I would like to discover in South Australia. Nothing so tedious as a winery or whatever, but the spaces in between. The space between the destinations.

SA road trip - Day 4 - Woomera to Morgan

June 19, 2014 in Travel

Today’s drive I rather enjoyed. Rising early, though not amazingly so I left Woomera around 9:30 am ish.

Had breakfast at Spud’s Roadhouse as Woomera doesn’t have anything approaching a café. The food outlet in the Heritage Centre probably could have done me something, and I’m not sure about the restaurant in the Eldo Hotel.

For a roadhouse that’s 2 hours from a town it was a good proper sized breakfast. I ordered eggs, bacon and mushrooms. Got a plate piled with bacon, a quarter of the plate was mushrooms, 3 pieces of bread and 2 fried eggs. A proper sized breakfast that kept me not hungry till the afternoon.

I followed the road back down to Port Augusta and then headed south along the Princes Highway. Turning off for Crystal Brook and Burra.

Burra had been, early on in my planning the location where I was going to spend the night, but I’d decided to push on a little bit more and instead stay at Morgan on the banks of the Murray River. Something I later regretted that night.

This drive along the Goyder Highway and various other roads that lead me to Morgan was actually rather nice. Not flat either, different terrain changes, more farm land, it was all rather nice and different from the landscape that I’d previously passed through.

My route took me through farmland, past creeks and up hills. The landscape quickly changed from dry scrubland to somewhat dry farmland and then as I approached the Murray River green farm land. Trees neatly planted in rows crept up along the landscape.

Morgan was surprisingly hilly. It seemed a rather hilly place to settle a town. Odd that is was settled here being such a hilly town. But it did have good access to the river, which was probably its appeal when it was settled. Access to the river and the river in turn providing water for the surrounding land.

My accommodation for the night in Morgan was the Commercial Hotel, Morgan. It’s one of two pubs in Morgan. Both are on the same road, opposite one another. The other is the Terminal Hotel. It doesn’t do accommodation.

The Commercial Hotel is one of those great old hotels that has been added to throughout its life. So the accommodation that’s upstairs is all over the place. You go up the main flight, then it peels off in two directions for more rooms and then the bathrooms. The men’s bathroom had two showers and a toilet, with doors but within the main space. The women’s facilities were individual rooms 2 of them, which was interesting. From what I’ve gathered from the other places I’ve stayed at the men’s and women’s facilities are basically mirrors of one another.

History plaque for Commercial Hotel, Morgan

The proprietor gave me a tour of all the facilities and where the emergency exists were etc. This I’ve not had before, though he explained it’s ‘legal shit’. I do wonder if he’s been done for something and now does the show and tell to be careful, maybe I didn’t exude the tradie atmosphere that his other clients do and there was suspicious I was an OH&S dundridge.

My room at the Commercial Hotel was probably the worst of my whole trip. It was a room in what was probably part of the original hotel as it was above the pub and looked out onto the street beside the pub.

However it had been linked to the room beside it at some point in the past and the linking door remained. It also didn’t really close very well and had a door stop wedge to stop it moving around too much. Except the wedge wasn’t chunky enough to do its job.

The room had two beds, a double and single. The single was fine, unless you sat on it, then it sagged and bounced around.

No problem though I slept on the double bed.

Whilst waiting for 6 pm to roll around (so I might eat) I had been calculating my next stop which would have been Wycheproof in Victoria.

It’s notable for having a train line that runs down the main street. It does this because the council (when it had been originally built) didn’t want to pay extra money to buy land around the town to run the train line around the town. So it does down the main street to save money. This main street is also the Calder Highway.

Having arrived early into Morgan, as I’d mistimed / miscalculated how early I’d be rising and how much I’d been stopping at places along the way (very little) it meant I was arriving early.

The journey from Morgan to Wycheproof I’d calculated at being 5 hours 37 minutes or 6 hours if I had a look at the other side of the Murray River (necessitating two ferry crossings).

Instead, I’d decided to just push on and head home.

Making the trip from Morgan a little bit under 10 hours drive time.

Which meant getting a good night’s sleep.

I dined early, I was the only one in the dining room, a little odd. Though the clientele of the pub weren’t really the people I wanted to be sharing a dining room with.

The meal was pretty good $24 for a pub meal of steak.

Afterwards I showered and headed for bed.

Then, probably an hour maybe 2 hours later, as I was drifting off the shouting began.

This wasn’t exactly late at around 8:30 or maybe 9:30 pm.

The shouting was from bogans outside. I’m using the term, I feel accurately because, even without seeing them they were, the women especially sounded quite bogan. I presume that, based on their ‘discussions’ they wouldn’t mind me using this term to describe them. They were outside the pub. Outside my window in fact. Well actually they were outside and below my window.

At this point I thought ‘fine, they’ll drink and then leave’.

No.

That’s what I should have done.

I don’t actually recall how long they were drinking and shouting for. There was primarily one guy who liked to shout the most.

It think it was at least 10:30 pm maybe 11:30 pm when they left, tooting their horns all the way along the road.

And then driving back and doing the same thing again.

Then, finally probably nearer to midnight it went quiet.

It’d been sort of dozing though not really sleeping during all of this.

Eventually I got to sleep proper.

It’s all part of the experience is what I thought to myself.

I have bailed on a location before, though the last time was on my Brisbane trip heading away from Brisbane I’d decided to stay in Coopernook in New South Wales (it’s about 20 minutes from Taree). There I’d got to my room and found that it had a door that opened onto the balcony that wrapped around the pub.

It would have been lovely. In the summer.

I wasn’t there in the summer. I was there in July, a particularly cold July.

I thought maybe I could have put my bag against the door or something to ward off the cold. If there’d been a heater or something I might have stayed. After about 15 minutes though I’d decided no. I couldn’t stay there and got my money back from then and went down the road to Taree.

In Morgan I didn’t discover the shortcomings until later. Well alright initially I saw some shortcomings but they weren’t huge. I could work around the wedged door.

I suppose it wasn’t actually the pub’s problems it was their clientele.

But of all the places I stayed Morgan was the worst. Sometimes a small town is nice, quiet and homely. Other times it isn’t.

I think, were I for some reason to go through that neck of the woods again I would stay in Burra, which I did drive through. It was larger than Morgan though still a small town and seemed nice.

SA road trip - Day 3 - Port Augusta to Woomera

June 18, 2014 in Travel

Today I allowed myself to leave a little later than I had for the previous days’ drives, as Woomera is only 2 hours from Port Augusta.

Leaving Port Augusta you basically have two choices, turn left for Perth and Western Australia or turn right Darwin and the Northern Territory. I needed to turn right. There’s nothing between Port Augusta and Pimba. Just roads and cattle grids, which are something of a surprise at 110 km/h, once you go over one you get used to how it feels when you drive over them, but still a surprise at first.

A sign which I noticed as I was driving up to Woomera, but only really processed what it said after seeing it a second time was an ironically hard to see small sign that said “See and Be Seen Use Headlights 24 Hr”. With an illustration of a car with headlights. As I’ve got a black vehicle it makes sense for me. I’m always wary of the times at twilight and near that of having my headlights on so people can see me.

I’ve tried going through Flickr and Google image search in an attempt to find an image of this sign, which like all road signs is well set out. Except it was smaller than most road signs and positioned quite low to the ground. Hence I didn’t catch all of it when I first saw it.

I think maybe it just needs to be one of those things that’s in the tourism booklets or whatever that says ‘if you’re driving in the desert have your headlights on 24 hours a day’. I have looked through “The Nullarbor” tourism map (published by http://www.exploreeyrepeninsula.com.au/) which list various useful things for outback travel but doesn’t say anything about headlights.

I had two destinations today, the former site of the Island Lagoon Tracking Station and Woomera itself.

The former, located next to the a salt lake was a tracking station in the 1970s. From what I gathered online there wouldn’t be much left, just some remains of the building.

It’s located down a road that probably doesn’t have a name, although there was a road sign pointing towards it, but I didn’t pause long enough to look and Google Street View isn’t of high enough resolution to see it.

I didn’t pause because I was trying to keep an eye out for what I’d written on my directions as a ‘semi-sealed road on the left’.

The road was vaguely alright until you got further away from the freeway where it had deteriorated much more down to a gravel road.

Surprisingly I needed to drive a fair away to get to the former site. Disappointingly there were practically no remains of the former tracking station.

I noticed there were some long screws left on the ground, so I salvaged one of these as a souvenir for getting out there.

I think, I would like to go back to this site and go out further to the Island Lagoon and get up closer to its shores. On this trip I had other focuses, I think in the future I would like to return and camp near by to it. Ponder it and its island.

Being there, being 2 kilometres from the highways there was this surprising silence around. Although it was windy, so maybe it was just that.

Continuing on from there there’s Pimba, which is Wikipedia calls a “small settlement”, which appears to be a roadhouse ‘Spud’s Roadhouse’ and a wrecker’s yard.

A very short drive up from Spud’s Roadhouse was Woomera. The town I’d come to see.

It’s a weird town.

It is a defence town, which is only somewhat responsible for its weirdness.

It’s a town that basically stopped in the 1960s and it looks it. Aside from a few TV satellite dishes on the roofs and most houses having solar hot water tanks it looks like it’s stuck in the past.

Driving around the town to its outskirts is also odd. It has sections that have been lair out with roads, power, street lights, even bus shelters but the houses haven’t been built or have been taken away between the 60s and now. Though I suspect given the scrub that’s on these plots they never materialised.

Some roads just stop at “road closed” signs, though there seems to have been the intention that they would go on further.

There were three places I visited whilst in Woomera, the rocket park; an outdoor display of various rockets and planes that were tested at Woomera. The Woomera Museum ($4 entry) and the Heritage Centre.

The museum was well worth the entrance fee. I found the history of the town fascinating. Though I am someone who is quite interested in Australia’s contribution to space and space flight and all the things in between.

In the 1970s they worked out that Woomera was at the wrong latitude to put satellites into geostationary orbit. To do so from Woomera would’ve involved a dogleg manoeuvre in space in order to get it into the right position. So that basically curtailed Woomera as a launch site. But up to that point Woomera had been a great hive of activity and there was much development in various military and scientific technology disciplines.

It’s also a town that has several American influences. Whilst driving around the town (before I’d visited any of these locations) I drove past the oval. Set up with AFL goal posts it struck me as looking a little odd, as behind one of the goal posts was a large fence, when I saw it I thought it was odd. Thinking as I looked at it ‘it looks a bit like a baseball pitch’.

Which is what it was, baseball was quite popular in Woomera because of the American contingent in the town.

The town also has a bowling alley (in what is now the Heritage Centre).

The rocket park is a bit like being in a Gerry Anderson Thunderbirds / Captain Scarlet storage facility. All of the rockets, missiles and other aeronautical objects are very 1960s. There’s also the occasional object that isn’t aeronautical like that

Ikara an Australian made anti-submarine missile. Which looks kinda like the space shuttle.

Outside the Heritage Centre is another example of a rocket; the Thunderbird Mark 1, a British made anti-aircraft weapon designed for the UK Army. To me when I was there I was reminded of the “Thunderbolt” a missile that appeared in Doctor Who 'The Mind of Evil'. Now that I can do some research I’ve found that that missile was the Thunderbird 2 SAGW. No wonder it reminded me of it, it is basically the first generation of the missile.

The Heritage Centre was something of an odd mish-mash of areas.

There’s a bowling alley, left over from the town’s past American inhabitants.

You can do your banking there as there’s a Westpac bank branch. Okay, branch may be over selling it a little, it’s a window.

There’s also a little museum / history of the town in there.

Unlike the Woomera Museum out in the rocket park which mostly focuses on the rocket and weapons tests this space in the Heritage Centre gives some background to the formation of the town and how it all came together. This little history is pretty interesting and gave me some background of how it was in the early days.

When the town was set up everything was pretty segregated, due to the military influence. You could only socialise based on your rank. So depending on what rank you were you could only go to certain social clubs. This extended to the spouses of the servicemen there. Which led to many people feeling somewhat isolated when they first arrived in the town.

Later when the European Launch Development Organisation (ELDO) came to the town. These scientists didn’t fit into the rigid military organisation of social and professional classes. So they were housed in the Eldo Hotel.

Said Eldo Hotel still stands and was where I had my accommodation for the night.

It’s run, I found out by Transfield Services.

It’s also not cheap for what it is, a 1950s hotel that was probably upgraded maybe in the late 60s and left like that.

$106.50.

I forgot to ask why it’s such a specific amount right down to the 50 cents.

All the accommodation blocks, and there’s a few, very large blocks in fact have names. I know there’s at least Blue Steel and Redstone. Because I was mistakenly given the former and actually stayed in the latter.

The accommodation had a double bed and then in a side room another single bed along with tea and coffee facilities and fridge. Plus an ensuite bathroom.

The bathroom was interesting because there was a separate shower and bath. Though not a huge bath. It wasn’t the romantic sort of bath, or even something large enough for a person of average height. A small functional bath I would say.

It’s interesting because on the way back to my room I noticed lights glaring in the middle of the corridor back to my room. The lights were brighter than the corridor lighting which is what drew my attention. Wandering down, it was right in the middle of the building, I found communal (though divided into cubicles) showers and toilets (and a urinal). This is interesting because the tile pattern for half of this area matched the tile pattern in my ensuite.

Which doesn’t make sense, if they’d both been put in at the same time then you wouldn’t put both of them in. You’d have one or the other. Every room would have an ensuite or all the rooms would use the shared facilities.

But if it had been re-tiled, when the ensuites had been installed surely that was late enough in the program that they wouldn’t have needed the shared facilities.

It also wasn’t just my room that had these facilities, there was at least one person/persons staying in the room opposite mine (I think a couple) and I saw many other people (tradies overwhelmingly) at the restaurant who were presumably staying the night.

Also in my investigation of the shared facilities there didn’t appear to be any evidence of them having been used. Though there was a rather ominous sign stuck to one of the doors that read ‘Chemical Storage Area’.

The only other possibility that I dismissed as soon as I thought of it was that some of the rooms have an ensuite and some don’t hence the need for these shared facilities. I dismissed this because the Eldo Hotel had originally been built to service the European Launch Development Organisation scientists because they didn’t fit into the military’s way of doing things. Which means all the rooms would be the same. There wouldn’t be some “officer’s” rooms and other bog-standard rooms without a bathroom.

In twilight Woomera is no less eerie. The twilight and the light of the street lights and lights around the hotel only add to the eerie dream-like state the town seems to exist in.

The restaurant and bar was pretty fully featured for a town in the middle of no where. They even had a pear cider that wasn’t Somersby. Bulmers this time, and served in a glass, with ice. Which was nice.

Unsurprisingly it was a quiet night’s sleep, considering there’s no industry, no youths, no nothing really out there.

Ultimately, I would recommend anyone who has an interest in space, rocketry, military or weapons to visit Woomera, it’s a unique experience, out there in the desert. Strange, lost in time, frozen almost, yet it’s still active. There’s still people working out there, living out there. It’s also not isolated. Not isolated in the sense that there’s nothing and no one out there. I had Telstra 3G coverage that was pretty speedy. Roxby Downs is less than an hour away and Port Augusta is only 2 hours away and the petrol station in the form of Pimba’s Spud’s Roadhouse is barely 5 minutes down the road.

SA road trip - Day 2 - Kingston SE to Port Augusta

June 13, 2014 in Travel

Today’s second day was calculated at 6 hours 57 minutes.

Royal Mail Hotel, Kingston SE breakfast room

Leaving early and enjoying a solo breakfast, the other people staying having not woken yet as there was no evidence of other people having breakfasted in the dining room I left. Kingston SE was quiet with no one out on the road yet at 8 am I seem to recall leaving.

My route today took me along the Princes Highway and then along the highway continuing into Adelaide.

Just outside Kingston SE and pretty much all the way to Adelaide I had very much a sense of the moors in England.

Everything has a very flat, windswept sense to the environment.

Also, like the drive to Kingston SE a sense of post-apocalyptic desolation.

Perhaps it's just that I was travelling in the off season and mid-week. But this has very much been a journey where I have seen very few people for an extended period of time. For more than an hour I saw no cars, not a living being save for sheep, cows and the occasional fox.

I think the lack of people and the isolation that I've seen thus far is what's the biggest difference from my trips up to Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra. Going along the Hume Freeway I was almost guaranteed to see some vehicles, mostly trucks.

As the Princes Highway rejoins the ‘main highway’ system away from the coast at Tailem Bend it brought with it more traffic and as I approached Adelaide proper a realisation of how much height it has to drop in order to get to Adelaide CBD.

That’s something I hadn’t really realised when I was looking at the satellite image and planning my route.

Of course it looks hilly, but I was surprised at how much descending was needed for the highway to get closer to sea level.

It wasn’t as much of a steep incline as the highway through Toowoomba or the Blue Mountains which come with percentage grade warnings.

But still I am somewhat concerned I may have incurred speeding fines as the road was continuously at an incline, this was something I wasn’t expecting.

The way through the city was more a passage through the inner suburbs of Adelaide, the solution to this by the residents who reside along Portrush Road seems to all have been to build high fences to keep out the road that is on their doorsteps.

I do wonder if the Adelaide state government is looking to build a bypass around the city. But the hills would pose something of an obstacle in devising such a solution. But I think with the increased traffic towards the ports it'd be something that would soon become necessary.

Though if you look at a sat-image of Adelaide there isn’t really any space where a bypass could be built easily. Or if one was going to be built it wouldn’t be remotely cheap.

Following my chosen route I was greatly pleased that I had thoroughly researched (looked on Google Street View) at the intersections that I had to go through along that route as it was most worrisome going towards them. So when I was driving along I knew where to turn for Gepps Corner and which right turn to take at Grand Junction (there’s a hard right and a soft right that’s possible from Grand Junction Road) with only one lane for taking either of these right turns.

Heading out of Adelaide toward Port Wakefield the landscape was surprising in how not dry it was. From the sat-images I’d looked at I thought it would be dry arid conditions. But no, while there was some sense of dryness it was mostly verdant throughout my journey. Even as I neared Port Pirie and the landscape dried somewhat there was still much greenery around. It was only mid-May, so not quite into winter enough for rain I would have thought to have much of an effect on the landscape.

I didn't really stop until I was about an hour outside Port Pirie and then it was just for lunch and after that lengthy amount of time not speaking to anyone I found that needing to speak to someone, to form words rather difficult. Like I had a cold or something and had trouble just asking for a sandwich, forming words was briefly difficult. Perhaps I need to talk to myself more or something like that.

After my brief stop I decided to continue on into Port Pirie, intending to have a look around. Fill up with diesel and continue on.

One thing, as I drove through Port Pirie (twice) was the layout of the town. It being a port and therefore not being the layout of the road going right through the town.

I didn’t actually end up filling up with diesel in Port Pirie, I drove past the first station, just because I was taking in the town, the second one didn’t have a working low flow pump, only hi-flow ones. That never works out well when you try to fill up a vehicle with its regular opening with a hi-flow truck-use nozzle / pump. So I just ended up filling up in Port Augusta. There was no real worries for me, I still had half a tank of diesel at this point, but I feel more comfortable filling up when I have the chance to do so, and am always mindful of distances and how they effect the price of fuel. I’m also paranoid about running out of fuel.

Port Pirie seems to be a town in transition, Maccas and Hungary Jacks both look like they’re new additions to the town, with the International Hotel (somewhere I had intended to stay, though no one answered the phone), there sitting as something of an anachronism, even more so than its Art Deco exterior presents to the world.

Leaving Port Pirie and continuing north towards Port Augusta the kilometres rolled along. The hills to the right undulated as I drove, lending an odd almost alien quality to the flat and becoming even more arid landscape.

Yet these hills were quite green, dark against the patchy, dry landscape below them.

There was a train line and I only saw one train travelling along it; it was quite long, for at least a couple of minutes, travelling at 110 km/h I saw only the carriages. Containers and also cars being pulled by two locomotives.

Travelling along the Augusta Highway I also had my first experience of overtaking B-triples and road trains. In order to pass in any good amount of time a truck doing 110 km/h I found out quickly that I needed to do 140 km/h. It could have been done slower, but as it’s only a single lane road that speed allows you to pass the truck and put some distance between the truck and you.

I always want to be sure I put a good couple of car lengths between myself and any truck I overtake.

One of the things that I became fascinated with during this part of my journey is power poles. Not something I imagine people often become fascinated with, some might say a blight on the landscape.

But they are a very necessary part of our modern life and have been for over a hundred years.

South Australia’s power poles fascinated me, they are not the T-shaped sort of pole. They’re trident-shaped.

It’s a very interesting design for a power pole. Indeed it’s an interesting shape for anything that isn’t a trident.

In order to get the trident shape they’d need to have engineered and manufactured them much more than the standard T-shaped power poles.

There were also other power poles I saw, also a three pronged design that came off the right of the power pole with a straight horizontal line followed by an angled line down.

Again there would have been more manufacturing and engineering to create this design rather than the T-shaped variety.

Driving into Port Augusta I was firstly intrigued by the path the highway takes into Port Augusta; along a levy between two lakes. According to my GPS that I was messing around with as I drove over it my height above sea level was -2 meters.

Port Augusta struck me, a bit like Port Pirie as a town that’s had some booms recently. It’s a small town, but one that’s had some expansions recently. Driving down Commercial Road it didn’t seem like a small town, it seemed like a busy, quite active town. Yet, later when I went for a walk down to the Woolworths it felt like this was a town that had expanded quickly and perhaps lost something. There seemed like there had once been a village atmosphere to this location but as time and growth has happened that’s gone. Though perhaps I’m reading it wrong, perhaps Port Augusta has always been like this. It’s always been the last big stop before the Nullabor.

My accommodation for my second night was The Hotel Flinders. Which was one of the places I stayed at which did have a website (the other was the Royal Mail Hotel in Kingston SE). The Hotel Flinders’ however had been created in the past 5 years.

Looking at it and looking at Google Street View it looked like a grand old lady of a building, and when I went inside it had a lovely old stair case leading up to the upstairs rooms.

Alas I wasn’t to be going up said staircase as the room I’d booked was out the back of the hotel.

Paying up front the lady at the bar also took my driver’s licence details and my credit card info “in case any damage happens to the room”. Understandable I suppose, but does suggest that they have had past experience where they need to ask for this info.

It was a manual flip-flop card machine where they use carbon paper to take a copy. I was assured they destroy it after my stay.

I didn’t think anyone still had those manual machines for credit cards. I suppose if it works there’s no point in changing it.

The rooms were at the back of the hotel, I’d assumed that from the website and from looking at the sat-images of the hotel as I’d asked if there was off street parking there.

There were 5 rooms at the back of the hotel in a motel-style arrangement.

I had room number 3.

Pondering the space where these had been built I did begin the wonder if the space was where the stables would have been.

It’s certainly the right shape for where they’d have been out the back of the hotel.

The building however wasn’t original, I would guess that the building had been constructed in the 1950s or 60s. The bricks that were on the balcony between the rooms and where the car park was definitely suggested 60s to me.

Compared to my previous night’s accommodation the accommodation at The Hotel Flinders was really quite good. No shared bathroom, flatscreen TV (though it did need retuning to be able to get the ABC), tea and coffee facilities and a fridge (though I couldn’t get it to work).

The bathroom wasn’t amazing, it’s basically a space that could be a cupboard but it has the necessities. A toilet and a shower. The basin was outside that space.

The double bed was comfortable and there was even a table and two chairs in the room. These were tall ‘cafe style’ chairs and table, but perfectly serviceable to sit at, write some things, ponder the universe or have a cup of tea. Actually a mug of tea, no silly little tea cups in this room, two proper sized mugs.

My meal later that night was in The Hotel Flinders’ dining room. A really grand old room that had been renovated very well and it had a nice grand sense to the space.

The only downside to The Hotel Flinders is not really a slight against their service at all. It’s against whoever it was who parked in the car park in front of room number 1.

Lots of revving of an engine early in the night, they departed and then returned with much grunting and revving of their engine. I thought perhaps it was them doing deliveries of pizzas as I had looked through the book in the room and that had mentioned something of this. But I’d not seen any evidence around the hotel that they did anything like this.

Then later in the night it all went a bit...odd. Actually odd is me putting it lightly. There were voices outside that I could hear and two guys talking and walking around. Eventually I decided to get out of bed and peer through the wooden blinds on the window. It looked like two guys trying to break into one of the cars.

For a moment that’s exactly what I thought they were trying to do, and I thought that my car might be next, though I was more worried able them fucking up my car in some way rather than them actually succeeding in breaking in. I once unlocked my car with the key rather than the key fob and accidentally set off the alarm.

Also, they would have to be the most brazen or incompetent car thieves in the world as one of them had a high visibility vest on and the other wasn’t very good at breaking into the car.

At first I thought that of these two guys one of them was the owner, having locked his keys in his car. But, having got it open somehow, I didn’t sit at the window like some private eye watching for the whole time (though did take a few photos just in case something nefarious was going on) another guy was actually sat in the car talking to the other two guys. From his body language he didn’t seem like he’d been locked out of his car, or relieved, or thankful that these two had helped him get into the car.

It wasn’t something that I mused on much further as the guy in the high visibility vest and the other guy left in an 90s Holden Commodore and the guy whose car had ben broken into also left I allowed myself to drop to sleep.

Reflecting on this day’s drive I think I enjoyed today the most. The drive from Kingston SE along the coast was windswept and isolated, I saw very few cars, yet it was fascinating.

Likewise as I left Adelaide’s surrounds heading north there was hardly any civilisation, yet this emptiness was equally interesting.

Also neither of these drives was particularly difficult, having put my car in cruise control I didn’t need to constantly watch the speedo to remain at 110 km/h. I could enjoy the scenery roll past.

Update 2020:

Looking at The Hotel Flinders on Google Street View it appears they have installed remote gates, which would probably assuage some of my concerns regarding parking here.

SA road trip - Day 1 - South Eastern Melbourne to Kingston SE

June 06, 2014 in Travel

I set this trip (what had been a 6 day trip, but cut down to 5) for mid-May, and travelling beginning on Sunday so as to avoid any busy roads / tourists.

This first day I had set to leave at about 9:00 am with the driving time calculated at 7 hours 27 minutes.

The destination was Kingston SE.

The SE is for South East.

Notably there is no longer any ‘Kingston’. Anywhere in South Australia, not anymore.

There is Kingston On Murray.

Kingston SE used to be called Kingston, but the SE was added to differentiate it from Kingston On Murray, which was also known by ‘Kingston’ but has now been officially named Kingston On Murray (also written as Kingston-On-Murray).

Leaving from the south eastern suburbs, through Melbourne it was a fairly simple journey, over the Westgate Bridge and along the Western Freeway heading for Ballarat.

One thing I’ve not realised despite going there at least twice when I was a kid was how far Ballarat is from Melbourne. It never seemed like a long way as a kid, but it is a fair lick away from the city.

Basically there wasn’t much different about this trip that others might make on their journey to Adelaide by road.

There’s also not much to note, except after the road passes Ballarat that’s where the road has been duplicated up to. It is in progress, so at some point it should be duplicated all the way along to presumedly Ararat.

The change however from others driving to Adelaide is that at Horsham I turned at first set of traffic lights in Horsham heading west towards the coast along the Wimmera Highway.

All the trees along the Wimmera Highway, and indeed throughout Victoria at that time, though noticeably along this highway were beginning to drop their leaves. It gives everything a somewhat dream-like quality to things.

Except it was sunny and I had sunglasses on. So everything took on a bright, yet washed out sort of appearance. Everything had a de-saturated look.

The trees with their leaves half dropped didn’t look as dream-like as they might have done in the autumnal light. Instead they looked dead, almost sinister. It was a post-apocalyptic sort of sense that I drove along these roads, past abandoned buildings and towns with some shops closed, for lease signs in their windows. It made for an odd landscape to be viewed upon out the window.

In places it was like the destruction had come and gone, road houses and road-side petrol stations, general stores and the like closed long ago, though the light, the autumn’s sunbeams lighting it up with a dull saturation.

The road quality was something I had some issues with.

From Horsham to Lucidale it wasn’t just rough. Rough you can more or less cope with by driving around the rough bits in the road, you get to learn where the potholes or where they’ve been repaired. Also rough roads aren’t all of the time everywhere.

The road, the Wimmera Highway was both rough and uneven. It made for a trying several hours at the wheel.

Lucidale is interesting, sort of because of the route I was taking. Naracoorte incidentally is the larger town on the route going west away from Horsham.

Lucidale is the town I passed through to get from where I was on the Wimmera Highway to the Princes Highway which would lead me to Kingston SE.

Google Maps had other ideas, wanting to send me along Crower Road rather than Lucidale-Mount Burr Road and also the road the road signs indicated I needed to turn right along to get to Kingston SE.

Crower Road appears (on Google Maps / Street View) to be a sealed though in places very country road. It’s probably marginally shorter to go along Crower Road than to go through Lucidale. However Crower Road is twisty going along and around farm and bushland.

So after some more rough roads, joining the Princes Highway I made it to Kingston SE, and promptly missed the turning at the roundabout in town, because I forgot to look at my written instructions I’d written out for myself. “Go through town centre and turn RIGHT at roundabout.”

Because I’d forgotten that the town had two main streets, one that ran from the coast and along and then another that led into the town from the highway.

Two different eras I would guess of main street, the original main street with the pub on it and connected more closely with the coast and then a somewhere more modern main street that’s closer to the highway.

My accommodation was the Royal Mail Hotel, Kingston SE. $40 for a night.

A continental breakfast was included in that price. The only hotel on my trip that offered such a thing, though I’ve stayed at a few other pubs that have offered this. It’s a nice addition. Not something that’ll sway me when booking accommodation, whether I get breakfast or not. But it’s a nice perk.

The Royal Mail Hotel, Kingston SE has lots of parking, which it shares with the local Foodland which is next door to it.

The room was alright. A double bed with a single bed positioned over it in a bunk bed-esque sort of arrangement.

No basin, but there was a TV and a DVD player. The latter was something of an odd addition as the TV was an old (small) CRT TV. Though with a set top box for digital TV.

The bathroom facilities were down the corridor and then up a short flight of stairs. Like most pub hotels I’ve stayed in the location of the bathroom facilities can be in an odd location, though this one seemed like it’d been added in the 1960s or 70s.

Two toilets and two showers.

Downstairs it was a fairly normal pub layout, L-shaped bar with dining and bar areas next to one another. When I went down to eat at 6pm (because I was hungry and tired and wanted to get to sleep early).

One interesting thing to note about the meals that were served there was the presence of a buffet of vegetables.

So you ordered your meal and then you just got your vegetables from the buffet. Roast potatoes and pumpkin, broccoli and cauliflower in cheese sauce, peas, all the general hot vegetables and then also beside it cold salad, beetroot and other salads. Plus fruit and also hot bread rolls. I’ve not seen this sort of thing in a long time. The pubs around where I live and used to be taken as a kid used to do this, but I’d thought this sort of thing had long been abandoned.

The only other thing to note about the pub eating experience was ordering a cider (pear cider specifically) I was just given the bottle. No glass. I do rather like to have my cider in a glass with some ice, but it’s not something I’m going to get particular about.

Retiring to my room, up the steep stairs (though all pubs with accommodation seem to have steep stairs) and past the door that just seems to loom over the stairs evidence I think of a realignment of the staircase or the rooms at some point I headed for the shower. I like to have a shower at night, rather than the morning. I want to wash off the day’s adventures and go to bed clean than sleep in the dirt and sweat of the day’s adventures.

The shower worked, the water was hot, though slightly disconcerting was that the drain drained the water rather slowly.

My room was well insulated from the excitations in the pub below and after some time on Twitter and YouTube I dropped off to sleep.

South Australia by road 2014

June 05, 2014 in Travel

It’s been my intention for a while to go to each of the capital cities by road. To see the points between the cities, between the states of our country.

Australia is huge, but when most people go between states, between the capital cities they go by air. By air you see tarmac–sky–tarmac. Air travel is just walking onto an aluminium-composite tube that’s hurtled into the sky and then shoved back onto the ground. It’s essentially a bus for the air. It can be dressed up with a bit of food, maybe a comfy chair if you pay for those extras, but essentially it’s means of getting you moved from one location to another. There’s little regard for the

travel

itself. The

travel

the

journey

is a necessity, it isn’t something enjoyed or found or even discovered. Or if it is, it’s something you do when you arrive, your travelling begins when you arrive following being shoved onto the plane.

For me the destination is a secondary consideration. The destination gives you a direction to travel in. But the actual travelling is the primary purpose. That is what I find interesting, what I enjoy. To see the landscape roll past.

So that’s what I’ve been doing driving the highways, freeways, roads and other bits of bitumen between the capital cities.

On the way to Woomera

On this trip I did have a destination in mind, somewhere I wanted to see.

Woomera.

A name that probably conjures different things for different people.

It was a name synonymous with a detention facility in the late 90s/early 2000s.

in the 1950s and 60s it was the centre of Australia’s space, rocket and defence research.

It was for this that I wanted to go to Woomera for. Space research and Australia’s part in is something I have something of a fascination with. The potential that was there for Australia at that time and where it could have gone into the future fuels the imagination.

On the way up to Woomera I had to stop a few times, for sleep and that sort of thing.

I did not however stay in motels, even though, as I am driving that would seem the most obvious fit for me.

I dislike motels.

I think they service a need, but they are so very **boring**.

Every motel is going to give you a broadly similar experience. They’re usually built out of brick. They’ve got a bed which is nice enough with an awful bed spread in some beige, brown or a dreadful multi-coloured pattern. The bathroom will be there, there’ll be a shower/bath combination or possibly just a shower.

There’ll likely be some sort of tea and coffee facilities to make really awful cups of those beverages. Even if you bring and use your own tea bags it’s still awful (I know. I’ve tried). There’ll be a TV and maybe there’ll be some sort of single chair to sit in that will be comfortable enough but not for any length of time.

Boring, predictable and some various degrees of bland.

That’s kinda what you’re paying for in a motel; a predictable expectations. It generally won’t be outside of these expectations. You expect to get all those things, it’s part of the motel experience. Somewhere to sleep, shower and make really bad cups of tea.

I don’t want this.

I’d rather have somewhere interesting than somewhere nice and predictable.

So when looking for accommodation I seek out hotels. Hotels in the traditional usage of the word rather than the modern usage of it. Hotels as in pubs. As in those places with a pub downstairs and accommodation (usually) upstairs above the pub.

Two sites especially have helped me in this.

Gday Pubs

and

Publocation

If the town’s small enough even just looking on Google Earth and looking for a large building on the corner of the town’s main street usually helps to find the town’s pub.

Staying at a pub means you’ve got your accommodation there, you can go downstairs for a drink and a meal.

It also means, after I’ve arrived at my stop for the day I can park, stop and relax, there’s no where else to go. Not always the case with a motel which on many occasions may not have somewhere to eat nearby, meaning you have to go into the town to get a meal and then return to your accommodation.

Pubs are also interesting, and there will be a compromise or three to be made when you’re staying at a pub / hotel.

The biggest one which some people may not be able to go past when looking to this sort of accommodation is basically a historical one.

Because pubs are generally old buildings, which have historically offered accommodation and the idea of an ensuite is something of a luxury that has not existed as long as the pub has been in existence or when the pub was built.

The short of it is; shared facilities.

This does however mean much cheaper rates more than half the price of a motel.

The shared facilities come in the form of a toilet / shower block, generally on the same floor as the accommodation.

Some pub rooms may have a basin in the room, this again is because of historical reasons.

I don’t have much issue with shared facilities.

I balance it against the fact that I am getting a cheap room, and staying somewhere interesting and convenient.

I know that others do have issue with the idea of shared facilities. But, you shower once when you’re staying at your accommodation, you’ll use the toilet a couple of times (maybe). For that convenience it basically would double the price from a pub room to a motel room to have those conveniences attached to your room.

It’s not something I’m very precious about.

I shower at night as opposed to others who shower in the morning, so I do not encounter the queues for the facilities. I am very much likely to use said facilities early in the night rather than later because I have been driving throughout the day and will usually get an early night. So again no queues to be encountered.

With pub rooms there are a few other things to consider, there may or may not be a TV. It’ll be unlikely there’s any hot beverage making facilities and you’ll probably not get anything like a bedside lamp or anything aside from bed and towels.

But the bed will be relatively comfortable, it’ll be clean, the towels likewise will be clean, perhaps not the fluffiest towels but there’ll be there.

Some may be reading this and drawing comparisons between a pub room and ‘backpacker accommodation’.

Probably because of the shared bathroom facilities which is something they share.

However backpacker accommodation will usually make you bring your own towel and there may be some bedding requirements. And of course you generally have to share a room with upwards of 4 people in order to get a cheap room.

Pub rooms you’re not sharing with anyone, although the room you get may have a bunk bed in it, so you could have a room with a mate or whatever.

Pub rooms aren’t perfect by any stretch, each location where I’ve stayed I have had many issues of note with the accommodation, though only on my last night did I actually consider leaving, and it was only because I had decided to combine my last 2 days into one, something I’ll get to in that post.

Finally, or rather to begin proper, the route.

In general I went for the most direct with a modification or two.

I wanted to travel along a bit of the coast line, originally, though some time ago now I’d planned to go along the Great Ocean Road and Mt Gambier and work my way along like that through Adelaide and up to Woomera.

Over time that plan changed and Mt Gambier has become something I’ll do on another trip. Yet the coast idea remained so aside from my first night’s stop in at Kingston SE it was a mostly direct route.

The route

I planned the route using Google Maps / Google Earth. Yes my car has GPS, as does my phone. But I like to

know

my route, having a GPS is being informed about the route.

I also write my route out, where to turn at which intersection and where I need to be heading towards. Which major towns I should be heading towards.

I use the road signs.

With the road signs and knowing not just where I’m going but which towns I have to pass through to get there I feel much more confident when I’m driving.

The GPS is there as a last resort.

I am also very thankful for Google Street View having that so I can check intersections before leaving. Ones that look like they might be problematic or to look exactly where the exit for a highway or whatever might be has on every road trip I’ve done been of great usefulness. Likewise checking to see what sort of parking is available for accommodation and other such things has been useful.

I didn’t take a huge amount of photos during this trip (I did it in mid-May 2014) as, well I’m driving, kinda hard to take photos when you’re doing that. Also I only take photos of stuff that I find notable, so there’ll be a mix of room photos, and Woomera photos. Also probably a few photos that I may or may not have tweeted.

Reflections on the MICF 2014

April 24, 2014

I didn’t see as many shows as last year’s MICF. This was because of a group of things, in part fewer people I wanted to see, but also less time for me to be able to see them.

Also, as it’s the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, I kinda felt like I’d missed out somewhat on the I in MICF. The only international comedians I saw was FanFiction Comedy the guys and girl from New Zealand that make up that group. Last year I did attempt to see comedians from overseas. This year...just no one really grabbed me, or rather no one and none of their show subjects grabbed me.

The weather, oddly is something of note, throughout the festival it dramatically shifted from the last vestiges of summer into full on autumn. In the latter parts this was fine, getting from one venue in one part of the CBD grid to another is much easier in cool weather than in warm. Humidity and even a little rain on those warm days being not a great thing when you’re sitting in an audience with other people unprepared for the warmth of humidity. Rain on the cooler days was much better, a bit of rain transforms the city, as long as you’re prepared; an umbrella and a weather app to check whether you need it or not.

Out of the two podcasts that I saw, I think I Love Green Guide Letters is a better podcast to see live.
Although The Little Dum Dum Club has things like Australia’s longest running live comedy full cast sketch (Rad Dad) it’s also a somewhat more random affair.
Steele Saunders’ I Love Green Guide Letters, with its Green Guide letters aspect gives the podcast some structure. While the lead in and probably half or even more than half of the show / podcast is a general chat, the letters’ presence gives the show scaffolding to support itself better than just random conversation. It allows all the guests to have something to say / be able to say something.

In some of The Little Dum Dum shows I felt that maybe not all the guests had been able to say all that they could.
Though perhaps that’s just down to the constraints of the length of time (an hour) and the amount of guests they had on. On the recorded (non-live) podcasts there’s one or two guests on for about an hour, and with that there’s more time and space for the guests to have a good chat with Tommy Dassalo and Karl Chandler.

Tall chairs for ILGGL (front row view)

The most unexpected show of the festival was Hannah Gadsby’s “The Exhibitionist”. I really wasn’t expecting what I got in that show, but I really very much enjoyed it. It and Wil Anderson’s show are two that I would happily see again. Though unfortunately I wasn’t able to move my schedule around to be able to see either again.

My favourite show of the MICF 2014 was Joel Creasey’s “Rock God”. It was a well constructed narrative, with elements that seemed to be random tangents of the night, but on reflection had to be built into the narrative in order for it to work. Joel Creasey makes it seem like it’s random and of the moment despite it being the Xth time he’d performed it.
Having seen Creasey 2-3 times now,

This MICF I think as with last year the podcasts I was a subscriber to made the biggest impression on my thoughts on comedians and who to see. I saw Bart Freebairn based primarily on seeing him on I Love Green Guide Letters and The Little Dum Dum Club. I saw Karl Chandler and Steele Saunders in part because I’d heard them on their podcasts and wanted to support them. Likewise with Tommy Dassalo who’d I’d seen last year (because of The Little Dum Dum Club) and saw again this year in part based on seeing him last year and also my wish to support him.

I think that every comedy fan should be listening to comedy podcasts and seeing them when they’re recorded live.
They are incredibly good value, for $18 or so a ticket (or $55-$60 for a season pass of 4 shows) you get to see a lot of comedians. Each show there’s 4 or 5 guests usually comedians or some other sort of media person. Sometimes they may not even have a show at the festival like Josh Earl appearing on The Little Dum Dum Club or might not even be comedically related like Livinia Nixon appearing on I Love Green Guide Letters.
Podcasts recordings are also unrehearsed, which means what comes out of them is unique and honest. It’s like a talk show, a comedy show, a bit of news, it’s really just a bit of a friendly chat. Which happens in front of an audience.
You can sit in the front row of the audience and you’re unlikely to be picked on because there’s more than one person on stage at a time which means the host of the podcast has their attention on them. I have sat in the front row of all but 2 of the the podcasts I went to and wasn’t picked on nor were any of my fellow audience who were sat at the front (except for 4-5 people who sat in the front row of the final Little Dum Dum Club and then left early to go to Tommy Little).

So, to sum up.

Hannah Gadsby’s “The Exhibitionist” was my favourite show, for being unexpected, funny and well written. It had some great unique insights, plus I felt like I learnt something, and it made me want to see her show again.

Joel Creasey’s “Rock God” was the best constructed show, it felt polished, his performance highly honed yet still seemed spontaneous and ‘of the night’. He made what he was doing look easy despite it being a complex narrative.

My favourite podcast was I Love Green Guide Letters and specifically my favourite show was the final show with Adam Richard, Fiona O'Laughlin and Bart Freebairn along with Steele Saunders.

I have been impressed each time I’ve seen him, that he’s built on what he’s done before and still produced a consistent and brilliantly creative narrative.

MICF 2014 - The Little Dum Dum Club (4) and DrunkCast™

April 22, 2014

20th April 2014 - 5:00 pm (The Little Dum Dum Club) and 10:00 pm (DrunkCast™)

I’m lumping these two together as I can’t really remember much of The Little Dum Dum Club podcast recording earlier in the day at 5:00 pm and only bits and pieces of the later DrunkCast™.

I wasn’t drinking, that’s not the cause of my bad memory. It was just a long day that extended out to be much longer following the DrunkCast™.

At the final podcast show there was Greg Behrendt, Dave Thornton and Luke McGregor.

There were some updates on Luke’s dating via Tinder.

Also possibly one of the wrongest episodes of Rad Dad, much inappropriateness directed at Jenny.

Now, the DrunkCast™.

It was hilariously funny. Aided very much by the sketches provided on screen and at quite a speed. Very brilliantly done.

There was some racism.
And puddles of spunk.
Not real.
Just the scent of it.

Luke McGregor's brother is the much more handsome version of Luke. He's the Luke from an alternate universe.

Gary Chook also put in an appearance. He kinda looks like Karl Chandler.
Just more bogan. Slightly dangerous.

Near the end it was just devolving into ridiculousness, and games that I'm sure seemed like a good idea in Tommy's mind but just didn't play out very well into reality.

MICF 2014 - Bart Freebairn - “Double Happiness”

April 22, 2014

20th April 2014 - 8:00 pm

The show was scheduled to start at 8:00 pm, though it actually started closer to 8:15 pm. 15 minutes spent in the Imperial Hotel while red shirted people watched some sort of sport on a TV.
One of the most unpleasant places to be.

I enjoyed Bart Freebairn’s show without quite knowing why I enjoyed it.
It didn’t have much of a narrative structure that I’ve been banging on about liking in previous posts.

Bart has a wistful, joyful sort of tone, which quickly spins on its heel to become something slightly darker. It is kinda like a fairy tale where upon you're suddenly told the fairy godmother is off giving the bouncers a wristy while the princess scores blow off the toilet seat with the pumpkin people.
It's actually not much like that, but sort of like that.

Bart has an interesting tone and style, it’s like imagination and a confident slyness.

He ended his show on an electron joke that I really wasn’t expecting which made it all the more brilliant.

MICF 2014 - Tom Ballard - “UnAustralian(ish)”

April 22, 2014

19th April 2014 - 8:30 pm

I don't enjoy being preached to. That's one of the over riding things that I thought coming out of Ballard's show.

Wil Anderson often bangs on about his personal beliefs and thoughts on the world and what not. Though he usually qualifies his statements by saying that it's his own thoughts.

Tom Ballard's core idea in his show was good.

It's basically a slideshow through a trip around Australia he did when he was a kid, ending for him and his brother at least on the Gold Coast and beginning in Warrnambool, going all the way up to Darwin and then across to Brisbane and "Hollywood on the Gold Coast".

If only he'd stuck to those ideas.

To be fair on him the audience was some somewhat reticent to laugh. It was Easter Saturday and we're edging into winter. Also the Melbourne Town Hall council chambers are not exactly designed for performance. It’s a nice room, though probably not for comedy.

At the end of the show Ballard said that there'd be a bucket or some sort of receptacle for the audience to put some loose change in to be donated to a charity for asylum seekers.

It was this and how this subject tied into his show that I have an issue with. If I'm seeing a show that makes its philosophical leanings clear then that's fine. But there's nothing really on his MICF page that indicates this.

Ballard himself says something of the effect that whatever beliefs people have is their own concern. Believe what you want.

I imagine that to extend to having your own philosophy.

I didn't appreciate the guilt tripping at the end, the suggestion that we *should* give some change.

I will give to charity, I give to organisations I believe in. I had already given to Capril, the charity Steele Saunders champions on I Love Green Guide Letters, because I believe in that and his offer wasn't...I don't want to say hollow but...

Steele Saunders, at the start of I Love Green Guide Letters and in his tweets mentioned Capril (which is about raising awareness of depression & other mental illness).

At the end of the podcast recording he encouraged everyone to give their change to Capril into the bucket at the door.
He also said the podcast would match any donations.

I had already decided to give money (all the change in my wallet essentially) but that offer showed conviction to the charity.
While Ballard's, I just found a little bit hollow and guilt tripping.
What content in his show related to his offer that we could give some money wasn’t convincing enough for me to give and I felt guilt tripped into it.

Going back to his show, I enjoyed it.
But I didn't really enjoy it.
It made me laugh, but there were very few insights into him or his life.
I wanted to like it, I liked his show last year.

I think that’s it, I wanted to like it a lot more than I actually did.

The basic idea of the show was a good one, but the execution was a little bit too linear. While I do like a good narrative which are in general a linear affair this was a little too so.

His road trip in the mid-90s resonated, I had had similar experiences in the past, going to Movie World, doing the theme parks. Some of his photos (on his slide projector) looked like my family’s photos.

I should have liked it a lot more than I did.

I kinda feel that with so much gold from his and his brother’s diary that there could have been more to the story than what was told.

Hannah Gadsby also had some photos from her childhood, and wrapped them up into a show. Although hers was also about art.

Ballard himself says his brother’s diary of the trip was a ‘comedy gold mine’. But while many of the insights were funny, it was more like a silver mine where you occasionally find some gold than a constant stream of gold ore.

MICF 2014 - FanFiction Comedy

April 22, 2014

19th April 2014 - 6:00pm

Only myself and one other person had been to a FanFiction Comedy show before.
And the last one I went to was last year.

I've not been to as many this year, basically because of scheduling clashes, last year it lined up better with other things I was seeing so I could see 3-5 of the FanFiction show, but this year I've gone to one.

On Saturday there were stories of Love Actually weird mashup, a Memento/Mr Echo meeting (told in the style of Memento, very well told by James Acaster), a Buffy the Vampire Slayer tale, a story about Baribies their 'god', Ken and general toy life by Eli Matthewson and a 300 / 101 Dalmatians crossover.

The Memento / Mr Echo crossover story was intricately constructed. While I got basically none of the references having not seen Memento nor been much of a Lost fan.

Eli's Barbie story was the most evocative with clean, clear and precise story telling. It very quickly established setting and characters and made my imagination fire up.

The 300 / 101 Dalmatians was the most unexpected of the stories, that I did not expect the crossover to drop in.

I am disappointed I didn’t try to get to more FanFiction Comedy this year, it was very much a highlight for me last year.

MICF 2014 - I Love Green Guide Letters (4)

April 22, 2014

19th April 2014 - 4:30 pm

Back into the hate bunker for the last time.

Steele had a I Lover Green Guide Letters t-shirt around his neck in lieu of a cape, unlike last year's Capril where he went all Star Wars bed sheets on it.

Some people came in capes to the show, I was going to and then...forgot. I had other things on during the day and so it escaped my mind. Also the closest I have to a cape is a long frontier man’s coat, which is both epic and awkward. It’s great to walk along on a windy day wearing it because it billows up dramatically. Sitting down with it is a little more awkward. It splits up the back so you can wear it whilst riding a horse. But for the modern day sitting and seeing stuff, not so good.

The guests were...epic.

Bart Freebairn, Adam "the Snake" Richard and Fiona O'Laughlin.

Bart Freebairn, whom I've seen on a podcast here and there, wasn't the most outrageous in the room.

Fiona O'Loughlin is a comedian I've wanted to see for a while though have never been able to line up the other shows that I've wanted to see with the ones she's doing.
If it's anything like what happened in the I Love Green Guide Letters show on Saturday then I am sorry I've been missing out.

Where to start with Fiona O'Loughlin?
She doesn't look like she'd 50.
Late 30s maybe.
That’s probably the best place to start. I was seated at the front, where I’ve sat in all the shows bar one. I think what’s the point of sitting at the back or even one row away from the front. If you just want to listen, listen to the podcast. You want to be able to see the shocked unbelieving expressions on the guests / Steele’s face as it all goes off the rails.

Fiona hates Nicole Kidman.
There's a committee for the club that hates her.
Of both of those the only member is Fiona.

This show highlighted why you should see podcasts live.
Because Steele is going to be doing some pretty massive amount of editing to this episode (probably). The secret section may even be longer than the podcast. Likely with lots of “Mr Black” bits edited in.

Adam Richard was better with the litigious stuff having worked for the station that 'killed a nurse" he know where to put the allegedly-s and the "it's probably all lies" into his sentences to make sure he's absolved of any responsibility in what he says.

At one point it seemed like it was just Adam Richard and Fiona O'Loughlin chatting away. So much so Steele and Bart just seemed amazed, surprised and many other expressions passed between them.

I think this was my favourite I Love Green Guide Letters live podcast of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2014. I think, looking back at The Little Dum Dum Club and previous I Love Green Guide Letters live podcasts this was my favourite overall out of those two podcasts that I went to.

Brilliantly funny, somewhat insightful, things said unlikely to make it entirely into the podcast. Plus various things which don’t translate to audio, the looks Bart and Steele gave one another. The way Fiona O'Loughlin laughs. Adam Richard (just in general).

MICF 2014 - Joel Creasey - “Rock God”

April 16, 2014

13th April 2014 - 8:45 pm

Joel Creasy high-fived me.
I really didn't know what to do what he held his hand out to me, or to the front row, but I thought I'd better do something.

Creasy also continues his end of show theme of wearing something under his clothes.

I did think, sitting up the font that he had packed out his jeans quite a bit. I wasn’t looking per se, just musing off centre randomly.

Although those shoes must have been somewhat difficult to get off at the end.

Joel Creasy's narrative is like his previous shows (to which I've been to 2-3) a tightly constructed narrative with some diversions and detours along the way. But they're seamless.
He makes them seem like random detours but they actually form a part of the whole narrative that he's presenting.

This show reveals itself very well, and thinking back on it as I drove home it was a brilliantly written piece of comedy. Creasey constructs his narrative with intensity and flippancy at times which hides how much he must have written his show to ensure all the different strands come together throughout the show and it all happens at the end to pool together.

I was last year and still am surprised and amazed by Joel Creasy, he's a comedian whose material is brilliantly funny. But also well constructed. He manages to paint scenes and sequences in a brilliantly vivid detail very quickly. Like he's using a large paint brush, but cartoon like as it goes out across the room is actually painting intricate details.

I didn’t know what Zumba was before seeing his show, and I’m still not sure, but it does seem like it’s a bit of an inappropriate thing for guys to dress for.

Joel Creasey’s show is probably one of my top shows of this year’s MICF, just so well written, excellently performed with a passion.

MICF 2014 - Anne Edmonds - “It’d Eddo!”

April 16, 2014

13th April 2014 - 6:15 pm

It is indeed 10 minutes from 5 Boroughs to the Melbourne Town Hall. I didn't quite believe Google Maps' route, but it was, though it was a brisk walk and a rush up the stairs to of the Town Hall to get up to the Portico Room.
I'd needed to do that because I had to get from the 5 Boroughs where the Little Dum Dum Club finished about 5 minutes late. Though that was okay because it started 10 minutes late.
But did mean I had to rush to get to see "It''s Eddo".

So, once sat down I was a little puffed and dizzy from the rush to get there.

I felt, about half way through that the energy drink I'd had in the mid-afternoon wear off. I only mention this because I really didn't mean to yawn in the middle of her show, especially as I was at the front. It was a combination of being out the previous night, up late the previous night / early morning and then working before heading into the city.
The lighting was also a very soft yellow light that made me think of sunset/sun rise.
The perfect time to be made to feel sleepy.

I went to see "It's Eddo" because I was curious. After seeing her at I Love Green Guide Letters I was curious enough to want to see her.

Her question threw me at the start "so have you all been to Mass?". Someone actually answered yes.
I had to think for several moments, was this a new comedy room, was it a club, was some food or beverage company doing a special on weights and measures? Admittedly all of this roared through my head in a very short amount of time. Before I remembered it's Sunday and the church does some little ritual sort of thing.

For warming up the audience it seemed like an odd question.

Edmonds is quite a physical performer and she used most of the small stage to the fullest.

At the start she pointed out the gap between the front of the stage and the first row of the audience. That was an emergency exit which lead out onto the balcony of the Melbourne Town Hall. From there I'm not sure what we're meant to do, I don't recall seeing any emergency exits from the outside, but maybe it's hidden quite well from the outside of the building. Or maybe there's an emergency exit somewhere around the back of the Town Hall that people can get access to that no one's seen.

I would be lying if I said I really enjoyed all of Edmond's show.
Which is what I did do on twitter, mostly because I need this space to explain why I didn’t like parts of it.
I did enjoy it overall, as a piece of entertainment and comedy is was funny and enlightening.
Between Edmonds and Karl Chandler I feel like I've voyaged through various reality TV performance tropes.

There were bits of musical comedy that I didn't like.
I don't like musical comedy in general, it's not something that does it for me.
In Edmond's show I just didn't get what she was doing with the song. It was related to what she was talking about. But it mentioned characters that I didn't really get or where/why they had been introduced to her story via song. I just didn’t really engage with it at all.

Edmond's mother sounds interesting and sounds like there's lots of good comedy from her.

Likewise Edmond's time in America sounds like it's a voyage of interesting things that happened. Her improv class especially from the way she performed it seemed interesting.

I however don't think this was the best show for me, Edmond's comedy was funny, in places. I laughed and a mused and considered.

But the ‘one person show’ as in performing to yourself is not something I’m a fan of. Karl Chandler did a little bit of it, within the context of his show to illustrate a portion of his story and it worked for this little bit as an illustrative performance. But I’m not a great fan of the jump cut talking to yourself style of comedy that’s often favoured by people on YouTube and the real life version that Edmonds did is also something that doesn’t quite work for me. It’s also something I have vague memories of doing myself in high school, so maybe it’s me, cringing at memories of my own past.

I admit I flirted with walking out, I didn’t because I respect performers too much to do that to them and it was mostly because I was a bit tired and didn’t want to be yawning throughout Edmond’s set. I was glad that I stayed through because it was funny. But just not exactly to my taste.

MICF 2014 - The Little Dum Dum Club (3)

April 16, 2014

13th April 2014 - 5:00 pm

Last week I arrived late to the Little Dum Dum Club, so this week I arrived early.
There were a handful of people already in 5 Boroughs. I bought myself a lemonade and found a comfy chesterfield chair to sit in and look at twitter. Of the handful of people in 5 Boroughs also waiting there were 2-3 other people who like me were alone, and like me were browsing their phones doing whatever it is they were doing. I was on twitter musing on how cyanide isn't used any more as a drug of choice in narratives. Agatha, or rather the cultural memes from her works kinda ironically killed that.

The comedians for the night were Ian Bagg (sold out), Peter Helliar (doing 2 whole shows), Bart Freebairn and subbing in, just in case Peter Helliar had to go, Xavier Michelides.
Peter didn't have to go anywhere so that was a little bit odd.

The thing about going to a podcast recording rather than a standup's show is none of it is rehearsed and it's all spur of the moment.
So it's all unfiltered.

Rather like the mental image that was presented of Karl Chandler's 62 year old mother in a bikini. That is something that I didn't need to think about, however I rather think it's something that Chandler didn't want to think about even more.

Chandler's off taking his parents to Thailand, on Malaysian Airlines. Which should be interesting. As Dassalo said I am hoping he makes some video blogs of his experiences. i don't know how he's going to cope.

Seeing Bart Freebairn in person and on stage made me reconsider seeing his show once more, it was something I was going to go and see and then decided not to and then mused on whether or not to see it again. The only night where I have some time is on the last night of the festival, when in between the first Dum Dum Club and then the last DrunkCast™ show at 10pm. So I may go and see his show.

Ian Bagg had an interesting mic technique of holding the mic with two hands, it's and interesting in its confident grip that I've not seen any other comedians do. The closest is Wil Anderson who seems to have a special microphone stand that allows him to move it up and down with ease and it looked like it was on a rubbery base so it could waggle and bend when Wil let go of it.
Nothing so high tech in the Dum Dum Club, not even enough microphones to go around when Peter Helliar was able to stick around.
Which is a bit of a pity as it meant that Ian Bagg and Bart Freebairn had to share a mic. I liked the sound of Ian Bagg’s comedy, and would’ve liked to hear him more than his brief appearance in the show.

As I’ve said in my write ups of I Love Green Guide Letters, podcasts are fantastic things to go to. It’s not just going to something that you can get free.
It’s seeing Tommy Dassalo and Karl Chandler make it through their opening, Karl Chandler’s expressions, his inability to sit on a seat without sitting on his leg. The pained expressions and other things he does when caught out in thought or otherwise in musing. There’s Tommy Dassalo’s range of hats which seem to change show to show.
You get 4 guests plus Tommy and Karl making 6 comedians on the show, for what is an extremely cheap price I paid $60 for a season pass for all 4 shows. I think you would struggle to find a better deal in the comedy festival where you’re guaranteed to see at least 3 different comedians in each show.

MICF 2014 - Hannah Gadsby - “The Exhibitionist”

April 16, 2014

12th April 2014 - 7:00 pm

Hannah Gadbsy's show was something I booked relatively blind. I've seen her past 2 or 3 shows and really enjoyed them.
This was also a show, going into it that I didn't know much about.
I don't even really recall reading her page on the MICF website, I just booked it based on liking her previous work.
She is also someone who doesn't have a podcast and doesn't frequently appear on any podcasts. Which means unlike my previous outings where I've seen comedians who I know something of or about I really didn't know what I was getting going into Hannah's show.

It was surprising, and funny.
I also felt like I learnt something.
It did also make me think about fair use, Creative Commons and image licensing. This wasn’t raised in the show, it was just something that came to mind for me while watching it.

Hannah's show, is about legacy and exhibition, her show behind called “The Exhibitionist” kinda wraps that up.

There are a lot of bad photos in this show, and not just of Hannah.
There's also a feeling of a lecture, with amusing things.

I think "The Exhibitionist" is my favourite show of the MICF. It was unexpected, it was gloriously funny, but it was different sorts of funny. It wasn't just one sort of funny, there were laughs from insight, laughs from revelation and laughs of weirdness. I also felt that I learnt something, and I wasn't expecting that.

MICF 2014 - I Love Green Guide Letters (3)

April 16, 2014

12th April 2014 - 4:30 pm

On the 12th’s I Love Green Guide Letters there was a genuine TV personality. Someone who wasn’t on the podcast who also had a show in the comedy festival. Someone who has been on a many a different show on the commercial networks. Livinia Nixon, a genuine fan of the the letters, possibly as much as Steele. She knew all about the The Doctor Blake Mysteries letters and all the complaints that were raised in them.

The other guests were; Greg Fleet and Luke McGregor.

I misjudged which way the queue decided to form this week so wasn’t at the front of the queue, nor was I able to get a seat at the front in front of the stage as I had the previous weeks. Those with season passes or just return audience members working out the quirks of the ‘hate bunker’ and that it being a long narrow room meaning that getting near the front was better than sitting at the back. I was 3 rows back which wasn’t bad.

I did get talking to someone outside the in the queue who mentioned that she’d been drunk or hung over since Valentine’s Day – during the Adelaide Fringe. They’d gone to the I Love Green Guide Letters show in Adelaide and had followed it to Melbourne.

I don’t know how they could be drunk for that long. Though I’m a very cheap drunk. A couple of bottles of cider will do me. 1-2 is in general enough for me for the night, any more and I think it becomes unpleasant.

Dating was discussed at some length, both Fleet’s experiences with women and dating and also McGregor’s upcoming date with someone he’d met online.

Celebrity Dog Survivor was one of the many things that Livinia Nixon mentioned whilst discussing the various shows and bad things she’d worked on. It involved a restraining order, against the owner not the dog.

Not quite as shocking or revealing as last week. It was still a quality hour of comedy. Heartily recommend it, there are very few shows in the comedy festival where you will get to see 4 entertainers at once speaking unrehearsed about stuff.

Don’t think live podcast recordings as something of the audio medium presented live. This is like going to Good News Week, or Rove Live! or something like that. It’s a comedy talk show, live and about the Age’s Green Guide Letters. Though only as much as they’re a framing device to lead to more conversation.