Photos from the Writing Bunker
After spending many months in bed watching TV shows and mindlessly surfing the internet on my laptop in an attempt to regain my humanity after Year 12, I’ve inadvertently returned to my pre-graduation days of living in Mum’s office, typing away for hours until I can’t feel my soul anymore. Well, not quite so melodramatic — but I do feel wasted after every session. Unlike Year 12, though, I’m writing by choice and doing something that I’m convinced is worthwhile, rather than being told it is so.
Another Year 12 cramming habit I’ve returned to is going for shortish walks around the ‘hood most days, often going down streets I’ve lived virutally next to my entire life but have never had the need (or bothered) to explore. As ridiculous as it sounds, it feels like I’m overseas, with landscape that is familiar yet foreign in its layout and details. The laneways (so long as it’s not night) are also endlessly interesting to walk through, and always seem more industrial or detached from the aesthetics of the rest of the street. This, coupled with some fantastic vigilante graffiti and my camera phone, make for an alternative album of Northcote and its surrounding suburbs.
Here’s to many more walks and keeping Melbourne awesome.
You’ll no doubt be pleased to hear that Moreland council (is Northcote actually in Moreland council? Lets pretend it is…) is running quite the campaign against graffitti now… just several months after it financially supported the Don’t Ban The Can gig/fest over the creek in Brunswick.
In fact, it seems like a magic alarm clock went off in the heads of many greater Melbourne councillors recently (perhaps about the time Doyle was elected? Hmm…) suddenly telling them time is up for graf in Melbournes urban centre and inner suburbs, and that now’s the time to punish, punish and punish some more.
I could go on and on about this all day, but I’ll stop here and leave your comments alone.
Melbourne backstreets are awesome. Someday I will re-discover the alley with Spiderman’s telephone and on that day I will be beside myself with joy.
@rantolotl: you are more than welcome to fill my comments with diatribes for I am a comment whore. And Doyle is just a whore.
@Hel: We must undertake a proper CBD laneway exploration before I bugger off to the land of the Deep Fried Sesame Balls.
There have been some essays in the Age over the years about wandering through Melbourne’s lanes. One was by poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe. He said one difference in exploring neighbourhood lanes and streets these days as opposed to twenty years ago, is now you don’t see kids in the street playing cricket–or playing anything, I suppose, because they are all inside playing computer games. I’m glad to see there are still some of today’s young people (adopts pompous tone) who still wander around closely observing things and recording what they see.
Get off your high horse, Mum — you were WITH me. “Today’s young people”, indeed. And close observation is still relevant in video games, as is wandering around virtual worlds (hence virtual exercise!)
This is a great post! Would you be interested in seeing your work about local places syndicated on local news blogs? See Fitzroy for example. Many local bloggers are contributing. There’s no advertising and no exploitation of your content – just a convenient way for local people to read local news. To contribute please add suburb categories, tags or labels to your posts, such as ‘Northcote’, ‘Brunswick’, etc and let me know you’ve done this. RSS feeds for these tags are created and added to the local news sites. You may find that syndication brings more traffic to your blog and more comments from readers!
Thanks, Fitzroyalty! Will do — and I highly encourage anyone else reading this to check out local blogs and provide some content of their own.