Mudrooroo’s ‘Dr Watson Holmes Jackamara’ by Derham Groves
Derham Groves
His Wunderkammer
‘The Adventure of the Lost Trousers’ by Derham Groves
In nineteen eighty-six,
Our haughty ex-
Prime Minister,
Malcolm Fraser,
Lost his pants
In a trance,
After sharing a red,
Quite innocently, he said,
In Memphis, Tennessee,
With a busty young floozy.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Cardboard Box’ by Derham Groves
Pop Culture Icons, whittled by Derham Groves
(clockwise) Eric Pearce (newsreader, GTV9); Happy Hammond, King Corkey, Professor Ratbaggy, Susan Gay Anderson, and Bernard the Magician (THE TARAX SHOW, GTV9); George Johnston (Australian author); Hopalong Cassidy; Chris Cobb (WHIPLASH); Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty; Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Cedric Price (architects).
Tree change to sea change!
Late last year (2014) we sold Linton and bought a boat shed on the foreshore at Rosebud on the Mornington Peninsula. It’s a great spot! Looking forward to many happy days by the sea.
Yesterday (Sunday the 3rd of May) I launched my handmade timber Canadian canoe (below). Capsized it only once!
Barber Shops in Melbourne
Preface
One of the areas that my Master of Architecture history/theory course, Popular Architecture and Design, which I teach at the University of Melbourne, looks at is “everyday architecture”.
In previous years the students who did this course have researched kebab shops in Melbourne (2011), launderettes in Melbourne (2012) and painted garage doors in Melbourne (2013).
This year (2014), the students researched barber shops in Melbourne. Working mostly in pairs, they were asked to choose a barber shop and record the following basic information about it:
• The name and address of the barbershop.
• A plan of the barbershop, including the fittings and furniture.
• At least one photograph of the front of the barbershop.
• At least one photograph of each of the rear and sides of the barber shop (where accessible).
• At least four photographs of the interior of the barbershop.
• Photographs of any advertising (awning signs, window signs, 3D signs, etc.).
• A brief description of the barbershop.
• A brief interview with the owner/manager and/or one or more customer(s).
Barber Shops in Melbourne: An Architectural Survey contains the above data exactly as the students gave it to me—errors and all. To be able to see 50 barber shops at a glance and compare their similarities and differences based on exactly the same information is this book’s main value in my view.
Judging from the students’ research, many barber shops in Melbourne are very quirky, highly masculine places. Those that have the barber’s personal collection of football memorabilia, or foreign currency, or knickknacks, or photographs, or whatever on display in the barber shop are the ones that fascinate me the most.
Derham Groves.
Hoon, Tiang, Thiaw and their Dad
My wife, Tiang (who I call Ping), found the negative of this photo in some things she had stored at my parents’ house. It shows the three Khoo sisters and their father at Central Padang in Kuching in the 1960s. The surreal perspective has almost turned their father into a Ken doll. Weird! And Hoon looks like she has only one leg! The photo was probably taken by one of my wife’s brothers.
Darwin 2014
Last week I spent two days in Darwin to attend the opera I was involved with at the Darwin Festival. It was one of the most incomprehensible things I’ve ever seen! Never mind. It was enjoyable all the same.
William Boyd/Hopalong Cassidy visited Darwin in 1954. However, if he came back to life and visited the town again today, he wouldn’t recognize the place. About the only building that might look familiar to him is the Star Theatre, although it isn’t a cinema any more, but some shops. Every Wednesday evening was “ranch night” when cowboy films, including Hoppy’s, which were the favourites of Darwin’s Aboriginal community, were shown at the Star Theatre. Hoppy’s glory days are commemorated in the shopping centre’s courtyard by a poster. I managed to track down one person who met Hoppy when he visited the Bagot Road Aboriginal Community school in 1954, a delightful man named Don White. He remembered Hoppy’s school visit like it was yesterday.
I drove to Adelaide River, about 100 kilometres south of Darwin, just for the hell of it. It was just a name on a map to me. But I was unexpectedly moved by the immaculately-kept, World War II military cemetery there. So many young men in their twenties killed. The inscription on “craftsman” R.W. Thomas’s Army headstone really got to me: “Ever loved by this Dad …” The youngest person buried in the cemetery appears to be 16-year old R.H. Stobo, a Merchant Navy “deck cadet”, while the oldest appears to be 66-year old G. Dew, a “donkeyman”, also with the Merchant Navy (I guess he looked after the Merchant Navy’s donkeys. How many donkeys were killed in the bombing of Darwin I wonder?). [I stand corrected by Mike Scully. A “donkeyman” looked after the boilers on a ship. I guess it comes from the term, “donkey engine”. Nevertheless, how many donkeys were killed in the bombing of Darwin?] It seems that the Darwin Post Office received a direct hit, because about a dozen post office workers were buried side-by-side. As I say, I was unexpectedly moved by the stories of the people buried in this beautiful, but out-of-the-way place.
Termite mounds by the side of the road between Darwin and Adelaide River.
Derham’s first grandchild — Amazing!
Hopalepidopter almost takes Darwin
Danius Kesminas recently asked me to write a libretto—in the form of a story board for a comic book—for the fourth part of a science fiction/surreal/punk opera, to be performed by the Lepidopters (Punkasila et al) at the Darwin Festival in August 2014. I had to more or less continue the storyline of the first three parts written by Mark von Schlegell. I based my story on Hopalong Cassidy’s visit to Darwin in 1954. Instead of Hopalong metaphorically capturing Darwin, as he did when he visited there, Hopalepidopter literally captures it (well, almost). Great fun. Following is the relevant page from the Darwin Festival program and two of the 45 panels of my collaged story board.
