Orange Juice for Sale

A couple of weeks ago, I went into the city to drop off some film I'd exposed of the Coppin Masonic Lodge. As I walked home from the tram stop I noticed two girls, both about ten years old, who were hawking orange juice to passers-by.

"Would you like to buy some lemona--, I mean orange juice?," one of the girls asked as I approached.  "It's only 20 cents."

Orange juice sales is less than brisk in Brunswick West.

"No, thank you," I replied. "It looks good, though, and good luck with the project."

She dropped her head, dejected. As I moved on I could barely hear her mutter "Why not?" Three steps later, and I asked myself the same question. Sure, I'd lied about it "looking good." There was no ice to keep the juice chilled. There was too little of it in the bowl to make it look appealing. Their sign was too small and hard to read. But I gave them points for continuing a suburban tradition. I spun around and said, "I changed my mind; I'll have a cup."

From the look of the till, I was their only customer, so I tossed a 50-cent piece into the basket. In return, I got half a paper cup-full of syrupy-looking yellow-orange liquid.

"It's pretty tart," they warned.

One sip and a forced smile was all I could manage.

The Postcard Files: Aussie Tourism and Portarlington

This one is a reproduction of a tourism poster, but I still think it's cool. It's a much better image for Australia than Paul Hogan or any of the frantic, bogan dreck Steve Irwin was responsible for.

Ahh, an honest, straightforward postcard made in the good old days before town councils became convinced that if they didn't pay a consultant to come up with a logo and tagline, they wouldn't be taken seriously by anyone. Good for you, Portarlington!

This is the only other postcard available for Portarlington, and I can see why. If this is the best they had for card #2, clearly they were way too short of material for #3. I'm not sure what's going on here. Is this mass transit for old people? If this was a stop on the bus tour, then judging from the fact that the three old ladies on the left are staring at their shoes, it's time to leave. Or maybe they've just finished the train ride and are trying to figure out what happened to the person who was sitting in the chair.

Brunswick Trugo Club

For months I'd wondered about the Brunswick Trugo Club. I'd seen signs pointing the way, but never bothered to discover where they led. Given the large immigrant population in my neigbourhood, I thought it might have been the name of a private association of ethnic Italians.

Headed for the trugo club? Not this way, you're not.

Nope. Trugo is a sport invented by Melbourne rail workers in 1924. Last week, I called Gerald Strachan, the president of the Brunswick Trugo Club, to ask if I could come by to see the place and learn about the game.

"You're absolutely welcome to," he said. "The season ends soon, but we meet on Tuesdays at 11AM, and we also have a hit on Sunday afternoons."

The clubhouse and grounds are are at the back of a small public park nearby, tucked into a verdant corner and enclosed by a high chain link fence. I arrived thirty minutes early, but Gerald and some of his clubmates (about eight people well into their retirement years) were already setting up. The game is relatively simple. Players hit a dense rubber disk with a heavy, double-ended wooden mallet, the striking surfaces of which are cushioned with swatches of rubber from either recycled crepe shoe soles or thongs (flip flops). The disk has a hole in the middle, and is about the size and density of a hockey puck. It's an industrial product, once used on train couplers as a cushioning device. The object of the game is to hit the disk hard and accurately enough to have it roll between two posts at the end of a 90-foot green.

A trugo match at the Brunswick club in 2008.

Gerald demonstrated the correct stance and swing-- back to target with feet planted on either side of the disk for a vigorous backwards swing through the legs. Then he handed me a mallet and, before I realised it, I was playing a game against another club member. My first hit rolled dead centre.

"That always happens with beginners on the first few strokes," Gerald remarked. "Then it all goes to hell."

So true. Whereas my first four disks rolled smoothly and briskly between the yellow posts, the next four, then eight, wobbled crazily off course and veered out of bounds. An ill-timed soak at my end of the court from a malfunctioning sprinkler didn't help my accuracy, either. My fouls were retrieved eagerly by Champ, Gerald's 7-year-old Jack Russell terrier. Champ is a trugo fanatic and a daredevil. He routinely positions himself at midfield, in the direct path of the hard rubber puck (which, should it skip high at the receiving end, could knock your teeth out) prepared to pluck it off the green if it's a bad shot.

"He only takes them if you muck up the hit," Gerald explained. Champ was having a ball.

Things improved dramatically at halftime, when my opponent and I switched ends. Now I had the dry end of the court and he had the wet one. Suddenly, my game got better and nearly every one of my hits scored a point.

I have no idea what the final score was, but everyone was having a good time and no one seemed to care. I went inside the clubhouse to make myself a cup of coffee, then returned to the courtside bench where the others sat in the sun, smoking heavily and barking friendly gibes at another pair finishing their match. ["That was a shocker, Lois! You're miserable!"]

Trugo is a threatened species. Only six clubs exist, and it's a game played almost exclusively by pensioners. Public awareness is a serious problem; very few Melburnians know of the game, so recruits are scarce. When a club member dies, there is usually no one to take their place. The Footscray Trugo Club, which had been Melbourne's oldest, closed in 2009 for lack of players. The smoking probably doesn't help, either.

I don't want to see trugo disappear, so I'll do my part. I've got my eye on the start of the competitive season in August.

The Postcard Files: Shepparton

I like to get postcards in the mail, but not many folks send them these days. Text messages and mobile phone snapshots are instant but spiritless, and a postcard, no matter how dorky, carries a faint whiff of the place from which they were posted. For the last few months, I've begun buying them to send to members of my family in the United States, and to good friends in Germany and Belgium. At the start, I bought only postcards that "looked nice" but that got boring fast. So now I gravitate to the ugly ducklings, which is more fun and makes the task easier. Here are a few I found this weekend while I was in Shepparton and Wunghnu, in the farm country of northern Victoria.

I found these first two at the news agency in downtown Shepparton. "Shep", as it's called by most people, has a few interesting elements but, for the most part, it's kind of a dump. Outlet stores and fast food joints are the connective tissue holding the town together. The sales clerk seemed a bit puzzled as to why I'd want to send a postcard from this place, but my American accent probably explained enough. These are the most expensive postcards I've ever bought, at AU$2 each. Ouch.

Lesser Shepparton didn't warrant their own postcard.

This one is just weird. Had I not read the caption, I might have guessed this was, in fact, Lesser Shepparton. But it appears to be a museum diorama. I have no idea who Bangerang is. I assume it's the fellow (?) on the right touching a wooden pole to a rock, and that this is what constituted housekeeping in days of yore. I'll have to look for it the next time I'm in Shep.

This is Wunghnu's only postcard. It depicts an instructive graffito scrawled on the north side of the water tower, across the street from the town store where I bought it.

Coppin Masonic Lodge, Part I

Yesterday morning I joined my lodge brother, Nick, for a perusal of the Freemason hall on Weston Street, in Melbourne's Brunswick neighbourhood, not far from where I live. A couple of weeks ago, Nick mentioned to me that the building would soon be sold, and likely demolished. I'd ridden my bicycle past this edifice (called Coppin Masonic Lodge) several times, and admired its facade-- a dignified two-storey structure of red brick appointed conservatively with decorative ionic columns-- settled cheek-by-jowl in rows of single-family residences. It alarmed me to learn it's days were numbered.

Google Maps image of Coppin Masonic Lodge (Brunswick, Victoria, AU)

Nick explained there was only one remaining Freemason group (a "lodge" in Masonic parlance)  that still used the building, and that their last meeting would be in late April. After that, the place would be vacated permanently. A large, multifamily development is clearing ground immediately adjacent to the hall, and, given there is little financial incentive for the building to be coddled by the developer, the Freemasons expect it to be razed. The members of the remaining lodge (called Weston Street United) will meet thereafter at the hall on Davies Street, about three kilometres northeast. With regard to Coppin Lodge, however, it was Nick's job to decide what artefacts, among possible hundreds, would be saved and moved with them. Everything that remained would be thrown out or left for a wrecking crew.

Nick and I arrived together at 10:00 AM, meeting three other people inside (two Freemasons from Weston United, and the wife of one of them) who were on hand to answer questions, and take notes of what Nick planned to rescue. I had come equipped with two cameras, three rolls of colour film and a digital voice recorder and, while I managed to take a few photographs of the interior, it soon became clear that it was more important to capture as much of the conversation among the group as I could. I could take pictures later, but the anecdotal and nostalgic chatter interested me, and would not be repeated. For the next ninety minutes I followed the group from room to room, asking the occasional question, but mostly listening and making mental notes of what, after Nick had identified items to be saved, still lay in peril. Among them: a large, wrought-iron gate inlaid with the symbol of Freemasonry-- the compass and square-- that secured the stairwell to the upstairs meeting room; a chronological arrangement of colourful, hand-painted banners, each emblazoned with the name and insignia of various Freemason subgroups and the year in which they convened, and, among my favourites, two largish portraits of Queen Elizabeth II from the early 1950s. One of these portraits still hangs, as is custom, from the wall in the dining room and receives a toast from the lodge members during their dinner functions. The other was covered with a thin layer of dust and propped unceremoniously atop a row of cabinets in the ladies' wardrobe.

By 11:30, Nick had made the rounds and was ready to leave. "Nick, I have to come back," I said. "This was really interesting. I want to take more pictures, and there just wan't enough time to do that this morning." He seemed pleased to hear this, and said he'd help make the necessary arrangements to get me back inside.

I have a cold. Shit.

I've just posted my first blog entry, and now I'm lying here trying to fall asleep with a damn stuffy nose. I came down with a cold yesterday, but until now the symptoms haven't been particularly bothersome. I even burned 1000 calories at the gym this afternoon. Well, they're bothering me now. Headache, coffee-can voice, grumpy. Tomorrow, it'll be less coffee and more water. Quit staring at me.

Finally

Finally I've enlisted some help from Joe and now have a template I like. I plan to get my website up-and-happening in the coming months, but in the meantime, this site serves the purpose. Stay tuned for more exciting events.