Category Archive: AUSTRALIANIA
Dumbing Down Terracini
Sydney Opera House (photo by Diliff)
Every artist has occasion to groan about critics. Often it can amount to, in Verdi’s phrase, ‘stupid criticism, even stupider praise’, or argumentum ad hominem. As Peter Craven observed in last weekend’s The Australian, much online content falls into these categories but in the current context, the artistic director of Opera Australia has taken the bait and been hooked like a bullfrog. Diana Simmonds reports on her site Stage Noise that she was informed: “In response to some of your recent writing about the company, Lyndon [Terracini] asked that you be removed from the media list.” So what was Simmonds’…
Continue Reading →The Athenaeum Library – Melbourne
First Floor, 188 Collins Street, Melbourne. Literally a Melbourne Institution, the Athenaeum Library is an oasis among the desert of commerce in the heart of Melbourne, a quiet place to sit, read, reflect. More power to it!
Continue Reading →Love Serenade
(Dir. Shirley Barrett) (1996) There is simply something fundamentally wrong with Dimity and Vicki-Ann, lonely-heart sisters in Sunray, Queensland, back of nowhere. Why the wheelchair? Why the obsession with lounge lizard Ken Sherry? Why are they so obviously mad as hatters? Why does Sherry eat no fish yet has a giant marlin mounted on the wall? Why all the casseroles left on his doorstep? Why did he leave big time radio and TV in Brisbane? Why does he quote “Desiderata” (with due respect to Max Ehrmann, the most pretentious farrago ever twaddled)? Are there killer fish or black holes in…
Continue Reading →Captain Cook’s Voyages 1768-1779
(James Cook) Stirring accounts of Cook’s scissoring across the world in leaky boats, to places often unexplored, from South America, Africa, South East Asia, the Bering Sea & Strait and all over the Pacific. This book is based on Cook’s journals and reports to Admiralty, selected by Glyndwr Williams for the Folio edition (1997). Cook was one of a handful of giants in exploration when about a third of the world was unknown. By the time he was lethally sandwiched by natives in Hawaii, he had become famous in his homeland and well known to much of the rest of…
Continue Reading →The Windsor Hotel
At 111 Spring Street, opposite Parliament House, a tall man in purple has been welcoming guests to The Windsor for a very long time. The Windsor is TVC‘s hotel of choice when in Melbourne and indeed we are such regulars that both we and our close relative D were once upgraded to suites and we always receive a handwritten letter of welcome from the CEO when we check in. This is a grand eminence of red carpet, federation tiles, chintz curtains and afternoon tea. There is no day spa but there is the Cricketers’ Bar, with deep window embrasures and…
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