Hey Hey It's Hang-over....

...well, not strictly a hang-over in the traditional sense as I don't drink grog.
But I have spent the past 3 hours roaring with laughter, giggling, snorting, cackling, belly-laughing until the felines climbed the walls, crying with mirth, sniggering on end and generally having The Best bloody time in a long time.
For free.
Cost me jack.
T'was Hey Hey It's Saturday.
I feel like I've shed 10 yrs, Dad stayed up later than his usual 7pm bedtime for the first time in ages, Feral Beast LOVED it and we all had face-ache from laughing/smiling so much.
Decent, fun, GREAT family entertainment that appealed to 3 generations in this house alone and, judging by the soaring numbers on the Facebook page and Tweets, every other man, woman and child in all of creation.
Channel 9 would be silly not to bring it back permanently!

*Will resume normal trivial blatherings sometime tomorrow when my face stops tingling!

A completely biased commentary on an edict from The Vatican...oh I'm so going to Hell...

I was going to be all Sunshine Sally and remind everyone to watch Hey Hey It's Saturday the reunion on the idiot box tonight.
Until I read this steaming pile of frog shyte.
I don't think I've had the misfortune to hear of such a sack of shitful lies before.
Oh, wait.
Yes, I have...Father bastard-lying-arsewipe O'Donnell, our parish priest and who had been a priest for 50 yrs before he retired.
This was a parish priest who molested and sexually abused boys AND girls for all of those 50 yrs.The scum-sucking-shithead was given the "right" to "die with dignity" at home rather in gaol after he was diagnosed with cancer after he PLEADED GUILTY.
WTF?
So many of his victims have ended up on drugs, alcoholics, in gaol, dead from suicide or 'risk taking' behaviour and only 18 months ago another of his victims found release in death.
But the frigging-bastard-prick-dog got his "dignified death".
And now the Vatican claims all the sexually perverted little bastards aren't pedophiles but homosexuals?
GIVE ME STRENGTH!
Mind you, this is the same bunch of drop-kick dickheads who just kept on shuffling that bastard-c**t O'Donnell around to different parishes with full knowledge of his actions against boys AND girls.
Please explain to me again, isn't a homosexual bloke one who is attracted to males, not females?
And isn't a pedophile a person who molests children?
A-huh.
And doesn't the fact arsehole O'Donnell abused CHILDREN who were boys and GIRLS kinda refute these bullshit claims by the Vatican?
And the fact Sack-o-shyte O'Donnell is not the only bastard-arsewipe to do this again negates these piss-weak bullshit lies from the Vatican.
Oh, and to certain dipshyte rightous religious c**nts who sneakily read my blog ...homosexuality has not been considered a mental illness for some time, nor is it illegal to be gay nor is it illegal to demand equal rights, you shallow sad mother-farking dickheads.

30th September with nary a drop to be found...

Water-envy.
Don't laugh, you know you secretly suffer from this condition, counting the millilitres flowing into our dams, measuring out your daily allowance, peeing on the lemon tree after dark.
If only we were more honest about it no one would need to hide their water-envy, and in today's post I will show how this has cropped up throughout history...

1817 John Macarthur was not the Merino Messiah he was just a Very Naughty Baa Boy who had been unofficially exiled in The Old Dart for 8 yrs; he schlepped his sorry arse back to old Sydney Town on this date on the condition that he kept his nose out of public affairs but he quickly developed water-envy.

1836 Explorer Thomas Mitchell spotting a mountain and did what every bloke under the sun has done when faced with anything larger than a pimple - he climbed it.
When he reached the summit of Mount Macedon (for that was the slumbering hill's name, wasn't it lucky Mitchell picked the right one?) Tommy spied Port Phillip Bay and contracted water-envy.

1953 The smarty-pants scientists at McGill Uni suffered from water-envy so they created radar (no, not the character from M*A*S*H).

1962 NZ was blessed with the first Ombudsman, Sir Guy Powles.
He didn't have water-envy, although there were rumours...

1981 The Commonwealth Heads of Govt Meeting took place in Melbourne aka CHOGM to discuss this little-known syndrome 'water-envy',  thus the first CCTV cameras were planted way up high (weigh a pie) over-seeing all.

1982 Christchurch Gas Works was closed.
Reason?
Water-envy.

1983 Christchurch Council closed Victoria Square to traffic.
Yep.
Radiators filled to bursting with water-envy.

1984 Uber-high water levels in the Caniapiscau River proved unpopular with approx. 10,000 Caribou who forgot their floaties and how to doggie-paddle...
Aww, bet they didn't have water-envy.

1986 Lake Ontario's outflow reached the high mark of 844 billion litres per day.
Yep, SEETHING water envy happening here now!

September 29...pass the tomato sauce, pretty please Mr Music?

Now, all of you readers with good taste...oh, yes, that lets you all off the hook...
Hmm, well, anyway next Wednesday Hey Hey It's Saturday is having a reunion show (yes, I know it's a Wednesday, not a Saturday) but for those overseas (and unable to channel the show via the nearest Angel) it will be streamed online HERE.
Just watch out you're not sitting too close for when Mrs MacGillicuddy pops up.

1836 Cap. Billy Lonsdale rocked up in Port Phillip on this grand day to do 'umble dooty as the first Police Magistrate....and he's been playing catch-up ever since.

1844 Norfolk Island was annexed to Tassie, who had not the foggiest of what to do with it apart from sprinkling a few flash floral decorations around the edges and the odd UFO sighting.

1862 The Royal Princess Theatre Company and The English Opera Troupe put on the first opera to grace the good ground of The Shaky Isles when they performed The Daughter of The Regiment.
Which is actually a love story about an orphan girl raised by a regiment of soldiers, nothing to do a time hole in the chook house in Jackie French's book, Daughter of The Regiment.
Or is it?

1898 Canada held a referendum on the question of introducing prohibition of grog...the resulting numbers were so close the authorities, wisely, held up their hands in surrender and shelved the idea.

1930 Prince Edward Island (PEI) the setting of Anne of Green Gables (yes, she was real and she does still flit about there, somewhere, perhaps near the White Way of Delight?) converted the final section of railway track from narrow gauge 3' 6" to standard gauge (4'  8.5" for those who are still awake).

1958 Masterton and Carterton were the oh-so-lucky guinea pigs to get the emergency telephone number 1-1-1 introduced on this day.

1967 Who could forget the visit of the President of the Republic of Italy, Guiseppe Saragat, to the Vic Parliament?
*crickets chirping*
Ok, moving along....

September 28 rocked up again...

Yes, yes, I've been slack again, blah.
Feral Beast has had the driving seat of the computer of late, tapping out his weekly activities for school and playing games (of course) just to Get Mother Off The Interwebs.
Or I may be imagining the conspiracy thang.
Anyways....
Wrap your laughing gear around this lot...

1793 The Upper Canada Legislature made the magnanimous decree that all slave kiddies born after this Very Date would get their Freedom when they reached the ripe old age of 25.
Almost like Logan's Run but in reverse...

1885 Riots broke out in Montreal at the very thought, the very idea! of compulsory immunisation against Smallpox!
How very dare they!

1928 The pollies packed up their porn kit bags and vacated jolly Marvelous Melbourne for sleepy Canberra where they began polishing seats with their (broad and well-fed) arses.

1984 Kiwi morals supervisor campaigner Patricia Bartlett warned that the end of the world was nigh 'sex education might be taught by someone known to the children as a poofter'.
And then we all caught teh gay.
No, seriously, only those who ate quiche caught it...and those who wore pink...or orange...and those who showered....and those who ate fruit....and those who ate fish every week....
Everyone else strapped on a pair of bulls balls and stopped waxing their cracks.

2006 The Kiwi Overlander (trundling between Auckland and Wellington), which was supposed to be kicked to the kerb by the end of the month, was announced to be still burbling along the tracks but less often.

The drug-fecked lunatics were taking over the asylum.....

Can someone please tell me when it became acceptable for drugged up parents to wander around the car park of Chaddy?
In the pissing rain?
With their 8 (?) yr old son?
How do I know they were drugged up?
Because the t-shit and shorts-clad dipshits were loudly panicking about "It must be here somewhere/ where is it/how could we lose it?" over and over, with many arm gestures.
Stupid me, thought they'd gone shopping, found nought and were now hunting for their car.
Until the son pointed to The So-Frigging-Large-You-Cannot-Miss-It Shopping Centre and said "There it is, Chaddy is there." !!!!!!
And to top it off he then pointed to me (with empty backpack over my head so stave off the almost-horizontal rain) and screeched in astonishment to his drug-fucked dad, "Did ya see what she'd done?!"
Yeah, sorry about that, kid.
How inconsiderate of me to be straight and know where I'm heading, tsk tsk.
Sorry that I don't have an over-whelming urge to get shit-faced on whatever chemical cocktail your parents recommend from cleaners under the sink, then get drenched to the skin, lose myself in a car park and rely on my 8 yr old rugrat to drag me in out of the rain.
Yeah, holding a backpack over my head to stay dry must have really freaked you out.

How to re-write history so that everyone is happy and sipping at their hot cocoa in silent awe.

Today, boys and girls, we'll have a look at how we can re-write history to be more palatable for those people with weak tum-tums, the ones who turn a sickly shade of green when we mention Indigenous Peoples or Black-birding slavery or missions or convicts or Maori Wars and then claim that "history is boring, change the subject".

1750 Fairytale version...Canadian laborers were hale and hearty tea-totaler menfolk who were soundly recompensed for their hard work and were happy with their wages.
Fact...The first Govt wage fixing in Canada on this day saw laborers' wages cast in concrete at 18 pence per day with a glass of beer and one of rum thrown in to keep them in fine fettle.

1819 Fairytale version....Samuel Marsden was such an affable fellow few guessed he was a minister of the cloth; Samuel treated lesser souls like his own children and blessed NZ soil with the first plantings of fine wine grape vines.
Fact...The Flogging Parson aka Samuel Marsden did plant some grape vine cuttings from Port Jackson but they were far from the first.

1826 Fairytale version... Those naughty convicts were up to mischief on Norfolk Island but the party pooper troops got wind of their plans so the poor convicts were sent to their rooms without any supper and learnt to be well-behaved, did as they were told, were well fed and lived happily ever after.
Fact...Insurrection of the convicts was savagely suppressed.
No ice cream sandwiches for elevenes!

1839 Fairytale version....The British Legislative Council running Canada was such a generous body they offered free holidays to those who loved their country very much and almost 60 lucky souls were bon voyaged to The Fair and Sunny Land of Oz.
Fact...58 Canadian rebels who were agitating for elected Canadian Govts were transported as convicts to That Land of Hell, Tasmania.

1965 Fairytale Version....At Paparua Prison there was a slight misunderstanding and several prisoners and guards had their feelings hurt but it was soon sorted out and everyone played Twister to show they were friends again.
Fact...A whopper of a riot at Paparua Prison saw 40 warders and police injured.

1998 Fairytale version...Loud bangs at a gas plant in Victoria made everyone a little nervy so they thought all gas metres should be turned off 'just in case'.
Fact...Several explosions rocked the main gas supply plant near Sale in Vic; 2 workers were killed, 8 injured, gas supplies just about empty so all gas metres turned off for almost 2 weeks.

September 24....allegedly....so rumour has it....apparently....according to gossip...

1844 First international cricket match saw Canada beat the US.
Go figure!

1871 Mary MacKillop was excommunicated from The Church coz she protested against the directive she had received to split up the nuns in her order.
Seriously, it had absolutely nothing to do with Daniel refusing to chow down on boiled lamb's brains.
Really.

1881 The first telephone exchange opened for business in New Zealand and just as well it did or I wouldn't be able to ring Nikki whenever I wanted to hear dirty, smutty talk like Fush and Chups or suxty sux.

1890 The shearers went on strike but their hearts weren't in it as they were back breaking their backs, just like Andrew, after a week.

1905 Lionel Terry was not a nice bloke - or, if he was, he did a good job of hiding it.
He murdered Joe Kum Yung in Haining Street, Wellington to draw attention to his personal crusade of having all Chinese removed from New Zealand.
Read more HERE.

1969 Ontario banned the pesticide DDT.


1978 The Gay Trade Unionists Group held their first meeting in Sydney.

2005 100 boats met the inter-island ferry Challenger protesting at the speed with which it traveled through Marlborough Sounds, claiming that it damaged the shoreline.

2009 Kelley is currently climbing the walls...and has the shits BIGTIME.
Yes.
Yes, she does.
Read it HERE.

It's moments like these....September 23...

Excuse me while I nom nom nom my way through the Minties packet, haven't had a Mintie for....a gazillion years.
Remember the competitions to try to make the longest single strip of paper from the wrapper?
Whole schoolyards across the nation were filled with weird-arse kids tenderly tearing at itty bitty squares of waxed paper, some even *gasp* swearing with a dropped "damn" or perhaps "blast it" when the precious paper broke.
The really tough kids who'd dare to use the Really Bad Words were ripping into paper in a different way; they were usually doing rubbish duty in their lunch break for talking back to the teacher or not handing in their homework or something equally scholastically illegal.
Probably for not ruling the regimented 5 cm margin in their exercise books in the obligatory red pencil.

1853 The first sod was belted across the left earhole and told to behave turned for the Geelong Railway.

1961 Claws were out in the name of beauty when Miss Canada, Connie Feller, was ousted from the throne after a mere 6 weeks.
Her crime?
She dared go home to visit her family WITHOUT getting permission from officials.
Tsk tsk.

1974 Paper Lace were rockin' us all in The Land of Oz for 8 weeks in the top spot with The Night Chicago Died.

2006  Kiwis were gettin' their Sexy groove on with Justin Timberlake when he brought Sexy Back.
Which was ok...kinda....but not a patch on Dick In A Box.

Short order of September 21

Fountain, Carlton Gardens, Exhibition Buildings.
Usual suspects.

Before I scampered off to Mornington Peninsula for a frolic or 3 Feral Beast had an excursion at the Melb Museum.
So I took the obligatory happy snaps.

1834 Betty Guard and her kidlets were rescued from Ngati Ruanui.
Read more details HERE.

Melbourne Museum.

1886 A white woman was found living with Indigenous People near Cooktown in Qld; known as The Normandy Woman she spoke no English and died within a few days of capture.

Rabbit burrow and nibbled plants in Carlton Gardens.

1934 Singer Leonard Cohen was pupped in Montreal in Canada.
You can read more about him HERE.

Mystery solved!

Yes, the lazy old cow leapt over the sleeping fox ...or some such and made herself useful by looking up the answer to the previous post.
The kiddies wading pool in the Carlton Gardens - which gradually acquired the title of "western lake", ...which implies that at some stage either the Powers That Be didn't want the grubby little urchins peeing splashing merrily about in a pool intended for them or the grubby urchins mater and pater started noting the pollution in the uncleaned pool/lake....or maybe the homeless tramps who once called the bench seats home (coz of course we don't have any homeless in Melbourne these days *ahem*) even turned their noses up at having a 'bird bath' in the pool?...
Anyways, enough conjecture, sometime in the 1950s-1960s the "heavily polluted" pool/lake was filled in and a model traffic school was built on top but this, too, was kicked to the kerb and a playground was erected on the spot.

Further reading and details can be found HERE and HERE.

And, yes, there was once a football oval in the Carlton Gardens but this was paved to become a car park ...shades of Big Yellow Taxi, anyone?

Solve this Melbourne mystery....

...and win Absolutely Nothing!
Yes, that's right.
Stingy old cow has just got a teaser for you to puzzle over and for your hard efforts you simply get the warm fuzzy feeling of being The Smarty Pants of The Week.
Or not, depending if your hot water bottle leaks on your warm fuzzy....

Right!
The puzzle, should you choose to accept it, is there was a Children's Paddling Pool in the Carlton Gardens, opened in 1924.
No, I wasn't personally there you cheeky sods, I read about it HERE.
My question to you is.....

Is this pond the remnant of the Children's Paddling Pool?

Answers in 25 words or less on the back of a stamped, self-addressed envelope hand delivered to the old troll under the railway bridge in Upper Comebuckta West (turn right at Pakenham Upper shelter sheds).

For your entertainment....

Yes, yes, I've been incredibly slack, haven't collated the daily trivial history for your daily convo to impress your co-workers around the water cooler...or around the dumpster where they make the smokers stand these days....

Anyway...have a nice piccy from my mini-holiday.

 

Yeah, as The Spouse keeps whining, it's blurry.

Blame my exhaustion from walking the whole length of the street to find this at the end of it...a whole 6 houses *sigh* the hardships I endure for your amusement...

 

Sunset at Flinders Thursday last week.

September was only 16, only 16........

Have you checked out Go Buzz for what's happening in the Fylde and Wyre?
If not, why not?
And don't give me any guff about not travelling anywhere near the area or not having the foggiest of where the Fylde and Wyre is...it's The Place to be, The Place to visit and The Place to ...do whatever it is people do when they're overseas and far from home, don't you know?!

Anyway...apparently the year is galloping away and it's now the 16th of September....get the feck outta here! Where's this year gone?!
No, cat-eating builders don't partake of eras ...although I've known a politician or 10 to steal my precious time that I'll never get back again.

So, in 1804 they were having a bit of a knees up as the Parramatta brewery began pumping out the golden hops-fueled liquid known as beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer.
*burp*
Cheers m'dears!

1905 The Originals, the first Kiwi rugby team to carry the name All Blacks and perform the Haka, set off on their Northern Hemisphere tour where they trounced 34 out of the 35 matches they played.

1914 First Canadian air force was formed on this date when Sam Hughes created the Canadian Aviation Corps.

1924 According to the Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle on this day the news was thrilling!
There was a Queen Carnival with more than £700 raised, a Presbyterian Church Soiree with attendance numbers that bested record numbers for the past 80 years (those Pressies know how to have a proper knees up), there were tales of a wild pig hunt, ads galore to whet one's appetite and loads more gossip than you could shake a stick at.
Read more HERE.

1956 TCN channel 9 in Syn City aka Sydney launched the first regular TV service upon the unsuspecting public and they were hooked within a matter of minutes....

1974 Canada's first chicky-babe constables were sworn into the RCMP.
I am woman, hear me ROAR....

When you wander off for just a few days....

....all hell breaks loose.
Crikey Moses, Mary mother of God and Joseph the carpenter what in the name of all that's crisping on a barbie in the Outback has happened?
They're all dropping off the twig!
First dear Ray Barrett, gentleman actor, talented to his fingertips and a quiet, unassuming bloke takes his departure from us.
Up there with Bud Tingwell, Ray was another who sharpened his teeth on the stage and screen in far off climes and made a name for himself giving the Thunderbirds voices.
One is beginning to wonder how many of the Thunderbirds were actually American or really Aussies whacking on an accent for the local content?!
Then Mike Leyland has handed in his cards, leaving us who grew up watching the infamous Leyland Brothers feeling as if a bit of our childhood has disappeared.
Who the heck are we gonna ask now?
Ask The Leyland Brothers, and we asked non-stop for almost a decade - more if you count the umpteen specials they filmed for TV.
They opened up the Isle of Oz for lounge lizards and kids stuck at home, ed-ya-ma-kated us all about our own backyard in a time when it was popular to bugger orf overseas, they were throwing "shrimps" aka prawns on the barbie in beautifully secluded outback camping spots long before Paul Hogan was doing it for the tourism board.
The Leylands became a national institution; when driving in our cars the conversation usually went something like...
"Shit, I got no-f**king-idea where we are. What's it say on the map, Mal?"
"Well, Mike, it appears we're up The Black Chooks' Arse looking for a white feather otherwise known as Ihavenoflippingidea."
or
"Where the fluck are we?"
"Dunno. Ask The Leylands."
One would usually duck after the last remark as a road atlas was usually flung in disgust.

Travel all over the countryside...
Ask The Leylands, Ask The Leylands
Click HERE for an ep of Ask The Leylands.
Part 2 is HERE.
Part 3 is HERE.

Edit - and now Patrick Swayze is gone, too.

If you are reading this...

....then you obviously have nothing better to do!
I'm off like a bucket of prawns in the noon day sun to the Mornington Peninsula until next week.
I will take many photos just for you (shhhh Andrew).
Now, I shall be gone....

Wunderkammer..

Have been procrastinating for years that I'd take Feral Beast to the science museum/retail shop that is Wunderkammer.
Well, I finally did yesterday and I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner.
You'll find Wunderkammer at 439 Lonsdale St in the city - yes, on the same side as Lonsdale House, that lovely Art Deco building some plebeian wants to destroy so have a good look as you walk past.
Wunderkammer is full of every kind of thing you don't find made in plastic on production lines and sold by the bucket load (not looking at any pseudo-scientific retail chain in particular).
There's stuffed animals, embalmed animals, salt-water crocodile embryos, human skulls, full skeletons, full chimpanzee skeletons to hang in your in-laws wardrobe when they visit, there's some fantastic collections of pinned spiders *shudder* and pretty irredescent bugs, millipedes who gave me nightmares in broad daylight, fossils, shells, dinosaur toothy-pegs, 19th century apocrathy jars and other wonderful antiquated scientific equipment.
There's antique-reproduction kaleidoscopes hand-made with leadlight glass *drool* stuffed and mounted bats (yes, jokes allowed) anything you can imagine and fabulous goodies.
Look through their website as it gives a very good summary of what they carry and have on offer.
Feral Beast settled for a book on how to collect and preserve insects so I shall look forward to jars and pieces of cardboard full of dead bugs.

Exploring Melbourne with September 9

Enjoy!

1836 The Port Phillip area was declared open for settlement.
So they promptly chucked up this Taj Mahal look-a-like train station and called it Flinders Street.

1870 Ballarat was proclaimed a city.
And everyone celebrated across the road from the train station in the pub.

1916 Melbourne's Catholic Archbishop Daniel Mannix started letting loose his opinion on conscription for WW1.
But not in this Anglican cathedral he didn't.
Even though it was across the road from the pub.

1959 Canada's first large nuclear power plant was officially opened.
Which looked nothing like the Nicholas Building as seen below.

1969 Kiwi model Rachel Hunter was pupped on this day.
Who is rumoured to resemble explorer Matthew Flinders not at all.

1976 Wanganui Computer Legislation was passed in The Shaky Isles.
Which had no connection whatsoever to the various "houses" below.

 

 

Hey, Jussy!

I know one "house" that deserves the wrecking ball more ...Parliament House.

1979 Canadian cartoon For Better or For Worse made its debut.
Something...something...*mumble mumble* below!

1988 Today was the coldest frostiest day since records were first kept a quarter of a century earlier.
This is The Block Arcade that we made earlier....

For anyone interested there are now guided tours of The Block $9 gets you a tour and afternoon tea, Tuesdays and Thursdays. 

Will give it a burl next week.

2003 Number one song in the charts in NZ on this day was Scribe's Stand Up.
Just like these buildings are standing up....shhh, don't tell Jussy...

 

  

Last but not least- a faded sign for Tony and Andrew...

 

Top of 226 Swanston Street.

September 8th

Today I'll throw some dates and trivia at you so you can impress your co-workers, family and friends.
Or just confirm their belief that you're a strange lil poppet, a suspicion they've harboured since you knocked back the chance to scarf down a whole packet of Tim Tams.

Today is the International Day of Literacy.

It is also the birthday of the Russian Mother Goddess, Berehynia.

1664 The Dutch village of New Amsterdam was conquered by the Brits who renamed it New York.

("Even old New York was once New Amsterdam...why they changed it I can't say, maybe they liked it better that way?!")

Madness, I tell you, sheer madness, it'll never take off!

1858 They finally stopped murdering each other when the Crimean War ended.
Never mind, any old excuse to have an argument to start killing each other is easily found.

1866 Things were pretty crook when the Bread or Blood Riots erupted in Brisvegas after unemployed workers marched from Ipswich. They tried to force the govt stores open to get food then attacked the police present, stoning (with rocks!) some of them before being arrested.
More details HERE.

1890 Kiwi waterfront workers, who were striking, attacked the scab labour who attempted to take their place.

1906 The return carriage for the typewriter was born.
Madness, I tell you, sheer madness, it'll never take off!

1930 Transparent sticky tape was born.
Madness, I tell you, sheer madness, it'll never take off!

1954 In a bid to get rid of the Reds under the beds NZ signed the Manila Pact to stop the insidious march of communism in their neck of the woods.

1966 Star Trek began boldly venturing forth across galaxies where few had dared to tread, with Canadian-born William Shatner as Captain of The Enterprize.
Madness, I tell you, sheer maddness, it'll never take off!

1977 Cindy Nicholas from Toronto swan the English Channel non-stop in both directions- the first person to do so.
Because she could.

Is it wrong that I giggled (and wanted to take a photo but the guy looked like he'd been obeying his hat all night) when I saw a cap that read,

"Finish your drink!

There's sober people in Africa"

Burnley History Walk

First off I'd like to say I'm REALLY impressed with the quality of the guided heritage walk conducted by the Richmond & Burnley Historical Society.
I'm not going to copy it here but just give a brief summary of the things we saw and history we learnt.
I highly recommend going on their walks and joining the society; alternatively you can pick up brochures for several differently themed self-guided history walks at the society's rooms and print the one available online.

Click on all images for larger view.

We started out at Golden Square Bicentennial Park; this was originally the site of the beautiful Neo-Gothic Revival bluestone *sob* Burnley Primary School and private houses, with a titchy-tiny street running part-way through it, Felicia Street, which is now extinct (Melway 2H, F11).

 

This isn't to scale or exact, it was put together to give the rough idea of what was where, approx. 20 houses in Felicia st.

The houses were demolished to give the kids more playing room but then the school itself was kicked to the kerb *sob* and today there is a square surrounded by houses on 3 sides and facing the train tracks on the 4th.
Apparently it got the name Golden Square from all the pigeon fanciers who lived around the square, in the dim distant past, and who were forever winning "the golden prize", hence Golden Square.

 

A pretty park with playing equipment, trees, a plaque to remember what had once been here and that's about it.

We walked down Parkville st (which was originally named Peckville after a landowner) which drunkenly toddles up behind houses in Gibdon st only to throw a fast left at 90 degrees and lurches out onto Maddon Gve again (Melway 2H, G 11).

 

See, over to the right of that lovely house (want, now, wrap and put under Xmas tree, pretty please?) and that other delicious red brick abode.

                                                   

Oh, before we leave the park, the elm that used to be in the backyard of the caretaker's cottage is still there today.

Now, we wandered up Madden Gve to Loyola Gve which trotted us down to turn right into Twickenham Cres.
At this juncture I'd like to pop in that it was named after the Twickenham in The Old Dart with the crescent reaching the shores of the Yarra River and where the Twickenham Ferry would convey all and sundry across the water in their Sunday finest *ahem* or not.
This was soon replaced by a bridge; MacRobertson's Bridge, to be precise, to the tune of 100,000 pounds.

Of course, it had nothing at all to do with the fact that without a bridge his trucks had to drive into the city and back around to the factory.

No, nothing to do with it at all....

There is still a malt works on Twickenham Cres, between two green wedge-shaped spaces (Melway 2H, G12)

 

This beauty was designed by architect William Pitt.

See, architects and planning ministers really gave a fig way back when.

 These green spaces were filled with houses that were demolished for the freeway, which goes nowhere near them, but it is thought that they are possibly to be used for road widening at some future point.
We kept on going along until Twickenham Cres became Barkley Ave and crossed the freeway at the corner of Barkly and Burnley st.
Yes, pedestrian lights are there, as is a walking/cycling track to take one down to Loy's Paddock.
Loy's were the family which began Loy's soft drinks and their horses would be kept on the land beside the river which still holds the name today.
Seriously, pack a picnic and head there one sunny day, it is a very pretty spot.

 

  

  

Then we were faced with the hard task of dealing with this view ahead of us...

 

  

  

Opposite Herring Island (Melway map 2M, C1) 

The overhang in the top of the photo is the underside of the Sth Eastern Freeway.

Along this stretch was also the site of the Burnely Ferry which was a row boat that was barely patronised except for at least one regular; a lady from Toorak who'd do her weekly shopping at the Burnley shops while to-ing and fro-ing across the river in the row boat.

Herring (formerly Picnic) Island used to have only one channel of the river flowing past, the channel that sweeps up toward Como Park but when the quarries along the Richmond side of the Yarra were spent they were cleaned up and used as a second channel which also helped stop the periodical flooding in the Richmond area.

This is near the end of Mary Street, one of the last remnants of the quarries which is being turned back into wetlands.

Exhaust vent for the Burnley Tunnel.

Standing on top of the entrance to the Burnley Tunnel.

A new site for Mutant's next BORT?

This beauty was coughing her way up the incline but she finally made it!

The MFB training site in Burnley St, built on the old Richmond Council tip, which was a former quarry, tannery, abattoir and gawd knows what else.

There were a few gruesome tales about the things that went on in there (which I won't repeat) suffice to say it's got more than contaminated soil to cleanse from the area.

Old weighbridge, still patiently snoozing but now forever silent.

We then reached Madden Gve and turned right into it, which began leading us back to where we'd began our journey.

 

Next time you're near Swan Auctions pop in and wander out the back; you'll find the original Burnley Theatre intact with stage, etc, waiting for the wonderful patron of the arts to donate enough money so it can be bought and done over like the Sun Theatre in Yarraville and turned back into the spectacular place it once was.

Bluestone building (thought to be the only bluestone building in Burnley) in Madden Gve which was once a spirit merchant premises (for the selling of kero, metho, etc, not liquor).

We pottered up Adam St to the old Bell's Match factory (still largely intact) designed by architect Koch, who designed Labassa.

Then around down Barkley St into Stawell St and back to Madden Gve and Golden Square Park.

The historical society then fed us all with a vast array of sandwiches, fresh fruit, nuts, dry bikkies, antipasto and cheese platters, cakes, slices, pate, tea, coffee, cordial, BBQ and good conversation.
The pictures and boards were on display for all to see, as were several publications available to buy.

 

Such finds like the one above from an old newspaper copy, showing how it was once proposed to span the river to join Williams Rd in South Yarra with Burnley St in Burnley, are in large number at the society.

We were then offered a trip in the 25 seater bus they'd hired to take us up across the freeway, along beside the river and to the Burnley Horticultural Institute (what's left of it after Kennett and Bracks flogged bits off for various private development) which has botanical gardens that are open to the public but this is a well-kept secret, apparently.
We had a lovely wander through the gardens, had a guided tour on what was almost trashed and what was saved by neanderthal designers/architects and govt bodies.

 

Speaks for itself.

Old buildings were once able to be kept and turned into apartments, did you know Jussy?

You can snag the top sign, too, Andrew :)

Some old signs for Andrew and Tony.

 

 

  

And perhaps a Moran & Cato is waiting to be discovered in Burnley, so I'm told.

There shall be a couple of walks during Seniors Week so grab yourself a well-matured body to drag along on the next walk!