The hand-made thing

Almost all the time, the objects we use in daily life – the door handles we turn, the glasses we drink from, the pens we write with – were made by machines. At most, someone somewhere has simply screwed a few pieces together never touched by human hands.

Further down the scale of economic fortune, down to the bottom, where life is a daily struggle of subsistence as it was for our ancestors, the fewer machine-made objects you will find in their original state.

Down there among the people whose lives resemble the rag-pickers and mudlarks of Dickensian times more than they do yours or mine, the machine-made objects have already been used and discarded by others.

Lately I spent some time in our quirky local shop ‘Just Planet’ in Sunbury, created by my friends Lee and Norman. They sell all sorts of objects with an implicitly internationalist agenda: things like Fair Trade coffee and chocolate, toys for children, organic this-and-that, all in a happily cluttered space. But apart from the excellent coffee, I like to go there to see the large range of hand-made things.

Recently, my wife bought me a little tin guitar, only a few centimetres high, to go on my keyring. The strings are made of wire, the face of the guitar is from an aluminium drink can, while the clips holding it together and the sides and back of the guitar are made from an old sardine tin. I’m amazed how hardy it is. It will certainly last for years.

It is also ingeniously designed.

I’m sure no pencil ever touched paper, but it is design nevertheless. Done in the mind and the hand.

I’ve since bought a tin car, made from an insect repellant can, with working tin wheels, a steering wheel, seats, and even a transparent windscreen.

Appropriately it looks like a Volkswagon. I say appropriately because the VW spent the longest time in continuous production of any car. It will run on just about anything including banana skins (I saw it in a documentary), and it was for decades the car most likely to be owned by the working poor around the world.

Here’s to hand-made things.

Medcraft not so independent

On this blog I generally shy away from politics per se, except when it intersects with issues in the media. In that spirit I address the following issue which has arisen in my little corner of the world, and is being comprehensively ignored by my local newspapers, who never touch a story when it reflects on one of their most constant sources of inflammatory quotes: former councillor Jack Medcraft, also known as Steve Medcraft when he is dispensing his own brand of justice to the Herald-Sun or to one of the tabloid ‘current affairs’ shows.

What is known so far is that Jack either joined or attempted to join a political party called ‘People Power’ and run as their candidate in the electorate of Macedon for the forthcoming Victorian state election. He was glimpsed at the People Power launch, broadcast on the ABC’s Stateline program. He was also quoted by the Hume Star to this effect, a paper which does not circulate in the actual electorate for which he’s running. Needless to say, this was not picked up by either of the local newspapers which do.

This is all despite Jack claiming many times that he was and always would be an independent, and now (apparently) crowing about that fact on GuruAnn’s blog, though no one can be sure that this is actually him speaking.

Now it appears that he has been spurned by the leadership of the party. This is not surprising, as Jack’s brand of right wing populist whining is nowhere near their area of political focus, and it is frankly weird that he ever thought they would be interested in him.

However, the interest they might have for him is obvious, at least to me: money.

Jack recently lost a court case he brought against Ann Potter, the current Hume City Councillor who beat him in the last ballot. Costs were awarded against him. He then declared that he would be running as a candidate in the next state election as an independent. It remains unclear how he would be able to finance this venture, since he doesn’t appear to be a wealthy man.

Jack is a member of the Sunbury Residents’ Association, who have endorsed candidates in the past. To my knowledge, they have not said who they would be supporting in this one but it’s not going to be Labor. Will they be financially backing Jack? If not them, then some other financially well-endowed supporter?

To make matters worse, it now appears that the Sunbury Leader contravened their own publication policy and ran an unattributed political letter to the editor in a recent edition. I have read enough verbiage from Jack in the past to know a Jack letter when I read one, with its characteristic approach to grammar, inability to distinguish personal abuse from debate, and lack of logical rigor.

I was under the impression that corespondents are always required to include name and address in letters to the editor. I know that in certain circumstances, the editor can act on requests to run a letter without publishing this information at his own discretion.

Now, if he used his discretion in this case and ran the letter without attributing it to Jack, what was the reasoning, given that it was (I strongly suspect) a letter from a candidate in an election attacking the policies and character of the other candidates? If it wasn’t signed by Jack, but claiming to be from another source, then surely this blatant misuse of the paper’s guidelines should be looked into?

Not enough PALS for Medcraft in Hume

In an argument for the existence of karma, Jack/Steve Medcraft was defeated in Jacksons Creek Ward in the Hume Council elections. It couldn’t have happened to a better bloke. Pardon me if you don’t live in Jacksons Creek Ward, and you might not think this has anything to do with you, but you would be wrong in the sense that when justice is done it should lighten the load for all of us.

I am also delighted that Ann Potter was successful in shifting this roadblock in the path of Sunbury’s continued progress. Sunbury and Hume Council will be all the better for having an intelligent, experienced and level headed woman at the big table.

As Cr Medcraft showed with his divisive conduct during council meetings, vigilante-like behaviour during the controversy over a convicted sex offender who may or may not have been living in Sunbury resulting in distress to his innocent relatives, his relentless and frequently hysterical bullying of opponents and anyone he saw as an opponent on online forums, his attacks on Sunbury businesses, his self-promotion through the manipulation of the local press, and his politicisation of an efficiently run council, he was unfit to hold such a public office.

Would Bernie pull the trigger?

I notice that today’s Herald-Sun reports (page 12) that our very own Bernie Finn, the former Member for Tullamarine and Sunbury resident, has been pre-selected as Liberal candidate for the Upper House seat of Western Metropolitan.

Is this despite, or because of, his stated desire (on radio) to personally execute the Bali 9 if they are found guilty?

I’d just like to know how he would prefer to do it. Are we talking lethal injection, or perhaps hanging? Would Bernie be prepared to pull the trigger himself in a firing squad? Or would he prefer to get his hands dirty?

I think the electors of Western Metropolitan deserve an answer.

It seems Bernie and his friend, Cr Jack (Steve) Medcraft, have been comparing notes, since Jack was all in favour of executing Schapelle Corby, even before she had been convicted by a court.

Medcraft and local media

It looks like we’ve entered the era of local government by press release here in Sunbury, as one of our councilors has given up contributing to the online forum after it became too damaging for him to continue, and taken to using his media pull with local journalists by feeding them juicy content directly where he can’t be openly debated.

There’s no other explanation for two unsigned pieces appearing in the Sunbury Leader last week, one of which was essentially an unsubstantiated statement by the councilor, who alleges that there is a conspiracy by political opponents to silence him.

The very opposite is true, as those who are regularly entertained by some councilor Medcraft’s more outrageous statements hope that he continues to alienate voters by exposing his opinions to the cold light of debate.

For those not familiar with the workings of the Hume City Council, Jack Medcraft, who is known as Steve Medcraft when he’s fulminating on tabloid television against criminals, Labor politicians and other sundry scumbags, is looking down the barrel of council elections in November. His re-election strategy so far seems to be to avoid having to air his opinions in public in any forum which he cannot control or apparently threaten with legal action.

This method managed to shut down the ‘Local Politics’ section of Sunbury Online recently, after they gradually watered down the conditions of submission so much that any comment vaguely critical of the incumbent councilor was blocked or otherwise censored. There is now a war of spin being fought, after Medcraft (again) announced he was leaving the forum because the terrible bullies had made life impossible for him and he couldn’t bear it any more. He was going back to catching butterflies and making dry flower arrangements for a quieter life.

It was difficult to take this latest pronouncement terribly seriously, as, like Dame Nellie Melba in her twilight years, he had announced retirment once or twice before, only return almost immediately, unable to cope with the loss of his adoring public.

Presently, various members of his cheer squad (known colloquially as the banana-munchers) compete to both condemn the terrible treatment the councilor received at the hands of his own constituents, and out-do each other in expressions of love and appreciation ‘for all that he has done for Sunbury’. None of them actually say what this might be, however.

I would be happy to link to appropriate bits of business on Sunbury Online, but the powers behind the online forum have been frightened enough, not just to shut down the forum to further contributions, but make it impossible even for voters to see what their local representative has had to say on subjects that might interest them. Given that a few of these statements by Medcraft are actually under investigation by authorities, I would have thought the moderator of the forum was doing us a public service by allowing us to read what was said in a public place.

Dark mutterings are still made in other sections of the forum about ‘legal advice’ against critics. No one, however, is able or willing to say what this advice might be or even give us a ballpark idea of its content. It’s enough to give readers, who might be ignorant of the law, the idea that defamatory statements have been made against this councillor, without once ever having to say which statements are defamatory, or in what way.

The most offensive aspect to this whole non-story, is that we are talking about a local government representative who systematically blustered and bullied his way all over the forum for the better part of a year against anyone who found his statements wanting. If political debate can be likened to a street brawl, then Medcraft goes in with the rhetorical equivalent of a broken bottle.

His favorite tactic, when he didn’t like someone’s contribution, was to make allegations about their identity. Many times unsuspecting people had contributed briefly to the forum, only to be frightened off by his hectoring and frequently abusive tone.

On one occasion, after I had posted a statement on the forum, he demanded that I answer questions he was putting to me personally that were irrelevant to the subject being discussed. Nevertheless, I answered them. Not happy with my apparent ability to answer his question directly, he changed the subject and asked a number of other irrelevant questions, and continued to do so over several different subjects under discussion.

After I had not answered to his satisfaction after a week, he demanded to know why I hadn’t, asking where I was and even making insinuations about my place of employment. As it happened, I was on holidays! Instances of this kind proliferate all over Sunbury Online.

These tactics got him in a spot of bother when he began alleging that people were not actually residents of Sunbury, and were posting under assumed names, which was perfectly allowable under the terms of use. He managed to offend several women who were conributing under their maiden names this way.

He came a cropper when he alleged (during a non-political discussion by the way), that I did not live in Sunbury and was not on the electoral roll. I did, and do, live in Sunbury and I am on the electoral roll. This lie has been repeated in the Sunbury Leader, without correction. Did I get a retraction by my local councillor then or again last week? You can guess the answer to that one.

I call on our local journalists to put their thinking caps back on when talking to this man, and understand that a politician is seeking to use them to his electoral gain. I don’t have a problem with this, actually. Any politician wants to get his or her view out there, but journalists do their readers and the political process no favours by allowing deadlines to get in the way of properly investigated reporting.

Local papers showed absolutely no interest when a local government representative in their town was regularly making public statements about everything except local government matters, which is what he actually has responsibility for. They allowed him to blame ‘the council’ whenever things didn’t go his way, or when his failings as a representative were on show. Where were Medcraft and Ogilvie when the Ardcloney stables were being pulled down by an apparently unscrupulous developer? Why do they continually abuse the state Member of Parliament because a bridge is not built when they say it should be, while the beautiful Ardcloney House moulders on Macedon Street for the lack of a good idea what to do with it?

There may be good reasons for these things, but I haven’t heard them from these two.

Why did the local press not think it newsworthy when Medcraft repeatedly called for the death penalty for drug traffickers including Schapelle Corby, before her Indonesian trial had even convicted her?

Why did the papers not explore offensive remarks Medcraft made about Muslim Australians, and connect this with his refusal to stand or even stay in the room when a Muslim prayer was given at the commencement of a council meeting?

Are the papers going to do anything with the rumour that he has written to the Minister asking her to exercise her power to sack the council twelve weeks out from elections? On what grounds?

I will gladly be corrected when local press reverse the lack of care and objectivity shown in their recent reporting of most things to do with this councilor.

A game of Hangman anyone?

It’s surely only a matter of time before a gallows is erected in the Sunbury Park and public executions conducted by a masked man with a prominent moustache. With one of our two local government representatives regularly making comments like this one in public, we should probably save time and start collecting the firewood now, or asking for volunteers with gun licenses.

Fascinating that with local government elections due to occur for Hume Council shortly, neither of our two local newspapers consider this worthy of a mention.

Posted by: Cr. Jack Medcraft (Verified)
Posted on: Tuesday, 26 July 2005 8:30 AM
It was refreshing but sad to watch that poor mother in the U.S. giving a child killer an absolute verbal bashing before the Judge showed the type of courage a number of ours should show and wacked him with a death sentence. Game set and match well done one less menace in society.

There’s a lot more where that came from, but with the ‘Local Politics’ section of Sunbury Online now closed to those voters who might be interested to read one of the candidate’s opinions on subjects like these, you’ll have to take my word for it.

P.S: Sorry, I forgot, he favours lethal injection. My mistake.

Politically correct in Woodend

Looking forward to seeing and hearing some of the events in Woodend as the first Winter Arts Festival goes down over the long weekend. I almost said “Queen’s Birthday”, but as it’s not her birthday, it seems a bit redundant. We’d do just as well to call it Christmas, but I digress.

The festival has its own website, and it’s worth checking out the program at: http://www.blogger.com/www.woodendwinterartsfestival.org.au. If I had some extra money kicking around, I would be warming my hands and soul to the Tony Gould Trio at the Victoria Hotel on Friday night. I’ll think about it on payday.

I’m really pleased to see that the festival is making no compromises in its intention to present real quality. While not exactly avant-garde, the program is substantial, and bodes very well for the future. There are already dozens of festivals around country Victoria which, while perfectly well intentioned, attempt little more than scones and watercolours. There is however, as demanding an audience in the regions for adventurous art and music as there is in any capital city. The extraordinary success of the music festivals like Port Fairy Folk, East Coast Blues and Roots and Wangaratta Jazz have shown that uncompromising quality can be both popular and profitable in the country.

The local papers have given it a solid boost this week, with an extensive article in the Leader especially, which introduces us to Jacqueline Ogeil, a well-travelled musician resident in Woodend. She is a notable exponent of Early Music, which emphasizes the performance and recording of classical works on period instruments, especially where listeners have become accustomed to hearing them on modern instruments like the piano, for example. The results can often be startling.

Reading Jacqueline’s statements in the Leader, I came across this weird paragraph: “With record companies it comes down to profits and that is changing the face of classical music. At the moment a lot of great art is not being seen because it is not politically correct and the art scene has become very frigid.”

Now, it might have been a simple slip of the tongue, but politically correct classical music?

I’m sure while record companies might be cutting corners on quality to maximise profits, somehow I don’t think it’s out of anxiety over political correctness! Just think of all those great nigger-minstrel songs languishing in vaults while timid record company executives cower under their desks for fear of violent left-wing protestors in the lobby…

Or is she talking about art in general? All that rousing public sculpture begging John Howard to keep out the boat people, huddling under wraps in the council basement for fear of offending the leftist cultural elites. Pah-lease…

Maybe it’s no surprise that the festival is to be opened by the Member for McEwen, Fran Bailey, since she’s certainly in charge of the purse-strings: http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/One-electorate-16-of-27-sports-grants/2005/06/08/1118123897739.html

George Evans Museum

Popped along to have another look at the George Evans Museum again recently, as I remembered they had a collection of objects from the Asylum which I wanted to see again. It occupies a large room like an annex to the Sunbury Library.

A strange sort of space, neither one thing nor the other, really, and the display is rather chaotic. I imagine it changes over from time to time, but I visited about a year ago, and I don’t remember the show to be much different than it is now.

I realise they have travelling exhibitions through, but the current display has the feeling of a missed opportunity to it. It’s drab and incoherent. There is a small section on the Sunbury rock festivals, some material from the old asylum, some Victorian memorabilia, and a collection of photographs of early Sunbury and the pioneers.

The objects from the asylum are grim and humble, saying a great deal about the nature of the place despite themselves. There aren’t any thumb screws or straight jackets here, but there doesn’t really need to be. With my head full of stuff from the “Women’s Jail Project” I can look at the tiny ironwork bed and fill in the blanks for myself. There should be more of this – there probably is in the collection. Why not a whole feature exhibition on the asylum?

The best thing in the Sunbury festival stuff is an amazing bright orange poster, with a green naked hippy sporting an enormous afro, cross-legged and clutching a large flower. I just want to know where I can get one! (The poster, not the hippy).

The photographs are badly hung on partitions and grouped tightly so that you have to crouch down to see the ones at the bottom. They’re blow-ups and not original prints, which is a great pity, since I’m sure the originals are beautiful. The originals must be floating around somewhere. Are any in the collection?

There’s a strangely sensitive portrait of a young Mannix, the future Catholic demagogue, outside Our Lady of Mount Carmel. There are poignant images of a wounded soldiers’ reception at Rupertswood in 1915, and a Welcome Home Parade at the Rec. Reserve, with kiddies clutching Union Jacks. I was thinking of Larkin’s words, “never such innocence again.”

Most imposing however, is the portrait of Sunbury founder George Evans, who I have to say, is one of the scariest human beings I’ve ever laid eyes on. He is elderly in the picture, posed front-on, waistcoats buttoned around his neck, and an extraordinary scowling face, like something chipped out of granite, entirely framed by a white mane. He has something resting across his lap, which he touches gently, as if feeling its smoothness. He looks like he’s about to bash someone over the head with it.

I’ve read that at the time of his arrival in 1836, the land was occupied by the Wurundjeri-Willam, a Woiworung clan, for thousands of years. They called the Sunbury area “Koorakooracup”, which is another of those lost words which people called their country across the generations, only to be erased from history by fierce patriarchs like George Evans, who remade time and space with words like “Sunbury”, which is really a town in Middlesex.

Maybe the thing old George clutches is just a wooden sign saying “Sunbury”, which was a weapon after all.

The Women’s Jail Project

About a year ago I came across a book in a Kyneton second hand bookshop called “The Women’s Jail Project: A History” by Karen Martin. It is self-published, and was designed to accompany a theatre performance which was held in the now-abandoned Women’s Refectory Ward of the Sunbury Lunatic Asylum, which for most of its life was also known as “Caloola.”

I had known that the buildings now occupied by Victoria University were once an asylum, but I had no idea it was only decommissioned in 1992.

It turns out that the asylum started life in 1864, as an “Industrial School for Destitute Children” and it was the full Dickensian nightmare. 11 per cent of the children died in its first year of operation, earning it the nickname the “Sunbury Slaughterhouse”. I have no idea how many deaths that might have been, but it is difficult to imagine how 11 per cent of any group of children might have died in a year while under the care of the colonial administration. What could they have died of; neglect, overwork, starvation?

After public outcry, it was taken over by a government agency with the felicitous name of the “State Lunacy Department”, after 1879. A new ward was constructed in 1894 and housed “misbehaving” women and those found by a court to be insane. Following the recommendations of a Royal Commission, the new buildings were constructed along more progressive lines than was common for this sort of institution, though I can’t imagine it was a pleasant experience to be incarcerated there.

The longest and most fascinating part of the book is dedicated to case files of inmates who lived there in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, along with many photographs. The book is sad and fascinating at the same time. I say sad, as these things happened so long ago and were the products of the attitudes of a different time. Not to say that deprivation and exploitation of the mentally ill doesn’t go on today – obviously it does – but it is impossible to say that our attitudes to the mentally ill have not improved in understanding and diagnostic precision.

It’s common to come across the reason for admission as melancholia following the birth of a child, or drunkenness, or “religious mania”, or being “excitable”, or just something called “dirty habits”. I get the impression, though it’s not stated, that the doctors who attended these unfortunate people had not the faintest idea what they were dealing with. It seems they had little or no diagnostic tools to treat their patients other than simply containing them and managing their symptoms until the patient either cured themselves or died.

I gather that there was a distinctly moralistic atmosphere about the place, at least in its earlier days – these Victorian women thought, in some way, to be responsible for their conditions by leaving the habits of civil society behind. In one picture, an inmate wears large circular mitts made of leather. The text informs us that they were to prevent masturbation.

This brings me to me to my question: Is there anyone is Sunbury or surrounding areas who saw either of the productions of “The Women’s Jail Project”? I gather the performances were held in the original buildings. I would be fascinated to hear what it was like.

Also, does anyone have personal or family connections to Caloola? Connections either to former patients or workers at the facility?

If anyone can provide information, I ask that they contact me through my email address and I will follow up.

In the meantime, anyone interested should have a look at the old website attached to the project at http://www.womensjailproject.c2o.org, or pop in to the George Evans Museum at the Library to see the small display of objects from the former asylum. I’m sure they have their stories to tell, too.

Collins bookstore and that rumour

Rumours have been circulating around Sunbury that the Collins bookstore on Evans Street is to close. This, I presume, has been a product of the recent news that the parent chain, Collins Booksellers, is currently under administration. According to news reports, Collins was placed under voluntary administration in April and is expected to be able to continue trading its way out of financial difficulties. According to the reports, the chief cause of strife has been undercutting by department store chains.

The Sunbury store, however, will continue trading as before. Needless to say, if we want a quality bookshop in Sunbury, and God knows we need one, then we have to be prepared to support it.

These concerns may chime with an opinion I’ve heard expressed, that many of the larger stores who open small franchises in towns of Sunbury’s size tend to struggle, as those who want that store’s service would rather drive the extra miles to get the full experience rather than shop in a mini-version of the same store. One wonders if the trimmed down Bunnings will have the same difficulty.