19 Centennial Avenue, Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

A renovator's dream!

This charming little hellhole has been on our list of potential properties for some time now, but for some reason or another, we hadn't quite got around to writing about it until today. I don't know why, because this place just exemplifies the abandoned buildings side of his blog. The first time we went past it, I very nearly drove off the road in shock, because up until that point all the surrounding houses had been quite nice. This just hurts my eyes. Usually when you see something in this state of disrepair, it's surrounded by a wire fence with demolition orders up. But no, this one is just chillin', clearly without having seen any love or attention since it was first built. It clearly hasn't been painted since then - the original coat has just flaked off over time to expose the bare boards underneath. It seems that the plaster rendering on the upper section of the house has just fallen off, exposing a tasteful sort of wood skeleton underneath. In fact, those sections remind me forcibly of the huts I used to build in my back garden, which were made of bit of old trellis fence. The roof tiles are falling like autumn leaves, and I think the house has shifted a little on its foundations, because those windows certainly don't fit as snugly in their frames as they once might have. The garden is messy with a crumbling fence, and there is a lot of accumulated rubbish shoved down between the house and the fence.

I'm sure it was nice 100 years ago.

Now, let me draw your attention to the pictures taken through the windows. We examined these after our first visit here, and were surprised to see that there was actually some stuff inside. A fan is clearly visible, as well as some other random clutter. We assumed that the residents had just left, leaving all their old furniture to fester. I mean, seriously, out of all the houses we've collected for this blog, we were quite sure that this place was totally, absolutely abandoned. We assumed it must have been sitting there for years with just that horrible, fetid old caravan for company.

That poor, poor fan!

Here's why we should never assume anything ever again. Recently, we drove past this place at night. We had been keeping our eyes peeled, since we thought it might be quite hard to find in the dark. Well, this wasn't the case at all. You want to know why? Because there was a light on. A proper fluorescent light, not the torchlight of vandals or squatters. The place is actually in use. I couldn't fucking believe it. This is probably the closest we've come to finding something worthy of a Dot Dot Curve rating, and it turns out that people actually USE IT, perhaps even live in it. Out of all the places we've found for this blog so far, this was one of the few cases where we didn't even have a flicker of doubt about the "abandoned" status we gave it. Even if this is just someone's workshop rather than their residence, you'd think they'd at least fix the roof. I would be genuinely worried about this place staying up in a high wind, so I certainly wouldn't leave anything I'm working on in there unattended. In addition to that, it looks so easy to break in to. All you'd need to do is tap on the wall and you'd probably make a gap big enough to crawl through. I'm not even going to think about someone actually living here, but after seeing that light on, it's a troublingly plausible thought. I hope that they move out before that wonky chimney falls through their bedroom roof!

You win the "worst house on this blog" award. Well done.

To be honest, I would rather live in that caravan for a year than spend a week in that house. You might not quite understand how momentous that is, but I am massively ill-disposed towards caravans. They creep me out and they're dirty and horrible and get in the way while you're driving. Caravans are the crows of the mechanical world. I hope that helps you understand how bad these place actually is. I hope for the sake of everyone living on that street that the termites and the elements get rid of this place sooner rather than later. Perhaps then the mystery residents can move somewhere nicer - I think even this would be luxurious compared with their current wreck.

Rating: Cellar floor.

6 Homer Street (Rooster Delight), Moonee Ponds, VIC, Australia

Disclaimer: I have a mild form of plague at the moment, so please forgive me if my posting isn't quite up to its usual standard. In this case, I think my subject matter might make me feel even sicker and it might even kill me. I hope it's worth it.

The concept of "charcoal chicken" takeaway places was not at all unknown to me when I came to Melbourne, but they seem to be really fucking popular here, inexplicably so. You might be thinking that's not strange at all. It might bring to mind barbecues, sunny days at the beach, and overall some delicious tasty chicken. That's kind of what I thought too ... until the day when I first walked past one of these places. More specifically, Rooster Delight in Moonee Ponds.

Not so inviting frontage.

Now, "Rooster Delight" is a bad enough name in the first place. I have frequently been put off what might otherwise be perfectly good restaurants just based on the name, and this is no exception. Anything with "Rooster" in the title is inherently damning, simply because of the potential that removing the "S" holds. Teehee, rooter. However, that seems like a perfectly decent and attractive name when you think about what this place was originally called. I believe I did see the place under the old name on my very first trip to Melbourne, but I don't remember too well. Fortunately, they've had the kindness to leave the old sign up out the back of the store!

I can smell the factory farms from here.

The Chicken Machine? Seriously? What kind of mad drugs was the owner on when he thought that would be a fun and appetising name for a takeaway place? All I think of is the "chicken" you see in the deli sometimes, you know, the kind that comes in perfectly round slices. The kind that close reading of the label reveals to be "manufactured meat, minimum 40% chicken". The other 60%? Don't even ask. Are you hungry yet? I'm not, and I was so hungry 10 minutes ago that I was about to eat Axver. I don't know about you, but the last thing I was to be thinking about when I'm eating chicken is factory farms and meat processing plants.

Still, those things will probably be the last thing on your mind as soon as the smell of this place invades your nostrils. It is inescapable. Just be glad that the Internet doesn't enable you to smell things from the other side of the world, because I would totally inflict that on you. I can hardly describe it. It smells like death and burning and plague. If I smelt it out of context, I would assume that there was a crematorium nearby. NOTHING about that smell makes me think "oh, I'd love a chicken burger!"

See large version for a better view of the dingy awning.

Going back to the core purpose of the blog, I've got to say that the building itself isn't doing anything to redeem itself either. Dingy old "Chicken Machine" sign aside, the flaws are many. At the front, you can see a sign lurking behind the fancy new "Rooster Delight" billboard which possibly even predates The Chicken Machine. The awning is falling apart - I'm quite worried about its structural integrity after looking at the right-hand corner - and is in serious need of a good clean/lick o' paint. Being situated next to a fairly dingy and unattractive alley leading to the Coles loading zone doesn't help much, either. They could at least paint the brick wall - I've seen nice murals done over ugly brick walls just like this, and it can make such a difference.

In an area with such a high standard of dining, this is simply inexcusable. I don't know who they're trying to cater for with this charcoal chicken thing. People with no sense of smell, perhaps. I don't know. Just knock it down and let people go to one of the many other fine eating establishments in Moonee Ponds. I wouldn't even be tempted to eat here out of sheer morbid curiosity, and that is really saying something.

Rating: Condemnable

494A Victoria Street (St John's Anglican Church), Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

Now, normally when I rag on a church, it's because I find some aspect of their theology ridiculous or offensive (and being an atheist, this is not an uncommon occurrence). There is a Catholic Church near us that provides us with endless amusement via unintentional double entendres on its messageboard, but the church building itself is pretty imposing. Churches themselves have a habit of being attractive buildings. However, there are a couple of nearby churches that aren't exactly up to the usual standard, and today my focus is on St John's Anglican Church (or St John Chrysostom West Brunswick) on the intersection of Melville Road and one of Melbourne's ten bazillion Victoria Streets.

The front entrance on Victoria Street.

More specifically, today's sermon is about the Sin of Glass Bricks. Some of you may think there is nothing wrong with glass bricks; some of you may even own glass bricks. Well I call upon you to give up your glass bricks and come into the light of truth! No, seriously, what is the purpose of glass bricks?  It's basically like you're trying to give a false impression of openness and transparency while actually trying to stop anybody seeing in. Never mind a basic wall with windows; the front (Victoria Street) entrance to this church is three-quarters glass bricks. "Come on in, we're nice and airy and open ... except we really aren't."

Click for a larger copy and you should easily see the cross pattern.

Now, I don't know anything about this church specifically or its people, so I don't want to slur them directly, nor do I want to turn what is just a light-hearted blog made partly from curiosity and partly from casual revulsion into something overly serious and theological. But glass bricks are honestly quite fitting for many strands of the church organisation in general over history, trying to present an image of openness and light when they're actually a closed shop - especially if you're some sort of homosexual or unmarried sinner. Glass bricks are how you can present a welcoming image when you actually don't particularly want to be welcoming. Plus they can look fairly dirty even when new, an attribute exaggerated by this church. The pattern of a cross is made by some of the glass bricks, but it just looks like they've gone grubby with age and need a good scrub; I initially thought some had acquired a coating of dirt until it twigged that they were in the shape of a cross. This is all not to mention the glaringly obvious: glass bricks are seriously tacky. If the Reject Shop were a window, it would be a glass brick.

The Melville Road side.

As for the building overall, I think they tried. The main body of the church is a big brick edifice (big, I mean, in relation to the surrounding buildings) and it is exactly what you expect out of a church. It seems to follow a fairly tried-and-true traditional style - even if the top has windows that seem straight out of the mid-20th century, complete with an overly obvious cross. "Hey it's funny because the patterns in our window create a cross and we're a church so our symbol is a cross and yeah we're emphasising it REALLY REALLY HEAVILY just so you get it ... so you see it's funny ... and clever." Or not. But at least the main body, a hall I presume, is done right.

Think they ordered "prison tower" instead of "ornate tower".

And then they even decided to go for a tower. Nice big hall, capped by a tower - it should look good, shouldn't it? But this is a case of "good idea, poor execution". Here's a missed opportunity if I've ever seen one. A tower should be a grand statement, something beautiful that draws the eye. If you're going to make anything ornate, if you are going to demonstrate that you are devoted to your god by building him an imposing and gorgeous house of worship, if you are going to make your building a landmark around which the community can gather, then the tower is where you go for glory. Evidently they didn't get this memo. The tower just looks like they decided to lock somebody up the top ("shit, the pastor's gay? Well this'll fix him!"), or they wanted to give pigeons a roost to poop all over and suffocate within. Because they want the pigeons to have a chance to be close to god too ... or something. This doesn't look like a tower for a deity, but a tower for a somewhat petty local authority that thinks it's got some influence but doesn't even command the obedience that your school fete "little Hitlers" manage to acquire. Come to church and worship the mediocrity of our decent but uninspiring council!

St John's, I can see you tried. You're not a bad thing in the community. But those glass bricks? That plain tower? You can do better. Get out the paint cans, at the very least. Replace those glass bricks with something that actually shows off a vibrant faith community.

Rating: Lick o' paint.

9 Tamariki Avenue (The Nautilus), Orewa, New Zealand

This is perhaps one of the biggest tragedies I'll ever feature on this blog. However, before I actually say anything further about the Nautilus, I would like to share with you a quote from the official Nautilus website.

The Nautilus, designed by award winning Walker Architects, is a stunning development designed to complement a beach location that is probably one of the finest in New Zealand. Spread over 12 Luxurious levels the range of apartments afford breathtaking ocean views over Orewa Beach and the surrounding area.

It sounds quite nice, doesn't it? Sounds like it might fit in quite well with its surroundings, probably in keeping with all the other architecture in Orewa?

NO. YOU'RE WRONG.

Oh my christ what the fuck is that.

The Nautilus, designed by a blind architect with a very small penis, is a festering tumour breaking through the delicate skin of a once-charming beachside town, which is now teeming with inconsiderate littering tourists. Spread over 12 hideous levels, the range of apartments afford breathtaking ocean views over Orewa Beach while at the same time completely ruining views of the beach from anywhere else in a 50 kilometre radius. Fuck you, Orewa residents!

Those trees need to do a lot of growing to hide THAT.

This monstrosity was in no way necessary. Orewa did not need a huge hotel/apartment block hybrid. The town is full of little motels, as you might expect in a seaside town. The thing is, most of them are nice and small - as far as I know, none of them are higher than 3 stories. They're all painted in bright, cheerful colours, and most importantly, they do nothing to detract from the nice views over and from the beach. In fact, they "complement the beach location" in exactly the way the Nautilus doesn't. Now, they're probably all losing money as the Nautilus attracts the brain-dead tourists with way too much money away from the local businesses. I imagine that in the near future, the Nautilus will spawn many other hideous, soulless high rises, and eventually the little motels will be gone forever.

I guess this sort of thing is inevitable with the way Auckland and surrounds are sprawling off into infinity. I should have seen it coming when a new housing development was built to the west of Orewa town centre - all the houses were mushroom coloured and made out of balsa wood. Still, seeing the Nautilus raping the skyline was quite the unpleasant shock for all of us. At least the housing development was low-rise, just like EVERYTHING ELSE IN OREWA. Ugh.

The pretty town is visible here, but the Nautilus still dominates.

However, there is still some justice in the world - I had to laugh when a couple of years after it was built, the Nautilus was found to be leaking like a burst tap. God knows how many millions of dollars they invested in repairing the leaks, but I hope it hurt! Next time, I hope the whole thing floods and they just have to knock it down. What a shame that would be!

Rating: Condemnable

341 Victoria Street and 92 Henkel Street, Brunswick, VIC, Australia

I've been a little busy these last few days. I've been fine though, just doing fun stuff like maths assignments and turning 20 (anyone want to change my colostomy bag? I'm too old to do it myself). However, if I had lied to you and told you that I had a chronic case of food poisoning after eating food from this place here, would you believe me? I bet you would.

341 Victoria Street in all its derelict glory.

Ok, ok, I know it's closed and it has been for some time. I don't care. I have a funny feeling that it probably looked exactly the same when it was in operation. I wonder why it was closed down?  Now, before you go on with something like "stop stereotyping Chinese takeaways, they're perfectly clean", I might just go on a little tangent to tell you about this place I saw in Sydney's Chinatown back in August 2010. It was a takeaway Chinese place right near the railway station, which I imagine gave it more than its fair share of customers each day. It was pretty damn grubby - I would have never set food inside - but I thought it must be at least acceptable in order to continue operating in such a busy area. How naive of me! I happened to walk past one quiet morning on the way to the train, and witnessed five or six rats come scurrying out from under the door of this place and vanish into the drain. I was honestly almost sick. I guess they would have just been pissed off to lose the best item off their breakfast menu!

So yeah, what I'm trying to get at is that this place probably did close down due to a failed food safety inspection. However, there is still someone who lives in the space above the shop - maybe the ex-owner? This would make sense since I saw him as we walked by, hacking and coughing and spitting off the rooftop. Truly charming!

Hungry? No? What a surprise!

However, at least that place is actually closed down, unlike this. As far as I can see, this one is perfectly functional.

92 Henkel Street (Victoria Street frontage).

Now I don't know about you, but if I was a food wholesaler, I'd kind of like to get some customers every now and then. In order to do that, I'd have an attractive and most importantly CLEAN shop front. This one fails on every account. It looks as if it used to be a mechanic's workshop, and I wouldn't be surprised if the food in here was prepared on old oily benchtops. Organic products? Yeah, probably just the algae they scrape out of the sink every day. I don't know, maybe I'm being too harsh. It might be really nice inside. Maybe. Can you tell I'm not even convincing myself?

Oh, and get a roof. That wouldn't hurt.

Please, if you're starting a business in the food industry, at least paint and clean up your shop! Things can only get better from there. But if you decide not to, just don't come running to me when you get shut down for having sea snails attached to your taps.

Rating: Damnable

Bell tower, Miranda Street, Stratford, Taranaki, New Zealand

Stratford is a lovely service town amidst the farms of central Taranaki. It's the kind of quiet place where you can lie in the middle of the road on a Friday night and not get hit by a car. Besides Mount Taranaki in the distance, the skyline in Stratford is dominated by two towers a block apart: the clock tower on Broadway and the bell tower on Miranda Street. Now, if you arrive in Stratford by night, you'll find it to be a very pretty place. Both towers are well-illuminated and look quite pretty:

The Elizabethan clock tower

The modernist bell tower.

However, things are not as they seem. The clock tower maintains and arguably improves its character at daytime. The same cannot be said for the bell tower. At night, it is stark and almost imposing given how much it dwarfs the surrounding buildings. But you kind of get a hint that it's actually ... well, pretty ugly. And here's the daytime proof for you:

Is that a bell tower, or a monument commemorating an oil well? I'm not entirely sure. It's just a few concrete legs wedded together. It signifies nothing. It could not possibly be any more spare; it is functionalist to a repulsive extreme. Did they run out of money to make it look good? So much effort has gone into the picturesque clock tower that you would think its cousin a block over would get similar treatment. Instead it seems like they erected a bell tower purely as a chore rather than as a complementary landmark, and now the people of Stratford are stuck with something that looks like it should be at the entry to an industrial park.

I'm sorry, but there is no charm in a few concrete legs. As with any concrete surface, it shows off weather wear-and-tear in its own particularly unappealling way; click the daytime picture for an enlarged version and you'll see just how spotty parts of the tower's surface are, especially the centre of the foremost leg. That said, at least some effort seems to have been put in to keeping it a bit clean; I've seen spots and smears that are so much worse. But some things age well and some things don't, concrete structures falling firmly into the latter category. This bell tower is a great example of something that didn't look good when it was erected, doesn't look good now, and never will. C'mon Stratford, surely you can paint it or clad it or otherwise decorate it somehow so that it looks even vaguely as pretty as the clock tower! This stain on your daytime skyline is not very becoming of you.

Rating: Condemnable.

Pomare railway station, Taita, Hutt Valley, New Zealand

The bland northern end of Pomare station.

Earlier this month, I ranted about Macaulay station.  Well, the disease of soulless railway stations is by no means confined to Australia.  Meet a dreary trans-Tasman example: Pomare station, on the Hutt Valley commuter line (part of the longer Wairarapa Line).  Contrary to what some people may have you believe, Pomare station is not in a suburb of the same name as no such suburb exists; it is at the northern end of Taita.

Now, some parts of the Hutt Valley, including Taita, can be a bit depressing.  Large swathes of these suburbs are state housing (or ex-state housing) built in the mid-twentieth century, and with that comes the usual socio-economic disadvantage and depression.  This isn't to say that the area is totally and irredeemably crap, because it's not, but the Hutt Valley has never really been my favourite part of the Wellington region.  However, on a cold, damp, and windswept morning in July 2010, I found myself trainspotting at Pomare station.  And, well, oh dear!  Besides my fingers almost freezing to my camera, the station is no place you particularly want to be in a hurry.  It's not the worst station I've ever been to, and it's not quite on the level of the aforementioned Macaulay, but it's still pretty undesirable.

The southern end of Pomare toile- er, station.

If the people who authorised this station wanted to convey the impression that northern Taita is a bland, depressing, squalid sort of place where nobody wants to be through choice, then they've done a damn good job.  It has few redeeming aesthetic qualities; all it can really say in its defence is that it has a real, sloped roof, hence it isn't totally boxy.  The passenger facilties are as spare and basic as possible, and damn uncomfortable.  The building barely fulfils its basic function of providing passenger shelter from the elements.  You know what it looks like to me?  From the southern end (picture at right), it resembles a public toilet planted between two busy railway lines.

In fact, it looks like two public toilets.  The building looks like a rather large cubicle, the sort of which you often see decaying by beaches where the local council doesn't care that much about swimmers (especially since, from this end, the building is deceptively boxy).  Then there's that ramp, leading to a rape-y underpass that really does have a lingering scent of urine; when descending from the platform, it feels more like entering an underground loo than it does when you enter some actual underground loos!  Are you totally incapable of holding in the contents of your bladder on the oh-so-long trip between Upper Hutt and Wellington?  Step off at Pomare's public toilets and unleash your torrent!  Space for everyone.

Of course, the truth is, this station is so basic that it actually doesn't have toilet facilities at all, no matter how much the underpass may smell of one.  And when I was there in July, the whiffs of urine were mingling with the smell of dampness.  I was charmed, can't you tell?

Rating: Damnable

198 Berkeley Street (Economics and Commerce Building), University of Melbourne, Carlton, VIC, Australia

The view from Haymarket Junction.

Once upon a time (i.e. for about its first 100 years of existence), the University of Melbourne had an undeniably pretty campus in Parkville with a lake and a lot of gorgeous buildings.  Luckily, some still stand - Old Arts, Old Physics, University House, and the 1888 Building, to name a few.  However, the lake vanished in the late 1930s.  Wilson Hall burnt down and was replaced by a hideous box in the 1950s (soon to be featured here).  And since the 1960s, the university seems to be doing everything it can to erect eyesores that overshadow its rich architectural heritage; see, of course, my recent rant on the Eastern Resource Centre.  The latest chapter in Melbourne University's embarrassing architectural lowlights of the past 50 years opened last year: the new Economics and Commerce Building at 198 Berkeley Street.

Near the intersection of Berkeley and Pelham Streets.

The amount of wank produced by the university and the "architects" surrounding this building almost exceeds the amount of wank on a St Kilda FC team holiday.  And they're up against Nick Dal Santo there, so that's quite a feat!  Just check out the building's website, an unbelieveably hideous and unusable web failure.  Somehow 198 Berkeley St is actually the most attractive thing about that site.  But perhaps the most spectacular wank appears on the university's website, right here.  I quote:

Architect Paul Bennett of Metier3 says:"The University was looking for a landmark to signify their south-western gateway. The opaque enamelled glass has patterns suggesting deciduous trees in winter as well as an abstracted leaf canopy."

The opaque enamelled glass has patterns suggesting deciduous trees in winter as well as an abstracted leaf canopy.  Are they actually serious?  Can they actually say that with a straight face?  I mean, christ-

Just look at it!

PATTERNS SUGGESTING DECIDUOUS TREES IN WINTER?!

AN ABSTRACTED LEAF CANOPY?!

No, you blundering nincompoops, the only thing this building's patterns suggest is MOULD.  The opaque enamelled glass has PATTERNS SUGGESTING A GIANT FUCKING LOAF OF MOULDY BREAD AS WELL AS AN ABSTRACTED FUNGAL CANOPY.

Seriously, it looks like some bakers in Melbourne decided to bake the world's largest loaf of bread, succeeded ... but then couldn't actually eat it all and just left it to go mouldy.  The building may be commendable for its environmentally friendly design, but it's about as aesthetically pleasing as my pantry when it's 40C for a few days and I've forgotten that there are loaves of bread and Turkish rolls and pita bread in there.

At least I'm not the only person who has taken some objection; see this blog from July 2009, half a year before the building was officially opened.  Perhaps the only comfort we can take is that this hideous blunder of architecture has been inflicted on the Economics and Commerce faculty, rather than one with real people.  Then again, I'm not sure even economists deserve this, and it reflects pretty poorly on the whole damn university.  And bloody deciduous trees, really?!

DECIDUOUS TREES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!  GOODNIGHT.

Rating: Condemnable.

Geographical note: Although this building is part of Melbourne University's Parkville campus, it is the latest step in the university's expansion beyond its traditional southern boundary of Grattan Street, i.e. into Carlton.

Footbridge over Citylink, Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

One day, I headed out for a little stroll around some of the quieter suburban streets north of Albion Street. It was a bit of a dark day, with dark clouds threatening rain on the horizon. Everything was very still, and to be honest I was getting a little unnerved by it all. Imagine how I felt, then, when I followed a grassy little path and came out facing this.


This creepy creepy bridge runs from Peacock Street to McColl Street over Citylink. There is another bridge a little further south that is the same as the Head Bridge in every way except one. The crucial difference is that the Hope Street bridge doesn't have these CREEPY FUCKING HEADS. I inspected the bridge thoroughly and found absolutely no explanation for these heads. No artist name, no commemorative plaque, nothing. Just a whole lot of unnerving stone heads. They seems to all come from the same mould, so it's not like they're supposed to be statues of real people. Then again, I suppose this is for the best - I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't want to be immortalised in cracked stone on the walls of a slightly claustrophobic footbridge. This is a fate which I would only wish upon people like Tony Abbott and Justin Bieber, to name but two.

Now, I'm all for a little bit of artwork to liven up the city. I was frequently frustrated with the lack of artwork (or just nice features in general) in Auckland. However, I do not want to be confronted by cracked, blackened, expressionless stone heads when I'm going for an innocent suburban walk. These remind me forcibly of the way that hunters (and my friend Jamie) display deers' heads and the like over their fireplaces. Some of the heads look as though they've been burnt, and others have missing pieces - there's one which lacks a nose. Some of the heads have been defaced as well, which in most cases just adds to the eeriness. The drips of spraypaint on some of the heads make them look as though they're crying (or just emo kids without waterproof mascara).

I've searched far and wide for an explanation of this and have so far found nothing. Still, an explanation wouldn't stop this thing being creepy. I feel sorry for all the poor children who have probably been given nightmares from walking across this bridge. Actually that's a lie; I hate children. Still, this thing creeped the shit out of me, and I had to drag Ax down there as soon as possible to make him believe that I'd actually found such a thing. We went in the late evening, as most of these photos show, and it was even creepier that way. I guess this is what I get for walking down rape-y pathways by myself on dull days. Still, if it wasn't for insatiable curiosity, this blog wouldn't exist in the first place, and what a terrible thing that would be!

Rating: Unpleasant, both in design and in the feeling it gives you.

71 Melville Road (The Patra House), Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

This little charmer down the road from our house has fascinated me a whole lot more than it probably should. At a glance, there isn't much to it - it's a pretty ugly brick shoebox of a building, and if it were actually a house I'd probably just dismiss it with a "Walshe and Whitelock" sort of rating. As it stands, though, I'm not entirely sure what purpose this place serves. Most of the time the place is pretty uninviting - normally, the door is locked, the blinds are closed and there is nothing to indicate that the place is in use except the rather stern "members only" sign on the door. However, every now and then this place opens its doors to the world, causing much intrigue and confusion. Or maybe that's just in my case.

When I first came to Melbourne, about this time last year, this place had some interesting flags and posters up in the window, which have actually reappeared in the last few days. Last year, there was a flag hanging up which we're pretty sure was Romanian. At the time, we thought that perhaps this was a club for slightly nutty Romanian nationalists. It doesn't seem at all implausible given the high volume of immigrants around here. However, the very small morsels of information I can find on this place actually indicate that this place is home to something called the Patra Brotherhood, named in relation to the Patras region of Greece. Ok, Greeks make even more sense - lots of the shops around here, including many delicious bakeries, are owned by Greeks - but that doesn't explain the weird flag! Is it some kind of weird celebration of multiculturalism? Somehow I don't think so. To add to the mystery, one day we were driving past and we saw a pretty big group of what looked like protesters outside the place. They were holding up Italian flags. What kind of inner conflict is occurring between the Italian and Greek population of Brunswick West? And what do the Romanians have to do with it? It just gets more and more bizarre.

However, on a rather anticlimactic note, I think I'm being forced to admit that The Patra House might not be as suspicious as I originally thought. I've seen the doors open on Saturdays when they tend to hold their functions, and inside it just seems like any old club - there's a bar, a large seating area and lots of standing room, all clean and tidy but rather nondescript. Still, I would like to know exactly how you become a member - it's not like you can just waltz in and ask the friendly staff. If I was a Greek person new to Melbourne, I'd feel pretty intimidated.

All that aside, and going back to the essence of the blog, they could have at least tried harder with their clubhouse (or whatever this is). Surely they could decorate the outside, perhaps put some nicer blinds in the windows, and make their sign just a little bit more interesting and welcoming. And for heaven's sake, take down the irrelevant sign on the side of the building! It says "LP gas conversions and EFI specialists", which just makes me think of cartoons in which dodgy Mafia groups hang out in headquarters disguised as a "pet shop". I don't have a photo to show the incongruous sign, so I did a drawing instead. I'm very talented at drawing.

When it all boils down, I think this place needs to close for renovation before any members are admitted. It gives them a bad impression of Melbourne. We have many beautiful buildings to choose from - I'm sure that they could buy one of the abandoned shops around here and fix it up to be quite nice. But no, they picked one which looks like it used to be an abattoir. Try harder with your secret society headquarters!

Rating: Unpleasant.

Eastern Resource Centre, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

Today, I would like to highlight an example of truly horrendous architecture.  The Parkville campus of the University of Melbourne has a good number of beautiful and attractive buildings, amongst which are a few malignant tumours that blight the landscape.  One of the worst offenders, in fact probably the worst offender, is the Eastern Resource Centre (ERC), one of the main libraries:

Just look at it!  This is meant to be a library, a place of knowledge and ideas and books.  I can think of few more noble purposes for a building, yet this seems to have been built with none of that in mind.  There is no style, no grace, not a single nod to its purpose as a repository of intellectual achievement and historical record.  It looks like a prison, or a place to house a soulless, bloodsucking bureaucracy or accountancy firm.  Perhaps it should be home to the Faculty of Law.  This sort of incongruous, faceless Brutalist architecture should be deplored, or even better, torn right down.  The ERC is especially offensive because it neighbours and overshadows the most beautiful structure on campus, the 1888 Building:

My grudge against the ERC is not just on the basis of aesthetics.  It used to be.   It is now personal.  For all its aesthetic failings, inside it used to be everything you could want from a university library.  The upper three floors are given over to the Education Faculty's needs (hence its former name, the Education Resource Centre); the bottom two floors house books of interest to the social sciences and humanities - but because the main SS&H library is the Baillieu and most Arts students seem far too lazy to plumb the depths of the ERC, the wealth of relevant books here went largely unmolested.  If you were willing to use the place, it was a goldmine!  Few people ventured down to the bottom two floors; you could get lost amongst the wonderful smell of books, exploring all kinds of arcane but fascinating subjects, and curl up at a desk in a very, very quiet corner to get your work done or just to unwind.  You could even just sprawl out comfortably in an aisle - there was hardly anybody to notice you.

Then the forces of renovation struck.  Somebody evidently needed to kickstart a project to justify their existence.  Part of this involved a redevelopment of the third storey entry, which has been little more than polishing a turd, as the picture at right illustrates.  Sure, the glassy new addition is a bit more airy and open, but it's just as incongruous as the ERC and doesn't achieve a whole lot.  The other part of the redevelopment is what really gets me, though: half the bottom floor was given over to some new "hub" that hasn't really proved its worth to me after a few years of trying.  My favourite aisle was lost to this renovation.  The smell, the quiet, the atmosphere - it's never really been the same.  Sure, most of the second floor and half of the first still largely look like how they used to:

But then you look down a first floor aisle and you see the new hub.  I see where my cosy little home used to be, my place of relaxation, gone forever:

So if I seem especially bitter about the ERC, it's not just because it's an ugly building (though let's not play down the architectural failings here).  It's because the best damn spot on campus has gone the way of the dodo.

Rating: Condemnable.

Macaulay railway station, North Melbourne, VIC, Australia

I like railways.  As a consequence, I often find myself at railway stations.  I've seen many ugly railway stations in my time wielding a camera and generally looking weird (oh no a guy has a harmless hobby!), and if I were to ever make a list of the ugliest, Macaulay would be a prime contender for the top five.  I've also passed - quickly - through plenty of dingy and uninviting stations, and again, if I were to make a list of such stations, Macaulay would be a prime contender for the top five.

Yes, the lead picture above depicts a railway station. That's it on the left, where that train is hidden - the bricky thing that looks like a public toilet beneath a six-lane motorway.  As the picture at right shows, things look just as grim when you're on the platforms themselves.  And while cars whiz overhead, there is precious little activity at rail level.  Macaulay station is located in a part of North Melbourne home to light industry that gets lighter and lighter every passing year as industries downsize or close.  There used to be a thriving network of railway sidings here, diverging from the main tracks to service factories; now, the sidings are just dirt bereft of rails passing decrepit loading docks at businesses that have closed.  A bit of traffic passes on Macaulay Road, but if you are taking shelter inside the dimly-lit buildings, or are just any sort of distance down the platform, you might as well be invisible.  Not exactly the most comfortable place to be, especially not when the train frequencies on the Upfield line are so abysmal.

The setting is bad enough, but were the dank brick shoeboxes posing as station buildings really necessary?  Even before Citylink was built overhead in the 1990s, these would have been enough to make you turn your nose up at Macaulay station.  They're barely even useful - they don't exactly keep out the elements, let me tell you.  I'm pretty sure they'd be right at home in the Walshe & Whitelock part of the property press, and no doubt if the railways desperately need an injection of funding, Walshe & Whitelock would merrily rent out both buildings for outrageous sums to the poor and desperate.  "Cosy, modern riverfront unit close to transportation!"

Once upon a time (i.e. the early 1920s), things were different; Macaulay had a station that, although not an architectural marvel, was smart and functional.  Below, compare the first picture from Victorian Railways.net with a photo I took in 2008:

Ridiculous.  I'd say pull the fucker down and start again, but there isn't much you can do about that motorway looming ahead.  If you must catch a train in the vicinity, you're probably better off spending a few minutes walking over to Kensington on the Craigieburn line, just a few hundred metres away, or if you're obliged to use the Upfield line, Flemington Bridge isn't far either.  I'm surprised the station is still even open.  Well, it could be worse: the neighbouring Moonee Ponds Creek (soon to be featured on the blog!) doesn't look as bad here as it does a couple of kilometres upriver.  Here, the creek has been artificially widened into a canal that contains, gasp, water; upriver it has been raped and abused into a stormwater drain that is often just a stagnant dark smudge.  Macaulay station has suffered enough since its origins as a smart little stop; at least it isn't made even worse by neighbouring a skidmark.

Rating: Condemnable.

19 Melville Road, Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

So, you're hungry. You're craving a nice big pizza from one of Melbourne's many delicious independent pizza shops. Well aren't you lucky that you stopped at Hot Pizza House on Melville Road near the Albion Street intersection (some of the best damn pizzas in Melbourne!), rather than continuing south down Melville Road to be horribly misled by “Gibbi's Pizza”.

The first time I saw this place was about five years ago. It isn't a pizza shop now, it wasn't a pizza shop then, and I don't bloody well know when it actually was. Nonetheless, it still appears in some business directories that need urgent updating. The shop occupying the other half of this lot, “Melville Road Physiotherapy”, is a similar story – except, perhaps, for the fact it looks disused for even longer. Gibbi's Pizza appears to be somebody's studio; somebody who is clearly too lazy to actually take down the old signage and make the place appear anything other than dingy. Melville Road Physiotherapy now looks like it's either 1). abandoned or 2). an illegal den offering other forms of “physiotherapy” with imported girls from southeast Asia who are almost certainly underage.

At least Gibbi's Pizza looks like it was, once upon a time, a decent, functioning shop. The Physiotherapy, on the other hand? That small door and those narrow windows at the top of a soulless brick wall were not attractive when they were first put in place, and the passage of time has not been kind. It looks like it was built to keep customers – and prying eyes – out. It makes you think that even in its days of business, it was a shonky “physiotherapy” akin to those dodgy “Thai massage” places you see in Sydney's Chinatown with mildewed curtains covering the windows, and lights that are only ever on after about 11pm.

Rating: Damnable (Gibbi's Pizza side) / Condemnable (Physiotherapy side)

300 Dudley Street (Festival Hall), West Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Festival Hall from Dudley St.

There is simply no competition for the worst concert venue I have ever been to: Festival Hall wins by a mile. I've been to venues with worse organisation (looking at you, Auckland Town Hall and Stade de France), but for sheer dinginess, Festival Hall coasts to victory. Rightly dubbed "Festy Hall" or "Festering Hall" by Melburnians, this decrepit and dank hall is a stain on Melbourne's otherwise fantastic live music scene.

Stage door, Railway Place.

Now, many venues have access doors down alleyways that aren't exactly the most aesthetically pleasing places in the world. However, Festy Hall looks like it is surrounded on all sides by such alleyways, even on the wide open Dudley Street side. There is hardly an indication that this is a live music venue, or even that the place is still operational. Charlotte has never been to Festy, so when I first showed her my photographs of the place, she asked if it was some old and possibly disused factory. Nope, this is a live music venue that can hold up to 5,445 people - and if your band is too big to play theatres but not quite big enough to play Rod Laver or Hisense Arenas, this is about your only option in Melbourne.

Inside, it's not much better.  If you have the misfortune to be in the seats at the side, as I once did, you can enjoy all the thrills of watching a band through a tall plastic screen.  It's meant to separate the seated area from the standing floor, but in the end just makes you feel like you're watching a video on a grubby television.

Rosslyn St side, western end.

Festy's biggest claim to fame is hosting the Beatles in 1964, and I'm pretty sure it hasn't seen a lick of paint since. It doesn't have the character or mystique of most old venues; its walls don't ooze with stories of frenzied and chaotic live events; it doesn't even have the faded charm of a legend well past its prime. It's just a rambling, uninviting cavern with covered windows and peeling paint. It looks more like a prison or - as Charlotte noted - a disused factory than a vibrant centre of music. Normally music venues employ architects in the design phase, but Festy Hall's original developers clearly just skipped that.  If I weren't from Melbourne and my tour was booked here, I'd leave with a false impression that Melbourne's a pretty smelly city without much going for musicians.  Then again, hopefully this will work in our favour next month when Ke$ha plays here and she'll resolve to never again sully Victoria with her presence.

Rating: Damnable

72 Hope Street, Brunswick, VIC, Australia

Hope Street has yielded some bizarre and intriguing finds for us. We quite frequently walk down it late at night after gigs, when the undesirables are lurking in the alleys and the drunks are pissing in the stairwells of Walshe and Whitelock apartment blocks. On our slightly less perilous daytime walks down Hope Street, we had pointed out several dingy shops which, in our eyes, were quite clearly abandoned. I mean, some of these places  (which I'm sure we'll cover in later entries) actually look structurally unsound. 

However, things in the world of possibly condemned buildings are not always as they seem.

One night as we were walking home, I remember making a comment to the tune of "oh look, here's that awful abandoned shop, it's probably full of squatters". As we wandered by, I did a double take. Although I was convinced that this shop was last used since about 1960, the lights inside were on! From across the street, I peered through the oh-so-tasteful mouldering lace curtains. What I saw was even more confusing than the fact that people had apparently dared to enter this woeful hovel. Suspended from the ceiling were two objects of intrigue and mystery - a bicycle and a Chinese paper lantern. 

Who the fuck would be active in a dingy old shop at 12:30am with a bicycle and a paper lantern? I'm pretty sure I have the answer. Given Melbourne's high Italian population, I believe this is some kind of Mafia arts and crafts den. Well, can you think of anything more plausible? I don't know what's going on here, but I think I'd like to join in. However, the "enter at your own risk" sign on the front door kind of deters me!

When I was looking for the street address for this place, I noticed that the image on Google Street View is quite different to how it looks now. I believe the Google photos were taken around 2009. They show the shop with much less graffiti, and the "enter at your own risk" sign is absent. If this is anything to go by, the shop must have sat festering for some time before the arts and crafts bicycle people moved in. Still, at least it serves a purpose - it makes the nice house next door look even nicer by comparison. For god's sake, paint your shop and it might arouse a little less suspicion!

Google Street View image, markedly less graffitied.

Rating: Damnable