“The moment he pointed a rifle at me, our five kids screaming in the corner, was the moment I decided to get outta there,” Helen Phillips tells me. It was 1974, Cootamundra, New South Wales, and her husband was a violent alcoholic. “He said ‘You’re done’. And I said ‘If you’re gonna do it, pull the trigger, cause you will never get another chance. I’ve had ya – you’re done yourself.” The familiar cycle of apologies came – “Oh baby, I’m sorry, please forgive me” – but she knew she had to leave. “No longer would my children watch me with black eyes. We were gonna make a new start.” With fifty bucks in her pocket, Helen and her kids got on a train to Melbourne and fronted up at Travellers Aid, which immediately found her a post as a live-in nanny in Ashburton. On the second night there, her new boss came into her bedroom – “he expected me to sleep with him – this had been going on with every person who nannied.” With the phone in the house blocked, Helen went to the next-door neighbour for help; “she told me I’m about the tenth person, use my […]
In the park beside the National Theatre stands The Great Wall of St Kilda. A patchwork of ceramic tiles, the central mural shows our eclectic suburb: palm trees, Palais, pier and people all presided over by Bunjil the eagle. Around the outside, 600 smaller tiles were designed by members of the local community. Bright and inviting, passersby often stop to stare up at the Wall, examining its detail. The close observer may notice the name Robyn Szechtman painted on a tile. In 2010, Robyn, then a community development worker with Port Phillip council, teamed up with artist Camille Monet to bring the wall to reality. “Talbot Reserve was redesigned in the mid-2000s,” she tells me, “which did unfortunately design homeless people, sex workers and drug users out of it. We felt that the Wall was a tribute to the whole range of people that make up our community.” Tiles were designed at rooming houses, the Gasworks, Vegout Gardens and local festivals. “Camille would just bring clay, and groups of people would sit there and make a tile,” she says, “and in that, people would talk to each other – people that would never normally talk to each other.” […]
The swarm of bees chose the right St Kilda resident. “They lodged themselves in the ceiling of the balcony,” says philosopher Karen Green, pointing out the loungeroom window of her apartment on Robe Street. After a professional failed to remove them, Green, knowing something about bees, got a protective suit and a box and tried to cajole them inside herself. “They didn’t move for weeks,” she tells me, “Until one day they swarmed – flew over the road and completely covered a car!” The car owner wasn’t impressed, so Green donned her suit and managed to swoosh the swarm into the box. “It was during COVID lockdowns, so everybody was very bored – it was a bit of drama and entertainment.” The driver was relieved, and Green had the beginnings of her very own hive. How did she know what to do? In 1977, Green was studying a Bachelor of Philosophy at Oxford University, and her boyfriend kept bees. “He went away and asked me to open up the hives and take out the queens,” she tells me, a delicate process which involves removing the larger queen cells from the hive. Green succeeded with the first hive, but the second […]
“The moment he pointed a rifle at me, our five kids screaming in the corner, was the moment I decided to get outta there,” Helen Phillips tells me. It was 1974, Cootamundra, New South Wales, and her husband was a violent alcoholic. “He said ‘You’re done’. And I said ‘If you’re gonna do it, pull the trigger, cause you will never get another chance. I’ve had ya – you’re done yourself.” The familiar cycle of apologies came – “Oh baby, I’m sorry, please forgive me” – but she knew she had to leave. “No longer would my children watch me with black eyes. We were gonna make a new start.” With fifty bucks in her pocket, Helen and her kids got on a train to Melbourne and fronted up at Travellers Aid, which immediately found her a post as a live-in nanny in Ashburton. On the second night there, her new boss came into her bedroom – “he expected me to sleep with him – this had been going on with every person who nannied.” With the phone in the house blocked, Helen went to the next-door neighbour for help; “she told me I’m about the tenth person, use my […]
In the park beside the National Theatre stands The Great Wall of St Kilda. A patchwork of ceramic tiles, the central mural shows our eclectic suburb: palm trees, Palais, pier and people all presided over by Bunjil the eagle. Around the outside, 600 smaller tiles were designed by members of the local community. Bright and inviting, passersby often stop to stare up at the Wall, examining its detail. The close observer may notice the name Robyn Szechtman painted on a tile. In 2010, Robyn, then a community development worker with Port Phillip council, teamed up with artist Camille Monet to bring the wall to reality. “Talbot Reserve was redesigned in the mid-2000s,” she tells me, “which did unfortunately design homeless people, sex workers and drug users out of it. We felt that the Wall was a tribute to the whole range of people that make up our community.” Tiles were designed at rooming houses, the Gasworks, Vegout Gardens and local festivals. “Camille would just bring clay, and groups of people would sit there and make a tile,” she says, “and in that, people would talk to each other – people that would never normally talk to each other.” […]
The swarm of bees chose the right St Kilda resident. “They lodged themselves in the ceiling of the balcony,” says philosopher Karen Green, pointing out the loungeroom window of her apartment on Robe Street. After a professional failed to remove them, Green, knowing something about bees, got a protective suit and a box and tried to cajole them inside herself. “They didn’t move for weeks,” she tells me, “Until one day they swarmed – flew over the road and completely covered a car!” The car owner wasn’t impressed, so Green donned her suit and managed to swoosh the swarm into the box. “It was during COVID lockdowns, so everybody was very bored – it was a bit of drama and entertainment.” The driver was relieved, and Green had the beginnings of her very own hive. How did she know what to do? In 1977, Green was studying a Bachelor of Philosophy at Oxford University, and her boyfriend kept bees. “He went away and asked me to open up the hives and take out the queens,” she tells me, a delicate process which involves removing the larger queen cells from the hive. Green succeeded with the first hive, but the second […]