After being implored by friends to go at least once (and actually going there for a Brunswick Music Festival gig!), I decided to bite the bullet on a Monday arvo and make my way up.

The Moreland is situated at the very border of Brunswick with Coburg (well, the part of Coburg that honestly feels more Brunswick than Coburg). I wish I had more to write about in regards to my commute there, but it was a short, uneventful tram ride across inner suburbia.

The exterior of the building can be thought of as foreplay for what’s inside the building. The sandstone-coloured, columns-galore, greek-ish text, ungodly massive tinted glass sliding door, mess of a building is basically screaming ‘Hey! You! Yes, you! Stop fucking around and come inside!’. Alas, like a moth to an olive-oil lamp, I walked in.

The inside of the building is grand. Much more spacious than the exterior lends it to seem, with a chokingly hinted at ‘al fresco’ theme that’s more Vegas than the actual Mediterranean. A Statue of David stands in the middle of the room, measuring probably about 4 metres tall. A streetlamp is positioned with gusto in amongst the maze of tables. The ice-cream bar is accompanied by an indoor sidewalk-sign to emulate that authentic street food feel.

One significance about the bistro is that it feels chaotic enough to offset the chaos of Sydney Road, just outside its doorstep. Just outside is ‘the longest shopping strip in the Southern Hemisphere’ and let me tell you, as someone who has spent many a late night wandering around the coronary artery of the North, this place is busy 24/7. People who jaywalk Sydney Road should be given a fucking badge, or keys to the city, or something. The people who operate the Moreland Hotel deserve even more than that for realising a place that feels shielded away from all of the hustle and bustle that’s just a wall away.

Don’t let the decor fool you — this place is absolutely a suburban Bistro/TAB/Corner pub at heart. The Keno-screening display above the bistro’s bar will happily let you know that, as will the 80’s-dad-soft-rock blaring gently through the speakers, as if you’re in a supermarket in *insert Hollywood film here*. The scrawny, pimply-faced teen, ready to apathetically serve you in his black branded polo top. Their expectation of you to cut through a chicken breast without the help of a steak knife.

Depending on how you look at it, the food is either exactly what you’d expect from a place so… decorated, or nothing like what you’d expect at all. There’s a saying that goes along the lines of, ‘you can always tell how good a bistro is by its chicken parma.’ Trust me, I’d know. I came up with the damn saying. The meal was painfully mediocre, and I could probably name every good thing about it for every thing I didn’t really like — the chips were crispy, but powdery on the inside, as if they had been cooked from frozen (fair enough, I get it). The chicken was dry, but really well crumbed. The sauce and cheese layer was, well… what made it a parma, but the arrangement of the salad was confusing (see above picture with layer of julienned carrots on top).

The $7 pint was pretty sweet, though. What the fuck is this place doing charging happy hour prices during the saddest hour (12pm) on the saddest day (Monday) of the week? Come to think of it, the meal as a whole came together at a reasonably priced $22. Which felt bizarre, because the venue just looks ‘expensive’. Not in a fine dining way, hell no. You’ve seen the photos I took. This place and all of its bells and whistles just look high maintenance. It’s absolutely bizarre when lined up with literally everything else about the place, which otherwise felt normal.

All in all, I left the Moreland Hotel about as confused as I was upon entering. I felt like I ‘got’ it, whatever that means, but what I got was so many different things that still didn’t make sense together.

But MAYBE that’s the point. MAYBE the experience of being there is about allusions to other places that somehow feel specific and in your face, but vague. It’s an environment that’s fun for the whole family, where you can let your kids play in a model replica of a building infamous for bloody fights to the death. I paid for my meal and walked back onto Sydney Road, the actual outside midday sky blinding me for a bit because of how dark the bistro was.

Moreland Hotel, Corner Sydney & Moreland roads, Brunswick.

I just want to start this post off by talking about suburban malls, and about how they (sometimes, rarely) get more shit than they deserve. Soulless, depressing, dystopian. So much so that there’s an entire YouTube series based entirely on abandoned malls. Call it bias, or just call me a weirdo, but I feel like there’s something about these kinds of places that are… full of life?

I’ll show you what I mean, and talk about such a mall my family and I would do our shopping in, in Sunshine. Off-brand outlet store after off-brand outlet store. Exposed walls and ceilings in an area of Melbourne where they’re not quite (shudder) cool yet. A discount grocery store proudly selling groceries that are either close to or past their use by date. A Dimmey’s (sorta self-explanatory). A fresh produce market that I seem to always spend $20 at, no matter how little or how much I buy. An Aldi (again, sorta self-explanatory. No shade meant by it, quite the opposite in fact).

But, in amongst all of this, there’s one thing that genuinely makes me like this mall over most other suburban malls. Where else can you get your hair cut for 10 fucking dollars?? Tell me, please. Sunshine is quite a way out from where I live now, I only ever really head out that way to visit family. A couple of months ago, I decided I would head out that way to get my hair cut at one of the couple of places my mum would take me to as a kid — Glamour Hair & Nails. My surprise isn’t at the fact that they’re doing haircuts for $10 now, oh no. I’m surprised because they were also $10 about 10 years ago, when my mum would take me for a haircut. For the many years this place has existed not once have they thought to raise their prices on a simple hair trim.

The actual shopfront is (extremely) unassuming, and there’s no ceiling to the actual shop, just the same exposed one that’s a part of the bigger building. Does that mean this shop is technically a stall? Anyway, so I walk in and get seated straight away for a haircut. The actual haircut experience itself was fairly standard — cape on, shave off the sides, wet hair, clip off the top with scissors bit by bit. It was what was happening around me that felt like this place was pretty special though.

Call me ‘that guy’, but Sunshine encapsulates everything I weirdly miss about living in suburbia. The no-frills casualness (one of the employees of what was quite obviously a ‘family and friends’ business playing with his child in the store). The ‘cash only’ signs that were the antithesis of tap and go ‘card only’ places that are popping up more and more in the inner city. People who aren’t doing what they’re doing predominantly for fun, but because it’s a living, and often the most realistic living for them in a society that isn’t as accessible to first-generation migrants as it likes to think it is. Doesn’t mean that they’re not good at what they do. In fact, I’d argue it’s because of this fact that they take what they do in their stride, and pride themselves in their work.

Don’t get me wrong, there are still places like this in Brunswick and, hell, even in Fitzroy. But what I miss is these ‘old Melbourne’ places being the rule rather than the exception. I’m far more than a little bit skeptical that Sunshine will stay the way it is for much longer, but until then, I’m happy to soak up the atmosphere of an area of Melbourne I’m proud to say I’m from. Even if nowadays I’ll walk into a pho restaurant in Sunshine to overhear a white couple in their 40’s talk about a SCOBY a friend gave to them before asking the waiter what ‘Hi — en’ means.

Glamour Hair & Nails

Address: T17/324–328 Hampshire Rd, Sunshine VIC 3020

Ph: 0411 177 220

This post was originally posted on my main blog, brampolatkesen.com.

Queen’s College, Parkville

This college, founded by the University of Melbourne in 1887, was too tree-lined for me to get a proper view on Street View (I had to pull up a winter photo). I imagine it’s so passers-by and people who drive past it don’t get into accidents while trying to make sense of its complex energy. There is no fucking way a building as old as this, looking the way it does, and FACING A CEMETERY (Melbourne General Cemetery) isn’t haunted in some way. For the low price of around $30,000 a year while studying at Unimelb, you can live (and probably die) in Queen’s College.

Watswool Woo(l) Brokers, West Footscray

The string of industrial buildings along Sunshine Road in West Footscray are all pretty derelict, which lends the street as a whole to feeling pretty cursed. But there’s a difference between cursed and haunted, the latter of which this building definitely is. As a kid, my mum would drive into the city to pick up my dad from work (he doesn’t drive), and this would be one of the buildings we’d pass. Passing this building, it isn’t that difficult to imagine hearing the wool auctions taking place, to see people loading massive crates of the stuff into pickup trucks or vans. It doesn’t seem at all maintained; the fencing placed around it has been broken into, the grass patchy and wild, the lettered signage falling off slowly, one by one, and the grotesques of a sheep’s head on each end of the street-facing side, their piercing gaze staring into your soul. Compelling you to take off that woollen jumper (or it could just be summer. You decide).

McDonald’s, Clifton Hill

You know how buildings owned by fast-food companies often have a certain ‘look’ to them? Most McDonald’s stores look fairly similar. Their buildings are normally more modern in architecture, incorporating the brand colours, and offering an inoffensive, soul-crushing aesthetic. The building itself is one of many things that tie down to the experience, everything about said experience screaming ‘McDonald’s’.

That isn’t the case at all for this store. Imagine being drunk or stoned with your friends, and suggesting a Macca’s run. While traipsing and winding through the streets of North Fitzroy and Clifton Hill, you come across this two-storey art deco building, one of the most intact examples of its kind in the city. Situated on Queens Parade, this heritage-listed store is often called ‘the most beautiful McDonald’s in the world’. If that sentence alone doesn’t haunt you, I don’t know what will.

Queen Victoria Market, CBD

I could make a cheap joke here about this place’s status as a tourist trap being the source of its haunted-ness. And that’s a good part of it (trying to walk through the market is a fucking nightmare). But there’s more to it than that. In a part of Melbourne where most things are open until fairly late, there’s something pretty cursed about an area as large as the Queen Vic being completely shut down by 3pm (5pm on a good day). I also recall an exchange student from California telling me, a couple of months ago, about how the car park was originally the site of Melbourne’s first cemetery. I was staying the night at his apartment, which looked over the market. I didn’t get much sleep last night. Was it because I found him cute? Actually, yeah, partly.

Amcor Paper Mill, Alphington

Funnily enough, this was the building that inspired me to write this piece. I can recall times I’ve driven past it with friends before, but not intentionally. Literally the only times we’ve driven past it are when accidentally finding our way onto the Eastern Freeway. After doing some research, there is literally nothing about this building that isn’t haunting. The company the building belonged to was fined in 2008 for dumping oil into the Yarra River, adding to an already pretty extensive history of pollution and corruption.

Now? They’ve sold the building off to developers, who are turning the land into soul-less ‘smart’ housing that boring people will move themselves and their matched Ikea furniture into, living their boring lives. Travelling to their boring, 9–5, Monday to Friday jobs in their boring smart cars to go home, watch boring prime time commercial TV and eat boring food for dinner before going to bed at half past boring in the evening. Doomed, from beginning to end, and even after the building is gone. It makes my blood boil.

Originally published at cursedmelbourne.com on January 28, 2019.

Here’s what you will need:

• Water
• Sugar
• Flour

Step 1

Order food from an Indian restaurant which will arrive in approximately forty minutes. That gives enough time to make the wheatpaste and have the food arrive nice and hot.

Step 2

Bring your one container’s worth of water to a boil.

Step 3

Get your rice ready for dinner, because you’d rather cook the rice yourself than spend an extra $4.

Step 4

Cut the bag open with a bread knife because you couldn’t find where the scissors had been moved to since you last used them. If you know where your scissors are in the house, those will work fine too.

Step 5

Wash your rice, rinsing it repeatedly until the water runs clean. The ratio when you put it in the rice cooker should be 1 parts rice to 2 parts water.

Step 6

Refer to the recipe you’re using, which calls for 3 tablespoons of flour to a cup of water- shit, how much water did I put in?

Step 7

Once you’ve figured out that it was 10 cups, convert 1 tablespoon into grams and multiply that amount by 30- SHIT, THAT MUCH FLOUR?

Step 8

*sigh*… Measure out your flour.

Step 9

Actually, fuck it — eyeball it and mix in some water. Use a potato masher to get rid of any lumps until the mixture becomes a thin paste. If your kitchen, unlike mine, has a whisk, that’ll work too.

Step 10

Have your delivery order come twenty minutes earlier than initially planned. Comment on how early it was to the driver. Feel like a bit of a dick because, normally, having your dinner delivered to you that early is a good thing.

Step 11

Mix the flour paste in with the water and mix constantly until it starts to bubble.

Step 12

Transfer it to the container.

Step 13

Refer to your recipe again, because this is when you put in the sugar — ‘(added strength)’? WHAT THE FUCK IS ADDED STRENGTH SUGAR?

…if you, like me and probably everybody else on the planet, don’t have added strength sugar, sub in the type of sugar you do have. I used raw sugar.

Step 14

Put your now complete wheatpaste aside to cool.

Step 15

Eat your now lukewarm goat madras.

This was originally posted on cursedmelbourne.com.

Back to the Halloween party though. My housemates and I ended up pulling a (honestly not that) surprisingly bougie spread together. Devils on horseback (with prosciutto!). Caviar and crackers. Quails stuffed with brandy-soaked grapes, wrapped in vine leaves (that I only found out at around that time were growing in our courtyard!). Sangria. One of my housemates joked for weeks afterward about how we became the side of Brunswick we (by ‘we’ I mean the entire household) so hated. They’re wanting to be running buddies with a friend/pretty much (like 100m away from us) neighbour of ours though, so I guess the gentro badge joke is on them.

Besides, I’m the one that thought it would be a good fucking idea to cook a paella in a wok. I feel like that… actually makes me some weird kind of gentro? I mean, I’m currently in Byron Bay, and have written this on a stomach full of the most caucasian-ised Mexican food I’ve ever had (and I live in Australia, so that’s a bold claim to begin with). I’m some sort of gentro, whether I like it or not. I mean, you kind of absorb it when you live somewhere like Brunswick. I now run a (two!) blog(s!), I’m planning a radio show on a community station that’ll have local musicians on it talking about place and how it affects the unconscious in their practice — you get the picture.

We all agreed to do the cooking for the party in the days leading up to and on the day of the party. Because I was only responsible for the one dish (and mulled wine, which can be made beforehand AND ACTUALLY BE GOOD.) I decided to do it on the day, only to discover that I STILL left it too early. I was just so pumped to make this paella that I couldn’t wait. That, ironically (apart from the fact IT WAS MADE IN A WOK), was the reason for it being nowhere near as good as it could’ve been. My plan was to initially cook the paella, which was actually great freshly made, then put it in the fridge before warming it up again in the wok. It had all the right ingredients in it, Arborio (I couldn’t find Calasparra until afterward, when I found out the house had it all along) rice, a $3 bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, green beans, calamari rings, mussels, chicken, fish stock, and saffron, not in that order (not that I would know the order of how these things get put in, anyway. I only ever blindly follow recipes unless I’ve made the dish a million times.) It developed a nice crust on the bottom, which I guess is the point of a paella to begin with.

2pm. Our kitchen fridge was so full of food that there was no room for the paella. This meant going across the local park to a friend’s house, and putting the food in her fridge. She didn’t have enough room for the pan though, so I said goodbye to the socarrat (the Spanish name for the paella crust but honestly if it’s in a wok can I even call it that?), transferred it into a metal bowl of hers, rearranged her entire fridge without her permission, and let it chill until the actual party. I brought the empty pan home to wash, though.

This… let’s call it a pilaf from now on, was collected at around 9pm. I spent ages reheating it in the wok, stirring it around (THE COMPLETE FUCKING OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU SHOULD DO WITH A PAELLA), until it was warm and kinda crispy (and not just because the stirring action was so vigorous it actually snapped off parts of the mussel shells).

Look, it at least tasted fine. My housemates, being the kind souls they are, decided to focus entirely on that in the pilaf. “This has to be one of the best paellas I’ve ever tasted.” My drunk, high, tired from cooking, everything heart accepted the compliment toward the pilaf. I’m honestly not too sure if anybody else actually ate it though. It was a stupid party dish to begin with. Parties go on for hours and the food normally stays around for that long. Literally the only party a paella is good for is a dinner party, and that’s why I’m looking forward to actually making a proper fucking paella pretty soon (a few of my friends and I want to get a weekly dinner party rotation type thing started — fuck, I am way more gentro than I would like to admit.)

This was originally posted on cursedmelbourne.com.

I’ve also freegan-ed the shit out of my room and, bar a vintage suitcase that is used as more of a display piece/actual suitcase (which I only picked up for $20, anyway), haven’t paid for a single piece of furniture in it. It was only as I was planning this piece that I realised how Melbourne that is.

¯\_(👁)_/¯ on Twitter

Sydney queer scene: fetishisation of wealth Melbourne queer scene: fetishisation of poverty

Having my room entirely be a mix of hard rubbish, stuff people would’ve otherwise thrown out and stuff that came with the house wasn’t something I actively seeked out as a goal, though admirable, I guess. So, where did my furniture come from?

Dresser, Fan and Mirror

These things all came with the house, which is why I grouped them together.

I can still remember the day I first moved in to see the drawers placed awkwardly in the middle of the room. It’s fairly light, and even with its drawers full I’m able to push it around (though it does ride up against the clearly DIY-ed carpet).

I have no idea how the mirror hangs, but I’m glad it does. The mirror had the cutest writing on it, which I’ve since accidentally rubbed away by cleaning it. ‘It’s a good day to have a good day.’ Cute until my fucking stupid meme ass brain googled the phrase and suddenly remembered that ditty.it meme.

I originally thought the fan belonged to a housemate of mine. I didn’t even notice it in the house until maybe a couple of months in, and used it for the first time when I was toasting spices in my kitchen-without-a-working-exhaust-fan. I’m not going to entirely blame the kitchen — I was toasting powdered paprika which wouldn’t have made the air of the entire house noxious weren’t it in the pan to begin with. I decided to use the fan against an open window, an idea that probably would’ve worked about as well as just opening the window without the fan.

Bed

The bed itself got moved in two different stages — The mattress came in the first day I did, and the bed base followed about four months after.

The first I knew about the mattress was actually at a gig of a friend of mine, Al, who also ended up being the reason I moved. My now housemate, Earnest, was also at the very same gig, and is good friends with him. We left Boney and wandered through the streets of the CBD on a Thursday night. While trying to find somewhere for dinner, crossing an intersection, Al mentioned he had a spare mattress he was wanting to get rid of. I, not wanting to see it go to waste (my inner Filo really shining through), but also not having a car and Al living a two minute walk from me at the time, agreed to take it the day I moved in.

Then came the fun part of actually moving the mattress. After moving all of my other things into the new house from my parents’ place (thanks, sister), I made my way to my friend’s house. We’re separated for most of that distance by a flat park with a football ground in the middle. Earnest, Al and I all moved this queen-sized mattress out of the doorway, across the park, and through the walkway that leads to my house, which is at the back of the lot. I left myself to actually pop the mattress into my room once it was actually in the house.

The bed base was actually from the other house’s — for lack of a better term — ‘lead tenant’, Sandra. I got a message from her while pet-sitting for a friend in North Melbourne. ‘I have a bed base I want to get rid of, would you like it?’ Of course! I talk to her, try to arrange a time to pick it up, you know the drill.

So, I get home, fairly tired after caretaking a six month old Kelpie and a two year old cat who don’t get along well at all, to a queen-sized bed base, turned onto its side, right in the middle of my room. My other housemate, Emlyn, sees my fairly stunned reaction. ‘Yeah, we moved it over here to see how you would react’. It was a mix of perplexed and happy. My want for a bed base, to make my bed really ‘feel’ like a bed, overrode the tiredness, which quickly hit again like a bag of bricks as soon as I put the bed together.

Chair and Desk

I’m about as surprised as you are that a chair and desk in as good a condition as these ones were free.

I picked them up through a friend of someone in a Facebook group I am in, who was moving to Germany. My sister’s partner agreed to help me move the stuff to my place, but as he lives in Sunshine West, I figured it would be better for me to go to my parents’ in Sunshine so he could pick me up from there, drive to Footscray to pick up the items, then weave our way to Brunswick East without having to go back and forth. On top of the chair and desk, I also ended up nabbing a speaker set and amplifier for $25. I don’t care how shitty the sound coming out of them is, a price that low for a speaker system is pretty much free, and I had been letting my record player collect dust for about a year. Not anymore.

We make our way to the place in Footscray. Growing up where I did, I only really knew of Footscray as what lay west of the train tracks. Crossing over the tracks meant being somewhere that felt fairly foreign — the streets are wider. Remnants of old but still active industria (as is evident by the trucks, the noise, and the smell) sit side by side with construction sites for massive tower luxury apartments.The flat we drove to was pretty much on the edge of the Maribyrnong, one side of our view dominated by the port’s cranes and an endless sea of shipping containers. Melbourne’s disastrous attempt at a ‘we’re a big city’ wheel is just after the docks. You have to pass through these before you can enter the CBD, your vision tells you.

We loaded all of the things into his SUV, then drove off to my house. Over the Maribyrnong. Zipping through the inner north-west. Kensington. Flemington. North Melbourne and Parkville. Small, old-timey workers’ cottages interrupted by factories, interrupted by public housing flats, interrupted by Royal Park and the cemetery. Everything cascading into one another. Though we didn’t drive past it, I pointed out how close my mother’s first place when she moved to Australia was, at a block of flats in Brunswick West. Her first home of independence became mine, which was taking shape just that bit more that day.

We finally reached my house, and I told my sister’s partner to go through the back alley, allowing us to avoid the walkway. I had discovered a couple of weeks before, thanks to a housemate’s brother, that the back gate was actually just one massive sliding door we could use to get the furniture inside with ease.

Wardrobe

I actually found these in the same Facebook group as the desk and chair, but this time around was picking it up from a friend.

Originally located in Preston, this wardrobe was the shortest car trip I made for any piece of furniture. Still didn’t make it easy, though. In fact, it was probably the most difficult out of anything in my room.

After bouncing between asking Facebook and my parents for help picking up the wardrobe, one of my housemates offered to borrow their brother’s ute to help transport it.

Then came the day. I messaged the person I was picking it up from before work, letting them know I’d be there at around 5pm to get the wardrobe. They said they would be out by then, but would leave their house key in the post box for me. And so my housemates and I set off.

Drive up along Bell Street. Turn right and cross the creek. Keep going until you hit the road with the tram line and turn left. Getting there was simple enough. Retrieve the keys from the postbox. Walk to the unit at the very end of the block of flats. Go up a narrow flight of stair — oh shit. This might not be as easy as I thought it would be. And I didn’t think it was going to be that easy to begin with. I open the door and, thankfully, the wardrobe is already in the doorway, which leaves us only the stairway to carry it down.

It was a massive challenge trying to get it out of the doorway and down the stairs though. We had it on its side — easier to carry, but literally impossible to get down (it kept on riding against the brick wall). We decided, after a good half an hour of trying to do the physically impossible, to bite the bullet, carry it upright, and just hope that nobody got crushed between ~100kg of wood and jagged concrete, which thankfully didn’t happen.

We tried everything to actually get the wardrobe loaded into the ute. Carrying it to prevent it scratching. Dragging it on the ground with a giant rubber mat we found in the driveway. Getting rid of some of the pieces of wood to make the wardrobe lighter (not intentional. One of the wooden bars on the top actually fell off). Driving the ute closer and, eventually, getting the damn thing into the tray. There were tie-down straps in the trailer, but because we forgot to actually take them out before loading the wardrobe we didn’t have access to the tightening strap. Thankfully, Emlyn was able to tie a fairly secure, fairly tight knot in the strap. I don’t think I’ve ever been more glad to know a former Scout more than that day. We try to close the gate, to no avail, hoping that the singular strap keeping the wardrobe from sliding off of the ute will do the job, hop back in, and zip off.

Driving in Melbourne, speaking as someone who, while not a driver myself, has been in a whole lot of cars, is a very involved and intense experience. This is more so during peak hour. This is ESPECIALLY the case when you have a wardrobe questionably secured to the back of a ute with a gate that won’t close because the wardrobe is in the way. Anyway, so we’re zipping down Bell Street at 6 in the evening at a cruisy 30 kilometres an hour, extremely conscious of our status as the unintentional bad guys on a major road during peak hour. It’s only a five minute or so drive, but it felt much longer than that. It probably actually was much longer than five minutes because of how cautious we were and how slow we were going. Turn left. Go a bit further down than the road we’d normally turn on so we can access the back lane. Open up the back fence. Struggle to get the wardrobe out and leave it on the cobblestone while we have a breather. Discover that it’s going to rain soon. Have a friend from across the road come over to help. This happened over the space of a couple hours but involved so many things that time seemed to just zip by.

We finally managed to get it into the house, the wardrobe being just big enough to fit through the doorway. In good time, as well, as it had started to rain shortly after. I took care of the rest of the wardrobe’s journey, it being easily slid across the carpet floor.

So, what can we learn from all this? Getting shit at absolutely no cost is great, of course! But it also doesn’t mean you have to pretend like it’s some random assortment of items that don’t make a room feel lived in. I’ve been really self-conscious about this article sounding like one massive flex, because it can lean far too easily into that territory. But the items in my room make sense together. Sure, maybe it’s not in a ‘matched IKEA set’ way, but I don’t feel like that’s my energy anyway. I’m not asking you to force a story for everything in your room, but being able to see story in things sure does help you value them more.

It’s probably a good time for something like this to come out onto the internet, anyway. Find stuff that sparks joy for you, especially if it doesn’t spark joy in others who are trying to get rid of said stuff.

Gordon White on Twitter

Given how many of you are talking about that Marie Kondo programme, next week will probably be the best time in fifty years to hit up the thrift store. https://t.co/dTta568u7I

This article was also published on my blog, cursedmelbourne.com.

For most of its existence, Olympic Doughnuts took the form of a decrepit van Nick Tsiligiris bought from a friend, who worked with him in a cheese factory at the time. He parked next to Footscray Station in 1979, plugged his van into the main power, and from that point onward, for the next 37 years, dedicated his life to the business.

At first, business was quiet, but as time passed, more and more people bought his doughnuts, and from that point onward the status of Olympic Doughnuts as a Footscray institution was cemented. Very little about Olympic Doughnuts changed for a lot of its existence, but why did anything need to change? Those fluffy dough balls of delight were what he became known for, with people travelling as far as Geelong to get their regular fix.

In its recent history, Footscray has been a place of rapid change. 2009 marked the beginning of a massive overhaul of Footscray Station as part of the Regional Rail Link. All of the shops in the immediate vicinity were acquired, and businesses asked to move on. Olympic Doughnuts, however, was allowed to stay where it was. Such was the existence of Olympic Doughnuts essential to Footscray as a place that keeping it open was actually a part of the redevelopment contract for the station. Where construction sheds and cranes could go was dictated by where the van was.

Initial construction was planned around the station, and for a good period of time the van stood on its own surrounded by a mess of fences and construction. As the station took shape, however, the van was moved out of necessity, a bit further down from its original spot at the station. The shop closed for a weekend (which sent local social media circles into a frenzy), it was picked up via crane, and relocated.

Community relations advisor for the rail project, Laura Stewart, consulted an architect to design a purpose-built hut for Nick when it was decided by the developers that the van couldn’t be used anymore. It was in July of 2014 that Olympic Doughnuts finally moved out of the van and into the new hut. Next to the hut, engraved in the ground, was a redesigned logo for the business, incorporating the year it opened, the Olympic rings (reworked to avoid copyright infringement), and the dolphin that became the business’s unofficial mascot. Though the hut is now home to a different vendor, the Olympic Doughnuts logo is still there, immortalising the story of the business and, by extension, Nick.

In April of 2016, the shop shut indefinitely, without warning or notice. Such was the existence of Nick so tied to his shop that people thought he had passed away, with ‘R.I.P.’ signs popping up around it in October of the same year. His daughter, Gina, had to dispel rumours of his death, but announced in January of 2017 that Olympic Doughnuts would close permanently due to Nick’s declining health.

The story of Nick and his doughnut van so strongly capture the spirit of Footscray. Simplicity, resilience, humility, creativity (the van’s proving oven consisted of a bunsen burner in a cupboard) and tireless dedication to his craft are all things that quintessentially encapsulated the simple act of being in Footscray. It was a place of adversity, of people trying to find themselves in somewhere new. It’s a story (one I see clear as day in my own family) that I find extremely fascinating — even inspirational.

As more apartments get built and boutique eateries and cafes slowly replace institutions like Olympic Doughnuts, Footscray’s ‘feel’ has changed radically (and will only continue to change over time), but it’s through the story of institutions like Olympic Doughnuts people can peek into its past.

You can watch Olympic Nick: A Donutumentary, directed by Ian Tran and premiered at the 2016 MIFF, here.

It’s bizarre to think the last time I was here was in June of last year. It feels like it’s been so much longer than that. Take that as a testament to how long this year has felt, I guess. I decided to hike here for a few hours last Sunday for a whole body sensing exercise, as well as a chance to give my (fairly) new hiking shoes their first proper use.

I woke up at around 8 to a phone that hadn’t charged overnight. I hastily packed my things for the day, had breakfast, a coffee and prepared to brave Melbourne’s public transport system (insert montage of me running for ‘connecting’ trams and trains here).

I actually enjoyed the commute, despite how I just talked about it. The rush of running for a train that left a mere 15 or so seconds after I got on, running for so long that I actually felt sick for a good portion of the ride, is what I live for. The train had power outlets, a godsend for a klutz like me who manages to get lost and rely on Google Maps a lot more often than he’d like to admit. The 50 minute train ride out to Macedon left ample time to make sure I wouldn’t get (entirely) lost.

Macedon Station bisects the small Central Victorian town it’s named after. I found an IGA on my way to the regional park, where I got a few things to snack on during my hike. The town is located at the foot of Mount Macedon, providing not just a stunning backdrop as you leave the station but an immediate, ‘in your face’ sense of adventure to come.

The solid ‘builtness’ of Macedon slowly dissolves as you head closer to the park. Before you know it, the whirr of cars, small, humble community centres and gridded roads are cross-faded by trees, the chirps of kookaburras and crickets, and dirt tracks that incline as much as 70 degrees (to say the hiking shoes were an excellent choice that day would’ve been an understatement).

It was about 6 or 7 kilometres into what ended up being a 25km hike that I realised I not just forgot to pack a bottle of water for the hike, but that it didn’t register in me at all to buy one at the IGA. Luckily for me, I discovered while trying to navigate my way up to the top of Mount Macedon (emphasis on ‘trying’, but more on that later) that there was a tea room, aptly named ‘Top of the Range’.

There is a town north-east of Macedon on the way to the summit of Mount Macedon that’s called *drumroll* Mount Macedon. It might seem redundant to have two neighbouring towns named so similarly, but these two towns have very, VERY different feels to them. Macedon feels like it was a town built out of purposeful settlement — there’s a distinct town centre, the houses older, smaller and closer together than in Mount Macedon, which feels, well…

A good friend of mine coined the term ‘bougie regional’ in a conversation last week. If it were a dictionary term, the town of Mount Macedon would probably be the picture to go along with the definition. There are some interesting architectural choices (à la dollhouse-inspired McMansion Hell) plonked on sizeable blocks of land, with elaborate front gardens, and fences and gates to match. These properties altogether felt like a small art installation in the form of a town primarily made up of 20th Century celebrity estates. Walking up winding roads through Mount Macedon just added to the headiness and exhaustion I was experiencing through dehydration, the very confusing nature of the town itself not helping.

Even though I had no water on me, I wasn’t constantly thirsty on my hike up. The mere act of being in moister or wetter environments, and practicing whole sensing — taking in my surroundings through my feet, my breathing and what I could see, taste and hear — helped to quell that dehydration a bit. This was by far the longest whole sensing walk I have been on so far (I’m still really new to whole sensing in general — the first such walk I went on was around two months ago), and it’s really strange feeling an environmental response as powerful as that.

I had a break at the summit, possibly (definitely) overcompensating for the water I had lost on my way up (I ended up getting two bottles of water, a can of Sprite and a Weis bar). The view from the top was spectacular, and felt pretty well earned after 12 kilometres. I downed the Weis bar, the Sprite AND the first bottle of water before having lunch, walking around the summit for a bit and making my way back down.

Looking back, I’m not that surprised, but Google Maps turned out to be completely useless for navigation around the entire park. The GPS managed to constantly be off by a good half a kilometre. This would’ve been fine if it were the only issue — I can follow tracks relatively fine, except the tracks Google Maps had were also way off. I found myself cutting to other tracks through thick forest, along a seemingly discontinued track that was broken mid-way through, and even walking through the campus of a nearby private school, on my way out of the park.

I then hit Mount Macedon Road, which I found out about half an hour before my phone died would lead me to Woodend, the nearest town from me with a train station. Though I ended up in a different town altogether, there was a sense of déjà vu in having the mountain once again dominate the landscape. In saying that, looking at it and being able to go ‘I was at the very top of that, got to familiarise myself with the environment for a few hours and make my way down’ provided a starkly different perspective of the mountain.

One major lesson I took away from my walk was to learn to trust my intuition, as difficult as it can be, but also to not rely on it entirely. Sometimes you’ll be given advice that is completely useless (which was the case for me trying to GPS my way through Mount Macedon), and from there it’s up to you to make your own judgement. My particularly Gen Z intuition on that day, however, resulted in me packing my phone charger but not giving a single thought about bringing a bottle of water. Make an effort to gather other judgement or help, whether that’s through friends, family, or even your own surroundings, but also learn to trust yourself.

This morning, I prepared a batch of semolina helva as part of an offering to my dad. Apart from its significance in Turkey (and the Eastern Mediterranean in general), the few childhood memories I have of my father are heavily tied with the dessert, making it the perfect thing to offer him. I make an effort to visit him every now and again, bringing some helva and spring water with me every time I go, and recounting memories I have of him.

This is something I’m still fairly new to, and the first time I performed this ritual about a month and a half ago was a strange and intense experience. Towards the end of my first visit, a crested pigeon perched itself on the top of his gravestone, looking directly at me for a few minutes before flying away. The eerieness of the whole experience and the fact that it worked was fairly overwhelming, and I found myself overcome with all kinds of emotion as I was waiting for the train back home. Ever since that day, I’ve been noticing these particular pigeons more and more around Melbourne. I’m going to his grave tomorrow, but while this is fresh in my mind I want to talk about how I accidentally discovered the perfect ritual food to offer to him.

A month and a half ago (on the eve of the beginning of the Day of the Dead, actually), after browsing some op-shops along Sydney Road in Brunswick and catching the bus home, I realised I had left my wallet on the bus. Frantic, I messaged various friends, letting them know what was going on. I’d taken cash out for the week just an hour before, and even if I could salvage my card that was a good $250 just gone. I called the bus company by the advice of a friend of mine. The bus driver had picked my wallet up and dropped it off to their depot in Reservoir, where I found it, everything still inside.

Gordon White, author, chaos magician and producer of Rune Soup, advised me that loss or dropping of money is often an indication I should feed my ancestors. Considering I’ve had multiple instances of losing money this week (from leaving cash at the supermarket register all the way to being charged for cancelling an Uber… that was unable to find me at all), I felt it was only appropriate I make time to visit, which I’ll be doing tomorrow.

Anyway, back to late October. I decided to stop by Psarakos in Thornbury to pick up some helva and a bottle of spring water, along with a picnic tablecloth to fold and plate the offering on. On the train there from the depot, I was doing a bit of curious reading on helva, when I came across an article that explained its significance in Turkey as a food that is served and prepared after a death. Though I ended up buying tahini-based helva (instead of the ritual semolina-based helva, which can’t be bought in stores anyway), I found the synchronicity of that and my own memories tied to my dad and helva very eye-opening. My dad was a massive cook, and always made everything from scratch, including helva.

Among many other things, this ritual has become a way for me to give thanks to him for what he’s done and is doing for me. Feeding me as a child, I’m now returning that favour in a way that not only ties back to my memory of him, but also ties back to place and ancestral ritual.

I’m going to set up a picture altar of him next week, so watch this space! With that, I’m hoping to try other offerings that connect to place and ancestors. One thing I want to make is çiğ köfte, a raw lamb dish from my dad’s hometown, supposedly crafted by the prophet Abraham (whom my dad named me after) with ingredients he had readily available.

So… moral of the story? If there were a practical life lesson in this for me, it’d be to look beyond a loss, instead taking the time and effort to find out what the loss is trying to teach me. But another thing I’ve learnt through this ritual is how important it is to remember and connect with your ancestors. After all, if you pay enough attention, you may just spot them walking across the street from you as you’re on your way home.

Writing this piece on the anniversary of the opening of the West Gate Bridge, I’m reminded of water’s function as a border, or barrier. Most of the New South Wales-Victoria border is water, and the same separation happens in cities, too. In Melbourne, saying that you live ‘North of the River’ instantly conjures an almost antithetical image to a typical ‘Southsider’.

Though more subtle, this separation also happens between the numerous creeks that flow through our city. A couple of weeks ago, I walked along the Merri Creek, which separates Northcote and Thornbury from Clifton Hill, North Fitzroy and Brunswick. These suburbs all get lumped in the same ‘North’ catch-all, but Northcote has always struck me as a significantly ‘quieter’-feeling suburb than Brunswick, which has Sydney Road bisecting it.

I started my walk early in the morning, at around 7am. I had slept over at an apartment in Clifton Hill — an opportune location for me to perambulate home from.

The activity around the trail solidifies its status as a recreational path. It’s very well kept, but because of how its used there are certain quirks that pop up. Melbourne is a city that’s famed for its street art, for example — the graffiti to be found along this trail caught my eye because of how markedly different it was to other art I’ve seen around the city.

As I headed into Northcote, I reached an environment so heavily saturated with trees and bush that it was easy for me to forget I was in inner-city Melbourne. A true buffer zone, separating the distinct characters of Northcote and Brunswick.

‘Tag wars’, and artists overlaying their work over one another, is especially common here, and each piece melds to become a piece of work within itself.

Major power transmission lines dominate the landscape of the Merri Creek, especially so when heading into Brunswick. Areas like the Merri Creek serve as both the lungs and arteries of Melbourne, allowing the parts of the city to breathe, and providing them with the energy they need to live. Water and electricity — the combination of which is one of mankind’s biggest warnings to each other — seem to exist harmoniously in the city. You see this in other areas, like Gardiners Creek in the south-east, as well as along the Maribyrnong River in the west.

These environments seem to generally house the city’s more ‘ghastly’ or ‘unsightly’ infrastructure — buildings that wouldn’t be present elsewhere. The Brunswick Terminal Station faces the creek, and a telephone network manhole that juts out by about 70cm can be found not that much further up.

Through most of my walk, it did feel quite refreshing to use a recreational path to get from point A to point B, but it’s something that’s still taking me time to get used to. In the weeks after the walk, I used the trail a few times to get to places that were nearby. I felt a sense of strangeness at the environment around me being where it was. My own feeling of strangeness is a testament to how we’re conditioned to see urban landscapes, versus how they actually function.

These waterways and the green strips that accompany them are vital to the city, but doubly or triply more so than most people would imagine them to be. These waterways and their status as borders or buffer zones result in them becoming the veins of the city, freeways and electricity lines duplicating their path.