What's on: April

Adelaide * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Way We Wear Easter vintage fair
Burnside Ballroom, Adelaide
Sat 23 & Sun 24 (10am-4pm), Mon 25 (12-4pm)

Brisbane * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 
Let there be rock film program (April highlights)
Cinémathèque, Queensland Art Gallery  
Martin Scorsese's film concert of The Band The Last Waltz (1978) (Sat 30 1pm)

David Bowie's final performance as Ziggy in Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1973) (Sat 30 3pm)
The Rolling Stones 1969 tour film Gimme Shelter (1970) (Sat 30 6pm & Fri 6 May)

Suitcase Rummage mini-markets
King George Square, Brisbane
Sat 2 (12-5pm)

 Sydney* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

An Edwardian Summer exhibition
Museum of Sydney, Historic Houses Trust 
(Hurry Closes Tues 26 April!)

 

 Cult Sinema film screenings  
Annandale hotel & nearby Mu-Meson Archives headquarters
(crnr Parramatta Rd & Trafalgar St Annandale) (Every week)
Check out the Easter theme with killer bunnies in Night of the Lepus (1972)!

Sydney Vintage Clothing, Jewellery & Textiles Show
Canterbury Racecourse
Fri 15 (5.30-9pm), Sat 16 (9.30am-5.30pm) & Sun 17 (10am-4pm)
Adults $14, pensioner $10, children 10-16yrs $5, under 10yrs free, family $30

Vanity Fair Vintage Fashion Market 

Paddington Town Hall

Sat 9 April (10am - 3pm) free entry

Melbourne* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Australian Centre for the Moving Image film program April highlights
It came from Kuchar, Fri 15 & 22 (9.30pm) 
The Vampire (El Vampiros) 1957 cult classic, Tue 19 (6.30pm)

ManStyle fashion exhibition
National Gallery Victoria, Fashion & Textile Gallery

11 Mar - 30 Oct

free entry

Vintage Clothes Australian vintage fashion guru Nicole Jenkins talks on ladies fashions 1920s-1960s
Cheltenham branch library, 12 Stanley Avenue, Cheltenham
Thu 7 (2pm)
free with morning tea to boot! (bookings required)



Perth* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Vintage Life Market Held on the last Sunday of the month
Darlington Hall, Owen Rd, Darlington
Last Sunday of the month (10am - 3pm)
$2 admission

Darwin, Hobart * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
please send me your vintage happenings!


Overseas* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Toronto: Get your hair cut into a chic bob while visiting the Bata Shoe Museum's exhibition
Roaring 20s: heels, hemlines & high spirits and watch a film from their 1920s film program 

   

London: admire the The Cult of Beauty: the Aesthetic Movement at the V&A in London

Vintage crack: Australian Women's Weekly treasure trove

The National Library of Australia have been keeping themselves very busy - they've just finished digitizing the first 50 year's worth of issues of the Australian Women's Weekly (from 1933 to 1982). That's 2770 magazines - from back to cover!

Best yet they've made this amazing resource accessible to us all to see, search, and enjoy on the web. The project was undertaken in association with the State Library of New South Wales (from whose collection many of the magazines were supplied) and with the permission of Australian Consolidated Press.

You can search by keywords across all issues, look at at a particular date range, read a whole issue, or best yet check out their amazing timeline of covers. It's not all kittens, kitsch and kweens. But be warned - this stuff is like vintage crack, its highly addictive! Don't be surprised if your friends and family have to stage an intervention to get you out of there..

 Check out the Australian Women's Weekly digital archive for yourself on Trove

 

Who doesn't like 5 cent records?

Here are my TOP 3 record finds from my last trip to the country. All from the same garage sale in a big box of records marked '5 cents each'. Naturally, we were like bees to a honeypot.

Number 1:  Buddy Holly masquerading as country folk trio The Browns

 

 I didn't actually know who The Browns were but the woman's face caught my eye and then I saw the inscription... 'Buddy Holly / Everyday'. Looking inside I found just that - Buddy Holly's first 7" single Everyday backed with Peggy Sue (1958, CK-3601). Both sides of that little record got plenty of rotation that weekend I can tell you. It was in excellent condition. Pity it didn't have its original sleeve - but the music is awesome. The pared down simplicity of the recording is awesome - you really feel like he's standing next to you playing.

Number 2: The Beatles - Hey Jude / Revolution 45rpm
on Apple label suitably found in a brown paper lunch bag! (A-8493).

One of eight million copies sold in 1968!
It gives me great pleasure imagining Revolution blasting out of the
family stereo in that sleepy old town where this was found.
Fittingly, John Lennon considered Buddy Holly an early influence.

Number 3: Eartha Kitt - Lovin' Spree / Under the Bridges of Paris (1953) 78rpm

 

Back from the country

The last few months have been a little disjointed as I've been back and forth to the country. The first trip was basically visiting my parents to a) spend more time with them and b) try and help my Dad relinquish some of his hording.

Not long after getting back to the city I heard that my uncle had passed away so it was back to the country for the funeral, check in with my Dad (it was his oldest and last surviving brother) and help him get down on paper the eulogy he'd been asked to deliver. It was good to be there with him, to support him in some way, and share with him his thoughts and feelings.

Helping writing the eulogy meant digging into my stoic father's memory. Aside from the usual anecdotes and factual chronology of my uncle's life there was a sudden detour. My father suddenly started crying like a small boy as he recalled a stream of events from his Depression years childhood - experiences of poverty, shame, and the small injustices dealt by life. Like so many of the pains we carry they were simple stories but sharp little memories nonetheless - ones that burr the mind and for my father, stowed deeply away and not spoken of for seventy odd years. Though I want to share these stories I think I'll wait a little while. I don't know if I have the ability to convey them with the sparse potency they deserve nor if they will be meaningful to anyone other than me and my father. Another time perhaps. But they did go a long way to explaining his eccentricities and enigmatic ways. Not to mention his incessant hording. They also brought a sharp reminder to me of what it meant emotionally to live through those long years of struggle.

I've always admired my father's ability to just get on with life in the face of adversity and I think so few of us realise that this kind of strength - I know my father isn't the only one - was forged with a great deal of quiet pain that had no place for expression- everyone was in the same boat, you were no more special, your burden no greater than any one else - so deal with it.

This can make you stronger, it can make you more generous, it can also make you a little bitter, sometimes a little meaner, a little isolated.

I'd heard Depression years stories from my Mum and Dad growing up but they were always the funny ones, or ones we at least would laugh at - like when they said their clothes were made out of flour sacks, they had no shoes or had to walk four miles to school - a hah hah hah yeah right! It's only as an adult that you realise these were understated truths. The bigger picture begins to fill out - a picture that is a lot sharper, sadder, tougher than any of our fanciful ideas of the "good old days". Sure, people like my parents are the biggest perpetrators of these fantasies but they of all people are entitled to a little spin.

Over the past years I've witnessed my father getting older and older, more frail and fragile. I've often said how reversed our respective roles become with time as our aging parents become more like children and we drift into caretaker roles. I never felt more like mothering my poor old dad then hearing his sad little childhood stories and wanted to kiss those bad memories away.

On the upside, those lean Depression years have made my Dad the best thrifting partner a girl could ask for. The day after his brother's funeral we hit the op-shops and garage sales for some therapy and were humbly rewarded.

I'll post pics of some of our finds shortly but in the meantime here's some pics of the scale-model of Sydney Central Station that I checked out there before my 5 1/2 hr train journey into country New South Wales.

 

 

Sway

He fell in love with actresses who were elegant and strong, brought down in the end by loneliness or jealousy or age, but always wittier and dressed with more flair than their rivals

  - 'Sway' - Zachary Lazar (p62 on Kenneth Anger)