Throughout the Melbourne suburbs you can see old signs and buildings that refer back to one of the most powerful social movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries: the temperance advocates. They regarded alcohol as a social evil and sought to have it banned entirely, or at least the consumption drastically reduced. This crossed my mind as I walked south from Moonee Ponds into Ascot Vale, entering ‘The Temperance Triangle’. Continue reading
A definition of the vague term ‘psychogeography’ is “the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment … on the emotions and behaviour of individuals”.
One way of exploring the psychogeography of a city or suburb is to simply drift through it, trying to sense the moments when the atmosphere changes and your mood alters correspondingly.
I felt such a shift as I walked along Holmes Road, Moonee Ponds. It was around the moment when I spotted the signage for the Chinese restaurant. The words ‘Eat Here or Take Away’, shaped out of some soft and impermanent substance, looked as if they had been half eaten themselves. Continue reading
Melbourne Circle: stories from the suburbs 