Royal Park station

On Friday I began photographing train stations near my home with Royal Park Station; impressively maintained for the tourists visiting the Zoo, the station looks like it was only just built.

Clifton Hill Station

Flinders Street

Flinders Street from across the road in a sushi bar.

Anstey Station, on the Upfield line

North Melbourne

The first photo I took a few years ago with mere flukery, the second with a proper digital camera, but also by happy accident.

Stations

I went out as far as Laverton today, to take pictures; I have been lent a digital SLR camera and I am trying to learn how to use it. So I have decided to try to photograph as many of Melbourne's Suburban Train stations in a week as I can manage. I'll put the interesting images up here. I am limiting my brief to those stations which appear in my Val Morgan Detailed Street Map of Melbourne, which, judging by the advertisements for Valiants and Drive In Theatres, was printed in the late 1960's.
In the coming months the stations I can't get to I will tell an autobiographical story about, or make up some alternative history, or draw the station; I've got a good drawing of Footscray, in a journal somewhere.

Reconnoitering

Last night on a cold Melbourne evening I saw a man wandering up and down High Street Northcote clutching the front of his slightly too small short-sleeved shirt. I noticed he was also wearing jeans that didn't allow him to sit comfortably on a Tram stop and leave his arse unexposed to the chill northern breezes. Obviously an alien in a man-flesh suit, hastily acquired, a little too small; reconnoitering.

My Desk

This is my desk whilst I was working on my large map of the inner city of Maversham. The spoon is an improvised burnishing tool I used to transfer the pencil on the back of the tracing paper image onto the posh paper. I was using the top of a biro, but a spoon proved more effective.

Eric & Elvis

These are the sons of Sidonie.

Sidonie Frith

U.S.I.S. Map

Marvellous Maversham

I am showing some of my pictures from the work I have been doing creating a world.
In the red room at the Brunswick Street Gallery in Fitzroy Melbourne. It will be on until the 22nd of September.

Hair

In a meeting full of conflict and dissension, I draw an intricate hairdo.

Dream

I am re-drawing some of the pages of my graphic novel; this is a reject drawing because I tore the paper whilst rubbing off the masking medium.

... also endpapers

Zine

I am making a small magazine of the All-Aloneo Archipelago pictures; this is the front cover.

Double-decker tram

I should like to give the impression, or at least cause uncertainty in the minds of my viewers that Melbourne at one time was full of double-decker trams. Is it so impossible?

An Other tram

I remember if no one else does the strange sight of the little yellow maintenance trams whizzing by late at night or early in the morning. What did they do exactly? Vacuumed up the sand from the trams' brake systems? Polished the rails? Who knows; they were cute.

A Tram

Guns, eh?

Well, I drew a bunch of AK47s during the Royal wedding, and the crowing about the murder of that man ... and there is actually no connection. I just thought I should draw something from a photo that I have no real knowledge of, and make it look pretty.

AK

Guns

A Drawing

Dream

I drew this in another fruitless meeting.
This is a character from a comic I am working on. I want to experiment with the way the character is drawn; playing with identity, perception and reality. This is probably how she would imagine herself, while others would perceive her as being harder and less dreamy.

In a frustrating meeting...

I draw this.
It has been a bit of a frustrating week so far, actually. I left my folio at West Richmond station, and received less than helpful service from the Metro employee at Clifton Hill station; how surprising. Well, perhaps I shouldn't mock the intellectually disabled. I was advised to contact the Lotht Property Offith, but as it was after 5pm, I should try next morning. What are the chances of anyone handing in an art folio? Slim I would guess.

Though not strictly situated in the All-Alloneo Archipelago, this lonely island with its handsome Irradiata Pine tree borders the huge and empty Pacific Ocean at its extreme eastern edge.

Flora of the Mysterious All-Alloneo Archipelago

Melancholia Island has a beautiful stand of Bellus amicus, as well as a small jetty. An attractive wrought iron bridge connects this island to Abdominis Maximus which lies adjacent.

The Archipelagos only 'desert' island, Infanta Utera has a single Iron Blood tree, Ferris mirmexas which is tended by Anonychomyrma ants. These fierce little ladies will attack with a burning substance anyone foolish enough to attempt to harm the tree.

The twin islands of Dormir and Torpor are submerged at high tide. They are each blessed with a single mangrove tree of the species Mankus bubox which sweats at low tide a substance said to resemble overripe brie.

A single and venerable tree graces the island of Doloris. It is the last remaining Crow Tree, Corvus perpetua, and is over 2,000 years old.

On the island of Solus Surfexus a forest of Pinus adulata hides a ruined fortress reputed to date from the founding of the 1st Empire. It is haunted by the ghosts of men and women imprisoned there on their way to slavery and death in the Great South land.

The trees of the Island of Sweetgrass are hollow and thus a disappointment to sailors wishing to re-mast a distressed ship after a storm or Kraken attack. The Felicita felicitus or 'Promise' tree however secretes a red, sticky sap which can be used as a tincture to relieve catarrh.

The lagoon of the island of Love-In-A-Fog harbours a myriad of unusual and hideous aquatic life - which need not concern us. The forests of this island consist of the Violet tree, Vulvax argenta and an accompanying toadstool which is able to grow only in its shadow. The Death Brolley or Furled Fungus of Forgetfullness is hallucinogenic, lethal in even the smallest amounts and tastes like vanilla milkshake.

This tropical tree on Memento Amori Island blossoms twice a year in May and September. It is named Rosicrucio and will cause extreme skin irritation if touched or even lightly brushed.

The attractive curves of these Boh-Boh trees (Torticollis sp; Higgly-Piggly) were planted on Princess Charlotte Island by the explorer William Dampier's consort Prince Jeole in memory of his homeland and to provide food for migratory Puce Swallows.

This single and excellent example of the Bonetown Bay Fig, Ficus macrocorpus on Scriptus Island can be seen appearing over the horizon like a large green cloud for many hundreds of miles; the white birds clustered about its abundant fruit like swarms of butterflies.

Connected by a bridge to Melancholia Island, the hilly isle of Abdominis Maximus has a forest of Potato gums, Eucalyptus tuberosa and is a delightful place to rest, perhaps indulge in some improving literature, or even a short, restorative sleep.

These three delightful isles, named for the three muses; Escophia, Lectia and Dormira each have a single example of the Giraffe tree, Cameleopardis perplexis, with its distinctive caramel coloured bark.

These mysterious trees of the genus Fagus are called by superstitious sailors 'The Corpse-Finger' tree for their pale pink branchlets and the peculiar and revolting aroma of their flowers. This island is called Longtime Dead Isle after them.

Peppermint Ice Gums, Eucalyptus glacies, grow on the land farthest south of the islands of the All-Alloneo Archipelago and can withstand extreme cold, occasionally freezing solid during the southern winter. In summer Jupiter Island is home to many peripatetic birds and bats, but during the winter months ice can stretch like a glittering bridge all the way to the unexplored (and largely theoretical) land at the South Pole.

North Melbourne Water Spirit

A triangle of land; the island between Errol, Harcourt, Courtney and Harris streets in what seems like the lowest point of North Melbourne. Next to an electricity substation is a grate; always there is the sound of running water. By the bus stop there are three Moreton Bay Fig trees, giving the whole the feel of a billabong. If there is a water spirit in North Melbourne it would live here, and would be a little cranky.

New Years Resolution

My New Years resolution is to re imagine the anti Christian philosophy of Nietzsche as tho that religion had never become the official State religion of Imperial Rome. Wish me luck!

... and Happy New Year.