Derham Groves

That much maligned pop group The Monkees toured Australia in 1968. The cost of a ticket to see them at Festival Hall in Melbourne was only $2.10. Inflation is a truly frightening phenomenon.

The American-Chinese actress Anna May Wong performed at the Tivoli Theatre in Melbourne in 1939. Currently I’m doing research on the actress and her time in Australia. Few movie stars can surpass Anna May’s beauty and style.

‘Knowing how much the Chinese believe in lucky charms, I looked around the dressing room for some sign of this but as I could see no indication my curiosity prompted me to ask. Anna May picked up a quaint tiny shoe that had been fashioned into a pincushion, and told me it was her mascot, for it had actually enclosed one of her feet when she was a baby. When I pointed out that it resembled a boy’s shoe, she related the fact that, until the age of 10, she was brought up as a boy. It seems the first child in the family was a girl and then Anna May arrived. Her father was so annoyed because he had no heir to his name that he ordered Anna to be considered as such for nearly 10 years. It was her sister who kept Anna’s first shoes, and today she keeps the other one of the pair as a luck-bringer.’ Jonathan Swift, Sun, 13 June 1939.

Our little mud hut at Linton has lots of gaps. Once we arrived to find a possum fast asleep in the loft. And on the last two visits a tiny bat had taken up residence beneath my old overcoat hanging behind the door (photo, bottom right). It’s warm and dark under there. Thankfully the kangaroos have stayed outside…so far.

My old buddy Michael Jorgensen (left) had his fourth crime novel Kidnap reviewed in today’s Age (far left). Mick has also published around 20 books, including two by me. A publisher who isn’t deceitful, who isn’t a phony, and who pays his bills in full and on time — INCREDIBLE!

Exhibition curated by Derham Groves.

Recently a group of third-year architecture students at the University of Melbourne had to read a Sherlock Holmes story and then portray the victim in that story by altering the appearance of a Barbie or Ken doll. (I got this idea from the ‘Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death’, 18 dollhouse-sized dioramas of grisly crime scenes that were built by the International Harvester heiress Mrs. Frances Glessner Lee during the 1940s.) They produced a horrifying collection of dolls that had been bludgeoned, garroted, hanged, mauled, poisoned, scared, shot, stabbed and strangled. (The three featured dolls were constructed by Chen Gong, Nicholas Antoniou and Morsaleena Moytree Paruque.)

The dreamy eyed Geoff Corke in his cardboard crown as King Corky and the very lovely Susan Gaye Anderson appearing on The Tarax Show. What a colourful set for black and white television! We never guessed.