The virtual world – research and commentary on Australian arts and culture

When I established my blog ‘indefinite article’, a couple of years back, it was because I wanted to research and comment on Australian arts and culture. This is my main blog that gets most views. It seems to have taken off. I’d always thought that, given the specialist subject matter – after all it’s not a popular culture blog like a cooking one – that it would grow steadily but no more, which all along is what I had wanted. The rate of growth has surprised me. Now, I’m starting to focus on the other blogs that have played second fiddle – about short humour, gardening and cooking and creative writing.

When I first established my blog ‘indefinite article’, a couple of years back, it was because I wanted to research and comment on Australian arts and culture, something I know something about from working for over 35 years in the arts and culture sector. I could have written about other subjects but that would just be me expressing my opinions like every other man, woman and their dog (and cat) on social media. ‘Who cares?’ I thought. ‘indefinite article’ is irreverent articles about contemporary Australian society, popular culture, the creative economy and the digital and online world – life in the trenches and on the beaches of the information age. This is my main blog and it’s the one that gets most views.

Ages ago I used the phrase on this image, thinking that I had very cleverly been the first person to think of. Recently I saw the same phrase, virtually word for word, on an Internet meme. Whether my words just drifted around on their own and were picked up and reused or whether, more likely, it's just a case of a good idea appearing at the same time in many different widely separated places, is hard to tell. There are no secrets or possessions on the Internet. Here's my illustrated take on the meme.

On the morning of 25 February it passed 8,000 views and is now just over 100 views short of the next milestone of 9,000 views. It seems only a short time ago that I was celebrating having passed 7,000 views. That amount represented the total views from when I effectively started the blog, when I left the public service in late February 2014, to 25 February this year, a period of just under two years. My most recent jump of 1,000 views, from 7,000 to 8,000, took just 5.5 weeks. Three days later I was already a quarter of the way to my next thousand, 9,000 views. I seem to have settled around 1,000 views a month.

Squatting on the main road – the Old Canberra Inn is new again

The Old Canberra Inn has squatted on a main road in my vicinity for as long as I can remember – and obviously, as it was built in the 19th Century, as long as anyone else can remember. It always looked really old in that aged, stooped sort of way and, apart from acknowledging its age, I gave it no further thought over the years.

It seems to have changed hands – or maybe it’s just that I’ve finally looked at it more closely – but its a terrific local pub. I’ve already been there several times and enjoyed it thoroughly. Obviously I’m not the only one because it always seem to be busy. On the most recent night I was there a stream of fit looking people, dressed in assorted forms of exercise and sport gear popped in for drinks and meals.

Old Canberra Inn - squatting there as long as anyone can remember.

It’s part of the beer revolution, with a very tempting choice of interesting beers that actually taste like beer. I had a pint of one of Cream of the Hop experimental beers from Modus Operandi, a Northern Beaches brewer from Sydney that was a very refreshing experience.

A princess comes home – paulownia trees and Japanese wedding chests

Recently I planted a new tree in my garden – a paulownia tree. It needs a fair bit of water but it has been going great guns. I saw it at the local Farmers Market and was surprised that they were selling it, since I had thought it was rare in Australia.

Paulownia tree gets a head start in life

The reason it took me by surprise and why I bought it is that I have a Japanese wedding chest from sometime around the 1930s from the Tokyo Region. I drove to Sydney to get it and had to pack the car like some complex puzzle, moving pieces around until it all fitted. The reason I could do this is that Japanese chests like this were often used by merchants travelling around and they are made in sections clipped together that can be separated and stacked.

I must go down to the sea again – Sailor’s Thai Canteen still cooking

Here we are – driven down from Canberra to say a final farewell in Sydney to someone from Adelaide. Someone who was good at steering yachts – and guiding people. When it was all over I had to go down to the sea again. We were staying at Cremorne Point, one of those fabulous spits that stick out like a finger into Sydney Harbour, so we jumped on the ferry.

We went to a favourite spot, Sailors Thai Canteen, established by renowned chef David Thompson who has now long relocated to Bangkok, where it all originates. When he was writing his first famous cookbook he drew on the ‘memory books’ handed out at Thai cremations. These contained all the things important to the deceased, and since food is often important to Thais, frequently included a recipe or so ­– and often many. Highly appropriate, given the circumstances of our visit.

I must go down to the sea again

There were just the two of us so we kept it simple. We could hardly hear seated across from each other at the long metal bench that serves as a single table for everyone in the central corridor-like room.

Peas in a pod – food takes off

I think I may have been to Pod Food only a few times, possibly even only once, before this visit – and that was many years ago. It was good enough back then – but now it is something a whole lot more impressive.

Pod Food is in the heart of the slightly ramshackle gardening and nursery hub of Canberra, Pialligo , adjacent to the burgeoning exercise in urban growth called Canberra Airport – Canberra International Airport, no less. It was always the place you went to get large pots and even larger apples.

The entrance to Pod Food, formerly part of an operating nursery, is the sort of garden I eventually want to have.

Of late it has attracted some serious culinary action, with Pialligo Estate Farmhouse Restaurant, and its associated Smokehouse, going from strength to strength.

Vitello tonnato for a life well lived in hipster heaven

It had been quite a week and I had been crushed by too many encounters with the crazy world of Centrelink as I fulfilled my long list of aged care responsibilities. I needed cheering up so last night we ate out at the venerable Italian and Sons, the very first of the many funky venues which now enliven Braddon. The most recent innovation is a bar out the back of the restaurant that you enter, past a tall pile of firewood, from the side laneway.

It was barely 5.45 pm so I was the first arrival through the rear door and could pick any seat I chose – which I did with great enthusiasm. Unfortunately the extraction fan for their open fire wasn’t working so the stack of solid wood logs sat quietly and coldly in the corner. I had an Italian Indian pale ale beer with extra hops that I’ve had there before, a Birra del Borgo ‘ReAle Extra’ Indian Pale Ale Extra Hops from Lazio, and it was so much fun I followed it with a Spanish manzanilla sherry, the NV Delgado Zuleta 'La Goya' - Manzanilla Sanlucar de Barrameda. I was forgetting Centrelink faster than a politician forgets the last election commitment.

Vitello tonnato recipe in the international section of the classic Australian cookbook, the Margaret Fulton Cookbook, first published in 1968

Once in the main front part of the restaurant, having managed to snare a couple of places perched at the bar, I was confronted by a choice that made resistance futile. I began with the focaccia bread with rosemary – a simple but dazzling delicacy that caught the attention of Sydney food reviewers from the very start.

Eating out in a cold, funky city – Canberra comes of age in the Asian Century

Eating out in a cold, funky city. On a day and night which was bitterly cold – as cold as Canberra has been this year, with the hint of snow clouds overhead – I was reminded why I live here.

It had been a long day, with a bus ride to one of my favourite national cultural institutions, the National Library of Australia, to hear a talk like a detective novel, about the search for Indigenous words hidden in the vast collection. In a preview of the remainder of the day I had a tour of the newly refurbished Reading Room and Special Collections Reading Room, fitted out by local design firm, Designcraft, just as it should be, like some luxury apartment for books and manuscripts.

The National Library with Mt Ainslie wrapped in mist behind over the Lake.

At the end of the day I ventured forth again for the launch of the new Craft ACT design store, ‘Agency’, in the heart of hipster heaven, the rapidly funkifying precinct in Braddon. When I moved here almost 15 years ago, Braddon’s main feature was its car yards. The new store features top end craft and design work – you can even buy the lighting, shelving and display cases and hand-made clothes hangers – but not yet, we’re still getting in stock!