He barracks for St Kilda, she’s a Tiger.
Football doesn’t necessarily define friendships, but it can shape them, adding layers, other conversations.
I call him ‘Mr Melbourne’ and several years back, in my football writing days, I interviewed him in Yarra Park for a story about landscape; about the shape of nature, the emotions it holds, how it might affect who we are, the game we play.
He burnished the idea. A gun photographer, Simon O’Dwyer, took his portrait, lying on his back on the grass, looking skyward as Melbourne always has, his St Kilda colours draped over his chest, his heart. It was a story about place, and I was hoping for the front page, where he needed to be.
But life doesn’t always work-out so easily.
Staff at the paper went on strike. The story slipped though the gaps, was published online only (see https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/footy-ground-fulfils-fundamental-human-need-20160317-gnl8bt.html
All these years later, going through the upheaval of a separation, the ground under my feet no longer certain, he texted.
Said he was re-landscaping his front yard.
Asked if I might be able to help. His hand of friendship, it looped beneath me.
Turning fifty a few months ago, I sought refuge in art. In making things.
I spent some of the day playing with murals I was working on. And painted discs cut into two redgum posts with spade bits, into colours for them.
Red, white and black for him.
Yellow and black for her.
A nod to them, this city, layers of meaning.
One post for him, one for her, with a gate in-between.
They stand now as two totems in a fence that’s like no other in Melbourne. Imbued with care, a deep respect, with consultation, rich with memory – of a time in our lives, connections made – stamped with the colours of football identity.
St Kilda, Richmond.
And what are the chances?
Last touches, and the two teams play against each other this week, a first finals together for goodness knows how long.
Andrew May and Christina Twomey are esteemed historians, the both of them..
At Andy’s professorial lecture a few years back, he took the audience on a journey through landscape, mapping the soils of Melbourne, the ground beneath us, the texture of place. Archaeological digs, shifting sands by the Yarra, market gardens, the foundations of this city.
Now at his house, on a corner block on a west-falling hill in Ivanhoe, on a natural walking trail, in lockdown he has dug-over his whole front yard, tilled the soil lovingly, tenderly, found shards and fragments of porcelain - from which he will one day make a mural - preparing the site for a new landscape. It’s a big job. Bending his back, mostly on weekends, the footy running on the radio, his has been a very public performance of digging-sifting-turning-tilling, starting a shared conversation among neighbours, passers-by.
People stopped and talked.
Strangers encouraged him, gave compliments, admiration.
He built a community library box, filled it with books.
More gathered to watch, acknowledge.
His body ached from the manual labour.
It felt good.
The earth was giving back.
The street may never be the same again.
Ivanhoe’s own Capability Brown!
Andy and Christina asked how I might be able to contribute.
They didn’t really need my help, but maybe they knew I needed theirs.
What I saw was an empty paddock with a new boundary fence (1920s-style post and woven wire), and an impressive resurrection of their water-damaged veranda, with new jarrah boards and proper drainage and sub-floor ventilation works. Andy had loosely plotted pathways, but all was negotiable.
A heavy brushwood fence divided the spaces between the front and north-facing side yard, which they were to replace with a standard treated pine paling fence. A lost opportunity, I suggested.
Their previously overgrown north-east facing yard was open now to the street.
How had this opened their lives, created new conversations, passing friendships, a newfound connection with place?
Our built forms shape our lives in so many ways. Why not a screen fence? Allow the flow of air and light through, a playful filter, and allow also an emotional and physic passing, a fluidity. Not be boxed – fenced - in.
I had a collection of hardwood roof battens (50mm by 25mm), probably ash, salvaged from a mid-century bungalow in St Kilda East, waiting for a job like this. Affix them on edge, close together, and it creates a pleasing texture of timber, like a dense forest, warm, organic, nature’s rhythm, a screen of trees that viewed from an angle cannot be seen through.
They liked it. And so we began.
Not all batten fences are the same. Some are better than others, a few still are quite beautiful.
Least pleasing are those built from treated pine, painted, with a 50:50 ratio of solid to void. It’s the cheapest, easiest option. And it shows. Most pleasing is those built of western red cedar, with fine-milled battens placed close together, forming delicate slithers of light and air, a refined sensibility. But do the maths on timber like that. You need deep pockets.
What I’ve made is something in-between. I like to think of it as an art installation. Rustic, careful, honest, true.
As is the Bowerbird way, many of its materials are recycled, second-hand. Two of the posts came from under their house. I didn’t want bog-standard cypress pine posts for the other two, so made two posts from four old redgum posts, using gal bolts on half lap joints. I love old redgum posts, their hardness, the story they tell, how they grey-weather with such dignity.
Two historians needed two old posts with a story to them; clasped together, like words, lovers.
All the frames are found: I’ve used hardwood rails, and old bargeboards painted glossy black. The steel gate frame was bought second-hand from a retired plumber in Moorabbin (keen for a chat, a lovely bloke) and again painted black. (Most of my paint supplies are surplus tins from clearing out sheds – Melbourne has enough leftover paint to give the whole city a fresh lick).
From the get-go, I didn’t have enough 2100mm length battens to finish the job, so put a call into a roofing contact, and a request: a slab of beer if I could collect what ordinarily they toss in a skip. But lockdown, and tightening budgets, and Melbourne now is living with leaky roofs. Not as many being replaced. Plenty of Douglas fir battens were on offer, but no Australian hardwood ones came up.
We gave up waiting. (The trick with using salvaged materials is to grab them when on offer, then store the bloody things!)
I bought a batch from a yard in Bulleen. Three dollars a metre for six-metre OB (off-the-bench) lengths. Not what I envisaged; green wood, heavy with moisture, with none of the rich colours of age. But as it dries it should weather and warm and lighten. And I’ll give them a splash of oil to mute the hue.
Each is affixed with stainless steel screws, recessed in a counterbore, for visual effect.
A few finishing touches to come, but the structure is there, and I think it looks fine-boned, striking, bold, but with this sense of lightness, of letting things pass, not interrupting nature. A branch of an apricot tree has found its way through the slats already and my heart fluttes.
Shade of a loquat tree. A singing wind chime. Knock-off beers, a bottle of whisky.
Friendship, counsel, support.
Andy and Christina helped me. I built them something I hope they cherish forever, gives them joy, raises their spirits in little measures in private moments.
Life, communities, and football - and a love we show in other ways.
