Day 10: Melbourne
Nau Mai
Yesterday we played our final Australian show at The Forum in Melbourne.
Our morning began very well. The Kia Carnival was already packed from the night before, and we were staying at a hotel very close to the airport. We were apprehensive though after the Brisbane shitshow. It wouldn’t give us any pleasure to have to award another 0/5 stars airport review.
As I’ve said before, Jon has rather a knack for sniffing out the smoothest pathways through airport processes. It was Jon who recruited George to assist us yesterday morning. George is an employee of Virgin Airlines, and I guess his role could be described as that of a fixer. He wasn’t buried deep in the carnage of the general check-in but was patrolling the edges with his trained eye looking for efficiencies that could be snatched from the jaws of chaos.
Before we had even had a chance to join the check-in queue, he relocated us to a discrete corner away from the crowds and had us line up our cases neatly. He headed off towards the counter and returned five minutes later with a large handful of freshly printed bag tags, and began methodically working his way down the line, practised hands swiftly attaching a tag to each handle. We were on our way through security fifteen minutes after arriving at the airport. George said a friendly goodbye and headed back to his patrol station, ready to respond to the next crisis, whatever that might be.
I had donuts for breakfast from a box of Daniel’s Donuts that was gifted to us by promoter of our Sydney show at the Roundhouse. I had half of the blue one which had some kind of pink filling, and I had half of the green one which had chopped pistachio on top and pistachio cream inside.
The drive along Melbourne’s M2 Motorway was filled with interesting things to look at. We were in a Kia Carnival of course, another example in Stealth Black. This one had a nifty gear shifter for executing precise adjustments to the drivetrain.
There were some fine examples of graffiti on the many overbridges that cross the M2 motorway. This was my favourite example seen on the M80 Flyover in the suburb of Tullamarine.
Some of the interesting things we saw were wonky like this yellow pillar near the suburb of Parkville.
We saw the Marina Tower, a wonky building in the Docklands neighbourhood.
And we saw these two wonky archways leading into the CBD.
The Forum is a grand old theatre. It has been nicely modernised with the latest lighting and audio equipment, and excellent backstage facilities, but still maintains so many of those details that you just don’t find in a modern theatre or music venue. They just don’t put statues in the venues these days – at least not in the quantities that they did in the 1920s when The Forum was built. All the good Greco-Roman gods have been represented in various parts of the building and all the correct statuesque poses have been depicted. There is amazing detailing in the facades around the stage with magnificent columns, arches, and friezes, and the proscenium itself is work of art. Even the backstage corridors still feature handsome hand painted signs to point you in the correct direction.
We were given a tour of the building and shown the upstairs part of the theatre, once a huge mezzanine floor but now walled off from the main room and used primarily as a cinema. We also got to hang out in the projection room that looks down over the main theatre and that’s where we watched Womb’s set from.
Our final show was our largest ever Australian headline show, with close to 2000 people in attendance, and it felt like a great success. The atmosphere of the room was magical with twinkling 1920s stars depicted on a deep blue ceiling and a warm and appreciative crowd that were enjoying an evening in one of the great Melbourne venues.
It was only fitting for this tour that we got to finish our night with one last piece of logistical punishment, our tired bodies dragging all the gear through a quiet shopping arcade shuttling everything up an elevator to get to the lobby of our hotel. We managed to negotiate with the night clerk and store some of our cases in their tiny luggage room, and we lugged the rest upstairs to keep us company in our rooms.
The final load-out.
The author pretending to enjoy shuttling gear up to the hotel lobby.
My Gravity Gold .75mm pick performed well on its third outing. Speed and volume were both adequate and there were no slips or drops of the pick. There is still no visible wear to the tip and sides.
