Tag Archives: MONA

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To Alex and Max, on our Hobart Holiday

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Dear Alex and Max

If Bali was about tropical warmth and Sydney was about the mesmerising beauty of the harbour, Hobart was something else entirely — a trip defined by the vertical. From the bonkers sub-zero winds atop Mount Wellington to the windowless caverns of MONA, we spent our days either climbing or descending.

There’s something generous about arriving in a city on a Friday. Irregular seagull cries above our heads — oddly rare in Glenelg — heightened the maritime atmosphere. On Elizabeth Street, we explored Tommy Gun Records from which Alex emerged with the vinyl of Spiritualized’s classic album Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. You’re certainly an audiophile or crate-digger! How you spoke about its musical and cultural qualities was astonishing. I also liked our first trip to Banjo’s bakery — which originated in Tasmania. Max’s comment that, ‘There’s nothing here I wouldn’t eat’ is a truism.

Down by the Brooke Street and Elizabeth Street piers, we strode about. Admiring a giant ocean liner at Macquarie Wharf no. 5, Max told us he’s planning a cruise once school is done. I’m always heartened by this kind of aspiration and the widescreen and global nature of your hopes. Pepperoni pizza from Medici — conveniently located on Murray Street for all your Italian cuisine needs — and inhaled in our Allurity Hotel room was an excellent conclusion to our first day.

Half of the Apple Isle squeezes into the Salamanca Markets on Saturday mornings, all there for gin, juice, and scallop pie tastings. Max and I hung back while Alex bought himself some outrageously overpriced (artisan) biscuits. Aboard the MONA ROMA fast ferry, we took in the River Derwent — low-rise bungalows on modest hills, the jaunty angles of Bellerive Oval’s light towers. After sightseeing at ground level, then came our descent into the subterranean playground of the museum.

I loved watching you both interrogate that place. It’s a confusing, jarring, and often brilliant maze. Whether we were traversing the colossal concrete war — evoking, for me, the brutality of a concentration camp, the sparks installation, or the Fat Car Porsche, I appreciated how you engaged with both heart and head. We talked about what constitutes art and what does not. Another highlight was the psychedelic band Spooky Eyes and their boisterous set on the MONA lawn.

The Uber drive up Mount Wellington was unforgettable. Terror always does this to me. Leaving the gentle suburban streets, we watched the trees shrink until there was only ancient, shattered rock and a sky that felt far too close. Standing at the summit, looking down at the tiny toy-town of Hobart below — the three of us were, momentarily, the highest beings in the city.

Hiking down was a test of more than just our legs; it was a test of our resilience against that piercing Tasmanian wind and for me alone, the fear of tumbling into the abyss and becoming wallaby food. Watching you both steer between the boulders — Alex leading the way and Max offering the dry commentary that has become his trademark — I was struck by how appreciative you both are of the wilder parts in this world.

Battery Point provided a genteel contrast. Wandering those handsome streets with the sandstone cottages and a southerly sun on our faces, it felt like we’d stepped into 1800s Cornwall. It’d been a bakery trip, and our grand final was at Jackman and McRoss, surely a Michelin-starred pie shop! With table service and desserts for both younger Randalls, this was a triumph.

Pausing in Arthur Circus, you both jumped on the swings and suddenly, it was a decade ago in any of a dozen playgrounds. For the final time in Hobart, we’d another vertical moment.

Thank you for liking the steep climbs, and the strange art. You both have a knack for turning a simple walk through an old suburb or a trek up a mountain into a shared event. It’s not just about the destination; it’s about the moments in between.

And this, my witty, kind, dear boys, is all I can ask for.

Dad

xx

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Shakespeare drinks at the Railway Hotel

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Old mate Shakespeare once typed on a Friday just before knocking off for the week and heading to the Railway pub for Happy Hour that, ‘April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.’ It was a pretty lonely beer that night for Bill, largely as the railway was yet to be discovered by some Scottish git in the Industrial Revolution.

But he was right in that April with its public holidays and autumnal glow is, as Richie Benaud may have said, a very fine month indeed.

April 10 is our anniversary (same day every year at it neatly turns out) and we celebrated with a Sunday picnic at Golding Wines near Lobethal in the Adelaide Hills. In this photo you can see how Gen X is largely yet to master the selfy.
An audio highlight was purchasing this vinyl gem, complete with dark vignettes of life on the Californian coast. On the title track they ask the question most of us have at one time asked, ‘Who is the gaucho, amigo?/Why is he standing in your spangled leather poncho/And your elevator shoes?’
On an infrequent Saturday when the air is still and the sky promises a spectacular sunset Claire and I will stroll down to the esplanade and spend a quiet hour and drink in the transition from day to twinkling velvety cloak. We then rush home to watch the smug twits on Escape to the Country.
Hobart’s MONA is confronting and demands you look at the world from a curious and often fractured perspective. This tunnel walk is accompanied by a weird soundtrack that plays tricks on your ears.
I’ve always wanted a photo of my left ear and the distant, fetching city of Hobart. Thanks to Claire, Mount Wellington and our somewhat cursed e-bike excursion, this small dream of a Kapunda boy came true.
And as a well-known ale aficionado Claire also had a dream in which she found a lager keg in the beer garden of a funky Tassie pub that was named after her family. Thanks to the New Sydney for coordinating this and providing hope and joy to one eager South Aussie.
I wonder if the Queen finds seeing her name all over the joint on buildings, cruise ships, airport terminals etc a bit tiresome? I now know it’s fun thanks to Claire’s impeccable research. In a ridiculous display of monstrous ego and ill-invested cash I’m going to return to this place in the south of Tassie five times a year.
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MONA moments

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ferry

I’ve been accused, obviously in the past, by both strangers and friends, of ridiculous and unknowable underdressing.

It’s dark as a pint of stout and only just past five bells here in Hobart. As luck would have it, I’ve located a stool in the front bar of The Telegraph, and let me assure you, I’m suitably clad for the climate.

It’s July, but the side door is wedged open, tempting a decidedly crisp draught to gush into the pub, and phantom about us, like an anonymous, yet Arctic ghoul from the Harry Potter series.

Ordering a Cascade Pale Ale and a pizza, I note that Old Mate behind the bar is wearing shorts and a t-shirt. A quick scan of the dark, convict interior tells me that he’s not the only one. If my Mum were here, she may well now be in an involuntary foetal position, wailing for a Bundy and a blanket.

Scrutiny of the pub’s décor also tells me that stripping away the uptartedness, this is an old world, maritime boozer. I can almost hear The Pogues, playing Rum Sodomy & the Lash.

Already, I’m happy in Hobart.

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With the MONA ROMA ferry hurtling up the Derwent there was music thumping across the deck. I was instantly smitten hearing Joe Tex and his 1977 classic “Ain’t Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman).” I mean, who wouldn’t be?

Australia is wobbling on the edge of drought and, even here in Tasmania, the hills are brown and thirsty. It’s a massive harbour, and is more Port Lincoln than Sydney with its expansive stretches and rustic, inviting appearance.

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How tremendous to invest an afternoon in this most modern and confronting of museums?

The architecture is instructive for we are sent, mole-like, to the depths, and in exploring the exhibits, are to ascend, towards the light. This establishes a central theme of the vast collection, for it is about decay and marginalisation. MONA is more Nick Cave than One Direction. I’m eager.

It’s also surely a first-world indulgence that we have the luxury of introspection and probing questioning. Each room has a theme and the first two I visit are declared as opposites: faith and satire. I take an inner breath. Here’s two ideas I hold important. Are these so incompatible? Do I have to surrender one? I fear satire may be just in the lead.

I pause at an ancient TV which is looping endlessly through the clip of a band unsuccessfully trying to master the Sex Pistols’ “God Save The Queen.” The singer holds a sheet of lyrics in front of her agonised face, while the drummer and guitarist are bravely attempting the same song, but in violently clashing tempos.

Each musician is an octogenarian.

It’s funny and probably cruel and I wonder what I’m supposed to think.

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There’s a large cement cavern, vaguely reminiscent of London’s Tate Modern and its turbine hall, with its evocations of empire and space and dark. Along its length is Sidney Nolan’s installation, “Snake” comprising over 1,600 individual paintings across 46 winding metres. When it was conceived and assembled Nolan was already elderly, and I gasp at the colossal nature of his singular, ambitious vision.

A major departure, as near as my innocent eye can tell, from European galleries, is how this collection celebrates unheralded, everyday artists. Many of the works are Art Brut and Outsider Art, often by commoners and folks suffering mental illness, especially in the London-based Museum of Everything. There’s an insolent rejection of high culture, and a preference given to solitude, and the voices of the disturbed.

My audio companion instructs me in the work of a Prussian butcher who was fascinated by the cosmos and space travel, and created accordingly. Until recently he received no acknowledgement. How great, how vast, how rich is this planet?

I like that, at least in these very minor ways, there’s an arc towards democratisation.

I swing back through the galleries, past the dinosaurs assembled from found objects such as cable ties and one, a large asaurus of some note, built from both blank and pre-recorded cassette tapes, including incurably hideous disco tapes, but none by Joe Tex. By hang tight folks, if vinyl can make a comeback so can dinosaurs and tapes, like Ripper ’77.

I also take in a smiling hermaphrodite illumination and other happy collisions of ideas and amateur execution, including an entire darkened wall of vaginal casts, and its accompanying eight-minute audio commentary. I wonder if it has been commissioned by my favourite conceptual artist, Maude, of The Big Lebowski. I hope so.

Suddenly, the bright, southern day is rushing to the east. I’m back on the ferry and the Tasmanian velvet is pushing in, all over Salamanca Place.

maude