It has been some while since I last posted a blog. To be precise, the last post was a Sketch of Nagambie in December 2019, when we visited that part of Victoria with our camping friends. But I have not been idle! I do have two blogs ready to be posted, but for which I am awaiting copyright permission. In the 1880s and 1890s, an expat English man who had several names, including, but not limited to, ‘John Stanley James’ and ‘Julian Thomas’, travelled around Victoria submitting to the Age and Argus newspapers short articles on each place he visited. These he submitted under the name of ‘The Vagabond’, and fairly recently they have been gathered together and compiled into two books by renowned Australian journalist and historian Michael Cannon.
One book is entitled Vagabond Country which is a collection of his rural Victoria travels; the other entitled The Vagabond Papers comprises his Melbourne and Sydney urban sketches. I have embarked on the project of following the routes that the Vagabond travelled through Victoria and writing sketches of the same places as they are now, particularly noting the significant changes that have occurred over the last 130 or so years. So far, I have made a trip to Broadmeadows, which was his first trip, and to Kilmore, which was his second destination. These sketches are ready for publication in the Miscellany, but I am waiting for permission to quote fragments from Michael Cannon’s books. I am sure there will be no problems, but rules must be followed!
The third stop-over on the trail is to be Seymour; but our plans to visit that town in April of this year were thwarted by the arrival in Australia of Covid 19 and so the project has been temporarily postponed. However, that has given me an opportunity to revise some of the Miscellany, and you will now find an embryonic Menu, allowing easier access to ‘International’ and ‘Australian’ travel blogs. As I gain proficiency in finding my way around the arcane intricacies of the inner working of the blog site, I shall refine the menu to make it even easier—–I hope.
In the meantime, I thought I would bring you up to date with another project on which I have embarked due to Covid 19. Being ‘locked in’, or ‘locked down’, for the duration, I willingly accepted an invitation to try my hand at pre-recording ‘content’ that could be broadcast on Community Radio. Like many other enterprises, Community Radio stations have been caught up with the ‘social distancing’ and ‘work from home’ restrictions placed on all of us. Whilst many of the regular presenters have been willing, and able, to embrace the new processes, many of the usual volunteer program presenters do not have suitable recording facilities at their homes, leaving quite a few ‘unfilled’ time-slots in the daily broadcasts. As it happens, I do have some quite sophisticated recording and editing gear at home, (which I use in a rather amateurish way) and knowing this, the manager of Community Radio 3MDR (Mountain District Radio) asked if I would like to record some stuff. I had, in the past, filled in with a classical music program when the regular presenter was unavailable, so I thought ‘why not?’ My project began with a 30-minute segment reading poems by the late, great, bush poet Henry Lawson, which was broadcast on Tuesday April 21, and if you are at all interested, you may listen to it by clicking here. You will need to wait about 45 seconds before I come along!
For the second program I got a bit more adventurous and slotted some music between the readings. That program was broadcast on Tuesday April 28, and you may hear it by clicking here. This time, the scheduling got a bit out of whack, with the previous program running over by a few minutes; about 8 minutes and 40 seconds to be precise. However, you can drag the progress dot at the right-hand end player a bit to the right, until 8:45 shows just to the right of the speaker icon. This is a small and insignificant glitch in the scheme of things, and I think that we are lucky to get anything at all during these days of severe “Covid 19 lock-down”. So we must thank 3MDR and its dedicated staff for the efforts they are making on our behalf to keep the station on air!
Flushed with the success of slotting music between the readings, I then began including recordings of whole poems that had been set to music by various composers and sprinkling those among the readings. The third program was broadcast on May 19, and the link to that is here. If you have enjoyed listening to Slingsby Browning on 3MDR, you might like to have a look at their program guide to see if there is anything else which takes your fancy. Also, on that web page you will find details of other 3MDR activities, including how to become a subscriber. Depending on where you live, you may be able to tune in to 97.1fm to get to 3MDR; alternatively, you can listen live, or listen back, from the web page accessed by the program guide link above. Community radio depends on membership subscriptions, sponsorships by individuals, local community groups and businesses, and grants from charitable institutions. I think there is also a small amount of tax-payer funding allocated by the Commonwealth Government, but it is not an automatic grant, rather it has to be applied for. In addition to broadcasting content developed and produced by the volunteer presenters, 3MDR also provides work experience opportunities to high school students interested in a career in media or the technical aspects of sound in the entertainment industry. Further, being located adjacent to a local primary school, opportunities are frequently offered to primary school students to go ‘live’ on-air with various programs such as singing and storytelling. 3MDR is also a strong supporter of local musicians living and working in and around the Dandenong Ranges area, giving airplay to their recordings, promoting their gigs, and frequently providing opportunities for live-to-air broadcasts from the 3MDR studio. It has been a pleasure and great fun to provide ‘content’ during this time of Covid ‘lock-down’, and to be a part of the 3MDR endeavours.
Hopefully as the travel restrictions are lifted, we shall be able to get behind the wheel and once again head off to explore more of Victoria, following in the footsteps of The Vagabond. Until that happens, maybe a little ‘armchair travel’ reading some of the earlier blogs might help while away a few hours!
Slingsby's Miscellany 