02-16-2020: Off to Melbourne

We left Canberra early-ish Sunday morning. We were facing an estimated 7 hour drive to Melbourne and we had a date with a friend of Eve’s who we were meeting at 5:00. More about that a little later. After the day of rain every 2 hours yesterday we were really pleased to find a very fine day ahead of us. This was unexpected because the forecast had not been in our favor.

The drive to Melbourne was really nice. The countryside was lovely and the sunshine and white puffy clouds only added to the beauty. Between Canberra and Melbourne, a distance of about 400 miles, was rolling hills and livestock grazing country. It is also an area full of vineyards. The word Lou used to describe the countryside was undulating, an apt description. And never far away to the west were the mountains of the Great Dividing Range which runs nearly the entire length of the country from north to south. The Blue Mountains, which we traversed when we went to Margaret’s in Rylstone, is one section of the Great Dividing Range.

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One of the things that fascinates me is the Aboriginal language from which so many place names originate. As we drove along we saw many of these place names – Gobarralong, Gundagai, Wantabadgery, Jugion, Billibong, Wantagong, Tumbarumba. Of course all of these names have meaning, but I couldn’t tell you what. Even trying to say some of them is a challenge. It was fun, though, watching for the next sign and interesting place name.

Melbourne is the capital city of the state of Victoria and is the second most populous city in Australia after Sydney. The current population is about 5 million, but the city is growing so fast that within a couple of years it will surpass the population of Sydney. Melbourne is the more important arts, fashion, and cultural center of Australia, while Sydney is more the financial and business center, and apparently there is a great rivalry between them.

I was surprised that suburbia didn’t really start until about 20 minutes north of the city and then before we knew it we were in the central business district (CBD). Lou, not a fan of driving in big cities, did a good job of finding our CBD hotel, another Ibis hotel. Thank goodness for his TomTom, a GPS system, that helped with the navigation. I had Google maps open on my phone as well and we were able to find the hotel without a hitch. The only concerning thing was we arrived a bit later than we expected and so we were anxious about getting to our meetup location on time. We parked the car down the street and around the corner from the hotel and made the decision to use taxis or public transportation for getting around so Lou didn’t have to deal with urban traffic. We arrived about 30 minutes late for our date, but we had called Robert to let him know.

Our date was with Robert Lee Davis, a friend of Eve’s who met Robert while they were both teaching in London at the American School in London. Eve and Robert became very good friends. When Christine and I were visiting Eve in London we had briefly met Robert. When Eve heard that we were coming to Melbourne, she encouraged us to visit Robert in Melbourne and helped us set up a communication loop with Robert to organize that.

Taking from Robert’s website, it says “Robert Lee Davis is an international mixed media artist, who works in oil, found objects, acrylic paint, pen and ink, pencil and collage. As a painter, Robert creates cinematic paintings reminiscent of early colonial coastal cartographic surveys but with minuscule precision. Working across painting and collage he combines formal techniques with newsprint and images from journals and magazines. His work was always influenced by the stories and conversations he encountered and the experiences he had during his travels across the continents.” To learn more about Robert and see some of his work, please check out http://robertleedavis.org.uk/.

Robert’s studio is in the Gasworks Art Park. The buildings used to house the South Melbourne Gas plant and the area has quite a history. The Gasworks Art Park is now an artistic and cultural hub in the city providing studios, galleries, theaters and all sorts of opportunities for artists or all walks. It is a wonderful environment.

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Robert met us and walked us to his studio, which he shares with 2 other artists. I warned him that Eve would want to see lots of photos of our visit, and he understood and kindly obliged.

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Based in Melbourne, Robert has worked as an artist and arts educator in China, Egypt, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States and has exhibited his international works in China and Australia. We spent some time in his studio talking with Robert about his work. He explained a little about his creative process and how he intertwines various media in his work. Here’s a quote from an interview Robert did that describes his process. ” I am drawn to make art from objects, stories, statements, news articles and objects I encounter. I am interested in the beauty and hidden story in objects we discard and pass by – a piece of fluff blowing on the pavement and a discarded children’s drawing became the inspiration for the series: “Urban Dream;” “Differences are Lost” sprung out of a quote from the book: “Invisible Cities” by Italio Calvino; or a conversation with a friend about their life, travel and adventures lead to the creation of the “Life Landscape Series.” I hope I express the importance of small encounters.” One can see exactly that in his work and we were very moved by him talking about some of his pieces on display in his studio.

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It was so interesting seeing his studio. It is rather small but seeing where he creates and what he uses to create his works was fabulous.

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We spent about an hour at Robert’s studio and then we walked across the park behind the Gasworks and strolled through a wonderful old neighborhood where the gasworks employees once lived in small cottages lining the street. The cottages had wonderful ironwork and lovely front gardens, most lovingly kept up.

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We got in a cab to head to dinner. We were meeting Robert’s partner Ed at the Hotel Esplanade, a very iconic Melbourne pub first built in 1878. It is in the bayside suburb of St. Kilda. The Espy, as it is called, remains one of the earliest, largest and most prominent 19th-century resort hotels in Victoria. The Esplanade Hotel provided rooms overlooking Port Phillip Bay, at a time when St Kilda was both a suburb of the wealthy, and the preferred place to partake of the waters in one of the many sea-bath establishments for both Melburnians and visitors. There were many famous visitors to the Espey including Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt. The Esplanade Hotel is also reputed to be the longest continuously running live music venue in Australia and bands and groups continue to perform in the Gershwin Room. The Espy currently houses two restaurants and a couple of different pubs and dance floors. It clearly is a very popular place and it is very loud. Fortunately, we dined in the Espy Kitchen well away from the noisy crowds.

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We had a lovely dinner with Robert and Ed. Ed and Lou got on very well as they are both boat lovers and so they talked about boats. Christine and I conversed mostly with Robert sharing stories (Eve, we talked about you!) and getting to know each other better. And, not surprisingly, the table conversation eventually turned to American politics. Ed was very well versed in what’s going on in America and we talked about all that for a while.

After dinner, Ed and Robert arranged for us to see some of the rest of the building. The building has been through several owners in the past couple of decades and has undergone recent renovation. But the interesting thing was about Alfred Felton who lived at the Espy from 1892 to 1904. Felton was an Australian businessman, entrepreneur, art collector and philanthropist. Upon his death, Felton bequeathed half his estate to women’s and children’s charities (very progressive for the time) and half to the National Gallery of Victoria, and a considerable fortune it was enabling the NGV to purchase over 15,000 works of art. He was apparently rather eccentric and is known for throwing wild parties at the Espy. We saw some of the private areas where Felton lived and learned about Felton and his life from Ed and Robert. His whole living space was chockablock full of books and artwork as we saw from old photos at the Espy. The whole place was quite amazing.

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After our tour of the Espy, we walked across the street to the promenade by the bay. We strolled a bit and then headed to a tram stop. Robert and Ed were putting us on the tram back to our hotel. We had a fantastic time with Robert at his studio and then with Ed. at the Espy. They are wonderful guys and we enjoyed getting to know them. It was so gracious of Robert to spend so much time with us at his studio and talking about his work. I hope we meet up again. Thanks to Robert and Ed for a very memorable evening.

Our tram ride home was a little dicey. I had the CityMapper app going on my phone but I didn’t know which number tram we had gotten on. It was dark so we couldn’t see the street or tram stop signs. We eventually figured out where we were and came to the stop I thought was where we wanted to be. Unfortunately, I didn’t figure right and we wound up having to walk several blocks, mostly uphill. That’s not a good thing for Lou who is suffering from an arthritic knee and it pains him to walk for long distances, especially uphill. I felt badly that we had to do that, but we eventually arrived back at our hotel.

What a day! But how wonderful to have spent time with Robert. We’re just sorry that Eve wasn’t with us because I know she would have enjoyed it as much as we did. Eve, you need to come to Australia.