I came across the gorgeous blog of Melbournienne Lucy Feagins.  She has done a great job blogging Gertrude St.  The beautiful photo of Amor y Locura above is hers.  I find so few blogs that I really want to read these days, but this is one of them. It’s so what blogs should be like: journalism without the corruption.  And with good photos.  Good blogs need good photos.  Free and ad-free.  But hers even boasts hand-drawn maps to die for.

Apart from Gertrude St, it has much of interest to whatever remains of Abbotsford Blog’s readership after its sad neglect by me.  For example, her posts on:

• Abbotsford’s Yello Diva (how to explain: just click on the link);
• Gertrude St’s Cottage Industries;
• the Gertrude St florist Mr Lincoln (move over Vasette);
• Abbotsford’s Mondo Trasho; and
• Abbotsford’s Studio Hacienda.

But then just about everything else is likely to be of interest.

Collingwood man Richard John Lovett (more recently of Bundoora) burgled he whom the press are carefully describing as ‘disgraced millionaire businessman’ Steve Vizard’s then Toorak mansion while Steve and the kids were at home slumbering. You may recall that little Stephanie V. woke up to find him rifling through her things, in her bedroom. Security cameras at the disgraced white collar feller’s lair had Lovett and a mate in the mansion for 40 minutes. Remarkably, after the altercation outside with Stephanie’s dad, that same evening Mr Lovett went on to burgle another house nearby. Then, in Collingwood the following day, he stabbed a man in the back, puncturing his lung, in the course of the Harmworth St liberation of a backpack, clothing, and a gold necklace in a street robbery graced by a 20cm long blade.

Harmsworth St and its environs, tucked up near the corner of Johnston and Hoddle Sts is definitely the spot to get stabbed. It runs into Perry St, locus of the yellow racer murder. Housing Commission territory.

Mr Lovett is an aboriginal father of four who has been a drug addict for the last 15 years, since he was 14. He was intoxicated by ice at the time of the Vizard burglary. He pleaded guilty just the other day.

County Court judge Barnett said discrimination prevented Aborigines getting work and there was no access to culturally-sensitive counselling. “Unfortunately for some Aborigines the sort of opportunities that are offered to them are something that in my mind are meaningless.” According to the Hun, his Honour ‘blasted treatment of repeat Aboriginal offenders and said the community had no sympathy or understanding of the problem. He said the man who robbed Steve Vizard’s Toorak mansion had little chance of rehabilitation because Aborigines were treated with misery and neglect. “We are putting them on shelves, we are warehousing them, we are not getting them back into the community and the community doesn’t seem to offer a solution”.

According to The Age‘s Kate Hagan:

‘Defence counsel John Desmond said Lovett was institutionalised from the age of eight in state homes, youth training centres and prison.

He was abandoned by his abusive mother when he was 13, had no secondary school education and was a long-term drug user. Judge John Barnett said there were various facilities where he could simply “warehouse” Lovett, but traditional approaches were not working.

“It’s a case of Europeans saying, ‘do this, do that’, but they don’t listen, they don’t trust (them). It’s not Aborigines saying, ‘there’s a better way’,” he said.

Judge Barnett said the wider community did not offer solutions, just “neglect and misery”, and had “no sympathy or understanding of the real issues”.

“The world is full of deaf ears but the problem doesn’t go away, the problems keep coming back before the courts,” he said.

Prosecutor Ray Gibson said Lovett’s background was tragic and there was an obvious gulf between the life of a Melbourne Girls’ Grammar student (Stephanie Vizard) and Lovett.’

Mr Lovett’s accomplice, Eric Mark Lawson, drove the getaway car — an Alfa Romeo. He went in for a 6 year holiday courtesy of the Crown last month for an 11-week crime spree. Mr Lovett will be sentenced this week. It will be interesting to see how it compares with Mr Vizard’s $390,000 fine.

If so, please return to its owner, or ring 000. It’s 3m long. It’s as thick as an arm.  It escaped from a balcony at  Tim Marshall’s Noone St, Clifton Hill apartment on the 9th, where it had lived with another carpet python for a decade. They suspect it might be in your roof, or up a tree. The police suggest not leaving little birds outside in little cages, but the opinion on that is divergent.  Tim says the snake ate well last week, so not to worry. The Hun reported that the snake is not on any medication.  And this, for me, is the fascinating bit of the story.  What motivated Patrick Horan to report that bit of non-news?

The marvellous slow food market is on at the Convent today — get a rhubarb tartlett from the rhubarb lady, a strong coffee from Lentil as Anything, a loaf of bread from the bakery, and stock up on unbelievably good home made panforte for Christmas presents.  But take your own plastic bags, or baskets. And there’s an open day at the Convent besides, where you can go inside the buildings, check out the artists’ studios, the ‘wellbeing studios’, and probably even the most beautiful ‘cello shop in the world.  Market finishes at 1 p.m., open day goes till 4 p.m. 3MBS is running tours.

The Age has reviewed a bar that I like, the Abbotsford Convent’s Handsome Steve’s House of Refreshment. I never seem to get there though. This could be the prompter.

There are some wonderful homeware places for the well-heeled in Abbotsford proper in addition to all the lifestyle supermarkets in Bridge Road.  There’s Orient Express, where you can buy Asian people’s cultural heritage.  There’s Mondo Trasho, cool in every way, and then there’s one of my favourite shops, Zelij.  It’s a Moroccan importer (alas, Maison de Tunisie, a lovely little place on Smith St towards Victoria St a few years ago is no more).  It has beautiful Moroccan lights, bowls, Moorish tiles, tableware and cookware, and some distinctive rugs and armchairs and sofas. Also, lots of Moroccan cookbooks and books with titles like ‘Moorish Style’.

Usually, Zelij’s unbelievably expensive.  Today though, is the last day of their warehouse clearance: there are few prices marked on anything, but presumably it’s walking out the door at never to be repeated, crazy, crazy prices.  The warehouse is at 25 Russell St, Abbotsford, 3067.  The contrast between the wonderfully Moorish interior and the industrial brick warehouse exterior is kind of worth popping your head into, just for a gander.  Basically, it’s right at the southern end of Collingwood Station, near the Town Hall and the library.  Russell St runs between Gipps St and Langridge St, beside the railway line, one street towards Hoddle St from the street with the Carringbush Hotel on the corner.

Original article: Well, it’s not the most interesting news in the world, but apparently Dight’s Falls is to be rebuilt so that it looks just the same. Apparently they’re going to have a public consulation. They’re going to make an even better fish ladder to help little fishies, and eels to get over the big bump. Did you know that the eels that live in the Yarra can actually get out, walk around the falls, and get back in? That’s what the web says. What I’d like are some stepping stones across the top so you can walk over it safely. Anyone else?

Very sad news. The owners of The Terminus have sold, and have bought the Yarra Glen Grand from a guy who was born in it, and whose family has been running it for 77 years. Judging by the photo of the Grand, the pair must have grown up, and done well out of The Terminus too. They should give the Healesville Hotel a run for its money. If you haven’t been to the Terminus’s restaurant, better go this month, as I heard that the new peoples were moving in this month. It is a splendid restaurant, and one of its dishes made it into John Lethlean’s top 10 dining moments in the Melbourne Magazine recently. Previous posts about The Terminus are here.

Check this out: it seems that the windows from the Grand have yellow glass in them:

I have to say, Wellington St between Johnston St and Gertrude St is not a nice place. In fact, it’s the closest to a slum I know of in Melbourne (see pic of a side street off Wellington St).  At twenty to eight in the evening of Sunday 28 October 2007, a Collingwood man answered a knock on his Wellington St unit’s front door. Four black-clad men shot him in the lower body. He’s still alive. Sounds like a reprise of the gangland murders a bit too close to home for my liking.

By the 31st, Bou’ellas Kahalil, 32, had been arrested at Craigieburn police station and charged with seven offences including attempted murder, aggravated burglary, false imprisonment, intentionally causing serious injury, kidnapping and being in possession of an unregistered firearm. And another man from Port Melbourne, one-time home of Hizir Ferman, has been arrested and charged as well. See The Age‘s article here.

Yesterday, the Police announced they’d like to have a little chat with Robert Musso of Mill Park, but said not to approach him. The Age reported in 2004 that a top cop, Simon Overland, was a bit frustrated with what he perceived to be the lack of assistance from the courts in the police’s efforts to quell the spate of gangland murders. The article said:

‘Police fury over the granting of bail to crime patriarch Lewis Moran, gunned down this week in a Brunswick gaming club, is well known. Police are also dismayed by a County Court decision to give known gunmen linked to two murders, Hizir Ferman and Robert Musso, 12 months’ jail for carrying firearms when law provides for a maximum penalty of 15 years. Both men were out on parole when the Special Operations Group apprehended them with loaded guns.’

Someone named Robert Musso has been in jail before. He was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment on 30 March 2004: R. v. Ferman and Musso, a sentence which the Court of Appeal later referred to in another man’s case as ‘manifestly inadequate’: DPP v Faure [2005] VSCA 9.

Musso claimed to have suffered injuries in jail. According to the judgment in Musso v Department of Justice [2004] VCAT 1268:

’10 On 19 November 1999 there was a considerable disturbance in Port Phillip Prison. A prisoner was stabbed. A lock-down ensued. A group of prisoners, including the Applicants, were forcibly extracted from their cells in Swallow Unit for the purpose of relocating them in Charlotte Unit, which is apparently more secure. This extraction was carried out by members of the Tactical Operations Group (“TOG”). It is alleged, in essence, that, during this extraction and relocation, excessive force was used by TOG, and that prisoners suffered injuries as a result.’

Who knows? Perhaps it’s the same Robert Musso who is a suspect of this latest bit of attempted gunning down. And perhaps it’s the same Robert Musso who is referred to in this Bulletin article which says he was:

• a friend of Nick “the Russian” Radev;
• found with a .38 calibre revolver with live rounds in a bum bag and so was popped into jail;
• where he was stabbed up to 12 times in April by fellow inmates of Barwon Prison.

According to The Bulletin, Mark Mallia led the knife attack.

‘A knife attack last month of Robert Musso, a former ally of Nik “The Russian” Radev in Barwon prison by inmates loyal to Carl Williams shows how volatile the situation remains. The main attacker in the group hit has been named as a player in the murder of western suburbs drug dealer Mark Mallia. To understand the calibre of human being we are dealing with, it’s worth remembering how Mallia was killed. They tied him to a chair, bound and gagged and then probably tortured him with a soldering iron, before strangling him. They then poured petrol over him and set him on fire inside a wheelie bin, before chucking him down a stormwater drain.’

More recently, a case named DPP v Robert Musso & Khalil Bou’elias was listed for a hearing in the Supreme Court of Victoria on 15 December 2006.

I do like the Panama Dining Room on Smith St. Used to be a pool hall, when the floor below was a Latin Band venue — The Stage — which used to go off, and where I had some of my best evenings. Now The Age is onto it, and here’s their review. In fact, they like it so much they reviewed it again. It has that up 2 flights of stairs, you have to know about it excellence, but unlike so many such places, it is an expansive place once you get up there. There is a free pool table, and apparently on Sundays they have table tennis. They only got a sign recently. This one will be with us for a long time, like Spleen, and The Lounge, and 20 Myers Place. The photo of the Room’s bar is by Ben Richards, one of the Crumpler crew whose HQ is not so far away from the Room. Here are some more of his lovely Room photos: