Urban Broadcast Collective

Because Liz collected too much info, this digital death trip podcast (episode of This Must Be The Place) is in 3 parts. This is the 2nd episode of 3. Listen to episode 1 first! This episode of This Must Be The Place is part of the Digital Death Trip segment, where we investigate geographically themed ‘tragedies’ selected at random by the custom-coded ‘Digital Death Trip’ bot. The code uses the API to the National Library of Australia’s Trove archive to randomly select a Victorian town, then a random so-called Tragedy from it. It compiles a case file, then Liz follows up with some research about the incident, its place and time. Digital Death Trip has picked two random and distant Victorian locations, and two random tragedies: The 1902 East Malvern Tragedy and 1906 Pyramid Hill Tragedy. Both are ‘triple tragedies’, so run in parallel. They also end up connected in ways that start to seem not quite random. On November 14th 1906, in a murder-suicide reported as The Pyramid Hill Tragedy, Constable Oliver John Lang killed himself and his two daughters (Olive and Doreen) at Pyramid Hill, an agricultural town in northern Victoria where Lang had been stationed for 5 years. Noting Constable Lang had repeatedly spoken about shooting himself and his family, an inquest found that “a heavy responsibility lies on those hear such words”, especially threats made by “anyone holding a public position such as that of a constable of police in whose hands are often the property liberty and perhaps the lives of others”. In 1902, in a murder-suicide reported as The East Malvern Tragedy, German merchant Arthur Mueller killed himself, his wife (Cecile) and one of his children (Willy) in a prestigious eastern suburb of Melbourne. Themes include police and law in settler-colonial contexts: the roles of police stationed in rural areas, and the fragile line of law. Also Land Law. Land Acts facilitated ‘closer settlement’ and ‘selections’, later ‘soldier settlement’, as tools of colonial expansion. Through land titles, Pyramid Hill was made into a late 19th century agricultural settlement, and police had a vital role in the system’s administration. Fathers and family law: fathers and grandfathers, and inheritances (good and bad) are key. We discuss custodial law in 19th and 20th century Australia, and the legal principal of “father’s right” through which fathers were always granted custody of their legitimate children. Pre: Family Law Act custodial grievances, we hear Lang killed his family partly from a vendetta against his former father in law, Sergeant Frank Jordon (of East Malvern!). The stories share knowledge and lies: advanced lying skills central to traditional morality and legitimacy, unnoticed patterns, unknowing, and what you can or should do with knowledge. Rumours of “certain allegations” were one reason given to explain Lang’s violence, otherwise attributed (as with Mueller) to a fit of mania. Jordon, meanwhile, seemed to know what was coming but be powerless to stop it. There are echoes through to a recent mystery in Pyramid Hill, the disappearance of heavily pregnant intellectually disabled woman Krystal Fraser in 2009. Police suspect Krystal was killed by the father of her unborn child, and that people in Pyramid Hill know what happened but are not coming forward. A final theme is cultural references to ‘ghost towns’ that seem isolated not only in space but in time. Wake in Fright, Twin Peaks, The Shining, 100 years of Solitude, Blazing Saddles. And country song Long Black Veil: “nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows but me”. Featuring a wintery visit to the Pyramid Hill op shop, cop shop, abattoir, and cemetery. Factoids of early railways, cinemas, mobility scooters, migrants, TB, police filing systems. And a specially written Taylor Project song, closing with: “on the hill there is a lookout, I can see that long dark train…” This is the 2nd episode of 3, where we return to the 1900s to hear more about Lang, Mueller, and their contexts.

This episode of This Must Be The Place is part of the Digital Death Trip segment, where we investigate geographically themed ‘tragedies’ selected at random by the custom-coded ‘Digital Death Trip’ bot. The code uses the API to the National Library of Australia’s Trove archive to randomly select a Victorian town, then a random so-called Tragedy from it. It compiles a case file, then Liz follows up with some research about the incident, its place and time. In this instalment, Digital Death Trip has picked two random and distant Victorian locations, and two random tragedies: The 1902 East Malvern Tragedy and 1906 Pyramid Hill Tragedy. Both are ‘triple tragedies’, so run in parallel. They also end up connected in ways that start to seem not quite random. On November 14th 1906, in a murder-suicide reported as The Pyramid Hill Tragedy, Constable Oliver John Lang killed himself and his two daughters (Olive and Doreen) at Pyramid Hill, an agricultural town in northern Victoria where Lang had been stationed for 5 years. Noting Constable Lang had repeatedly spoken about shooting himself and his family, an inquest found that “a heavy responsibility lies on those hear such words”, especially threats made by “anyone holding a public position such as that of a constable of police in whose hands are often the property liberty and perhaps the lives of others”. In 1902, in a murder-suicide reported as The East Malvern Tragedy, German merchant Arthur Mueller killed himself, his wife (Cecile) and one of his children (Willy) in a prestigious eastern suburb of Melbourne. Themes include police and law in settler-colonial contexts: the roles of police stationed in rural areas, and the fragile line of law. Also Land Law. Land Acts facilitated ‘closer settlement’ and ‘selections’, later ‘soldier settlement’, as tools of colonial expansion. Through land titles, Pyramid Hill was made into a late 19th century agricultural settlement, and police had a vital role in the system’s administration. Fathers and family law: fathers and grandfathers, and inheritances (good and bad) are key. We discuss custodial law in 19th and 20th century Australia, and the legal principal of “father’s right” through which fathers were always granted custody of their legitimate children. Pre: Family Law Act custodial grievances, we hear Lang killed his family partly from a vendetta against his former father in law, Sergeant Frank Jordon (of East Malvern!). The stories share knowledge and lies: advanced lying skills central to traditional morality and legitimacy, unnoticed patterns, unknowing, and what you can or should do with knowledge. Rumours of “certain allegations” were one reason given to explain Lang’s violence, otherwise attributed (as with Mueller) to a fit of mania. Jordon, meanwhile, seemed to know what was coming but be powerless to stop it. There are echoes through to a recent mystery in Pyramid Hill, the disappearance of heavily pregnant intellectually disabled woman Krystal Fraser in 2009. Police suspect Krystal was killed by the father of her unborn child, and that people in Pyramid Hill know what happened but are not coming forward. A final theme is cultural references to ‘ghost towns’ that seem isolated not only in space but in time. Wake in Fright, Twin Peaks, The Shining, 100 years of Solitude, Blazing Saddles. And country song Long Black Veil: “nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows but me”. Featuring a wintery visit to the Pyramid Hill op shop, cop shop, abattoir, and cemetery. Factoids of early railways, cinemas, mobility scooters, migrants, TB, police filing systems. And a specially written Taylor Project song, closing with: “on the hill there is a lookout, I can see that long dark train, even when you close your windows, it comes back again, there’s a ghost upon the hill”. Because Liz collected too much information, this digital death trip podcast – Pyramid Hill and East Malvern - is in 3 parts. This is the 1st episode of 3.

Recent graduates, Heather Sherlock and Diego Espinosa of the 'Planners under the Influence' podcast cross interview Jess Noonan and Peter Jewell of the PlanningxChange podcast. Youth and hope meet 'manufacture hardened' professionals. A lively discussion with many different perspectives on what makes for good cities, the state of university training, the role of developers, influencers and shared podcasting experiences. Sweet bird of youth meets somewhat wiser owls. For more details: www.planningxchange.org. There was a problem with the audio on the original release, error corrected 8 January 2020. Apologies for the gaps in the audio.

In PX57, the interview subject is Val Gnanakone, a Director at Old Mile Grid traffic engineers. Val talks about the changing role and focus of the traffic engineering profession in city development. Traditionally viewed as car and truck focused, Val talks of the widening scope of activities. These including making better city spaces by improving mobility options. In the interview we pose the question, should traffic engineers have a different job decription? The interview discusses a wide range of mobilitiy questions relating to residential, commercial and freight uses. There are no simple answers to the issues raised. Val also considers technological changes and what these will do to city spaces. A thoroughly optimistic interview subject. The interview was released on the 22 November 2019. Podcast produced by Zak Willsallen of Complete Podcasting Services. For more details go to www.planningxchange.org.

The "Living in the Music City: If you've got a spare half a million" event was held at the Toff in Town in Melbourne as part of the 2019 Festival of Urbanism. It was co-sponsored by Monash Urban Planning and Design, along with the Henry Halloran Trust, and the University of Sydney, and by the City of Melbourne as part of their Music Plan 2018-2021. The Festival aims to raise the debate about urban health, and other key topics. “Living in the Music City” combined a panel discussion of policy and research issues around live music in cities, followed by a performance of songs. Both sections examined the past and future of Melbourne’s live music venues in the context of the city’s housing pressures. The name for the Music City event comes from a research project several Monash University academics are involved in, “Interrogating the music city: cultural economy & popular music in Melbourne”. The subtitle – “If you’ve got a spare half a million” - is a reference to the Courtney Barnett 2016 song ‘Depreston’. This episode is the recording of the second half - the musician part. The musicians are: Frank Jones (https://www.frankjones.com.au) Sarah Taylor (of Taylor Project www.taylorproject.com.au) Brett Lee / Pirritu (@pirritumusic, Instagram: @pirritumusic, YouTube: https://youtu.be/7w7kXZV1Pgg) Liz Taylor (senior lecturer in urban planning and design at Monash University, also playing violin on some songs here). Songs: My Brown Yarra (by Frank Jones, performed with others) Ngurrampaa (by/performed by Brett Lee / Pirritu) Buddy could you spare a dime (Sarah Taylor, cover of Yip Harburg song) Greenacres Lane (by/performed by Frank Jones) Secret Shape (by/performed by Brett Lee / Pirritu) Slow Tram Comin' (by/performed by Sarah Taylor) For Barry Dickins (by/performed by Frank Jones) Time I Spoke (by/performed by Brett Lee / Pirritu) Detroit (by/performed by Sarah Taylor) Pine Cone (by/performed by Brett Lee / Pirritu) Suburban Rendezvous (by/performed by Frank Jones) DePreston (by Courtney Barnett, performed by all).

“Living in the Music City: If You’ve got a Spare Half A Million” was held at Melbourne’s Toff in Town on September 2nd as part of the 2019 Festival of Urbanism. The idea of the event is to look at how live music and the night-time economy are shaped by the cost and availability of housing. The first half of the title, the Music City, derives from a three-year research project “Interrogating the music city: cultural economy & popular music in Melbourne”. The second half of the title – “If you’ve got a spare half a million” - is a reference to the Courtney Barnett 2016 song ‘Depreston’. The song’s lyrics refer not only to the spatial dynamics of the cost of housing in Melbourne, but to migration and change in the city generally. (Note: this episode of This Must Be The Place was put together before the Festival of Urbanism event in September 2019). The event will look at housing and music through a combination of academic panel discussion, and live song performances. It includes both panel discussion and music partly because it’s more fun, and partly because it’s always strange to talk about music without including music, as in a 1979 quote best attributable to comedian Martin Mull, that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” (but – why not?), or an older quote, from a 1918 New Republic article, that “writing about music is as illogical as singing about economics”. There might be a bit of the latter, “singing about economics”, because both now and in 1918, singing about economics does happen, and you don’t have to look far for songs with words like “money”, “dollar” or “rent” in them. For this episode I’ve looked back over 2 years of This Must Be The Place podcasts to find some episodes where we’ve talked about aspects of live music and its relationships to place. The episode comprises 7 relevant clips from previous episodes – these are compiled here kind of as re-runs. Or a nicer wording might be that they’re ‘curated’ selections, a ‘best of’ or ‘hits out’ collection, of This Must Be The Place talking music and place. Including: • Interview with Seamus O’Hanlon, Author of “City Life – the new urban Australia” • Musicians, memoirs and maps: a bookish Curtin-side chat with Sarah Taylor and Sam Whiting • Revisiting “Melbourne on Foot” (1980 book): St Kilda walking tour with Prof Graham Davison (also Richmond walking tour) • Dogs in Space to Olives in Toolleen: Small bands, small farms with Charles (‘Chuck’ Meo) and Ceilidh • Visit to Clunes Booktown Festival: Incl. David’s Talk on “Dig: Australian Rock & Pop Music, 1960-85” • Lachlan from the Ocean Party on why hotel hell is actually pretty swell

In this episode of This Must Be the Place Liz and Laura are joined by Monash Urban Planning and Design students Lachlan Burke, Sylvia Tong and Will McIntyre to share perspectives on whether and how urban planning can work across borders. They first talk about MAPS (Monash Association of Planning Students); how they gravitated to studying urban planning (from biology, environmental engineering, development studies and philosophy); and the upcoming MAPS 2019 Festival of Urbanism Commuter Race including how a MELWAY (the iconic street directory) will help with navigating it. (Note: the Festival took place in September 2019). Lachlan and Will then reflect on lessons learned across their planning studies and the international development projects they’ve been involved in, from Midigami (Sri Lanka) to Mongolia. Lachlan discusses two aid projects he’s been part of in Sri Lanka, including post-tsunami housing reconstruction in Midigami - the subject of a presentation by Sri Lankan researcher Dr. Rangajeewa Ratnayake at this year’s Festival of Urbanism. Will shares insights from a lifetime of exposure to cross-cultural and interdisciplinary development projects, including those that formed his father’s work for the Asian Development Bank. It was while working on green infrastructure projects in Mongolia that Will first became interested in the broader scale and context of urban planning -“I realised you need to know how the city works in order to be able to implement anything”. The episode reflects on the challenge of development projects maintaining long-lasting outcomes. For example, new elevated housing built outside of tsunami buffer zones suffer longer-term from water pressure issues. Wells dug without adequate hydrological analysis (or evaluation) suffer from repeated contamination and collapse. Across the examples run questions of accountability and evaluation, and the need for greater community ownership (versus issues of donor fatigue). And the borders of communication and translation, broadly understood – how to bridge planning words and knowledge across languages and cultures, and across disciplinary boundaries. “There are different ways of doing things that we’ve never considered, and you’ve never considered, but let’s work together to discover those”. Mentioned in this episode: • TED video about public spaces that was Sylvia’s motivation to study Urban Planning: https://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_burden_how_public_spaces_make_cities_work/transcript?language=en • Engineers Without Borders and human-centred design: https://www.ewb.org.au/blog/implementing-a-human-centered-approach • Planning Institute of Australia members and academic subscribers can access this paper by Ian Woodcock documenting a local example of interdisciplinary and human-centred planning for railway station design: Woodcock, I. (2015) The design speculation and action research assemblage: ‘transit for all’ and the transformation of Melbourne's passenger rail system, Australian Planner 53(1), 15-27, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07293682.2015.1135818 • Festival of Urbanism- Donor-driven Tsunami Housing in Sri Lanka: Resident Outcomes and Experiences: http://www.festivalofurbanism.com/2019/2019/9/2/donor-driven-tsunami-housing-in-sri-lanka-resident-outcomes-and-experiences • Festival of Urbanism- Quick MAPS: Monash Association of Planning Students Commuter Race: http://www.festivalofurbanism.com/2019/2019/7/29/quick-maps-monash-association-of-planning-students-commuter-race .

This episode of This Must Be The Place is a bit different – normally I talk to people, but in this episode I (meaning Liz Taylor, Monash University) actually just read out an essay I wrote recently about my experience of living in a building with combustible cladding. Also about reading Kafka (and David Graeber) and…well that’s the basic premise. I’ve called it Trial by Cladding. Please note – facts in this essay are as of around July 2019. A more recent (October) updated version of this essay and the cladding situation is on the Sydney Review of Books: https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/trial-by-cladding/

In this episode of PlanningxChange, Tim Eaton, Executive Director of Regulatory Standards, Assessments & Permissioning at the State of Victoria's Environmental Protection Authority is interviewed about current issues. These are many. In recent times, environmental issues have been constantly in the headlines, with a recycling crisis, chemical warehouse fires, distrust of government agencies and the general concern at the impacts of a rapidly expanding population. Tim speaks of the need of the EPA to have resolve and be seen primarily as a regulator. There is also the need to provide guidance and in some cases education to local authorities, industry, planning decisions makers and the general community. The EPA has been in existence nearly 50 years (commenced operations on 1 July 1971) and in this time there have been massive improvements in air quality, water quality and general amenity levels (ie. noise, odour etc). Tim speaks to the new environemnt provisions currently up for debate which some see as being too vague, broad and onerous (the burden of proof test, vague definitions about wellbeing including mental well being etc). Tim makes the case that these provisions suit the times. In the interview issues such as 'nocebo' are discussed, that being the stress caused by thinking of potential health issues. In a world where bad news headlines fill the community with dread, it is worth recognising the great environmental standards now achieved in first world nations and the expectation that these standards should be enjoyed by all on the planet. The interview throws up interesting facts such as there are 20,000 littering reports made by the general public to the EPA each year. Or that one hundred years ago, 1 in 4 deaths in the USA were attributed to contaminated water. The interview was recorded in front of a live audience (a first for PX) at the VPELA Conference held in Lorne late August 2019. Our thanks to VPELA for the invitation. For more details about PlanningxChange podcasts go to www.planningxchange.org. Interview released 16 October 2019.

In this episode, Jess Noonan and Peter Jewell of PlanningxChange interview Sophie Jordan, a Melbourne based town planning consultant running her own small practice. Sophie has considerable experience working across the public and private fields. She brings a new perspective (from the small end of town) on the challenges and opportunities associated with contemporary city development. Questions include, has planning policy kept up with the great societal changes that have happened in the last 30 years. Also, how does a small practitioner balance life/work pressures.