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00:07 PENNY: This podcast was recorded at the Richmond Library on Aboriginal land, the unceded, stolen land of the Wurunjeri people of the Kulin Nations. It also discusses events that occurred on the stolen and unceded lands of the Wilyakali people. We pay our respects to their elders past and present.
00:25 (jaunty piano music treble)
00:34 Penny: Welcome to In Those Days, where we talk about yesterday’s news today. My name's Penny Tangey and my co-host is Christina Adams. We use the National Library of Australia’s digitized newspapers in Trove to explore history with a guest.
This episode was recorded at the Richmond Library Makerspace as part of their artist in residence program. So thanks to Yarra Council and the staff of Richmond Library for their support.
In this episode we're going to be talking to Damian Callinan, who is star of stage and screen about the Globe Picture Theatre in Richmond, which was on the site of the current Richmond Library. And towards the end of the episode we're going on a big tangent and I'm gonna have a chat with my friend Tim Carruthers about some old sheet music, which he's brought to life that we found in Trove.
Damian Callinan is a very funny man. He has a show coming up in the Melbourne Comedy Festival called Unlikely Friends. It’s on at 3pm Saturdays and Sundays at Comedy Republic from 30 March to 21 April. I consider that to be a very convenient time and it will be a very funny show so give yourself a treat.
01:45 (jaunty piano music soprano)
01:54 PENNY: We are very lucky to have here today, Damian Callinan, star of stage and screen. He's also an author, he's a comedi-man, that's like a comedian that's a man, people might not have heard of that before.
CHRISTINA: It's good to unpack that.
Penny: He's one of the funniest people I've ever met.
Damian: That's nice.
Penny: Welcome, and you know
Damian: Thanks for having me.
Christina: Yay Damian, exciting times.
Damian: yeah, it's like getting the old band back together.
Christina: Yep. Here we are.
Penny: Well, you and Christina have travelled together.
Damian: We have. We did Roadshow South Australia. Probably other places too.
Christina: Mainly that.
Damian: We wore rat-mask headpieces.
Christina: I remember Damian over-committed to a character in an Op-shop.
Penny: The first question I always ask people is, do you use Trove much?
Damian: On occasion.
Penny: Okay, that's weird. Not every day?
Damian: Look I use it, I used it a little bit in the research for my show 'Double Feature', which is based on my mum's 1946 diary, written in Melbourne. And my brother uses it a lot, he's our family historian. He did a lot of the research for that show. But just finding things like, Mum might reference a particular theatre. The Children of Mary, were another constant reference in the diary that neither of us had any inkling about. So I don't think Trove was particularly helpful but we did find evidence. It was kind of a female youth movement, where they would wear weird little wedding dresses and blue cloak.
Christina: Cultish.
Damian: And a veil over the top. And according to my Aunt Margaret, who was President, so was Mum both high achievers in the world of youth cults as it turns out. They didn't do much, she said 'we kind of just sat there and occasionally sang hymns'. And at the end she just went, 'You know what Damian, we were useless.' Cos I do talk about that in the show a lot and I ask the audience when I get to that part of the show if there's members in the audience and hearing their different stories, it's pretty, and they constantly contradict me. Because I've written up. Look, to be honest some of my brother's research I abused. I said things like to be a member of the Children of Mary you had to be a single, Catholic female. You had to promise to marry a Catholic. And you had to participate in the blood sacrifice of the weakest altar boy on Good Friday. And they dispute that, some of them. Blood on their hands, not mine.
Oh, this is a true story, I'm going off on a weird tangent here but I was doing the show recently, I was doing it at a corporate event, which seems unusual, but it was the Elder's Rights Advocacy Group. Well, weirdly they just asked me to be a keynote speaker and I went, 'Oh well, I could just do this show, cos I think it fits in.' Cos there's a storyline in it of my parents in a retirement village and what happens in the aging process with the tragedy that ended up killing Mum. So I kind of went, yep, let's do that. Anyway, cos they're a very evidence-based group, I think. And they were really into it, they were very interactive. I got to the bit about the Children of Mary and the altar boys and then later on there's a voiceover, Mum's voice is through it, an actor playing her. And it said, 'Good Friday. Another altar boy went missing. That Colin O'Toole is faster than he looked.' And then I pretty much just move on from there and it's actually a big shift in the show cos I'm about to introduce Dad's diary, his retirement diary, which is why it's called Double Feature, it's based on their two diaries. Anyway, before I could really move on this woman said, 'I'm sorry, are we not gonna address the fact that yet another altar boy has gone missing.' And another person says, 'Yes! That's two now.' I said, 'What do you want me to do?' Like, it's too late, as far as cold cases. It's back in 1946. And I'm not, to be honest, I'm not gonna waste time trying to track down a fictional altar boy.
Christina: I love it.
Damian: It's one of the most specific heckles I've ever gotten.
Penny: So the episodes that we're doing now, they're all focused on Richmond, the suburb. So, do you have, what's your history in Richmond?
Damian: Well, I only discovered today, my father moved around a lot when he was young, his family lived in Clifton Hill, they lived in Moreland, Northcote at the time when he met Mum. I discovered today he was born in Richmond. This was 1924.
Penny: And Catholics. Big Catholic area.
Damian: Big Catholic area. We're not positive if was in a home, we don't have an address. I don't have any knowledge that his parents lived in Richmond so we assume it was probably at Bethesda Hospital.
Penny: That would make sense.
Damian: Otherwise it would have been I think they were living in Clifton Hill around that time but. So that's pretty cool. And I also discovered, so I'm Eureka descendent so my great-grandfather and his three brothers fought on the side of the miners. The Fighting Callinans of Eureka. My cousin wrote the short history, which I adapted into a show for the 150th anniversary
Penny: Oh wow, I didn't see that one.
Damian: Called Eureka Stocktake. One of those, probably the most famous of the four, Michael, he was the eldest and he sadly died about ten years later in an horrific mining accident but apparently his funeral was so big there were thousands of people marching up the streets of Ballarat. I think it was probably his son or nephew used to own the Prince of Wales on Church Street.
Penny: Pub owners in Richmond as well. I remember you doing a show in Richmond as well in a venue that Christina and I also once did a show in.
Damian: I think I saw the show.
Penny: And it was not a traditional venue.
Christina: Far from.
Penny: Well, it had been converted into a venue. It was 3 storey terrace and it was called the Owl and the Cat.
Damian: The Owl and the Pussycat.
Penny: Yeah, that's right. And what was your experience like?
Damian: Well we, I was actually only talking about this last night. We did it because we had a Regional Arts Victoria tour about to happen so I did some warm-up shows. It was a weird place to do warm-up shows. It's the tiniest, I think it's close to the tiniest venue I've ever done.
Penny: So it was basically that he converted the second floor bedroom basically into a theatre, sort of.
Damian: And bedrooms in the Victorian era homes were tiny and there was no augmentation.
Penny: Not really.
Damian: The stage was kind of like a recess. Cos I have quick changes in it. Zillah, my wife, was teching it and she was reminding me last night. You know like those triangular changing areas that you see at like at a market. Like that was how big it was and I'd have to do like full physical changes in this area about half, like a diagonal part of a phone booth. And it was a little kind of raised area kind of up to the side. So normally I'd have like a stump, so I just had a stool just up in the corner. And I remember, I think I did a couple of nights and one night there were a whole bunch of my mates who I kick the footy with, all sitting in the front row. A lot of whom very rarely go to the theatre. And I was performing right on top of them. Just, my balls hanging over their laps, in footy shorts. I mean, they're used to seeing me in footy gear.
CHRISTINA: Just not at that angle.
d. I remember Jimmy, Jimmy New he's called cos Jimmy Old was there. Anyway, Jimmy New's said to me afterwards, 'Jesus that was good but I was freaked out cos I could physically feel you transforming into other characters. I almost felt like it was happening in my body.'
Christina: What the hell.
Damian: 'And when you turned into that 9-year-old kid and I was just going it's Damo but he's 9, I believe that he's 9. It was doing my head in.'
Penny: That's a powerful performance. So that was The Merger wasn't it?
Damian: Yeah, it was The Merger.
Penny: So that's an experience of a theatre that we've had in Richmond, a converted theatre. Now what I really wanted to talk about today though is where we are now and what it used to be.
Christina: The library.
Penny: So we are in the Richmond Library but this library was built in the 1970s and before that there was the Globe Picture Theatre here, which showed silent films and it was built in 1912. You are a star of screen as well as stage, and you've made your own film, adapting your stage show 'The Merger'.
Christina: You did all of the things.
Penny: And I have heard, correct me if I'm wrong, that making films is very hard, cos it costs a lot of money.
Damian: The Merger evolved as a film, not through any original intent on my part but the play itself is quite cinematic in structure. There's a young boy making a documentary of the football club. For those who don't know The Merger, the story is of a small, struggling country town football club that look like they'll either have to merge with one of the other clubs in the other league or they'll just fold. And rather than that the prodigal son football coach Troy Carrington recruits refugees. That's the basic setup. But in the play Neil, the little boy character was making a doco.
Penny: And you played all the characters.
Damian: Yeah.
Penny: Which, in a way was hard, harder. In a film you can get other people to do bits.
Damian: I could get other people to. Easier to organise rehearsals. That's how it started and people say to me, from the very first night I did the show I had someone come up and say, 'That should be a film'. And that refrain just kept repeating and eventually a couple of people said, 'It should be a film and I'll help you.' Gavin Baskerville was the first one who said that and we kind of knocked around a first draft. And when I made another feature film called 'Backyard Ashes' with Mark Grentell who co-wrote and directed it. He came and saw the live show and said, 'Let's work together.' So yeah, that's how it started. So it wasn't a particular drive of mine to make films, it is now. I love the process so much.
Penny: So you haven't always thought in the back of your mind, 'I wish I could films'
Damian: No, not really.
Christina: You sort of stumbled into it.
Damian: Yeah. And most things are like that. My career is largely unplanned. I just like doing the things I like and am drawn to good stories.
Penny: Did you study acting at all?
Damian: Not formally. I did, I was a primary school teacher and I went back and did a grad dip Performing Arts.
Penny: I thought you were just going to say, 'I was a primary school teacher'. As though that was.
Christina: I had to keep the kids focussed somehow.
Damian: A little bit. So yeah, I became a drama teacher and in the process that got me acting and performing and did everything from impro to mask theatre to forum theatre, all sorts of stuff and then eventually, stand-up, which kind of brought me back full circle. Doing stand-up and then I could get on stage and just making up characters and creating my own work. So there was no real plan. But now if I have a plan, I would like to continue. And I am writing both a film version of Double Feature and I'm writing a comedy-drama series. I really enjoyed it. Like any process, you don't know how hard it is until you do it. I don't really want to go down the independent path, completely independent path again, cos it took 5 years. So yeah, it's a very difficult process. It's kind of a flawed system for the creators of films, particularly independent films are the ones who don't make the money. So our film's been on Netflix for 3 years and it's gone spectacularly well on there, to our knowledge. Constantly trending and it's been on Netflix for 3 years, which is an achievement in itself. I haven't got a single cent.
Penny: You're joking! Are we going on strike. What's happening? Let me know what I can do.
Damian: I mean it's a puzzle to work through as a creative how do you get your work made and then how do you make money out of it.
Penny: You've done so many different things over such a long time that's because you've done lots of different things and started things without knowing how long they were taking.
Christina: Blind leaps of faith.
Penny: Irons in the fire. That's what I say. Nice to have an iron in the fire.
Damian: It's better than not.
Penny: Yeah, cos you never know. You might just be about to get a nice email, or a good phone call, or something.
Damian: It's funny when you make a film like The Merger, which has been, really successful and it's reasonably well known. There's a lot of people who don't know about it, and that's fine.
Penny: We're getting to them.
Damian: But my hairdresser said to me the other day, 'Jeez I love The Merger. It just made me laugh so hard. Why haven't you done anything since?'
Christina: Slack arse.
Damian: Cos it's such a public thing, they don't know that since then I've written 2 solo shows, I've written a play, I've written a book.
Christina: You're multi-modal.
Damian: It did make me go, but people keep asking so.
Penny: It's like you could go, 'I loved my last haircut. Why haven't you cut anyone else's hair since?'
Damian: Yeah, exactly. Are you listening Marita? No, cos it's not a film.
Penny: She's not gonna be listening. I can almost guarantee it. But anyway, I might kick on with this article from the Richmond Guardian, which is a great source for us cos it's a local rag.
Christina: It's Richmond
15:09 Penny: It's Richmond. And this is from Saturday the 13th April 1912.
"Globe Theatre.
AUSPICIOUS OPENING. FINE SHOW PLEASES LARGE AUDIENCES:
The New Globe Theatre was officially opened On Thursday evening, April 4, a representative gathering of citizens being present to honor the occasion."
Christina: It's good to have a representative gathering.
Penny: "Admiration was expressed on all sides at the splendid interior and handsome appointments. The opinion was freely expressed that the new theatre would compare more than favorably with any other play-house of its kind in the State."
Christina: Or the world!
This is actually the third picture theatre to open in Richmond in like a year. So they were just kind of exploding.
"Congratulations were freely bestowed on the directors and shareholders of the Richmond Theatre Pty. Ltd. in the possession of such a fine property. Mr. E. J. Cotter, M.L.A., declared the new building open, and while complimenting the proprietors on their enterprise, expressed an opinion that the popularity of animated pictures for the entertainment and education of the people would continue."
Christina: The people.
Penny: Huzzah! So he was right. At least he wasn't like, 'this won't last.' So these are obviously silent films. Do you like silent films?
Damian: Yeah.
Penny: Do you?
Damian: Yeah, I like Buster Keaton.
Penny: I have to say, I have not seen many. I've mainly seen parodies of them.
Damian: I've seen a couple live. There used to be a band called, well, they still technically exist called The Blue Grassy Knoll, blue grass band. But they do soundtracks to silent films. So they did like 'The General', which is a Buster Keaton film. And it's so great, hearing a band, really brings it to life.
Penny: Yeah. Cos yeah, cos it wasn't just. It's not like they just hit play like they do today. There were live elements of it as well.
Damian: Yeah, so much. But there's so much that went into making, just single jokes. Like spend days creating a single joke. The craft and skill that all of those people came together. And that's one of the things I've learned the most about filmmaking is how collaborative it is, particularly having gone from literally me playing every character in the world of Bodgy Creek in The Merger play to turning up the set on the first day and there's approximately a hundred people making the story come to life.
Penny: And how do you go with that? Do you feel like that means there's a loss of control?
Damian: No. Not at all.
Penny: Cos you're the frickin’ boss.
Damian: Well, but yeah, you acquire a team around you so you have to have faith. There's only one time I can think of in that whole process where there was someone who I kind of took the eye off and that person had not been, had not worked hard enough to achieve the thing.
Penny: And they know who they are.
Damian: It was potentially quite disastrous in terms of, this is the day we're shooting this and you don't have the right things. But that was a complete outlier and that person got better. But generally speaking, it's the opposite. It's people going, oh my god, you're doing things I never thought of like production designers thinking about the colour pallet of the story from the start to the end and it changing, and the story arc. But in the sense of the silent films, everything came down to what you could see on the screen, so the set builders, the stunt performers, all of those people conspired to make a single moment. Without the trickery that we have today as far as CGI.
Penny: Yeah, it was very different technically.
Damian: Somewhat.
Christina: Christina, do you like old films. You're allowed to say 'no I think they're'
Christina: I do like old films.
Penny: But what about silent films?
Christina: Well, I guess I always think of the archetypal someone tied to the train tracks silent film. I know I studied Cinema Studies at uni and we did go back over a lot of those old silent films and then also looking at the impact of when sound is brought in and what, you know, how that impacts on you as a viewer and what that creates. Yeah, I do really like old films. That was a round-a-bout way of saying that.
Damian: The thing I discovered in reading my mum's diary was how important film was.
Penny: I mean she had talky talkies.
Damian: By '46 yeah.
Penny: I mean, I love that era, yeah.
Damian: But she was seeing up to 6 films a week. She'd always see a double-feature. sometimes on the weekend they'd see a double double feature and she would write about them and it very much flavoured the diary.
Christina: It would have.
Damian: I put together a visual version of the diary for the family and I got the film posters of every film she mentioned and I got photograph of every theatre that she went to, some of which don't exist. So it completely changed the reading of the diary when you saw it with all the visuals because you had the context.
Penny: This article continues. So this is E. J. Cotter MLA. He says:
"He attributed the large audiences which patronised such pleasing shows not only to the great progress that had been made in the cinematographic art"
Christina: Good job.
Penny: Thank you, I tried hard.
"and the production of increasingly-interesting films,"
Now do we think that films are becoming increasingly interesting? Or decreasingly interesting? How's the trend?
Christina: Mixed I feel.
Penny: Yeah, it's hard these days. Because probably in those days, cos there weren't as many you could just track it on one line. Are films increasing in interestinglyness or is it going down. Because I think some of the first films really weren't very interesting and then they were able to do more.
Damian: Look, you'd have to say it is increasingly interesting but there's still a lot of not-interesting films being made.
Penny: True.
Damian: But techniques and the, I guess that the conflict is in, does the technology overtake the storytelling. That's probably the challenge but there's still incredibly beautiful, just plain stories being made. Probably the best film I've seen this year, close to, is Christmess, just came out. It's an Australian Christmas film. It's about an actor who comes out of rehab just before Christmas and his world's completely imploded. His agent's not returning his calls, he's estranged from his family, and he moves into a half-way house and that's the sort of setup. And the victories are very small through it. So it's not like a huge redemption at Christmas. Heath Davis is the filmmaker. 135 grand he made it for. And it's certainly the best Australian film I've seen this year. So it's, but it's an old school story.
Penny: Well, he says it's not just about the films being increasingly interesting but also
"to the better conditions that the people now had for enjoying such entertainments. By judicious and humane legislation their hours"
Christina: Humane!
Penny: "their hours of labor had been decreased and their wages increased. They had more money to spend, and they had more time to spend it in. Naturally they had more enjoyment."
And this is true.
Damian: Does he mean the workers?
Penny: Yeah he means the workers.
Christina: Or stars of the screen? It's very hard to tell.
Penny: So people had more money and they've got more time, so they can go to the theatre. And it's true, and at that time they tried to shut down the sweatshops and there a big move to people working in factories. It wasn't always actually really good thing for the workers, because the factories weren't always very nice either. There was also a bit of a building boom as well. So people have more money and a bit more time. Still lots of unemployment but yeah, on average I think it was probably true. Cos you can't you know, go to the flicks if you don't have any time and you don't have any money. And he says:
"And the moving picture show provided wholesome enjoyment and was an undoubted educational force. In erecting such a palatial structure the company had evidenced their belief in the potentialities of the district and if they provided the entertainments they promised the people of Richmond would not be lacking in support. (Applause.)"
Loved that. They loved that. So, the biggest disruption we've had recently is, well we've got the cost-of-living crisis now, but before that we had Covid. And that really was not good for cinemas or live performances. How is it going? Are people coming back?
Damian: It's interesting I just did a long tour of my show Double Feature, so Regional Arts Victoria funded that went to both theatres and small halls. Audience members are down and confidence in all those venues is really down and some of the venues just don't know what to do, they just can't get people to come back. I mean there's a lot of competition too. Covid meant that people accessed entertainment exclusively online and probably augmented the number of servers and streaming services they've got. So it's increasingly difficult to get people out of their homes. And in the regions there the traditional, like, I'm just about to head off on tour this week and there's three of the towns where it's harvest. So they're going if it pisses rain on the night
Christina: You'll be packed.
Damian: We'll be okay, but if not it'll probably just be the ladies and the kids.
Christina: Good to know.
Damian: How little has changed.
Christina: Yeah.
Damian: So it's not just Covid. I think in the city's it's probably changed. I've been to a lot of concerts this week and there's very little evidence.
Penny: So they were full? People were out and about.
Damian: They were full. But certainly for a time. And also Covid introduced, as I said all these other streaming services and allowed people who can't go to the theatre the opportunity to see
Penny: Yeah, so it's not bad. Like it definitely has made things
Damian: But I think, right through that period I was cancelling tours and negotiating tours and we remounted The Merger in the wake of the film. So it got cancelled one year, we redid it the next year but they wanted to film it. So we actually got paid to film so that they had it as a backup. But by the time we did the tour, the tour happened and I was going, 'Are you gonna put it on that night like for people who can't come?' And none of them did. Not a single one.
Penny: Ah rude.
Damian: And not long after that tour we went into lockdown and there was one venue that said, 'Can we have it for a night?' and put it on. But I feel like the ball's been dropped a bit for accessibility.
Penny: Learning. It doesn't always happen, does it?
Damian: No. It's fascinating hearing that article though, like that was 1912, how many technological changes have been since. That was just for silent films. And I've just leant you a book called, 'My Giddy Aunt' about the vaudeville era, particularly from the female performers' perspective. And they were constantly having to adjust what they did as the film world started to take over, from the silents to the talkies.
Penny: Absolutely. And I think it's not so much that change is bad, it's the way. It's always capitalism always tries to. Like you're not getting paid from your Netflix.
Damian: Yeah.
Penny: I mean if you were getting paid properly for that it'd be like, oh great, it's changed. People change what they do.
Damian: And very few people on the outside, everyone would have a perception that happy days, Damo's films on Netflix. And I'm not whinging. It should be different.
Penny: And just let me know when we're chaining ourselves to something.
Christina: Yep, we'll be there.
Penny: Now, do you wanna know what was on at the theatre on this, when the Globe was opening?
Damian: Christina and I are gonna have a guess. I'm gonna go with 'Rex and his Dancing Pancreas'.
Christina: Oh, I liked that pancreas.
Damian: Yeah. It was huge in 1912, I know that.
Christina: I'll go 'Doris and the Haunted Haystack'.
Penny: Well you're close.
Christina: Yeah, I thought I might be.
Penny: Closer. It was 'George and the Dragon'. That was the star picture for the first evening.
"on Tuesday evening a splendid drama of Australian life was screened in Breaking the News. The picture was founded on the famous painting of the Australian artist John Longstaff, which hangs in the National Art Gallery. It proved a stirring production, the incidents of a miner's life being vividly depicted."
That might be one of your relations.
Damian: Could be.
Penny: Do you want to describe it again, cos you were good at that.
Damian: This is a black and white version, so I won't talk about the colours.
Penny: No, you can't. You can just say black and white.
Damian: Black and white. It's an elderly gentleman of rather upright stance with a long, white beard. And his hands are pressing onto the shoulders of a younger woman, she's looking more loving than he. She is either holding a dead sheep with no head, or a crocheted set of bagpipes.
Penny: It is hard to tell.
Damian: And they're in a traditional kitchen of I would say the late 19th century with a wood-fired stove. And there appears to be 2 men in the doorway that are carrying something. But that could be a body.
Penny: I think it is. And I think they've come to tell her that her husband is dead from the mines and they're just like assuming she's gonna be sad. So that was cheery stuff.
Damian: Cheery stuff.
Christina: So cheery.
Penny: That was very well-received. And there's another article that I wanted to read to you from the opening of the Globe. And this one, I don't know, to me it's like. We'll see, let me just see how
Damian: We'll make up our own minds Penny.
Penny: You guys decide.
Christina: Don't put your own lens on it.
28:36 Penny: Richmond Guardian Saturday 25th of May 1912.
"Globe Theatre.
A prominent resident of South Richmond has a friend from the country on a visit to him. He has not been to Melbourne for many years, and prior to a visit to the Globe Theatre on Thursday night had little knowledge of the wonderful progress of the cinema art."
This guy's a bumpkin.
Christina: Sure is.
Penny: Now, you guys both grew up in the city.
Damian: Yeah.
Penny: So I am a bumpkin. I grew up in the country.
Christina: We have allowed you to ingratiate yourself with us.
Penny: I am a bumpkin. I know what it's like to come to town and be overwhelmed by escalators, feel out of place and memorise the city grid as though that's gonna protect you and no-one's gonna be able to tell that you don't belong here. So I am on the side of the bumpkin here.
"The pair had seats in the dress circle, which is at the back of the theatre. They both appeared to enjoy the show immensely. The old man never lost his interest for a moment. When it was all over and the pair were proceeding homewards, the Richmondite asked his friend, who is slightly deaf, his opinion of the entertainment "Well," replied the old man, "there is no doubt about it. They are great actors at that theatre, and the plays were fine, but it's a pity we sat so far back. I could hardly hear what they said at all."
Damian: So, it was a film though.
Penny: It was a film and the bumpkin thought
Christina: He thought it was live. Quick set changes.
Penny: I had a little look to see if maybe this is an apocryphal story that people trotted out every time a theatre opened.
Damian: It does sound it, doesn't it.
Penny: But maybe it really did happen. And it continues:
"There is no doubt about the realism of the Globe pictures. They are something more than powerful."
Now recently I saw your recent film that you starred in Damian, called The Emu Wars.
Damian: Oh you did.
Penny: Which was hilarious and I really, really loved it. I'm wondering what it's like to see yourself on the big screen? Because you were in the theatre as well. And also, I mean, for context there was some nudity in that film.
Christina: Was that you Damian?
Penny: There was a sex scene. But it was all part of the plot.
Damian: It was a bit blurry you can't. It's deliberately blurred.
Penny: It was part of the plot. Very tasteful.
Christina: I wouldn't have thought it was
Penny: It was not gratuitous.
Christina: No.
Damian: You're being very kind. Look some backstory on this film. It was filmed over a very long period because the pandemic kept breaking up the process and on a slight budget. It was Screen Australia funded and it was originally intended to be a web series and not a film at all but such was, has been the reception to it that they've now got film distribution. I found out yesterday it's gonna be released in May next year.
Penny: You've gotta go Christina.
Christina: I'm gonna go.
Damian: So the screening you're talking about was at Monster Fest, which is essentially horror and violent films and it fits in that category, but it's more of a comedy. There's violence in it cos it's
Christina: Cos violence is funny.
Damian: It's funny in this context. The reason they chose it. So I'm not a writer, I play kind of the lead. I didn't really know I was the lead until.
Penny: You're in the middle of the poster so
Damian: Well, the poster came out and I'm the only one on the main poster. This was before I found out it was a film. Anyway, that was an unusual process, in seeing myself on the screen. Cos it was so broken up and over a long period of time I'd forgotten what we'd done, a lot of it. And also there's a lot of improvisation in the film, so they let the cameras go. So I didn't know what they were going to use and what they weren't gonna use. So it was genuinely a bit of a surprise. I was watching it almost like the audience going
Penny: So you hadn't seen it before that night?
Damian: I had not seen a second of it. So I was sitting there kind of discovering it with the audience. And the reaction was quite over-the-top like the laughter level
Penny: We loved it.
Damian: It's pretty nuts. It's all over the shop, like it's. And the CGI hadn't quite been finished, they'd had a disaster with the guy doing it and they had to replace him at the last minute. So that'll get fixed up to a point.
Penny: I mean it's never gunna
Damian: No, it's deliberately a bit not right. You know, legions of machine gun clad emus running over a hill.
Christina: Yeah, nice.
Damian: And it's historically all over the shop. My character
Penny: You're the only one who brought any historical
Damian: I'm the only character that exists in the real story. So for those who don't know the Emu War story, in 1932 such was the plague proportions of emus on the wheatbelt of Western Australia, they called in the Australian military and they brought a guy called Major Meredith in, who brought a company together of all World War I veterans and they approached it like it was the Battle of the Somme but it was summer in Western Australia. They set up trenches and machine gun nests and it didn't work. It was a complete disaster. But there's no attempt in this to tell that story. It's complete invention.
Penny: I looked it up in Trove afterwards. It didn't happen. It did not happen.
Damian: Well, it happened.
Penny: Not like that.
Damian: Not our version. Not that version. I love that they did that. Because Jonathan Schuster, who's the original story idea generator he just said straight away people, once you know what the basic story is, you'll get bored with it so they've completely thrown the rulebook out.
Penny: This is the last part of the article:
"This week a splendid programme is being screened, and oh Monday another fine change of subjects is promised. The beauty show has attracted large entries, and young ladies that own to prepossessing looks are advised that the time for closing is almost at hand"
Christina: Excellent.
Penny: If you think you're hot, get on
Christina: Get on the stage.
Penny: The Globe Picture Theatre did not just show films
Christina: I'm so glad it had some pageants. So glad.
34:43 Penny: And that goes into the next article that we're gonna read because it was actually in that time it was pretty much 50/50 films and live shows in the same night. So you'd go along there'd be live performers and they'd show a bit of film. This is from the Argus on the 10th of February 1915.
"TROUBLE AT "THE GLOBE,"
COMEDIAN SUES FOR WAGES.
In the District Court yesterday, Harry Hoddinot, professional comedian, sued Henry Percival, manager of the Globe Picture Theatre, Richmond, to recover £6 for wages for a week's appearances at the Globe Theatre.
Christina: Sounds about right.
Damian: About right.
Penny: Yeah 6 pounds. It's $700. Would you do that? Work for $700 for the week. You probably have.
Damian: It depends what the work is. It's kind of hard to describe to those who aren't doing it. There's some work you'd gladly do.
Penny: I mean, you're here for free.
Damian: Yeah, and then there's gigs like this.
Christina: Where you go, what the fuck am I doing?
Damian: But before I leave the library there'll be some objects I'll take with me that will make it all worthwhile. He said staring at a keyboard. I don't even know how to play it.
Penny: We haven't even used it so
Christina: You'll find out its value on Marketplace.
Damian: That's a fair bit.
Penny: But he didn't get it. The article continues:
"Sir. Ridgeway appeared for Hoddinot, and Mr. Blair for Percival.
Hoddinot, the complainant, said that he had performed in England and South Africa, and had been with him Brennan Fuller Circuit for 2 and a half years, and for nine months with the Tivoli Theatre management. After being engaged by Percival he appeared at a Saturday matinee and at the evening performance at the Globe Theatre. His turns "went good" on each occasion.
Christina: I love it when your turn goes good.
Damian: I had a good turn.
Penny: "In the evening he sang two songs, which were encored, and made three bows to the audience."
Christina: Imagine if he'd done a fourth.
Penny: So in your experience Damian, do you think performers are generally good at assessing how well their turns went? Particularly comedians?
Damian: I think they are but when you're trying to convince a judge that you should be paid then you'll
Penny: fudge it a bit.
Damian: That's why he's talking about how good he was in the past. Not on those particular nights. He said it 'went good' but I don't know. It's very unusual to get an encore in comedy because people have been...you almost never get, I've had some but you very rarely get a standing ovation in comedy even if people loved the show. And the reason for that is I reckon because people are emoting the whole time in comedy. Whereas in drama you might watch something for an hour and 40 minutes and there's just an eruption.
Christina: I think that's why comedy can be one of the most confronting performances. Cos if you watch a dance and it's crap, you'll still clap at the end and that dancer won't know that no-one really liked it but a comedian if you're not hearing some sort of response within the first 5 to 10 seconds, it's pretty disastrous.
Damian: It is, yeah.
Penny: And that's why ever so often when someone does seem to not know that it hasn't gone well, it is particularly staggering.
Christina: There's narcissists everywhere.
Penny: That's true.
Damian: Do you remember my show, I did it in 2009, called 'Is this thing on? The Dave Berry story".
Penny: I didn't see that.
Damian: So it was essentially a play exactly about this. It was about a try-out comedian who'd been going for 9 years who had no ability to understand how shit he was. So I created this really likable character who was running comedy rooms and just trying everything, but he was no good. And there was a German documentary filmmaker obsessed with schadenfreude who was chronicling his life. But one thing led to another and he started to get famous for being rubbish.
The interesting thing about that, the show used to begin, it was quite deconstructed, I'd have like German industrial music by Faust playing and I'd walk in slow-motion to a spotlight. So it was not lit till the last minute and he finally got to the microphone and it would have taken 2 and a half minutes of this kind of laboured, grotesque movement and then I got to the microphone, 'G'day, how're you going?' And then did 5 minutes of bad impro. And I had to make it bad to make the show work, the laughter was too good so I had to, I developed this system to self-sabotage that if I got a laugh, I'd then explain to the audience why it was funny. And drive them back to silence. But if they weren't in on the joke it was the most excruciating 5 minutes of my career. But it had to be there to make the play work.
Penny: Otherwise, it wouldn't make sense. And in real life, how self-critical are you?
Damian: I think you have to be. If a gig doesn't go well I try and analyse it. Yeah, factor in the audience a bit but you can't blame them you've gotta work out what it was. Particularly when you're doing new material. Or at the end of it you go, 'Aw, I shouldn't have started with that. They weren't ready for that bit of material.' Yeah, so I am self-analytical to work out why things didn't go as well as they could have.
Penny: Have you ever, cos I can't imagine, because I think of you as a very, very successful person, but do you ever want to give up? How often do you think, 'I want to give up. I don't want to do it anymore.'
Damian: Yeah, not even close.
Penny: Really.
Damian: Yeah. Look there's part of me that wants to write more but then I love performing too. I do really love the live bit. Having said that I got through the pandemic reasonably well. I'm not one of those comedians that needs to have a fix of live performance. Like, when I go on holidays, I go on holidays. I don't think 'Where can I do a gig?'
Penny: Oh my god does anyone do that? Do people do that?
Damian: So many people do that. People say, 'Oh, you're going to Dublin, are you going to do gigs?' 'No, I'm there for a film festival.' I don't want to switch my brain into acting as well. Yeah but I don't ever think, 'What have I got myself into? Let's put an end to this. Let's park it.'
Penny: Back to the classroom.
Damian: Yeah. Naturally.
Christina: We've got a few unfilled positions, or even a bit of CRT on the side. Keep your hand in.
Penny: Christina's constantly recruiting.
Christina: Constantly. I always feel like I need to have backup plans. Just always.
Penny: What's your backup plan from now?
Christina: I've done all sorts of weird jobs.
Penny: Oh that's right.
Christina: I could go back to any at a moment's notice if I had to.
Penny: Horse training?
Christina: I could go back to working at a racetrack or doing wine tastings. Those skills don't leave you, Penny. They're there. They're there for life.
Penny: I never came to visit you.
Christina: No, I know. I did notice that.
Penny: Can I just say and cos you're both people who know about, you know about wine?
Damian: I've done a show about it.
Penny: You've done a show about it, yeah. I hate going to tastings. I hate it.
Christina: Why?
Penny: I hate walking in. The absolute silence. Someone ambles out and goes, 'What do you want' and then you have to taste it and have an opinion in front of them.
Christina: And then I always slip in, 'I used to run a couple of cellar doors.' Because then I still get the industry special. Always. 'Oh we don't usually get this out.' 'No, I bet you don't, but I'm here now so get it out.'
Penny: Nah. I'm just there in a flat panic going, 'What, what.'
Damian: Well, people like Christina and I can't.
Penny: Horrible.
Damian: Because I grew up going to cellar doors. I know how to speak at one, I feel comfortable in them.
Christina: And the more I taste.
Damian: Dad used to have this way, he was very knowledgeable but he wasn't one of those, there's a lot of people in cellar doors who just want to show off what they know. But Dad would just ask enough questions that they'd go, 'You know what, I'll open the Hill of Grace'.
Christina: Yep, it's coming out. You ask them pertinent questions, you're obviously smart.
Penny: They're just getting out the orange juice for me.
Damian: Yeah.
Christina: They're like, 'She's a Muscato drinker'
Penny: 'What do you think of this?' And I won't, I won't say. Anyway.
Damian: You don't have to go to them.
Penny: I don't anymore. For a little while I pretended it was a nice thing to do. Like I thought it was something that I should like doing and so I went
Christina: So when your friend used to do it, and I wouldn't have made it hard for you, you still didn't come.
Penny: Yeah, that's right, I might have had a nice time
Damian: Important people in your life who could have helped you through this.
Christina: Would have really held your hand.
Penny: Alright we're gonna carry on with Harry Hoddinott's story here.
Christina: Okay.
Penny: "Percival came into his dressing-room after the evening performance, and said: "I will not be able to keep you; you are unlucky. The night is very hot, and this is the worst house I have had." Witness said he would have to sue him for wrongful dismissal. Percival replied, "If you stand on your 'dig.' you won't get anything." On the following Monday "witness went to the theatre and offered his services,"
Which is, beautiful after you've already been sacked, you just turn up on Monday.
Christina: I have to say, I've seen that.
Penny: "when Percival told him that he would not be required, and offered him a guinea for the Saturday appearances. Only two days ago witness had heard that his dismissal was for being under the influence of liquor."
Damian: So wait, a comedian was drinking?
"Evidence was given by William Vance, caretaker of the Globe Theatre, that Hoddinot's "turns" went all right. In the evening they went well."
Alright, now we're getting to the other side.
"Henry Percival, the defendant, said that before the evening performance he had occasion to put out a man who had come to assist Hoddinot to dress due to his being drunk."
If you can't put your pants on, cancel the gig.
Damian: Cancel the gig, yeah.
Christina: Yes. Noone needs a pantless gig.
Penny: That's like a standard rule I think.
"The applause for Hoddinot's performance that evening was only half hearted. (Laughter.)"
I think that's in the court.
"He told Hoddinot not to appear in the second part of the programme. In his opinion Hoddinot was under the influence of liquor. He was little better than his friend who was put out of the dressing-rooms.
Mr. Ridgeway,"
This is the lawyer acting for Hoddinott.
"Is it not a fact that if you have a bad Saturday night you are generally hard up during the rest of the week?
Witness. -- Not necessarily.
What was Hoddinot's performance like?
-- He did not sing at all; he bawled all through!"
Damian: He bawled.
Penny: Bawled.
Damian: So it's like they were just yelling
Penny: Crying.
Damian: Singing. Or crying.
Penny: "William Oyston, pianist, said that Hoddinot performed very badly at the night entertainment. He was erratic.
Mr. Ridgeway. -- But was there not a certain amount of hand-clapping?"
Christina: Why did we have to specify hand clapping?
Penny: "Was it for him or you?"
And the Oyston says:
"It was not genuine applause.
They must be very easy to please down your way?"
And Oyston says:
"They stamp their feet after every turn."
Do people still ever, is there much foot stamping these days?
Damian: Yeah, particularly in those
Penny: A wooden hall.
Damian: Bleachers in circus tents. You still get a bit of that.
Penny: "H. Fry, doorkeeper, said that, in his opinion, Hoddinott's singing was a disgrace. He thought he was under the influence of liquor, and heard people passing remarks going through the door."
Christina: He's pissed.
Penny: "Mr. Goldsmith. P.M. said that a majority of the bench considered the claim could not succeed. They were not convinced that Hoddinot was drunk, but it was evident that he had not done his work in a way which could have prevented the manager from complaining. There was justification for the manager's action. The claim would be dismissed."
So Hoddinott did not get his money. Cos it does sound like he was shit.
Damian: And I think that's a reasonable judgement to be honest. Like we can't definitely say
Penny: Whether he was.
Damian: You were drunk. But we can definitively say you were shit.
Christina: Yes.
Penny: Exactly, that's right. Could have been a number of reasons. Look the arts industry is notoriously insecure. But have you ever got the sack?
Damian: I was thinking about this. I don't know if the sack is the right word but Lawrence and I were asked to do, there was a TV show happening on the Comedy Channel and we were kind of at the peak of our duo stuff. We did stuff separately but we did four comedy festivals over 5 years and we doing Triple J together. We got asked, it was really Lawrence was the host and I was the second banana. So it felt like it was more to do with him but they went, 'Oh this is perfect cos they used to work together.' The show was called The Big Schmooze. My memories are foggy but we essentially were given it. They said, it's yours, you're doing it. And we were days away from going in to make, I assume it would have been the pilot then the agent, you know there's always a bit of noise and stuff. It's either noise or silence. Anyway, someone in higher up had said, 'No way in the world' and all of a sudden, we were out before we even started. And Matt Hardy and Kate Langbroek did a show.
Penny: Right.
Damian: Did a season maybe 2 seasons. Like a Tonight Show sort of thing. I don't really have much memory of it. So that was kind of, it felt like we got the sack but we hadn't actually, we hadn't got our lanyard yet.
Christina: That was coming.
Damian: So I've had more of those experiences of thinking that you've got something and then it didn't happen.
Penny: Now I reckon you would have been really good in the vaudeville era. Do you feel that? Can you sing?
Damian: No. I can dance.
Christina: But could you do what I call character sing. I reckon you could character sing.
Damian: Yeah, I call it dickhead bravado and character sing is about right.
Penny: Yeah, you'd be fine. That's the way to be a comedian at the time, so I reckon you would have.
Damian: I reckon I would have ticked all the boxes like character, a lot of clowning.
Christina: Your love of lederhosen.
Damian: Love an accent. So I think I would have ticked a lot of the boxes. And I would have learnt, like the dancing would have been fine, I would have just picked it up.
Christina: I think you'd be great.
Damian: I reckon I would have been alright. Maybe that's a show I should do. I should do a vaudeville show.
Christina: I think so. The industry's calling out for it.
Penny: Get in a cannon.
Damian: I'll do the life-story of Harry Hoddinott.
Penny: Yeah, well you know what happened next? Well, I think he went to the War, but I'm not 100% sure cos there's a couple of different Hoddinotts.
Christina: Those Hoddinotts, it's hard to keep track.
Penny: I decided it was a bit of a tangent. This is the problem that I have with this
Christina: Let's follow Percival's story instead.
Penny: I was meant to be focusing on Richmond. The site of the Richmond Library and then I'm obsessed with this guy and whether it's the right Harry Hoddinott going to war. So I had to drop that but I think he probably did go to the war and then I think he went to Broken Hill.
Damian: You know how he died though?
Christina: How?
Damian: He got up on the parapet and took three bows.
Christina: Yeah nice.
Damian: It was the third bow that killed him.
Penny: So have you been to Broken Hill much?
Damian: I have. Yeah, I did the Comedy Festival Roadshow there a couple of times. Not for a while.
Penny: Because he wrote basically what was at one time, almost the theme song for Broken Hill. Cos he wrote it for the 1933 Broken Hill Jubilee. And it was called 'We're going Back, Back Again to Broken Hill'.
49:58 (pianola-style music)
PENNY: Now we're going on a tangent. My friend Tim Carruthers and I are going to have a bit of a conversation about Harry Hoddinott's music and also about our music camp in Broken Hill. In year 10. It makes sense.
We're Going Back, Back again to Broken Hill, that was composed by
TIM: Harry Hoddinott.
Penny: I found the sheet music in Trove.
Tim: Oh right. Do you know if Hoddinott wrote a whole bunch of pop music at the time?
Penny: Not that I could find and I don't think so. This one became a bit of an anthem for Broken Hill for awhile. But there was a competition for their Jubilee and another song won. And there were articles in the paper that said, 'This is wrong, it should have been Harry Hoddinott's song'. 'Everyone loves We're Going Back Back to Broken Hill again.’
Tim: It was robbed. I had to transcribe the music and I didn't want to have a version with a bunch of mistakes in it. So this the actual written music played by a computer. I was saying before I played in sort of old-timey jazz bands playing pop music from the teens and twenties and thirties. I'm not a musicologist but it sounds to me more like a twenties-ish kind of song than a thirties-ish one. It sounds a little bit old-fashioned.
Penny: But he probably, maybe he was going for that cos it's like, it's a nostalgia thing.
Tim: The sheet music is interesting cos it sort of looks like it's been handwritten but then it's clearly got a bunch of lyrics printed on it as well. But it's not that kind of professional sheet music that you see. Cos you see music that was printed in the 1930s and someone has used proper hot-lead printing to make it look all neat and nice. And this is clearly someone's drawn it.
Penny: Probably mainly for Broken Hill people.
Tim: Well, yeah, I guess so. It would be really fascinating to know how well did this sell? Was this on everyone's home piano and they were. You know how we have music charts for the sales of recorded music? From what I read that came out of originally charts for sales of sheet music.
Penny: Yeah, I think that's right.
Tim: Because before recorded music was the thing in the late 1800s you started having sheet music being the big way that music was distributed.
Penny: But the other reason why this song particularly appealed to me and asking you to do it is because we have actually been to Broken Hill together.
Tim: We have. For a musical event no less.
Penny: Yeah, that's right. We were in the Castlemaine Secondary College orchestra in 1997 they went on a tour of the Outback, which was basically just rural areas of New South Wales.
Tim: I would be fascinated to know whose idea that was to take all the students from the high school on a music camp that would drive around the middle of outback New South Wales.
Penny: I presume it was Louise Ray and Dale. But how did they have that idea? Did they know someone in one of those towns or something?
Tim: I have no idea. They clearly had some concerts lined up because we went and we played a proper concert in some hall
Penny: To seven people.
Tim: There was more than 7, I'm sure.
Penny: Well, some were better than others.
Tim: Yeah, there were a few. There were sort of concerts every day or two as I remember. I mainly remember there was one where the power kept going out every minute. But of course, we were playing acoustic instruments, so it was fine.
Penny: What do you remember about Broken Hill?
Tim: I remember all the desert landscape surrounding it being genuinely very pretty and picturesque and really interesting to see cos I'd never been into the desert before. The town itself is just a bit weird and has a bit of a weird vibe. I mean, I don't know if we were the best people to judge. We were just teenagers. And we'd spent all of our childhood in a similarly strange country town, but it was not strange in the same way.
Penny: Yeah, that's right. And I remember the pool. I think the pool, I think there was probably more than one pool, but I think at Broken Hill there was a pretty nice pool and we'd all go in in the afternoon and scream. It must have been just a joy to have us there. You were playing percussion, weren't you?
Tim: I played percussion in the orchestra. There was also the concert band that I played saxophone in. And there was also a little jazz group that I played piano in.
Penny: Oh that's right. You were one of the stars!
Tim: No, no.
Penny: But you got to play for School of the Air.
Tim: Oh yeah. I'd forgotten about that until you mentioned it. That was interesting, yeah.
Penny: That was really fun. And hearing all the kids' voices come on and they were really crackly and they could understand each other. I was like, I can't understand a word of this.
Tim: No, it was interesting. Clearly it was a really memorable, well-done music camp because there was a whole bunch of things like that School of the Air thing and the concerts that we did that were really memorable and interesting. There are so many other school excursions that I went on that I can't remember at all but that one.
Penny: There is a reason though why I think we might remember this more clearly than other camps. It was video recorded by the Chaplain.
Tim: Yeah, that's right.
Penny: And he made an extremely tedious video of it with a lot of detail of it but there were some
Tim: Some gem moments.
Penny: Some good moments in it. It was about 3 hours too long. And then didn't we have like a night where we all got together and watched it?
Tim: Yeah, it got sort of edited and put together
Penny: It wasn't edited enough Tim
Tim: It wasn't. But it was a video that everyone was really happy had been made because there were a whole bunch of stupid teenagers doing stupid things in it.
Penny: We've gotta digitise it so that we can capture those moments. I'm not in it much because I was very shy and quiet and just sitting in the background. It was a good trip and I remember at the end of the video, he said, 'We're all packing up on our last day. You spend all day with people, getting to know them, sharing everything together. And then suddenly it's over. I suppose life's like that.'
Tim: Very deep.
Penny: But I always think about it. Whenever I'm feeling sad about something coming to an end, I'm like, 'Well, I suppose life's like that.'
Tim: No, it's good. I can't think of any other school camp I went on that had an accompanying video or anything like that. It has stood the test of time.
Penny: I think there's one bit where it's me and my sister yelling at you. Like I'm hardly in it, except for when you came up and said, 'We've already put our tent up'. And me and Georgina say in perfect unison, 'You started first!'
Tim: I can only apologise for being such a.
Penny: No.
Tim: Oh wow.
Penny: I think we were being a bit bossy as well.
Tim: See, it's funny the things you remember and the things you forget.
Penny: Even though I was always terrified, obviously, playing the clarinet, absolutely terrified. Overall, the camp was fun.
Tim: Although I did find.
Penny: Oh, one more thing about Broken Hill.
Tim: I found the lyrics to the whole song. We'll have to at the end maybe play it again and then we can sing along to the whole thing.
Penny: I'm not a good singer Tim.
Tim: I was going to say, the other thing about the Broken Hill song, which isn't fully captured by that sort of pianola recording that I made. Is that it's supposed to have a sort of a jaunty intro and then a slow verse and then it picks up speed again for the chorus. So it's that very classic drinking song mode of being (sings bawdily).
Penny: (sings bawdily). No I am good at singing.
57:38 (pianola-style music begins in background)

Thanks Tim. And now we are going back, back again to Christina and Damian in the Richmond library where we're still talking about vaudeville performer Harry Hoddinott and I'm still trying to draw tenuous links to Damian's career.
I've got a photo of him.
Christina: I really, really thought he'd have a moustache.
Penny: Yeah, he just looks like a pretty ordinary chap I'd say.
Christina: Looks quite tanned. Even though he's in black and white, I feel he's tanned.
Penny: I think he is. Well, he's been living in Broken Hill for awhile. And I actually know quite a bit about what he did, cos there were quite a few articles about him. Do you wanna hear what he got up to in Broken Hill?
Christina: What'd he do?
Penny: In 1919 he was involved in a fracas at a pie stall. He got punched.
Christina: That's great. He was passionate about pies and pastries.
Penny: I think it was actually an argument about a pay.
Damian: That's the title of my play, 'Fracas at a pie stall'.
Penny: And in 1924 he was charged with assault after squirting a joke ring in someone's face at a pub.
Christina: A joke ring.
Damian: He sounds like a pest.
Penny: He sounds really annoying.
Damian: He's always on. Come on mate.
Penny: And then in 1933 he visited his dad who he hadn't seen for 16 years. His dad was a concertina play. So that's like the family, they were all performers. The article on the visit to his dad. Cos this is the olden days, you go to visit your dad, it ends up in the paper. And it said that he had most recently been performing at the Royal Show in Sydney where he was introducing the Unsinkable Lady. Now, Harry Hoddinott actually discovered the Unsinkable Lady. He found her floating in a river.
Christina: Well, you'd hope so.
Penny: In Glenn Innes.
Damian: Alive?
Penny: Yeah. Floating.
Damian: He just kept poking her with a stick. She kept bobbing up. 'No, she's definitely unsinkable. Let's do a show together.'
Penny: Yeah, and then in 1937 the town held a fundraiser for him, because he needed treatment for an illness. And then he went off to Sydney to get treatment and I don't know what happened to him next. He's not still on the circuit though?
Damian: No, I don't think so.
Christina: I think he did a Fringe show a couple of years ago.
Damian: He might have.
Christina: Yeah, small venue.
Damian: That was the
Christina: The Owl and the Pussycat.
Penny: And I'm gonna say one more thing about him because, I don't really want to mention this, but in this era, but I feel like also I don't want to not mention it. In this era this was very, very common. He also produced and starred in a Golliwog show.
Damian: Almost all of those performers like if you read through My Giddy Art, minstrelsy was massive. At the turn of the century minstrelsy was the most common form of performance across the world. Like from 1880 to 1910. I did a whole lot of research for my show Swing Dance about that era. Because that's where swing dancing came from. Cake walk and all that was plantation workers on their days off used to perform to the plantation owners and they'd dress up and basically mock them. They'd put on their finery and the constumery of the European style landowners. And they used to make up dances mocking their dance style. And that's what the cake walk was. And then that evolved into their own dance that then minstrels used to copy.
Penny: Right so then it got flipped around.
Damian: There was a period where that started and minstrelsies was so big that they realised that the Afro-Americans were better at it. And there was a period when there were people who were black face, white face, black face. So onstage doing it, so to trying fool the people that they were actually white, but they were actually black performers.
Penny: Wow. Okay. That is complicated. Yeah, so didn't want to not mention it but also, it's not fun.
Damian: No, it's not fun at all.
Penny: But it happened. But I also don't want it to be like, 'He was just a fun guy who squirted things'. He was also probably pretty racist.
Damian: He was poking a woman with a stick in the river to get her to sink.
Christina: To ascertain she was not sinkable.
Penny: He didn't jump in and save her.
Christina: I wonder how many people who he'd tried that with where it had failed. 'Nah. Sinker.'
Damian: 'Gwinn's in the bottom of the Murrumbidgee.'
Christina: Didn't pop up again.
Damian: 'Bring Pam in.'
Christina: 'Held her down for 5 minutes. Nah. Didn't resurface.' That was his own scientific experiment.
Damian: I don't think we had to learn that he did black face to know that he wasn't
Penny: I thought you guys might be more on his side, but nah.
Christina: Sounds like a wanker.
Damian: He sounds like the kind of person you'd avoid in the green room.
Christina: You see him there and you're like, 'I might just wait outside.'
Damian: Want a lift home. It wasn't on the way.
1:01:58 Penny: Okay, so the last article I wanted to share with you is very cute. I think it's cute. Alright. Because remember the reason why we're talking about all of this is cos where we are now, this very site used to be the Globe Theatre. And we're reading olde newspapers so this is from the Age, Monday 7th of August 1939:
"NEWSPAPER PUBLISHED 101 YEARS AGO
This copy of Melbourne's first newspaper, the second issue of the Melbourne "Advertiser," dated January 8, 1838, was found last week during the remodelling of the new Globe Theatre, Church-street, Richmond." So in 1938 they found an olde newspaper and they were very excited about it and they looked back on it. And thought about what people did in the olden days.
"The discovery was made by a carpenter who was repairing a floor, and the paper was found inside a tin box, enclosed in another tin box. The "Advertiser" was published by John Pascoe Fawkner, and was written for him by hand. The paper, consists of a single small sheet folded in two, and its reading matter is made up mostly of advertisements, the principal news item being an account of the murder of a police constable — relegated to the back page."
Damian: Backpage of a two page.
Penny: Yeah, I'm like that's probably the easiest place to find it. People have always been interested in old newspapers.
Damian: I like that it's handwritten.
Penny: Yeah. So what are you hoping, Damian, in a hundred years, someone finds a newspaper article about you, which one would you hope
Damian: It's interesting, isn't it.
Penny: We're gonna read out, like we're reading out about Harry Hoddinott, people are gunna be assessing, Did we want to be friends with Damian Callinan?
Damian: There's nothing too bad out there. I haven't looked at it for awhile, but on Wikipedia there's an entry, it's kind of weird what gets picked up but there's a whole thing on my show The Lost World War I diary, which is one of my most successful shows that was pretty widely reviewed well, but it just picked up a bad quote from The Age, out of context. In a review that wasn't too bad, it wasn't the best review, the criticism. So that's the only thing that is said about that show on Wikipedia.
Christina: That's frustrating.
Penny: That's one of the things that you have to keep, when you're doing this sort of thing you have to always be aware of that you're only getting the snippet and you're trying to read stuff into it but it's very selective what ends up in the paper and then what we're able to find.
Damian: I was trying to think what, I tried to think of what the first thing ever written about me as a performer was. And I don't know if it is the first, but the first review I ever got was a show I did with Lawrence and the review is in Beat.
Christina: How we used to scramble for the copies of Beat during Festival season.
Damian: Anyway, it was an incredibly generous and over-written and verbose review but very complimentary, written by David Lindley. David Lindley is his middle name. His surname is Callinan. It was my nephew. And this wasn't solicited he just decided to write it, and that's his style, like his Facebook posts are why use 4 words when you can use 200. Hope you're listening Dave. We still laugh about the fact that that was my first review and people would go
Christina: He must be alright.
Damian: Dunno what else. Maybe I'll plant something under a pseudonym that talks about me. 'Damian Callinan! The Unsinkable Woman!'
Christina: We tried but goddamn it he didn't sink.
Damian: I think there'd be Facebook posts or messages, stuff like that that I'd like people to find. People write really lovely things.
Penny: I mean we've just gotta hope that the digital archives are able to survive. Because it's very possible that actually paper and books and stuff will last longer. But anyway. Thank you so much Damian for coming and talking to us.
Christina: Thanks Damian.
Penny: About this site that we are on. The Richmond Library, that used to be the Globe Picture Theatre.
Damian: For those who are interested in where these theatres went there's a fantastic film, 'The Lost City of Melbourne' by Gus Berger who runs the Thornbury Picture House and he's just released a picture book version of it and it's a particularly focussed on 7 cinemas but also to see what we've saved. But to see what we've lost as well it's a fantastic. I think you can see it on SBS.
Penny: Yeah cos when thy knocked down the Globe Picture Theatre there wasn't really much of a, I don't think there was much of a campaign to save the Picture Theatre. But there was a campaign to save the South Richmond Library, which was next door. But neither of them got saved. They knocked them both down. Cool. Thank you.
Damian: Thanks for having me.
Christina: Thank you.
1:07:27 (Tim and Penny singing badly) We're going back.
Tim: That was excellent.
Penny: That was really good.
Tim: See we sound just like a couple of Broken Hill miners in a pub in 1930 something. It's a great song.
Penny: I think it is. And I can see why the people of Broken Hill liked it.
1:07:47 (piano music plays in background)

Next time on In Those Days we talk to Richmond Brass Band leader, Adam Arnold, about how and why he's reviving the youth brass bands of Richmond.
Adam: It's a great thing to be able to do to sit down and play piano. But as a kid, there aren't that many opportunities to play piano with other kids.
Christina: No you don't all gather your pianos in a circle.
Adam: No.
Penny: And we also talk to one of Adam's students Scarlett O'Heeler.
What made you initially want to join the brass band?
Nina: My friends were in it.