About the tour

In 1961 Irine was born in Melbourne, a child of a mixed marriage. A Greek Orthodox Christian mother and an Albanian Turkish Muslim father. From a very early age she fell in love with music and wanted to know how it was made. She discovered that the only way to find out was to make it herself.

The tour goes for 20 minutes.

Listen now or download for later

Download audio file (Irine-Vela-A-Musicians-Life-audio-tour.mp3)

Download Irine Vela’s tour A musician’s life (file size: 14 mg)
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Your tour guide, Irine Vela

Photograph by Jacqui Brown

For the past 22 years Irine Vela has worked with ensembles and theatre companies throughout Australia as a composer, musician, musical director, and librettist, collaborating with many of our finest musicians, actors, vocalists and writers. Her choral opera Little City garnered her a Sounds Australian Award from the Australian Music Centre for Best Composition by an Australian composer. She was the Greek music consultant for award-winning Australian film Head On.

In 2003 Irine won the Tropfest film award for Best Original Score for a film by Nadja Kostich and Jeremy Angerson and her music drama 1975 enjoyed its world premiere. She is a founding member of The HaBiBis whose CD Intoxicationreceived an award for Best World Music album. In 2007 Irine was a recipient of a State Library Fellowship to create a multimedia music drama Australia In Danger – A Slide Night.

Links

• Irine Vela and The HaBiBis

Credits

This tour is recorded and edited by Nicole Hurtubise, produced by Community Radio 3CR, and funded by the Office of Public Records Local History grant program.

2009 Melbourne Fringe Festival event

We were proud to be part of Melbourne Fringe Festival. Check out the photos on Flickr of Irine’s tour done live at the 2009 Melbourne Fringe Festival on Saturday 26 September at Horse Bazaar in Little Lonsdale Street, City.

The river valley has been home to the Marin Balug people of the Kulin nation for some 40,000 years and bears many signs of their presence. It was also a major channel for the European occupation of Port Phillip, first as a pathway to the Western District for sheep-owners and their stock, then as a source of bluestone and sand for the growing city and a dumping ground for its noxious wastes.

Jenny Lee’s walking tour starts above the bend in the river that is the site of the now-defunct Commonwealth Explosives Factory, and takes in sites of Indigenous settlement, industry around the river and the current McMansion invasion.

The tour goes for 27 minutes and has nine stops.

Listen now or download for later

Download audio file (jenny-lee-maribyrnong-river-peoplestour.mp3)

Download Jenny’s tour (file size: 27 MG)

Your tour guide Jenny Lee

Jenny Lee became an editor by accident in 1982, when she began working on a multi-author critical history of Australia (A People’s History of Australia, 4 vols, 1988). She edited the literary and cultural quarterly Meanjin from 1987 to 1994. Jenny has been co-ordinator of the postgraduate Publishing and Communications program in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne since 2003. She is deputy chair of the OL Society, which publishes Overland literary journal.

Her book Making Modern Melbourne was launched at the 2008 Melbourne Writers Festival and was a Top 10 bestseller on the first weekend of the festival. Making Modern Melbourne charts the city’s story from illegal village to modern metropolis.

Getting there

See a larger Google map

Public transport

• 903 Smartbus along Buckley Street and get off at Colin Street, West Essendon
• Train to Essendon Station and then 465 bus from the station and get off at Colin Street, West Essendon
• or use Metlink Journey Planner

Bicycle

• The tour starting point is on a bike path. This Bikely.com listing has several routes to get there.

Car

• Limited street parking in Lily Street, Essendon West.

Credits

This tour is recorded and edited by Jane Curtis, produced by Community Radio 3CR, and funded by the Office of Public Records Local History grant program.

2009 Melbourne Fringe Festival event

We were proud to be part of Melbourne Fringe Festival. See photos on Flickr of the Fringe Festival walking tour on Sunday 4 October 2009.

The tour runs for 19 minutes and has 7 stops.

Listen now or download for later

Download audio file (tom-civil-carlton-street-art-peoplestour.mp3)

Download Tom’s tour (file size: 17.5 MG)

About your tour guide Tom Sevil

Tom (AKA Civilian) is a d.i.y. artist and activist graphic designer who publishes posters, zines, stickers and newspapers. His stencil work has been featured in various media including Melbourne Stencil Graffiti Capital and the ABC TV series Not Quite Art and he was a feature artist in the Melbourne Stencil Festival 2004 and 2005. The National Gallery of Australia has acquired eighteen of his works. Tom has exhibited in community art spaces, empty shows and on the street, has run stencil making workshops in different communities and given various public talks about the political nature of street art.

Tom is one half of Breakdown Press, radical publishers of three Poster Series covering issues of Indigenous sovereignty in Australia, corporate-globalisation and the nuclear industry, and the book YOU: some letters from the first five years, an anthology of an ongoing anonymous letter writing project.

Breakdown Press’ latest book is How to Make Trouble and Influence People, which explores Australia’s radical past through tales of Indigenous resistance, convict revolts and escapes, picket line hi-jinks, student occupations, creative direct action, media pranks, urban interventions, squatting, blockades, banner drops, street theatre and billboard liberation. It includes stories and anecdotes, interviews with pranksters and troublemakers, and 300 spectacular photos documenting the vital history of creative resistance in Australia.

Getting there

• Take the 1 or 8 tram from the City and get off at Elgin Street/Lygon Street
• Use the Metlink Journey Planner for buses along Elgin-Johnston Street

This tour was recorded and edited by Jane Curtis, produced by Community Radio 3CR and funded by the Office of Public Records Local History grant program.

2009 Melbourne Fringe Festival event

We were proud to be part of Melbourne Fringe Festival. Check out the photos on Flickr of the Fringe Festival walking tour on Sunday 27 September.

The economic depression of the 1930s saw thousands of Melburnians thrown out of their homes and into the streets.

However, these actions did not go unopposed, as across the city pickets, occupations and protests were organised to disrupt and prevent evictions and auctions.

This walking tour visits the sites of some of Melbourne’s fiercest anti-eviction battles in the northern Melbourne suburb of Brunswick.

Listen now or download for later

Download audio file (Iain-McIntyre-Lock-out-the-landlords-PeoplesTour.mp3)

This tour has six stops and is 20 minutes long. Download the file here (14 mg).

Your tour guide Iain McIntyre

Iain is an author, radio presenter and musician who has contributed to a number of publications including Rolling Stone, Chain Reaction and The Big Issue about Australian and international music, history and popular culture.

He has edited Tomorrow Is Today: Australia In The Psychedelic Era, 1966-70 for Wakefield Press, self published a book on the AIDEX ‘91 anti-arms fairs protest and contributed radical dates to Community Radio 3CR’s 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 Seeds Of Dissent calendars.

Iain’s latest book is How to Make Trouble and Influence People, published by Breakdown Press in October 2009. It reveals Australia’s radical past through tales of Indigenous resistance, convict revolts and escapes, picket line hi-jinks, student occupations, creative direct action, media pranks, urban interventions, squatting, blockades, banner drops, street theatre and billboard liberation. It includes stories and anecdotes, interviews with pranksters and troublemakers, and 300 spectacular photos documenting the vital history of creative resistance in this country.

Getting there

See a larger Google map

Public transport

• Train: catch the Upfield line to Jewell Station and walk north to Dawson Street. At Dawson Street turn right, walk past Brunswick Library. The Town Hall is on the corner of Dawson Street and Sydney Road.
• Tram: catch the 19 Coburg tram from the City, get off at Brunswick Town Hall.

Car

• Public parking opposite Brunswick City Baths on Dawson Street, turn left off Sydney Road.

Bike

• Take the Upfield bike path and at Dawson Street, turn right. Bike parking in front of Brunswick Town Hall.

Credits

This tour was recorded and edited by Nicole Hurtubise, produced by Community Radio 3CR and funded by the Office of Public Records Local History grant program.

2009 Melbourne Fringe Festival event

We were proud to be part of Melbourne Fringe Festival. Check out the photos on Flickr of the Fringe Festival walking tour on Sunday 11 October 2009, led by Iain McIntyre and Margaret West.