The Magic of Melbourne

[sharplittleteeth]

Jel and I went to the Hocus Pocus exhibition at the City Museum this afternoon.



It traces the history of stage magic in Melbourne, from the first performances in the gold fields onwards. There are lots of advertising posters, potted biographies of the magicians, and various props.

The posters were wonderful, but it's quite a small exhibition - just two little rooms. Not a patch on ACMI's Eyes, Lies and Illusions exhibition from a few years ago.

Still, it was only $5. And that included entry to the rest of the ground floor of the museum.

Where we saw a great documentary about Melbourne's old cable tram system.

It ran from 1885 to 1940. The trams were powered by clamping on to a moving cable that ran beneath the streets. The cable was powered by giant steam engines in the various powerhouses around the city, like the one on the corner of Nicholson and Gertrude street (photos at http://www.cable-car-guy.com/html/ccoznz.html).

The documentary had lots of 1930's footage of the trams and the powerhouses in action. It took some wonderfully and absurdly elaborate engineering to make it all work. Very, very steampunk. Not to mention dangerous to maintain, as the documentary narrator explained in a jolly voice. 

From the 1920s, the cable tram system was slowly replaced with electric trams. The last cable tram ran on October 26, 1940.

The weird thing?

No one told the public. Patrons caught the tram in to the theatre that evening. But when they came out, the trams had been replaced with double-decker buses.

Comments

[a-carnal-mink.livejournal.com]

Wonderful! Thanks for the heads-up - I'll have to get the boy along to this one. :)

[sharplittlteeth.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's an interesting way to kill an hour.

Oh. I have academic caps for you.

[frou-frou.livejournal.com]

I've been wondering what the original purpose of that building on the corner of Gertrude and Nicholson was - have you ever noticed that it's topped with a minature Exhibition Building cupola, to mirror the large one across the road?. Such a nice touch.

[redcountess]

I was always fascinated by the Gertrude Street/Nicholson Street building and knew it must have had something to do with cable trams, but I never realised the purpose of the North Melbourne winding house which is also mentioned on the website, although I'm very familiar with the building. And I was very interested to read the building on the corner of Victoria Parade and Brunswick Street was originally a winding house, this (pdf) is the minutes from a VTAC hearing on an application to get heritage status on the building, and details how the facade was significantly altered in the 1930s but internally it retains much of the fabric of a winding house.

[redcountess]

ETA: Sadly it looks like the redevelopment of the Brunswick Street/Victoria Parade site will go ahead due to an "administrative error" http://www.nattrust.com.au/conservation/heritage_news (And it's actually VCAT, not VTAC, my bad)

[virtual-munkee.livejournal.com]

i love the old cable systems for trams. catching the cable car in san fran last december was a novel treat for me! and seeing similar trams (which used to be cable also) in hiroshima was great. wish the big cities (la, new york, sydney) kept their trams!!!