In Search of a Title

Ghost signs: painted advertising on the sides of buildings. Wikipedia for more information.

I went through my photos to find all the ones I've photographed around Launceston. I'm using a broad definition. Some are new/in good condition. Some are so faded it's hard to tell if they were advertising.

First the location, then a close up of the sign.


Irvine & McEachern, Cascade House

"THE undersigned beg to notify to their friends and the public, that they have this day purchased the Wine, Spirit and Grocery business, lately carried on in Brisbane-street, by the Executor of the late C. J. Irvine" 1868 Advertisement

I'm not sure when they moved to George St, or this buildings was constructed. *searches through advertising* In December 1940 they're advertising Black & White Scotch Whiskey, from Cascade House, 3-7 George St (this building). The previous advertisement I can find is from 1938, and they're located in Cascade House, Charles St

Not unreasonable to guess that's when the sign dates from.

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of Brisbane St, because I found them while looking for something else and therefore have to show off the pretty city.



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Former Roller World skating centre, Merino St, Launceston.

Back in the 1980s, the roller skating centre was in the city proper--a warehouse on the cnr of Cimitiere & Tamar Sts--and it was where the teenagers went of a weekend. (A large main rink, smaller rink, kiosk, separate room with a wall-screen for films, lots of seats and corners for doing teenagery things in, all in enclosed area.) I'm not when it moved, but in the 1990s, the rink was out at the former Elphin Showgrounds. A smaller complex, without all the extra facilities. Then I assume it moved to the Merino St site when the showgrounds were closed. By this time, roller skating certainly wasn't as popular anymore. Nothing on the internet about the earlier sites, and my memory is mixed up. (There was also an older rink at Elphin, at the Cypress St end, which I seem to remember was operating in the 1970s and is possibly the same one in use in the 1950s. It had a different owner to the Cimitiere St rink, and possibly they were both operating at the same time at one point. Memory is a fuzzy thing.)


Anyway, the Merino St site seems to have closed about 2005. An archived copy of their website was last updated November 24. Then in February 2005, City Mission was looking to buy the site to replace their Youngtown warehouse after it burnt down. The fire at this site was in 2009. That we can't remember this, even though it was just a few years ago, probably shows how roller skating has declined in popularity.

I assume the fire is why the buildings is so well closed up now. No useful broken windows or gaps in the timber to take photos through.

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Last one. From The War Illustrated, 4 September 1915

Intimate Scenes in the Gibraltar of the Levant


New Zealands's new colony. This snapshot show a town of dug-outs on the Gallipoli. Hidden under the cliff, Turkish shells
are only able to reach this mark by accident. Here part of the New Zealand Contingent is domiciled in the cause of the Empire.

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From The War Illustrated, 4 September 1915.


Our Camera Correspondent at the Dardanelles:
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From The War Illustrated, 4 September 1915:

FRENCH SOLDIERS ARRAYED IN GARGOYLE GUISE


These fantastic figures, somewhat reminiscent of Dore's "Inferno" demons, are French soldiers wearing
anti-poison gas masks and respirators while expecting an attack under cover of a gas cloud.

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One of the things that came up when Wendy Lawson came to the adult support group was about working with interests. One of them things that seem obvious or maybe it isn't.

It was a social gathering--sitting around the table with afternoon tea and people talking about themselves. Wendy refers to neural-typical people as generic, and those on the spectrum are name brands. She talked a little bit about very recent research with brain scans. And she talk about teaching people and encouraging people to work within their interest areas. Or obsessions if you want.

OK that seems obvious, because we all know people learn better when they're engaged with the material, but it's more than that.

Imagine you're in a world where everything is uncertain, every person you talk to might say something you don't understand or do something you don't know how to react to, or expect you to do something you don't understand or see need for, or tell you're wrong when you're not; and every situation could turn wrong; and every place has uncertainties hiding in the corner or the ground the might disappear from under your feet. Even at home, someone might knock on the door or ring up. Stressful. Tiring. Anxiety-causing.

Now imagine a place in that world were you can feel, maybe not safe, but on solid ground. You know how to negotiate this place, and you have the tools or weapons or armour to deal with (most) things that come into the world. That is the area of obsession. The life raft on the ocean of life :)



(Userpic: playing quoits on board a ship is harder than on land, because you have to account for the ship's movement, but you're moving with it. Even from a close distance, it's easy to misjudge.)

Have some pictures from "The War Illustrated" to post this week, because you are not getting enough war stuff I know. It's a magazine of pictures that was published regularly during both world wars and Wikipedia describes it quite well.

This issue is 4 Septeber 1915. The front cover has a full page image captioned "'Bravo, Lloyd George !' British Soldiers cheering the splendid work of the new shells. The back is a full page ad, I mean editorial, showing "back numbers of 'The War Illustrated' converted into handsome volumes" and an opening paragraph that goes....

I have just had a striking example of what maybe be called the personal interest of "The War Illustrated". I received a letter, in which the writer, a lady, says: "You will be interested to know that the other day my children were looking over a bounded volume of 'The War Illustrated', lent to them by a friend, when suddenly one of them said 'There's father !' I looked also, and sure enough, in a photograph of a small column of troops marching somewhere in France, was husband was to be seen as plain as could be. I am now taking in 'The War Illustrated' every week. Perhaps we may see my husband again in its pages, and anyway, it will be a splendid storehouse of war pictures for him when he returns to fight his battles over again in the peace of his own home."


"German 'Flammenwerfer' (flame-projector) in action. The diabolical invention that
caused a temporary British set-back at Hooge by spraying liquid fire over our trenches."

I just posted that last article because I found it on the hard drive. There's a lot of interesting stuff in the Chums magazines, and I have a years worth of issues (and a Girls Own from the a bit earlier, also very interesting) and I'd love to post more material. But the print quality isn't that good (see image below) and the OCR results are very untidy. The first paragraph for the post I just did looked like this:

, WOMEN SAIL(lR§. f sons wao rousnr IN MANY Barrtrs. Y a newspaper ,of seventy years ago, we V are gravely informed that there _ died* at Tamerton, in her sixty-fourth year, a Mistress Mary Pote. A very respectable person was Mistress Mary, popular all the country round, and, what’s more, butt- womar: of Tamerton Parish Church.

If its a longer article, with images, it can take 2-3 hours to scan, edit and correct. So, I was thinking about ways to make the job easier. The obvious one being to just upload the scanned images. They're not small files though and they're not searchable.

From Chums, 26 April 1893

WOMEN SAILORS.

WHO FOUGHT IN MANY BATTLES.

IN a newspaper of seventy years ago, we are gravely informed that there died at Tamerton, in her sixty-fourth year, a Mistress Mary Pote. A very respectable person was Mistress Mary, popular all the country round, and, what's more, butt-woman of Tamerton Parish Church.

Butt-woman? What does that mean? Well, there is no explanation to be found in any reasonably accessible reference book, but no doubt the position of "parish butt-woman" must have been a highly responsible charge. That must have been so for the reason that the previous career of Mistress Mary was of such a distinguished character that it could not well have been capped by an office wanting in all the dignities. Mistress Mary had been a sailor on board a man-of-war for years, and she had fought under Rodney.

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