Live recording of Midland Highway Revisited: A Low-fi Investigative Musical from a Haunted House Live recording of Midland Highway Revisited: A low-fi Investigative Musical from a Haunted House. The performance was at the Motley Bauhaus in Carlton, Friday October 24th 2025. Written and performed by Liz Taylor and Sarah Taylor, with guests Ian Marks and Andrew Bonnici. Recording by Lia Knight and Kate Taylor.

This Must Be The Place on the Midland Highway? Liz from This Must Be The Place talks through some of the research, true stories and songs that are going into a project called Midland Highway Revisited: An Investigative Musical from a Haunted House. It’s a rough intro here - the ‘In Real Life’ Version will have twin hosts (Liz and Sarah), songs, instruments, guests. A stage! Where we’ll spend an hour telling you 12 stories about a possibly haunted house on the possibly haunted Midland Highway. In this podcast intro, it’s not all-singing or all-dancing but Liz doodles on the piano and talks – it gives an idea of the research and material, some of which overlaps with This Must Be The Place themes. Included here are versions of 4 stories (the upside down house and the RSL guys, the haunted guitar, the local ghost folk song, and the ghost town theory). Midland Highway Revisited is a low-fi investigative musical exploring true-life stories with a mix of spoken word, pathos, humour and research, all signposted by original songs, and by songs that have been signposts. The show will be on October 21st-25th 2025 at the Motley Bauhaus in Carlton - https://www.eventfinda.com.au/2025/midland-highway-revisited-an-investigative-musical-from-haunted-hou/melbourne/carlton

In Castlemaine in Central Victoria, Liz from This Must Be The Place interviews Anitra Nelson about a new book, Post-Carbon Inclusion: Transitions Built on Justice. Anitra is one of the co-editors of the volume and contributed chapters on degrowth in the context of transitions to decarbonisation. The discussion introduces the principles of degrowth, and covers international and local examples of what are termed pre-figurative hybrids: people doing things now in ways that both imagine and build possibilities for a future world. These are local (a key term is ‘open localisation’) networks doing things that try not to suck for people or for the environment: which can be as simple as places to get your toaster repaired, or as fundamental as a establishing a different model for secure housing. Is it possible to imagine – and make – a better future without relying on unfair economic and political systems? Anitra explains how degrowth focuses on meeting people’s basic and varied needs rather than on new luxury commodities. It is about scaling out rather than up, horizontal rather than top-down, and quality over quantity. In terms of technology, for example, the emphasis is on convivial tools– accessibility, understanding how things work, durability, choice – in contrast to scaled up, top-down, disposable gadgets. Topics include personal and shared space, fashion and textiles, technology, ‘buying back’ your time (working only enough to buy the time back to experiment with your life), state versus local governance, land, the spatial aspects of degrowth, debt, transport and food. Examples include Cargominaia in Budapest, the House of Change in East Berlin, the Castlemaine Free University, Repair café, and central Victorian cohousing and eco-collaborative housing. Around housing in particular, however, planning and related regulations tend to disable rather than enable change – even or especially of the positive kind needed for transitions. We get into (not literally) composting toilets, gray water, parking (of course), and tiny homes. The book and this introductory discussion of it is about breaking open the landscape for some kind of post-carbon inclusion – imagining the possibilities before they are foreclosed. Castlemaine, by the way, is apparently known locally as Castlemania.

work from a course I recently coordinated for Monash Masters of Urban Planning and Design and Masters of Architecture students. A new course Called Urban Positions and Practices, this was essentially urban history and theory, focused on critically interpreting the role of professionals like architects and planners. I structured it around a series of 12 ‘things’: fence, pipe, pig, garden, house, plan, pub, tower, street, person, car park and pylon. One assessment task was group story telling– AKA critical audio, or basically, podcasting. In groups of 3-4, students researched, recorded, and edited a roughly 15-minute audio story on the theme of “the past is present” – connecting planning history to a contemporary urban feature. Students picked their own topics and the podcasts had to have 3 parts –scripted part, conversational, and something else. This was a research task but also about learning an unfamiliar medium. I’m sharing a few partly to draw attention to our students and the Monash UPD course. Also, to illustrate podcasting as a learning tool. And hopefully they’re just interesting. I’ve picked 4 student podcasts to share – the topics are ‘dogs’, ‘park benches’, ‘playgrounds’ and ‘billboards’. This final, fourth one, is ‘Billboards with Haruna, Ryall, and John. Join them discussing the history, impact and ubiquity of billboards and advertising space in cities. Listen to some children try to make sense of an ad for Bumble. Small correction here – what the first semester students missed here was the specific planning regulations around advertising signage of different types, sizes, illumination and so on. For the pedants amongst you, these are set out in the Victoria Planning Provisions at 52.05 ‘signs’. For everyone else, enjoy the podcast.

Here’s a bit of a cheat update of the This Must Be The Place podcast: 4 episodes of student work from a course I recently coordinated for Monash Masters of Urban Planning and Design and Masters of Architecture students. A new course Called Urban Positions and Practices, this was essentially urban history and theory, focused on critically interpreting the role of professionals like architects and planners. I structured it around a series of 12 ‘things’: fence, pipe, pig, garden, house, plan, pub, tower, street, person, car park and pylon. One assessment task was group story telling– AKA critical audio, or basically, podcasting. In groups of 3-4, students researched, recorded, and edited a roughly 15-minute audio story on the theme of “the past is present” – connecting planning history to a contemporary urban feature. Students picked their own topics and the podcasts had to have 3 parts –scripted part, conversational, and something else. This was a research task but also about learning an unfamiliar medium. I’m sharing a few partly to draw attention to our students and the Monash UPD course. Also, to illustrate podcasting as a learning tool. And hopefully they’re just interesting. I’ve picked 4 student podcasts to share – the topics are ‘dogs’, ‘park benches’, ‘playgrounds’ and ‘billboards’. This third one is ‘Playgrounds’ with Zara, Elicia, Julian and Nick. Join them in exploring the historical links between the arrival of cars and the emergence of the playground movement. Small proviso here – as a parent who takes a young child to playgrounds that are very well-used, I don’t share the students’ assessment as playgrounds as increasingly obsolete. I do agree children’s independent mobility has fundamentally changed over the century or so since playgrounds first appeared.

Here’s a bit of a cheat update of the This Must Be The Place podcast: 4 episodes of student work from a course I recently coordinated for Monash Masters of Urban Planning and Design and Masters of Architecture students. A new course Called Urban Positions and Practices, this was essentially urban history and theory, focused on critically interpreting the role of professionals like architects and planners. I structured it around a series of 12 ‘things’: fence, pipe, pig, garden, house, plan, pub, tower, street, person, car park and pylon. One assessment task was group story telling– AKA critical audio, or basically, podcasting. In groups of 3-4, students researched, recorded, and edited a roughly 15-minute audio story on the theme of “the past is present” – connecting planning history to a contemporary urban feature. Students picked their own topics and the podcasts had to have 3 parts –scripted part, conversational, and something else. This was a research task but also about learning an unfamiliar medium. I’m sharing a few partly to draw attention to our students and the Monash UPD course. Also, to illustrate podcasting as a learning tool. And hopefully they’re just interesting. I’ve picked 4 student podcasts to share – the topics are ‘dogs’, ‘park benches’, ‘playgrounds’ and ‘billboards’. This second one is ‘Benches’ – or street furniture, with Eliza, Audrey and Daniel. Join them explaining the historical links between benches and public transport, and the recent emergence of ‘smart benches’.

Here’s a bit of a cheat update of the This Must Be The Place podcast: 4 episodes of student work from a course I recently coordinated for Monash Masters of Urban Planning and Design and Masters of Architecture students. A new course Called Urban Positions and Practices, this was essentially urban history and theory, focused on critically interpreting the role of professionals like architects and planners. I structured it around a series of 12 ‘things’: fence, pipe, pig, garden, house, plan, pub, tower, street, person, car park and pylon. One assessment task was group story telling– AKA critical audio, or basically, podcasting. In groups of 3-4, students researched, recorded, and edited a roughly 15-minute audio story on the theme of “the past is present” – connecting planning history to a contemporary urban feature. Students picked their own topics and the podcasts had to have 3 parts –scripted part, conversational, and something else. This was a research task but also about learning an unfamiliar medium. I’m sharing a few partly to draw attention to our students and the Monash UPD course. Also, to illustrate podcasting as a learning tool. And hopefully they’re just interesting. I’ve picked 4 student podcasts to share – the topics are ‘dogs’, ‘park benches’, ‘playgrounds’ and ‘billboards’. This first one is ‘Dogs’ – or ‘Dogs in Cities’, with Benjamin, Bethany, Nick and Saeed. Join them in unpacking colonial dog nuisance laws; different cultural norms around relationships between humans and non-human animals; and visiting the soon to be lost ‘Lost Dogs Home’ in North Melbourne.

“Things fall apart- it’s scientific” is a line from the Talking Heads song “Wild Life”. Like most Talking Heads songs, including the one from which the This Must Be The Place podcast takes its name, the lyrics are a bit bookish. “Wild Life” seems to be a reference – one I haven’t actually fact checked – to popular scientific accounts from the mid 20th century, theorising the trajectory of the universe and of life in it. Entropy, or the second rule of thermodynamics, refers to the “general trend of the universe toward death and disorder”. And in 1944’s “What is Life”, Schrodinger put forward the idea that life itself is a kind of negative entropy machine, defined by a temporary state of order-from-disorder. Aside from sometimes passing on copies of our DNA, however, the ends of our lives are as apparently inevitable as that of the universe. Meanwhile and despite this cheerful thought, our lives are temporarily put together from bits and pieces, material and digital. People attempt at various times to curate, purge, hoard, systematise or selectively narrate piles of memories and things and files. Friends and relatives might do the same for us after we pass away. Music, and the changing technologies through which music is created and duplicated, forms one part of this. In “This is your Brain on Music”, Daniel Levitin writes about how music can connect people to times and places long after their more practical memories have faded. Side note – the music we remember the most vividly tends to be from when we are 14 years old. I was not 14 years old, but I remember the first time I heard the Talking Heads song “This Must Be The Place” because it was on the soundtrack to the film “Wall Street”, which I watched on a rented VHS tape in 2001 before I first travelled to the US. David Byrne of Talking Heads later discussed the effects of a century of music technology in “How Music Works”. The study of technology and media as part of the social and historical record is not new – in coining the term “the medium is the message” Marshall McLuhan in 1964 proposed “communication medium itself, not the messages it carries, should be primary focus of study”. Radio and records are central to Ken Burns’ History of Country Music – previously, songs were reproduced and adapted through live performance. The Carter Family’s early recorded songs were said to have been “captured, rather than written”. But what of the music so many people now record themselves, and which does not form part of the broader popular or cultural memory? How do people give order to their own songs and recorded music over the course of decades, during which mediums for recording and sharing music have come and gone, and changed fundamentally? The topic has been more in my mind and conversations of late in light of the recent death, from Motor Neurone Disease, of an old friend of my husband. Two decades ago, they and others spent years writing and recording music together in garages and warehouses. But you can’t always find, let alone access old recordings. Listening to a song is one way of putting yourself into a place and time. Music is geography and is also technology. In the shift to digital, each new technology promises less physical stuff, less clutter, perhaps even a kind of longevity. It’s an illusion – the archiving and curation of our own music is contingent on constantly changing technologies and media which are as fallible as the material world. There are extremes to navigate – you might have only one copy of a song, or you might have hundreds of copies of lurking old CDs. I’ve put together a rough chronology of different technologies for recording and sharing music that I’ve used, over the 1980s to 2020s. I’ve included example songs where I could find them – its own saga. Radio, cassette, VHS, studio and home recorded CDs, social media, digital releases, vinyl, the cloud, and back to a missing hard drive – and a song about the ephemeral artificial Lake Mokoan.

As part of Amplify: Story, Resistance, Radio, David Nichols of This Must Be The Place podcast interviews Sabina Andron - a cities scholar specializing in creative and transgressive public cultures, with a specific interest in the semiotics of urban walls and surfaces. Sabina is the author of “Urban Surfaces, Graffiti and the Right to the City”, to be published in 2024. Although graffiti (or “stuff on walls”) is shorthand to describe Sabina’s research, it’s not really a fair description – Sabina’s interest is in documenting and understanding how urban culture articulates itself onto the visible surfaces of cities. In trying to understand cities by reading walls and surfaces, Sabina spends a lot of time walking around noticing the urban forms of relatively humble streets and walls, but more broadly studies both endorsed and illegal forms of markings as well as how surfaces are managed, regulated, maintained and cleaned. Sabina started in photographic documentary methods, but is also trying to pay attention in different ways of seeing urban surfaces, such as written note taking. She has recently filled a notebook with all the names mentioned in the Brunswick stretch of Sydney Road. Many of these are ubiquitous but unnoticed corporate and security signs – text that is permitted or sometimes required in urban space. People notice tags, but “there is so much of everything as well, we just don’t question them – we should challenge that because it is about who has a right to be visible”. As well as international examples and context, Sabina offers observations on Melbourne – for example, its rich outdoor poster culture, it’s laneways both touristed and otherwise, its pride in certain forms of street art but also its policies focused on order – Melbourne’s Mayor, for example, holding a pressure cleaning to reassure people “how important it is to keep the city clean”. The discussion covers graffiti as cultural and artistic discourse, the relatively recent criminalisation of graffiti, David’s short career in train vandalism at age 15, the material ecologies of things like posters (side notes – small birds seem to eat the paste, right? Or is it just Liz that thinks that?), murals versus graffiti, City Square’s “graffiti wall” which was basically a whiteboard, photographic books of graffiti (including the popular 1970s Australian volumes of ‘witty’ examples), the visual and cultural language of graffiti and how train tags came to be seen as an unsettling signal of decay, graffiti removal companies, coatings, designs that actively prevent damage from spray paints, and how Melbourne discourse, as in many places, tends to hate graffiti but love street art. Music venue The Tote in Collingwood has sound restrictions based on vibrations that might damage the paint on the Keith Haring mural next to it – a 1984 mural preserved at substantial cost, as a community symbol. Although Serena asks - why are some things symbols and for whom? “We should perhaps start valuing the collective meaning and force of our capacity to write on walls”. Also discussed is a recent Fitzroy residents’ meeting about graffiti – how the vehement dislike of tagging uses the language of viral invasion, and of threat and disorder. David wonders whether Fitzroy residents still fear the sanctioned “white anting” of the Housing Commission and Freeway construction days of the mid 20th century. Sabina argues graffiti often is read as an invasive threat, as the sign of a disordered environment, but that there are other kinds of threats – to civic rights and access to space - from a clean and ordered environment. The discussion is about specific places and surfaces – but “I think we are a bit naïve if we think that the form is the most important aspect of this conversation. It’s more about our right to occupy space”.

As part of Amplify: Story, Resistance, Radio, Liz Taylor of This Must be the Place interviews Paul Long, Professor in Creative and Cultural Industries and a recent arrival from one music city (Birmingham) to another (Melbourne). Birmingham in the UK is known for its connections to diverse genres of music - heavy metal, conscious reggae, grime, bhangra, dance. “Brum” is branded as the birthplace of Black Sabbath and heavy metal, as well as of such ubiquitous bands as UB40, Duran Duran and (previously unbeknownst to Liz) ELO. Birmingham has also been home to a widespread unlicensed radio scene. Particularly during the 1980s and 1990s, unlicensed or ‘pirate’ radio served as voices (albeit periodically raided by police) for geographically and culturally specific groups such as Caribbean migrants, and as entry points for micro-genres and local scenes – broadcasting, for example, mobile phone numbers for dance party tickets. Here Paul reflects on the challenges of documenting and curating music cultures which are largely ephemeral, in places home to diverse communities and narratives, and in contexts where government intervention can be a virtue or its opposite –how “a place can take on these challenging narratives”. As both listener and historian Paul describes “going in search of radio”, “trying to find traces and put them back together”, and how different technologies and places interact over time. As well as contrasting the radio and audio landscapes of Birmingham and Melbourne, the discussion covers trade-offs between amateur and professional programming, national and local content, and between celebrating past hits and continuing in the present. As is often the case for musicians “the longer you go on, the more you’re burdened with your own standards, your own repertoire”, and “the same happens to places”. Documenting music heritage in a music city like Birmingham involves, on the one hand, exhibitions and mythologies around famous bands. On the other are the more fleeting places, moments, and sounds which are nonetheless important to memory and identity – the value of “recognising not just the big names, but the also-rans, the never-rans, the thank god they never succeeded types - and thinking about what this means to people”. In the age of streaming and digital radio, Paul argues for tracing the origins of relatively recent music genres still matters - “learning about where this stuff came from, and preserving stuff that might otherwise disappear”. Links – Amplify - https://amplifies.blog/2023/09/27/pirate-radio-schedule/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/amplify-story-resistance-radio/id1704273057 Paul Long, Monash University – Professor in Creative and Cultural Industries and Director, Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre - https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/paul-long Birmingham Music Archive - https://www.birminghammusicarchive.com/ Paul Long’s RRR Brum-a gems playlist - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6pnFpV208Ve3LKqV4K4zO0?si=cddd34c664be4f81&nd=1

As part of Amplify: Story, Resistance, Radio Liz Taylor of This Must be the Place talks with Shane Homan and Seamus O’Hanlon about their book “Music City Melbourne: Urban Culture, History and Policy” - looking back on Melbourne’s music spaces from the 1950s to now. From town hall to stadium to pub, how have the physical spaces of popular music changed alongside a dramatically changing city? What are the ingredients of a music city, and what role does government policy have? Shane argues music cities are “a bit more complex than making sure you have enough live music venues in your city, add some funding and stir – each city as its own histories and settings”. The book starts with the arrival of rock and roll (and other transformative changes, like television) in 1956 after which Shane and Seamus chart the emergence and declines of different music circuits in Melbourne: e.g. drawing on interviews with musicians of Italian background who came to Melbourne in the mid 20th century and created their own Italian ballroom circuit across suburbia. These shows would attract thousands of people, playing hits from the Italian hit parade for local consumption. Another example is unlicensed discotheques of the 1960s – at one point there were 25 in the Melbourne CBD, such as Catcher in Flinders Lane which served as a space for late night jams. Not having liquor licenses, discotheques were hard to shut down, but police were in “a constant search for what we can do these venues for”. Seamus argues that as economic conditions change, new spaces become redundant, and “one of the really interesting things about music is that it’s really good at taking over redundant spaces” – whether suburban theatres, boxing rings, hotels, and later warehouses. In Melbourne, culture and tourism became seen as sources of economic growth after the decline of manufacturing in the 1970s - “in the 1950s and 1960s it was all about factories and come and get a job. By the 1980s they were gone. It was all about, come and have fun instead”. Alongside these broader economic and social upheavals, beer barns and the pub rock scene come to prominence. Melbourne changed from an almost parochial but vibrant music scene, to a self-consciously globally connected city promoted for its local live music scene of smaller venues and sub-genres. Looking back on Melbourne’s specific music scenes, Shane argues that what they have all had in common is a “do-it-yourself enthusiasm from communities finding their own members, with venues building from there”. Governments, generally, have tended to not notice them until years later when they’re under threat. The interview covers liquor licensing, demographics, migration trends, noise complaints, moral panics, planning and policy settings like Agent of Change, broadcasting and the origins of community radio, Sydney and Melbourne rivalries, recording labels, publishing, and cultural policy; but also lands back on the inexorable pressures of housing and land costs. The contemporary challenges in Melbourne and other expensive and unequal cities are “how do you keep the small hole in the wall venues going?” and how do you create the conditions for new venues and opportunities to emerge? “Venues aren’t just bricks and mortar, they have a heritage component in terms of memories of both fans and performers”. With music venues facing hostile conditions, new ideas and models include the Collingwood Yards precinct, and the Tote’s latest iteration. But does place and live music still matter? You can record music to high quality on your phone, but “seeing it performed live- there’s still something about it” – at least for now. Links – https://amplifies.blog/2023/09/27/pirate-radio-schedule/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/amplify-story-resistance-radio/id1704273057 https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/music-city-melbourne-9781501365720/

Urban Policy and Research – 40th anniversary journal party This episode of This Must Be The Place is a live recording from the party held for the 40th anniversary of the journal Urban Policy and Research, which took place at Melbourne University in early 2023. The episode begins with Liz briefly introducing the journal and its history – including one of the co-founders, Jeremy Reynolds - via an anecdote about Margo Huxley and her paper on chicken by-laws and the TV show “The Good Life”: (“In search of ‘the good life’: Being a political economy of certain local government by-laws within the metropolitan area of Melbourne, Victoria” published back in 1985. - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08111148508522607). After that it’s a largely unedited live recording of the anniversary proceedings – we hear from Crystal Legacy, Paul Maginn, MC Peter Phibbs, and co-founders Brian Haratsis and Marcus Spiller. There’s two game shows including a “you can’t ask that” panel of Emma Baker, Alexa Gower, Nicole Gurran, and Mike Berry. Plus a quiz where you have to guess the date of articles over the decades. Part of the theme of the proceedings is looking back at change and at non-change: at the sometimes frustratingly circular nature of debate, with some ideas coming around repeatedly without necessarily effecting good outcomes. It can be hard to pick which decade an editorial about ridiculous housing problems comes from. Having said that, “Housing policy in the 1980s” has a particularly dated ring to it. UPR was founded by a group of Melbournians in 1982 – and, as Marcus Spiller recalls, was actually launched by Gough Whitlam. Then as now, “the journal aims to disseminate information which is useful to Australian policy makers”. The recording has a few rueful laughs about trying to make that true, but also valuing the community of authors, reviewers and other contributors to the knowledge and influence of Urban Policy and Research. Most of the recording is a live recording, but with some light edits. There’s a fair bit of room noise, clapping and familiar voices. Finishing with a cover of “Little Boxes”, by the Taylor Project, and part of the requested song “Ballarat”. Alas the recording cut out such that the very end of the night cut off from the recording. ANYWAY you should also check out the UPR back catalogue and consider contributing an article or debate piece!

In this summer instalment of erstwhile podcast This Must Be The Place, Liz Taylor (no, not the actor – who is dead by the way) talks with Brendan Gleeson (no, also not that other actor). Brendan Gleeson is Professor of Urban Policy at the University of Melbourne and has had a decades-long career in publishing urban research. But since 2021 Brendan has for health reasons “stepped off the plate” from heading the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute – he hasn’t read an academic theory text in over a year, and has instead been rescaling his focus to the local and the everyday of life in the Hotham Hill area of North Melbourne. Brendan’s recent projects include setting up an independent press, Shiel Street Press (named for the North Melbourne street – also home of the Public Records Office), publishing a book of poems based on Gardiner Reserve in North Melbourne (“Records of the Loss Property Department of Gardiner Reserve”), and researching the life and times of a long-lived cockatoo (Cocky Duggan) who lived in a hotel in North Melbourne in the mid 20th century and was known for his “more than passable impersonation of men vomiting”. Gardiner Reserve is a place Brendan suddenly spent a lot of time in, living and observing at a walking pace, and the “Records of the Loss Property Department of Gardiner Reserve” book is a faux-corporate drama made up of pictures and poems, in large part inspired by items left behind in the park that Brendan’s flat faces onto – beginning with the triggering sight of a set of sparkly children’s shoes discarded (but neatly arranged) in a playground. From these lost and found items – shoes, toys, milk crates, crochet rugs, single crutches, the routine sadness of lost cat signs - the discussion gets on to themes of loss, grief, time, decay, children gone and grown, and the broader cultural fascination of discarded objects. Liz ties it into Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and his theories of modernity and decay, and to “Found Magazine” including Speckles the proto-viral “Loss Cat”. Also covered are municipal micro-regulations, public trees, Blue Lake, urban noises (lots of them are in the background), the anxiety of public toilet announcements (“door locked – your maximum use time is…”), North Melbourne Swimming Pool, and of course concluding with the tale of Cocky Duggan of the Court House Hotel. It was a long conversation and most of the background on Shiel Street Press has been cut but you find more information here - https://www.shielstreetpress.com.

In this episode of This Must be The Place Liz opportunistically interviews Associate Professor Jan Scheurer. Jan has been involved in public transport accessibility research for several decades and has a particular interest in comparing the performance of public transport between cities, as well as identifying changes in networks over time. From the basics of better bus network planning, to the more recent hype cycle of trackless trams, here Jan reflects on lessons for public transport and liveability in Australian cities. Jan nearly always travels by PT or bike - and on this occasion he joined us in small-town Elmore, arriving on the late train in mid-winter in time for a 3 course meal by the fire. Which sounds a bit like the opening to a murder mystery but instead the conversation covers: • The SNAMUTS accessibility model; • Comparing public transport between cities and over time; • Recent improvements in public transport in Auckland and Sydney; • Bus network changes and the latest in network planning; • Lags in public transport in growing Australian cities; • Limitations of political announceables and major infrastructure focuses; • What constitutes good, user-friendly public transport including frequencies; • Reflections on hype cycles and panacea solutions in public transport; • Trackless trams!; • What is a trackless tram? What is a tram? What is a bus? Also what is a monorail?; • (General discussion of linguistic and operational differences along this spectrum); • Where trackless trams might work – e.g. expanding outer suburbs, or regional cities (Bendigo!); • “As a transport researcher I see my role as mitigating both ends of the hype cycle”; • The costs of tracks and of trams themselves; • Regional cities and their transport opportunities and challenges – is the Sunshine Coast what the Gold Coast was like 20 years ago?; • Meanwhile in Elmore – ‘big’ trains (18 services per week!), and the mini train; • Never having a driver’s license; • Bike riding in Perth and Baja California; • Living in Barcelona and “it’s true that living in Barcelona you often spend extended periods of time not even thinking about cars”; • Lessons for Australian cities: “Dare to be a public transport city, dare to be an active transport city”; • Improvement is a long process, but “the outcome is a more liveable and sustainable city and what’s wrong with that?”.

The past, potential and perils of swimming in urban rivers. After quite a long dormancy period, in this episode of This Must Be The Place Liz has a follow-up discussion with a researcher she met recently while speaking at an MPavilion event (“Time Travel: Can Inspiration from our past save our holiday future?”). Loretta Bellato is a PhD researcher based in the Swinburne Centre for Urban Transitions, whose work crosses over with some of the topic Liz spoke about at MPavillion – particularly the historical origins of Victoria’s imperilled public swimming pools in river enclosures/river pools. Loretta’s research is focused on the potential of regenerative tourism, including a case study of efforts to regenerate the Birrarung (Yarra River) into, amongst other goals, a swimmable urban river. Relatively few people now would brave Melbourne’s brown “upside down” river – at least not in its lower urban reaches – but in this episode we hear about some of the people who are working to make the Birrarung swimmable; and about people who already swim in it including at the longstanding swimming hole Deep Rock. The discussion ranges from pollution and perception; what regeneration and regenerative tourism mean; transitions theory; ‘Wild Swimming’ and the UK’s legal history; other examples of urban rivers being made swimmable again; Melbourne’s river pool locations of the 20th century; and the demise of river pools - many of which were diverted into/replaced by the concrete post-war Olympic pools that are themselves now fast becoming obsolete. Liz has spiels about the role of health regulations, insurance, signage and fences as applied to open water swimming locations. Featuring Deep Rock, Warburton, the Thames, Copenhagen, Hepburn Pool, Kyneton, Shepparton, the Campaspe, Buchan Caves pool, and Bondi’s poopy past amongst other stories. If you’re interested in participating in Loretta’s PhD research, she can be contacted at lbellato@swin.edu.au . The song ‘Swimmers” by Taylor Project is stuck on the end for good measure.

In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth reports from Launceston, Tasmania, from the Urban History Planning History conference. (Listeners should also note the earlier interview with Alysia Bennett at the same conference, offering a very different take on how to pronounce ‘Launceston’). As well as hearing from the UTas historic tram that periodically trundles through the expansive campus car park, (and from some local windiness), in this instalment we hear from Professor Nicholas (Nick) Phelps of the University of Melbourne. Nick describes how he went from being an economic geographer studying Croydon in the UK (“the butt of jokes”) and its attempts to fashion itself as an ‘edge city’; to a general interest in suburban settlement patterns and identities. His talk at UHPH - Centering the Periphery: The Real and Imagined Centres of Casey, Victoria – centred (pun intended) on Casey, a suburban local government area in the south east of Melbourne. Casey is a geographically huge area (which Nick compares in scale to Metro Miami), and Nick and co-authors (including erstwhile TMBTP host David Nichols) were interested in Casey’s efforts at fashioning ‘centres’ in the context of incremental largely residential growth. Part of the presentation included revisiting Casey’s earlier history as the City of Berwick, which in the 1970s pursued what we would now consider ‘futuristic’ (as in, an imagined future we now scoff at) plans for a ‘metro city’ of 100,000 people with its own green belt and (as was the style of the time) monorail. That city-shaping plan was shelved, although similarly huge scales of growth have since nonetheless occurred. Incidentally, some parts of Casey apparently still have a reservation for a monorail. As in Hugh Stretton’s Ideas for Australian Cities, we discuss the idea there are two broad aspects to people’s lives, with one secluded and quiet (the traditional function of a residential suburb – at least for certain people/men), and the other the outward facing connected ‘buzz’ generally the function of a city centre. Nick considers whether and how suburban areas like Casey create the second kind of place. The discussion compares places like Casey to those of British New Towns under Development Corporations. For example Milton-Keynes, designated in the 1960s while passing through phases of mockery, is now the fastest growing city in the UK and an attractor both of new residents and new industries. We also discuss the prevalence of projects like monorails in edge city plans around the world in the 1970s – Nick suggests the ways we now scoff at such plans reflects a larger shift in planning, away from a belief in “thinking about the future in quite grand terms”. Part of the ensuing reticence is an aversion to some of new town planning’s architectural dagginess, implausibility and paternalism. But there are trade-offs: planners have also tended to lose the capacity to have positive, large scale-discussions about the future, as well as some practical mechanisms for timing and delivery of new settlements. These include the use of land values toward supporting some notion of a shared public good, like providing facilities or shaping centres longer term. The episode also ranges from land acquisition and developer contributions, to national settlement patterns, local governments, 1970s economics, TV, Albury-Wodonga, green belts and how to pronounce names like “Launceston”, “Traralgon”, “Leicester” and “Gloucester”.

In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth reports from Launceston, Tasmania, from the Urban History Planning History conference. (Listeners should also note a subsequent TMBTP interview with Nick Phelps at the same conference, who offers a different take on how to pronounce ‘Launceston’). As well as hearing from the UTas historic tram that periodically trundles through the expansive campus car park, in this instalment we hear from Alysia Bennett about her conference presentation and ongoing work on ‘right sizing: addressing housing challenges through activating marginal spaces, conditions and rules’. Right sizing, a concept Alysia and others have been developing, refers to working within existing houses to enable upsizing and downsizing simultaneously. Without necessarily creating a new fabric, ‘right sizing’ is about creating small and large dwellings at the same time, with houses that can switch between the two. Part of this is historically grounded - looking at how parts of Australian cities are already being used as forms of covert density, for example with the integration of secondary dwellings, dual occupancies and subtly-tucked apartments into historic areas like Battery Point in Hobart. These include additional dwellings that ‘stealth’ themselves as garages in terms of their presentation to the street, exploiting the fact that garages and parking spaces tend to be invisible to and automatically accepted by both people and planning rules. Alysia’s work has shifted from looking at ways to increase density through apartments (the predominant policy interest in density in Australian cities), toward finding existing examples of density within low-rise urban and suburban areas – looking for design and regulatory opportunities that build on better elements of what people are currently doing incrementally. We hear ideas about who might benefit from right-sized housing; how house layouts can work with alignments of things like doors and wet areas; the role of monetising housing space; and models of ‘plug-in’ ageing-in-place facilities like accessible bathrooms. Alysia is a Lecturer at MADA, Monash University. The Right Sizing project is ongoing and also involves Professor Dana Cuff of UCLA and Damian Madigan of UniSA.

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. Because Liz collected too much info, this digital death trip podcast is in 3 parts. This is the 3rd and final episode. Listen to 1 & 2 first! 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. 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. There are echoes through to a recent mystery in Pyramid Hill, the disappearance of heavily pregnant intellectually disabled woman Krystal Fraser in 2009. 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. This is the last instalment of 3. We return to hear a few updates Liz could not help researching further. It includes specially written Taylor Project song Ghost Upon the Hill: “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”. Further post-script: Robert Mueller, youngest son, survived and moved to Germany. He married there in 1925. Also, re: the early ‘cinematograph’ the children went to at the Athenaeum. Most cinemas in early Australia were in inner city theatres. Each reel was about 3 minutes, usually a short documentary display: boxing, footy, horses. The show would have included magicians. Mueller's servants took the children to this new popular entertainment spectacle. And while they were out, Mueller made preparations to kill everyone.

Because Liz collected too much info, this digital death trip podcast 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.