The Last Summer at Chris’s in Lorne

The Last Summer at Chris’s in Lorne

I was a late comer to Chris’s.  This little unpretentious 40 seat café had already made its name for decades as the place to be in Lorne for honest simple grills and sensational seafood. Chris would start the day early at the pier bagging the best seafood of the day, big sacks of crayfish, tubs of proper calamari. Gemfish was the most popular fish du jour. He would make Kakavia the Greek fisherman’s soup, pure pistachio Baklava and a mess of chocolate mousse before finalising all the orders and preparing breakfast for his elderly parents who came from Greece for the southern summer. By the time I started my day around 3pm Chris had already ensconced himself at the sidewalk table spruiking the day to the passing parade of regulars booking tables and running to and fro to the TAB for the day’s bets. Stevie, Sammy and all the other Greek old boys who ran the café scene in Lorne would gently break each others balls over coffee and gossip. Kosta, Chris’s younger brother would often call in to “borrow” a few cray and take the parents up the road to his café to see the grandchildren.

This summer was different the pressure was on from the big developers. David Mariner was hovering he had to get Christos to sell up to realise his big fuck off development A serious charm offensive. Eventually he made an offer too good to refuse and the countdown was on.

The staff were a motley crew of local grommets, super smart university students and a few experienced hospitality tragics.  Many lived or camped out the back of the shop.

It was a small restaurant with a small kitchen that did seriously big numbers.

A big thick flat grill ruled as the kitchen piano.  Chris had a remarkably simple system of service that echoed how Chinese restaurants worked. One of the young Einsteins would receive the orders and get the raw produce from the fridge, a bowl of scallops, a couple of steaks, a clutch of calamari etc while verballing the whole service to the 2 cooks on the grill and stove. Aboyeur and Garde Manger in one.  Crays were dispatched to order before going on the grill or under the salamander with a swift cut through the head down the centre for a quick death.

The caller had to have the skills of an air traffic controller and the patience of a saint to talk through the often 3 sittings that would smash us on the grill every night in the season. The seafood was simply seasoned with garlic oil salt and pepper. Broiled on the flat top and served. The crays were the same or finished with a brandy sauce made a la minute for each one. There was a real Greek salad with the finest Fetta and good herbs and the famous roast potato. It took me a while to fully understand the lore of the potato. It was always Christos who put it on very carefully around 4pm in a big galvanised crate filled with about 80 big unpeeled but washed dry spuds not sure of the variety but they were not Kennebecs. There was a second tray for the 9pm sitting By 6pm they were baked potatoes, by 7.30 they had a crisp crust and by 9.30 they were nearly hollow with a crunchy skin and a smoky layer of silken spud. One weekday night just after I started the delightful Bob Cowcher was due late.  Chris kept us there to wait for his friend with a special bottle. I was worried that I only had about 3 potatoes left and they were rapidly shrinking. As I was leaving I said Hi to bob and apologised for the spud and I can still visualise his smiling response “George I was dreaming about that potato all the way from New York.” That’s what I call a signature dish.   

Service began around 5.30 with families coming straight off the beach slowly building up to the first official service around 7pm these diners were well trained to be out by 9pm.

There was a doorman with a job of responsibility who herded the walkins armed with a roll of $5 notes from Chris that he would convince parents to give to their teenage children to go and get fish and chips or play the pinnies while the oldies could relax over a bottle, a cray or a big fillet steak. There were 3 normal sidewalk tables but often the footpath would be full of tables of diners right up past the old post office full of happy campers

The heat in the kitchen would come to a screaming crescendo around 8pm to make sure the 9pm setting was ready to roll.

Chris had a very clever pressure valve installed in the shape of a punching bag hung in the corridor out the back that he, and all of us including the diners, would occasionally consult when the merde frapped le ventilateur.

If we were lucky we could catch our breath before the nine o’clock rush.

This was the main course. After 9pm the real regulars would descend on the dining room. Christos knew just where to seat this A list. 

 Joe and Patrice Saba had a table every night for at least 8 often a lot more that would spill into the rest of the room creating a soiree that continued well into the night. Pinder was buying the Burley Griffin Knitlok mansion. Rennie Ellis captured these scenes forever.

Chris worked the floor all night sampling the premier cru BYO’s and generously flirting with his adoring public. It was the toughest brigade I have worked with. Penny made sure everyone behaved themselves. 

 A summer of love tinged with sadness because of course the bulldozers would soon erase this sacred site. For what?

You can still find Christos Penny and Taki  [this is really a reminder to self to go soon] at Beacon point at Skenes Creek near Apollo Bay where the story continues.                        

Lost and Found Vanne Trompf and Percy Everett

Lost and Found

 Percy Everett and Vanne Trompf 

This is the story of three buildings, two architects and a lifelong love of the Moderne.

 My Art Deco epiphany came in 1972 when a friend came back from London with Bevis Hillier’s catalogue to the ground-breaking World of Art Deco exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 1971. The book lit a spark within our group of friends and we became hunters and collectors with an insatiable appetite for all things Art Deco. Deeply infected with the Deco bug most of our spare time and money was spent in op shops, antique shops, auctions and flea markets until our student shared houses were styled to the hilt in what would now be called Acid-Moderne.

 I knew it had got serious when we had a whole room devoted to rescued mirrored tables.

.    We scoured the city and suburbs making guerrilla raids to country centres and revelled in the architecture but it would take another forty years to discover that it is Percy Edgar Everett’s work that holds the distinct bass line to the rhythm of Art Deco architecture in Melbourne and indeed all of Victoria.

Bursting with clutter we realised that to feed this obsession we would have to dispense with items in order to find space for more. I found a vacant classic tiny deco boutique with rounded brass bound windows and a classic door motif Both no longer in place] that became our logo at 109 Collins street Melbourne.

 It was still a working gentleman's hair salon in 1973 called Jockels with Mr. Bill Routlege on the scissors and strop in the basement. A small group of mates and I leased it, kept the name and became gonzo Art Deco dealers. When we opened Miss. Whiteman of Le louvre flounced in, looked us up and down, saw the faux leopard skin on the ebonised Bauhaus style desk and offered a regal welcome to Collins Street. We had passed the toughest test.   

 We eventually passed on the shop on to my friend Paul Craft of Paraphernalia who moved up from the Block Arcade.

In 1975 I embarked on another equally strong passion, a life of professional cooking and restaurants. Our dining rooms were filled with chrome and bentwood littered with Ward, Lowen, Sebel and Featherston chairs that, to most people, was just “shabby chic mix n match”. But bookings from the cognoscenti sometimes discreetly asked for the Featherston stem chairs and table by the bookcase.

After three decades at Sunnybrae Farm and Restaurant near Birregurra Diane and I were looking for a small modernist house to retire to and in 2013 we stumbled upon a little “Eichlerish” house in Kyneton. The architect was not known to the real estate agent or the council and it would take four years to identify the designer as Vanne Trompf who had a practice in Kyneton in the seventies.

 Vanne was part of the modernist movement in Melbourne and was for a time a lecturer at RMIT.

I wrote Vanne a note to say how much we loved the house and he offered a cheeky invitation to check out his aluminium earthship on a big farm in the shadows of the Grampians.

On arrival at Chez Trompf you are greeted by an understated Zincalume covered courtyard housing water tanks where the tail of a 1953 silver aluminium H G Mulliner coachwork, Type R Bentley Continental’s Batmobile bum protrudes out of the southside garage.

 Vanne had said he liked aluminium. The functional eco features of his 1983 house can be read clearly from the brutalist exterior and sits perfectly in the landscape. It’s a slow reveal as you enter to the 180-degree views of the Grampians. The interior is based on Indian Havelis that allow cross ventilation with rooms divided by low walls that do not extend all the way to the ceiling. A brutal natural granite two-sided fireplace takes central focus in the living areas. The walls are decorated with early designs, his daughter’s paintings, rich textiles and the work of [another Australian Art Deco hero] his relative Percy Trompf’s iconic posters.  The Grampians follow you through the house and you can feel the spirituality of country.

 Over a cup of tea, we learn that due to Vanne’s poor health, the farm has been sold and they are moving to Hamilton. On the way out, Vanne’s wife Judy says how thrilled he was to hear that his little house in Kyneton is being lived in and loved.

We decide to spend some time in Hamilton before returning to Kyneton and stumble upon what at first looked like a white landlocked tugboat bursting out of an embankment and that early thrill of unexpectedly finding a great Art Deco masterpiece came flooding back. 

Percy Everett’s building is in the grounds of the Hamilton Base Hospital and one of the nurses explained that it was originally a tuberculosis “chalet”. It is only after probing Professor Google that Percy’s epic story as chief architect of the Victorian Public Works Department from 1934 to 1953 is revealed.

The TB sanatorium, one of a number that Percy designed, was for the use of 14 patients and all the design elements are purely functional from the tubular X Ray room to the ramps and the semi open fully glazed northern orientation. It was built in 1944-5 but by 1947 Tuberculosis had found a cure and while many of the other Chalet have gone this little tugboat that could, in my opinion the most playful and personal of his buildings, is thankfully fully conserved and serving the community as a modern rehabilitation centre. Percy’s career is too important for an amateur like me to summarise here but a look at Rohan Storey’s collation of Percy Everett’s greatest hits on the link below will reveal how important his work is to the architectural fabric of Victoria. Who is going to write the Everett book?

https://www.pinterest.com.au/rohanstorey/percy-everett-victorian-chief-architect-1935-1953/

Postscript: Sadly, Vanne Trompf died in 2017.  

This was published in Spirit of Progress the Journal of the Art deco and Modernist Society of Australia Spring 2018

  

A Matter of Taste

Cartoon by David Low Caption Fat diner "What's this, Beef or Mutton?' Waitres "Car'nt you tell the difference?" Diner "no" Waitress "Then why worry about it?" Its 1974 I’m sitting on the stairs at the old Joel’s Auction rooms in McKillop Street Melbourne waiting for a lot to come up. In those days the most extraordinary stuff turned up for sale and that day it was a job-lot of about 300 political cartoons that belonged to Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes’ private secretary Percy Deane . I had spent the last 24 hours trying to work out how I was going to get the money to buy this most important collection. By the next day I had reconciled having to let it go and waited to see how much interest they would bring. As the lot came up the bidding stalled at $750 and before I knew it I had bought the collection for $800 thinking it would surely go for thousands?? I wrote a cheque and realised I had until Monday [Joel’s are still selling on Thursdays] to cover the cheque. My first call was to show them to my friend and “go to guy” for cartoons Vane Lindesay the great Australian Black and White artist and historian whose cartoons graced Australasian Post and many other publications. 

Vane was over the moon to see them and explained how important the collection was but he was also not in a position to buy them but offered to swap me two of them for two original Leunigs an offer that I could not resist. At the time I had a shop in Collins street that specialised in Art Deco, Australiana and ephemera. Barry Humphries was a good customer. He collected Australiana and I went up to the Windsor where he was living at the time and left a note for him to ring as soon as he got back. By Saturday afternoon I had no word from Barry and I went to see my friend Ann Turner [History professor Ian Turner’s wife] for some advice as to how not to be arrested for cheque fraud.  Ann was a fixer and she rang Cliff Pugh who said bring them over. Cliff bought the collection and I managed to keep 2 of them. One was a Will Dyson pastel portrait of Gerald du Maurier drawn as a magician in a tux pulling a rabbit out of a hat [subsequently stolen in a burglary] and this wonderful David Low cartoon of Billy Hughes and fat “friend”. I liked the joke but always thought there was more to the story than the “Why worry about it” punchline.

After Cliff bought the lot and told me he would donate the collection to the various galleries that had a geographical or political connection to the drawings. He was that sort of man a mensch.

 Good result. Vane had two for his collection I had two wonderful Leunigs and a Dyson, this David Low and the rest of the collection would go to where it was meant to be.

Fast forward [fuck its 43 years!] to a couple of months ago when Diane noticed that historian Ross McMullin was giving a talk at the Kyneton Library about Pompey Elliot He was a great presenter and after the talk I bought his book about Chris Watson Australia’s third Prime minister “So Monstrous a Travesty” the story of the first national Labour government in the world. Great book

.

In the second chapter we hear about his choosing a ministry that would include two future prime ministers Andrew Fisher and Billy Hughes.  His choice of Senate leader was Gregor Mc Gregor who had lost most of his sight in a logging accident while working as a labourer [good working-class politician] but had a remarkable memory “he buttressed his vigorous speeches with streams of memorised statistics’. This ex wrestler [also good training for politics] “had become plump to the point of stoutness with a massive square shaped head”

That’s when the penny dropped Billy Hughes’  dining companion was revealed to be no other than blind Gregor McGregor.

So finally, another level of politically incorrect comment was revealed in the “joke” that now still has a resonance and truth in the madness that the “modernist” food world has become.

So why worry about it?