All posts tagged: The Age

and the archibald goes to…

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V V V The well-known Australian artist Tim Storrier has won the country’s most prestigious art award for portraiture, the Archibald Prize. The prize was first awarded in 1921, with the winner receiving £400. Today, the prize is worth $75,000. According to the official guidelines, the winning portrait should be ‘preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in art, letters, science or politics, painted by any artist resident in Australasia during the 12 months preceding the [closing] date’. You can view Storrier’s winning self-portrait here. There are also some amazing pieces among the forty-one works that made it to the finals. V For more info, check out these links: Wikipedia’s Archibald Prize page ‘Tim Storrier wins Archibald Prize’ story from The Age, 30 March 2012 Tim Storrier’s website V

Let’s talk about the weather

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V V Ah, Melbourne weather. How we love to loathe you. For the last two months I’ve had two blankets on standby: my light summer one and my billowing winter doona that keeps me warm on the coldest Melbourne nights. Seeing as it’s only just ticked over to Autumn, you might find this a little strange, but we Melburnians are used to it by now. Our weather is as changeable as, well, as the weather. Today is a particularly pertinent day on which to bring up this subject. Right now, it’s around 2.30pm and it’s only 13 degrees outside. Yesterday was 27 degrees, and throughout last night we all kicked off our doonas in unusual 26-degree heat. But according to The Age, in the early hours of this morning the temperature dropped by five degrees in only half an hour, then continued to fall from there. While this extreme meteorological flip-flopping is a bit unusual, Melbourne is famous for its sunny-one-minute, rainy-the-next weather. Many people hate it, especially tourists from Australia’s northern states, who love to ridicule our …

Melbourne’s best cafe…?

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Look, I’m going to be honest with you. I’m not that into coffee. I know, I know. Shock, horror — a Melbournite who isn’t obsessed with discussing cafes and beans and temperature and strength. Only a few days ago, while I was sitting in a cafe, I overheard a girl say to her friends, ‘I find it really weird when people don’t drink coffee. I don’t think they’re real humans.’ (That’s a direct quote.) Dare I say it, it’s just a drink. There. I dared. Don’t get me wrong. I like coffee. I drink it from time to time. And I do appreciate a good coffee, just as I’d appreciate a nice glass of wine. But in this city, the word ‘like’ often just doesn’t cut it where coffee’s concerned. Despite my dispassion for this particular beverage, I am partial to cafes, which is handy seeing as this city’s daytime social life exists largely within these little establishments. For me, a good cafe doesn’t only feature good coffee; it’s also got to be a comfy …

for my fellow current affairs junkies

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Well, a big day in domestic politics today, folks. If you’re a stranger to our shores, you probably won’t know a whole lot about the leadership stoush consuming the Australian Labor Party (ALP) right now. To fill you in (cue deep breath) … Kevin Rudd was our Prime Minister until Julia Gillard staged a coup in 2010 and kicked him out of office but she only just scraped through the last election to form a very tenuous government to say the least and her Prime Ministership has been rocky and her polls have sucked and last night Rudd resigned from his Foreign Affairs portfolio and today he’s challenged Gillard to a leadership ballot. (Ok, breathe.) To sum up, they all have their heads way too far up their bums and we’re all sick of them. Having said that, the thought of (Opposition Leader) Tony Abbott becoming our Prime Minister is almost as scary as that time an enormous hairy spider jumped on my neck… Keen politicos can get up to speed on Australia’s political system …