Sydney Typosphere, Where the bloody hell are ya? (and your typewriters)

Steve and I woke up early again as we were eager to get into Sydney and through the traffic before it became difficult to drive on it's consistently grid-locked roads. It was a cold morning in Scone, and my car was frosted from cold condensation that had dropped overnight as it hit the nearly 30 degree mark. 

I looked out across the road as a coal train snaked its way past the town about 500 meters from the hotel. I felt this seemed particularly odd as it was an Easter Sunday. But I guess the mining industry stops for no one, not even the religious. I'd see several more such trains travelling beside the road before the day was out. 

Coal shipping in Scone. 

We jumped back into Ruby the Exxy, and immediately there was something wrong. The 'battery' light - which is actually the alternator warning light, was on and was staying on. I found a servo to get some petrol, and started to try and assess what was wrong once the engine was warm. 

With a couple of blasts of WD40 and a little bit of testing I determined that the alternator was able to produce a healthy charge,  so Steve and I thought we'd just try our luck and see how far we went. I had roadside assistance coverage, so if we did get stuck we'd be able to call for help. As long as we had phone range. 

After about 20 minutes there was a loud squeal and a thump, and the alternator light turned off. From that point onwards Ruby drove just as well as she always had. WD40 may have saved the day. 

Maybe. 

We grabbed breakfast on the road and just kept on driving. It wasn't long before we hit a brand new dual carriageway that turned the highway to Sydney into a Freeway, and we were soon barreling across the landscape at an uninhibited 110km/h. This was a bit of a shame really, as this new road bypassed many of the most beautiful towns to be found in the Hunter Valley. Instead we ended up having an effortless drive into Australia's largest metropolis - the crazy emerald city of OZ. Sydney. 

Now, I'll liberally steal from a somewhat failed Australian Tourism commercial when I ask this question: Sydney Typosphere, where the bloody-hell are ya? 

Sydney according to Apple Maps. 

Sydney's population is 4.6 million. Melbourne's population is 4.2 million. Brisbane's is 2.2 million (all as of 2011 census). My blog gets several readers from Melbourne, and my blog on Tom's Typewriter shop constantly gets hits by Victorians checking out information on his shop. So while there's really only one consistent blogger (see Teeritz Agenda) There's plenty of users down in Melbourne. 

Brisbane also is quite the same. I get a fair few general readers from Brisbane, and as we've seen there's quite a few lively bloggers there too.

Even Darwin and Perth have bloggers. People from Adelaide frequently email me, and they make up a fair amount of the buying and selling activity on ebay. And of course there's Canberra - which despite it's diminutive size, appears to be the typewriter writer capital of Australia. I have several consistent readers from Canberra, and not talking about just Rob and Jasper either.

But Sydney? I know of a guy that services machines there, and I know of at least one collector. But Sydney is incredibly quiet. Vanessa Berry, who is listed up in the Typosphere as a blogger is very Zine focused, and I've personally never seen her interact with other typewriter lovers. In short, typewriters and the typosphere in Sydney seem to be practically invisible. 

My blog also features nil interaction with people from Sydney. No readers, no commenters, nothing. Discussions in forums about hunting typewriters in Sydney often lead to nothing - as though the place is a veritable black hole. I often see machines being put up for sale there on ebay or gumtree, but there's more in outer New South Wales than there seems to be in that state's capital.

It puzzles me. With the level of creative activity going on in Sydney, and the size of its population you'd kinda expect to see more writers using their machines and collecting them there. But instead it is a dark patch of sky with only a few stars dimly twinkling. 

As it was Easter Sunday when we arrived in Sydney few shops were open. Steve and I didn't take the opportunity to hunt for typewriters, and instead headed for the Sydney harbor bridge - often known as 'the coat-hanger'. I popped open Ruby's roof and stuck the camera out as we crossed the bridge in the hope of getting some shots. They worked out okay, and both Steve and I had fun as we drove across this rather famous Australian landmark. 

As we drove into the CBD we found ourselves somewhat lost. After doing a few circles we came across a road that was completely shut off from traffic. On that road a large group of people stood waiting and watching the hotel across from them. They were being held back by a temporary steel barrier and a host of Australian Federal Police officers who were controlling the affair. 

These people were here to catch a glimpse of the visiting royals. A sign that Sydney does still hold onto some archaic and anachronistic traditions. 

Steve and I ducked around the miasma and headed out towards the western suburbs. Ruby showed no sign of failing, so we looked at the map and headed to Canberra and the Australian Typewriter Museum at Rob Messenger's place. 

Not a typewriter or typewriter lover was to be found in Sydney. If you're reading this and you live there, give me yell as I'd love to see that there's signs of life.

Steve Snow's blog, The Impatient Typewriter Mechanic' can be fond  HERE

Brisbane 2014 type in (that was really an out)

I got a phone call from Steve K (writelephant) about 10:30 telling me that he'd managed to acquire one of the covered park benches at the park. This was fortunate as the section directly under the bridge that I wanted to use was sadly off-limits. They had done some grass replacement there.

So when Natalie (NatsLapTaps) and I got to the park, we grabbed the two tables that I brought with me, and quickly tried to set up under the cover before anyone else tried to push us off the table. The park was filling fast with picnic attendees, and covered space was becoming quite sought after.

The people.

From left to right - Louise Cause, Me (Scott Kernaghan) John Lavery, Steve Kuterescz, Natalie Tan, Rino BreeBart, Rob Messenger and Steve Snow. Oh, and an Olympia SM3.

Everyone seemed to arrive in very quick succession after 11 o'clock, and once again I was enjoying the company of a group of really great people. John (McTaggart's workshop) was technical as usual, and Rob (OzTypewriter) was passionate about the history. Natalie was exploring and just enjoying the company, while Louise was being her usual witty self. Rino (Long, slow blog)and Steve K got their hands on as many writing machines as they could to see how they typed, and Steve Snow (Impatient Typewriter Mechanic) was right there with them.

John, trying to diagnose Natalie's machine's over-eager bell. 

Natalie was enjoying writing on one the invading Lettera 22's. 

Now here's a crew I could hang with. 

Natalie's Favorit 2 got plenty of love. 

Rino was documenting me, documenting him. And also documenting typewriters. 

Steve K got down to some serious writing. And just looked.. cool.. doing it. 

It's always great listening to one of John's stories. 

Lou and John rather loved Steve Snow's QDL. 

Rob had plenty of history. And found a fellow smoking buddy with Lou. 

The Weather

For the most part we had a very lovely day, and the sun was enough to give me a sunburn. Looking at Rob Messenger's photos I could see my face progressively grow pinker as the day went on. 

However every so often we had some heavy cloud come over and threaten to dump a little rain. We even ended up copping a bit of a shower at one stage, but it soon passed and we were once again in the Queensland sun. 

The Typewriters

Last year we had two beautiful Lettera 22's side by side. This year, Louise brought back Pinky Beecroft and Steve Snow brought his mushroom L22. But this year they were joined by Steve K's beautiful machine, that is in incredibly good condition. I have a feeling that I'm going to have to bring my pistachio green machine next year so we keep the L22 love growing. 

There were two 70's plastic H3K machines. I brought my cursive, while John brought another machine with a very fine larger techno typeface. John also brought several other Hermes machines - an amazing, yet dauntingly large Hermes Ambassador, and a very interesting Hermes 9 that was set up for telegram operators. 

John seemed to have the Hermes machines down pat, as he brought his glossy and charming Hungarian keyboard Hermes 2000. But I rounded out the collection with a Hermes Baby named 'Kermit', which Louise ended up taking back home with her after the meeting. 

Mind you, John's Cyrillic Klein-Adler was nothing to be scoffed at. And would certainly hold its own in a 'most interesting machine' competition. Although Steve Snow's Royal QDL, and immaculate Underwood Noiseless 77 were also attention-stealers. 

Rino brought in a Remington 5T that was very nice to type on. It felt just that little bit smoother than my own 5T machine and I could quite happily spend an afternoon typing on it. Next to his machine I sat my Smith-Corona Sterling, which was sadly playing up. Some screwdriver love will be coming its way soon. 

Rob didn't disappoint. He had his brilliant Underwood 4 bank with USB attachment hooked up to his laptop, and was giving demonstrations on how to use the machine. But Rob's real beauty came out later.... 

It was a stunning Fox, and really stole the show. The machine is now heading to a new home in John Lavery's collection, where I'm sure it will be just as loved. But what a machine!  Everyone wanted a go on it. It was a real cracker. 

Rob also brought out a very interesting Monarch that was heading to John's as well. Such a beauty!

Natalie brought with her an amazing looking green Adler Favorit 2, which joined John's Klein-Adler in bringing some push-rod classiness to the event. And can I say, it is nicer than my own Favorit 2. Much nicer.

The other machines I myself brought were an Olympia SM3 in maroon (yet to be featured on my blog) and my Remington 16, AKA "The Filthy Platen" - which stayed in the car, as I couldn't be arsed lugging it's 15 kilo bulk it across the park after carting the tables and chairs. 

Oh yeah, and I also brought my Triumph Tippa, which is one of my finest traveller machines. It seemed to surprise a lot of people with it's sharp and punchy feel. Which is something it often surprises me with whenever I get on it. 

All in all, I think everyone had an enjoyable day. I certainly did, and I'm pretty eager to get to another one next year. I'm sure it will happen, even though circumstances are changing for many of us in the next 12 months.

Everyone that came today had something in common, and it wasn't the typewriters. They are all story tellers. These are people that enjoy a tale and love writing and reading. I think really the typewriters are incidental, and are an extension of their story-telling. Steve K, Steve S, Rino, Lou, John, Rob, Natalie and I guess myself - all have tales of our lives we want to tell - and in some cases tales of lives that never existed. And in a way I feel that's really what this was all about. 

Well, at least as much as checking out the pieces of industrial art-work that each other owned. 

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Pt 1 - The lonely lost highway.

Somewhere in New South Wales: the lonely lost highway - The Newell.

They make pubs big in Queensland. But why the palm trees 300km from the beach? 

*watching in the rear-view mirror*

Link to the 'Worlds largest virtual solar system'.

Hermes of the outback.

Howard Steer - Saved By The Flying Doctor. 

I'm going to steal Rob Messenger's thunder a bit here. While in Charleville I found an interesting Hermes Featherlight, that had formerly been in service to a rather significant Australian. Significant enough that he features on the back of the Australian Twenty Dollar note.

I speak of course, of Reverend John Flynn. Flynn wasn't just the founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service - which I also visited while in Charleville, but was fundamental in the four pronged approach to establishing the Australian Inland Mission (AIM) and their health & education service in the Australian outback. His decisions and actions have saved thousands of lives, and improved the lives of thousands more. 

Crammed and uncleaned I found this Hemes machine stuffed into a corner of an ageing wood and glass cabinet at the Charleville Museum. It was neither located with the rest of the Royal Flying Doctor artefacts, or anywhere near the three other clusters of typewriters and office machines that I had found around the museum. It sat alone, with only a hand written card - dropped almost carelessly in front of it describing what it in fact was.

I was almost tempted to ask the gentleman manning the front counter if I could get my hands on it and clean it up. However the cabinet looked like it weighed about 200Kg, and was pressed against the wall so that the access doors were inaccessible. 

"Flynn of the Inland" is quite the outback hero. The card attached to his typewriter rather downplays his significance in Australian history.

Let me tell tell you a tale...

European settlement of Australia commenced in 1788. Back then, the continent was split into three regions, with no defined national borders. New South Wales had been claimed by the British, while the western 2 thirds of the continent, the coastline of which had been briefly explored by the Dutch 200 years earlier, remained under the name of 'New Holland'. To the cold south, a piece of land was called 'Van Diemen's land', and was originally thought to be a large peninsula - but turned out to be a large island. 

New South Wales and Van Diemen's land originally had been established as penal colonies by the british, who for nearly a hundred years transported convicts to their shores to be put to work developing  colonies and infrastructure. 

Suffice to say, very few of these people wanted to be here. And this included the soldiers, governors and clergymen that were sent here. Many of them were rough men either looking for adventure, or to escape precarious social circumstances that they may have found themselves in. 

While the governors were often brutal and corrupt, the clergymen that had been sent to Australia to protect and establish their 'flock' were often just as brutal. The clergymen often held other roles in early colonial society, and performed as magistrates, governors and judges themselves. While churches were being built to accommodate for the colonial christian flock, they were often built at the expense of the lives of the convicts building them.

These convicts were kept in line by severe corporate and capital punishments that were often ordered at the hands of the magistrate clergymen. As such both the new settlers, and often the indigenous population living near by often suffered severely from the wrath of these often brutal men. The hypocrisy of clergymen would define Australia's miss-trust for religion for centuries. 

Often when convicts had served their penal terms they fled out into the the outback and snatched up large and remote tracts of land that they used to grow cattle and sheep. The few roads and established tracks made it easy for them to distance themselves from the trauma and hurt provided by the colonies, while still allowing them an income to live out their lives alone.

*  *  * 

The colonies were still something of a backwater when the larger organised religions seemed to suddenly find an interest in attempting to establish themselves in - what was inevitably going to be a new nation. Still smarting from the slight they had copped from being essentially locked out of the American Constitution, early Australia became something of a theosophical battleground for churches as they attempted to gain influence in the newly establishing communities. Various organisations sent missionaries to the colonies, but quickly found hostility from the locals. The Australian rebellious spirit was forming, and the locals had no intention of being ruled over by bunch of men and women that had never had to live the hard lives that the former convict community had.

This began to turn around slowly due to two things: The irish potato famine, and the Gold rush. 

Catholics from Ireland flooded into Australia to escape the oppression in Ireland, not long before people from all over the world rushed into Australia to try their luck at finding gold. All of these groups brought their religions and customs with them, changing the attitudes of the colonies to culture and religion. 

*   *   *

The subsequent cultural upheaval saw several religious groups begin to take a more serious look at what kind of role they could play in Australia. The societal push-back at these organised religions had a lot of these groups on the back foot - making it hard to dictate dogma as readily as they had in most other countries in the world. People didn't fear the hand of god in the way they had elsewhere. 

Churches as such stated to become much less malign organisations, and focused heavily on improving social services. Missionaries became teachers and physicians. They slowly built up trust in colonial society by being far more socially progressive than the colonial government at the time was. A lot of these missionary groups also attempted to reach out to the aboriginals. But this had limited success, as the missionaries often saw themselves as superior people helping 'unfortunate' savages. And issue that came to a head with the controversy around what is now called 'The Stolen Generation'. 

The colonial governments at the time considered aboriginals to be 'part of the fauna'. Aboriginals were governed in Australia under the "Fauna and Flora act of New South Wales" until 1967.  

Flynn of the outback/inland.

Born outside of Melbourne, and educated in various locations around the city, Flynn took on work as a teacher before becoming a presbyterian minister. In 1911 he volunteered for as a missionary in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Here, he discovered how difficult it was to minister to people that lived on huge tracts of land that had been allocated for use by cattle and sheep farmers. The massive cattle stations meant that a lot of people out in the outback lived further apart from each other by distances that were often larger than most countries in Europe. He often wrote to his superiors about the difficulties, and eventually he became the superintendent of the Australian Inland Mission. 

For years Flynn looked at ways of dealing with the problems that were faced by people out in these areas, and looked at the technological advances of the day. 

Powered flight soon gave hope to Flynn, and he started to investigate ways of using aircraft to access remote populations. But it wasn't until Alfred Traeger built a pedal powered radio that Flynn's vision really started to take shape. 

Education over the airwaves was now possible. But not only that, with the assistance of powered flight, Flynn was able to establish a means to get medical assistance to remote areas. He utilised all the technology he could, and began to construct hospitals and hostels in key locations in order to accommodate the growing needs of the region. As such, he was able to establishe the 'Aerial Medical Service'.

While it was often routine to teach aboriginal children, Flynn did something quite revolutionary at the time - he offered the same education and medical assistance services to aboriginals that he had offered the rural settlers of the region. 

It has, however been suggested that Flynn was personally indifferent to aboriginals, and that it wasn't uncommon for aboriginals to be turned away from AIM hostels. However there is no written evidence to suggest this, and the AIMs policies - written by Flynn, has suggested otherwise. 

Flynn was very hands on with the establishment of all aspects of the AIM. He would routinely meet with architects and builders himself - and explored most of the areas where infrastructure had been built. 

Eventually the school of the air, and the Aerial Medical Service would be handed over to the now established Australian federal government - which had federated in 1901 to form the nation of Australia. 

School of the air still operates today, while the AMS is now known as the 'Royal Flying Doctor Service'. 

Many of the hostels and hospitals still operate, and the Presbyterian mission has established strong communities throughout much of regional Australia. 

Australia is still in the top 10 important mission districts of most church organisations. 

*   *   *

Hermes Featherlight. 

I can't say that this machine is the prettiest of the Hermes lightweight designs, but it certainly has a solid and utilitarian look about it. 

Doesn't mean I wouldn't love to own one! 

At a guess, this machine was chosen because it would be so easy to transport, while being so light that it didn't add extra weight in cars or on planes, or on horses. Horseback transport was still largely common during Flynn's era. In fact, horses are still in frequent use in rural Australia to this day.

I can only imagine the correspondence that was done with this machine. Not just builders and legislators, ministers and politicians... but also the people that were most loved and cared for by Flynn. The kinds of people that almost never get mentioned in the short biographies of people that have done amazing and great things.  

And I would so love to have been all the places this typewriter has been - depending on how often it travelled with Flynn. There's much that is left to the imagination with this typewriter, and have to say that I feel that it needed more than just a dodgy display card. 

The typewriter would have been made in the 1930's, meaning that it would have missed the earlier pioneering days of the AIM. But I'm sure that it still probably would have one heck of a story to tell... 

... if only it could write it's own story. 

Thanks for reading this rather lengthy blog entry. 

Coming up next... a couple of promised photos. 

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