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Donovan

People, Places

Digging a little deeper

28/02/2026
Photograph, headstone, bushland

Earlier this month, I had a delightfully unexpected and long overdue catch up with my aunty Moon, and my father at a local cafe. When rapport is easy and familiar, conversations have a habit of jumping quickly from subject to subject, and we found ourselves talking about graveyard real estate. My aunt mentioned she knew someone who had purchased one of the last remaining plots at the Melbourne General Cemetery, and I said we have ancestors buried there. She wanted to know who, so I regaled her with what I knew. On my walk home, I thought I should dig a little deeper …

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People, Places

The spirit lives on: Glenferrie oval

14/09/2025
Presentation with footballers lined up on an oval with a flag pole in the foreground and packed crowds lining the oval perimeter.

The Hawthorn Football Club has gone back to its roots in Glenferrie this season to honour its centenary. The club, in collaboration with the Patient Wolf Distilling Company, released a centenary gin featuring native Yellow Box Eucalyptus growing around the club’s spiritual home of Glenferrie Oval.

My father, a lifetime Hawthorn supporter and teetotaller, told me he wanted a bottle of this gin for the mantlepiece.

I laughed, ‘But Dad, you don’t drink, and you don’t have a fireplace’…

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People

Alice in Wonderland

14/06/2021
Faded, shabby edged dust jacket of a book.

Late last year, the Athenaeum Theatre advertised a stage production of Alice in Wonderland for children in January.  When I saw the email in my inbox, I instantly thought with delighted relief, ‘Christmas presents for my nieces, sorted!’

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People, Places

Rear Window Twist

29/01/2021
Illustration of a actor James Stewart peering over binoculars with the movie plotline reflected in the lenses and actress Grace Kelly in the background.

The lure of popcorn and a summer holiday matinee of my all-time favourite film, Rear Window (1954), playing at the Lido Cinema in Hawthorn proved irresistible a few weeks back. My dear friend Rebecca and her ten-year-old daughter, Anna, came along with me. They were seeing the movie for the first time.     Read more

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