Opportunity

My hometown is Castlemaine. Not "Carstle-maine". It's "Cassle-maine" thank you very much. For some, it's a home to hipster Melbourne-bred tree-changers, a thriving arts scene, or Broadsheet-featured Johnny Baker - the destination patisserie. For locals, it might be Saffs, Lot 19, or The Little IGA. It's definitely the generational trauma of the death of the Stonemans cat. For me, a girl who lived on a hippy hobby farm hidden between sheep paddocks out past Newstead, Castlemaine became my spiritual hometown. My Newstead Primary School friends headed west to the private school in Maryborough, and I went east in a quest for new friends and a public education. 

Now when the country calls me home, Castlemaine still feels just the same. It doesn't matter that I don't recognise anyone strolling along Mostyn Street's goldrush-era shopfronts. Or that the Country Target my mum fainted in after a blood donation is now a "K-Hub". It's still all so warmly familiar. Its old-timey cannons in Victory Park (obligatory in every regional country town for some reason). The grand steps of the market building. Cosy homewares displayed in the windows of Taylor's. Two competing fish and chip shops barely three shopfronts apart. The cool shade of the enormous Indian bean tree in the Botanic Gardens. 

So much has just carried on for all these years. 

One that has carried on for longer than all of us is the Theatre Royal. Standing grandly on Hargraves Street since 1854, the theatre has been a stately and solid feature of Castlemaine's cultural scene. It is the oldest continually-operating theatre on the Australian mainland, a source of great pride to the town. 

Aside from being a noble home to arthouse theatre and live gigs, the Theatre Royal was the venue for our first movies (The Lion King), first dates (Ned Kelly) and first kisses (see also Ned Kelly. My date: 1 star, Orlando Bloom: 5 stars). It's where my mum cried watching Babe when the duck's girlfriend got served up for Christmas dinner. It's where my dad took me to an Australian film about a country girl leaving her farm and moving to the city, special because it's really my only memory of doing something just the two of us. 

I saw one of my very favourite films - the cinematic classic (and personal inspiration) - Legally Blonde. It randomly stopped about 10 minutes in, while the person in the projector room scrambled to get Elle back onscreen. Our school treated the Year 12 cohort to a screening of the film adaptation of the Italian novel I'm Not Scared by Nicolo Ammaniti. My friend and fellow Lord of the Rings nerd, Annie and I went to a double feature of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. Luckily we were seated on comfy couches on the ground floor, below the usual creaky and stiff red leather theatre seats on the balcony.

Most notably, the Theatre Royal was home to our formals. My first one was as a starry-eyed Year 9 attending the senior formal with a Year 10 boyfriend, in a blink-and-you-missed-it terrible high school romance. I borrowed my bestie's sister's dress, and still remember feeling self-conscious as my hips had made a sudden appearance and I hadn't quite grown into them yet. I didn't even know how to dance and sat awkwardly for much of the night. (Note to the reader - this was before the introduction of a very well-played CD of The Killers' 2004 masterpiece Hot Fuss, the album that taught me to dance). My boyfriend pulled me up to dance to Sexyback by Justin Timberlake, which in my defence has a pretty weird rhythm, and I embarrassed myself enough to be encouraged to sit back down for the next one. 

Our high school years flitted by and before I was really ready for it, 2006 brought us our last year at Castlemaine Secondary College, and with it, our final formal at the Theatre Royal. There were no dates for this one, just the easy companionship of best friends as we curled hair, layered mascara, and spritzed ourselves with lashings of Paris Hilton's signature perfume. As we arrived at the theatre it felt significant. There was a palpable shift in the way we saw ourselves, as we began to wonder what was next. This girl gang was shaking off high school politics, and just about ready to step out into the possibilities of our own lives. 

Out on the dancefloor, the class of 2006 was serenaded by a Year 11 kid, whose name I'm quite sure was Dave, singing Pete Murray's Opportunity. 

Hold on now, your exit's here

It's waiting just for you

Don't pause too long

It's fading now

It's ending all too soon, you'll see

For my entire life, I have always been so acutely aware of the sensation of time slipping between my fingers. It is a blessing, to deeply appreciate all the beautiful moments, but has also given me a life saturated by nostalgia, tinged with a sadness for those moments as they pass into memory. It has given me a fear of change and an unwillingness to step out of how good things are, even if better things are waiting ahead for me. 

I felt the poignancy of this moment so deeply, aware of all of the opportunities that lay out ahead of us. Moving out of home and away to the city, grown up jobs, university, and hopefully, maybe, love. We didn't know what we were about to begin, but we knew that we had each other. 

So how moved I was, nearly 20 years later to find myself in the Theatre Royal as Pete Murray himself played Opportunity onstage, just him and his guitar. This time with Al, while our toddler slept soundly in Mum's little mud-brick house. 

Time was circular, and here I was, on the same dancefloor, under the same paint-peeling ceiling, hearing those lyrics again. 

Had it been everything we had imagined? 

Dinners and trips and nights out. A college year surviving on porridge and mountain bread, but simultaneously filled with laughter and creativity. Learning and study (and wild university parties). New friendships forged, some just for a season, and some for the long haul. Shitty jobs and worse bosses. Grief. Tiny apartments and countless moving days. New furry family members. Love, both passionate and comfortable; destined and unexpected. Engagements. Weddings. And now for some of us, children of our own.

The years have passed, but each one full. What lives we have lived. 

As Pete sang, it felt like I'd done all of it and none of it. Like it was all about to begin again. New challenges and changes. Books to read. Words to write. Places to find and beautiful people we haven't met yet.

So much life still to live. 

So much joy unseen. 

It's waiting for us. 

Jump in the Way Back Machine with me

 There was an internet sweet spot, a little later than Neopets and age-inappropriate Hotmail email addresses, but well behind the "trending audio" Tiktok slop funnelled into our feeds now. And that time, this historian explains, was where one would purposefully visit a website, usually in blog form, to catch up on the latest posts. You'd simply click back a few pages to catch up, and then switch off your desktop computer to get on with your life. This said computer was probably housed in one of those computer desks with roll out keyboard drawer that slowly retreated back into home base while you typed. Eventually, when only able to access the spacebar, you would yank it back out again and start again. Like a typewriter but more annoying. 

We weren't just stuck on the same three apps. The internet was a broad and wild place, full of wonder and mystery just waiting to be explored. 

One such quest led my friends and I to a website that each of us still checks in on from time to time, and that is the splendour of Randy Constan's Peter Pan-inspired life. Randy, a self-styled Peter Pan who refused to let this dark world corrupt his inner child, documented his life, his search for his very own Tinkerbell, and - most importantly - his outfits on his personal website. 

When checking in recently, I was unnerved to read a pop-up explaining that Randy has updated and modernised the site. Thankfully there was little of the latter, because Pixyland.org is still there in its purest 2000s form. It is a riot of grainy, sparkling GIFs, Comic Sans, and emojis circa 2002 chain emails (4ward to 10 ppl on ur friends list or bad luck 4 10 yrs 💗💗💗💗💗😞😞😆). While the website itself is a museum, and I mean that in the most wholesome, nostalgia-filled way, Randy's fashion creations must not be missed. The loading screen alone makes this website a must-visit. Trust me. 15,608,865 visitors (at the time of publishing) can't be wrong. 

The 2010s were a time when you would stalk the website and then buy the book. I bought a few of the books, and Cake Wrecks was one of them. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the website lives on and is updated regularly! This was the website for appreciators of wild and desperately incorrect applications of spelling, as well as some really creative interpretations of different living things handcrafted in cake form. I was very unkind to my best friends for taking cake decorating classes as an elective in Year 9, but it's a shame that they did. They might have ended up here in this museum of horrors otherwise. 

Another book that still sits on my shelf, is the printed form of snark blog Regretsy, only available now to view through the Way Back Machine. Savage and merciless, the blog was penned by voice actor April Winchell, featuring the most craptastic and unhinged creations sold on maker website Etsy. There was a steady flow of vaginas, bad art and poorly-executed craft, drip-fed to us post by post that you'd periodically check back in on. It was an early form of internet bullying, sure, but the snark was top-tier and I really did lol reading back through some of the posts even today. Often featured items were snapped up quickly by readers from the blog, so like content creators of today have worked out, any engagement results in more sales. Also... someone needed to tell them. 

'Merica.

Behold the glory of this deliciously nostalgic photograph. The slightly mullety haircut, Valencia insta filter and the coloured flats. I actually love how it captures the time. 

Just, no. 

Lastly for today in my nostalgia round-up, I can't forget the kinda horribly titled food blog This is Why You're Fat (TWYF) Partly appreciative and partly in horror, like a slow-motion car crash of heart disease and spiking cholesterol, TWYF documented the most creatively obscene culinary concoctions. Posts were submitted, let's face it, almost entirely from Americans, who had discovered completely and wholly unique methods of cosuming calories. The calories. The fat content. The sugar. The complete lack of any featured vegetable (does potato count?). Decadent and delicious? Or a single bite away from an early grave? You be the judge. 

KFC Pie: six pieces of fried KFC chicken breasts baked into one pie. (Submitted by Shazmodo.)

Pulled pork and mashed potato parfait. (Submitted by Anne.)

The Bacon Mug: A giant mug made out of bacon and filled with cheddar cheese. (Submitted by K8.)

That is all for my round up of 2000s internet nostalgia for one day. Honourable mention to STFUParents (obnoxious parents, still hilarious even though I now am one), and NSFW dishonourable mentions to Chat Roulette and especially Cake Farts. Don't ask. 

Keep Calm, It Happened to You

 Today in my daily depressing trawl through the internet (though, now I suppose it's more like what the algorithm force-feeds me), I saw a video of an American sorority who had a kitchy 2010s theme for their O-Week party. Girls dressed in their interpretation of the 2010s - denim three-quarter jeans and a long top -  held up their moustache-adorned index fingers above their lips, and danced energetically to Gangnam Style. Behind them was an enormous "Keep Calm and..." sign printed onto a mint and coral chevron background. All of this was mildly alarming. I wasn't completely convinced by the outfits - one girl was wearing chunky white grandpa sneakers (no thank you, sweet summer child, millenials would never), yet the attention to detail was definitely accurate but concerning. 2014 was only a few years ago, and no-one can convince me otherwise. I'm not ready for infinity scarves, peplum tops, and bandage dresses to be packaged up into a packet at Spotlight as a retro party costume. 

This unkind reminder of the disappearing decades was compounded later in the day when the internet deemed Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros' Home as the 'worst song of all time'. The voters have short memories, or more likely had not yet been born, when Crazy Frog burst onto Video Hits and assaulted us with his aviator helmet, micro penis, and the most annoying song you'd ever heard (one that the completely deranged could download as a ringtone). The demonising of the "stomp clap hey" era of music is just another attack on millenial culture by our nihilist Gen Z rivals. That genre of music sold itself as anti-establishment, yet was so catchy it was snapped up by enterprising advertising executives to sell everything from cars to Big Ms. It was overplayed and as a result is now being dismissed as hipster nonsense, and worse - 'millenial cringe'. 

Actually we all made fun of hipsters too at the time, and we lived in the capital city for hipsters. but what I wouldn't give to see a vintage bearded Melbourne hipster with no socks and loafers, skinny pants just a bit too short around the ankle, wearing an SLR camera as a fashion accessory. I actually saw this for real once in a copy of MX (RIP, iykyk), and he told the interviewer that the camera didn't actually work. 

'Millenial cringe' is a statement that, no matter how many times I hear it, cuts me deep. Once upon a time, we were the cool young generation - Josh Thomas with his cutesy, awkward antics on Talking About Your Generation alongside his Gen X and Boomer counterparts. Raised on Neopets, we taught our parents how to navigate between windows on their computers, and we snapped photos of our food as early adopters of Instagram (#brunch #adulting). Somehow we blinked and to paraphrase Grandpa Simpson - It happened to us. 

At a recent work party, many drinks were consumed, and staff had a chance to let loose and have a dance in our kitchen garden. My Gen Z colleague stood on the side, watching the dagginess unfold with her arms crossed and almost a look of pain upon her face. While my Gen X colleagues were having fun, she was dying of secondhand embarrassment. When she asked what my song of choice was on nights out and I replied with the anthem Mr Brightside (and let it be said on the public record that I expect my wake to be exactly this), her reaction was, and I quote, "Cringe". Likewise too was winged eyeliner, for some mysterious reason. 

But when I watched my Gen X colleagues drunkenly attempting the Dirty Dancing lift, egged on by laughter and cheering, and then back at my mortified young friend, I realised that perhaps Millenials are the last generation to really have fun. Gen Z, who have grown up with their image carefully curated, haunted by the fear of going viral for the wrong reasons, have lost the freedom to truly live. 

While I depart to dance to Mr Brightside with my arms in the air (yeah, that's cringe too apparently), my thoughts turn back to my favourite writer and appreciator of youth. So much so, that he penned a novel entirely dedicated to the dark depths one would go to to retain his youth and beauty. "Ah," writes Oscar Wilde. "Realise your youth while you have it... Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you. Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing."