“Cheltenham in the jungle”
‘We thought we were English. We had no convict ancestry, unlike the rough, common people in Sydney. We had English trees, English gardens, English flowers. No aborigines, no sign of a kangaroo, except at the zoo, no koalas in the trees, no snakes. We lived in a sort of Cheltenham in the jungle.’
Wattle Park Blues, a poem
For the launching of the show At Least You Can Say You've Seen It in Melbourne [August -, 1974] - Barry hired a tram and invited the press on a picnic to celebrate the bursting of the wattle, the Australian harbinger of spring. Each had to wear something as yellow as wattle, and as the tram weaved through Camberwell Junction yellow drinks were served - pernod, advocaat and sherry. At lunch in the Wattle Park chalet, the journalists were served creamed sweetcorn, curried egg and daffodil-yellow jellied trifle, after which Humphries recited his Betjemanesque poem 'Wattle Park Blues'.
Peter Coleman
Wattle Park is a public park in Melbourne, Australia. It is located in the suburb of Burwood within the City of Whitehorse, approximately 13 km east of Melbourne's CBD. The Wattle Park Chalet was built in 1928 as a tea-house and function venue. It is an elegant structure in the rustic Tudor style of English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.
Steve Vizard tweeted on 22 April 2023: 'Nightnight Barry Humphries. The most unforgettably subversive, wicked, insightful, and wildly hilarious of them all. Travel well friend on your final tram trip to that great Wattle Park in the sky. “Only half a pint today Milko. Money under brick. PS Nothing tomorrow.”'
The poem was read by BH's daughter Tessa at the State Memorial for Barry Humphries AC CBE which was held at the Sydney Opera House at 11am on Friday 15 December 2023.
Camberwell
My photo, taken in April 2019. And in a bookshop not too far away, I acquired a copy of a biography of Western Australian novelist Randolph "Mick" Stow (1935-2010), who ended up in the English village of East Bergholt, Suffolk and then Harwich. I came upon his novels [The Girl Green as Elderflower (1980)] on my first trip to Sydney in March 2015.
Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4
On Desert Island Discs, for book Barry chose a street map of Melbourne, pointing out that the only book James Joyce took into exile (first of all in Trieste, Italy) was a map of Dublin. The programme was first broadcast on Friday, 29 May 2009. Though he lived in West Hampstead, London, for 40 years, he claimed to always travel with a copy of Melways street directory so he could peruse Melbourne’s streets.
"What a pleasure it is to stroll through the streets of Melbourne safely at night. To visit small restaurants and to take coffee or browse in the bookstores of Brunswick Street, Fitzroy or Maling Road, Canterbury, or enjoy the thronged restaurants in Lygon Street. Through all of its changes good and bad, the spirit of Melbourne somehow survives and prospers.
"Few people know that I always travel with a copy of Melways street directory — an increasingly chubby volume — in my hand luggage. At a cafe table in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, on a ski lift in Switzerland, in the garden of ranch in Argentina or a beach in Denmark I peruse this well-thumbed guide to my birthplace, and I dream of Hawksburn, Rosanna, Aspendale, Gardiner, Dennis and Spotswood. The still-to-be explored heartland of my favourite city."
The Age, 7 October 2055
Showtime & Procrastination
At the moment I'm engaged in writing a new starring vehicle for myself and friends and I open in Sydney next month. And it's usually my practice, being a professional procrastinator amongst other things, to commence writing the show as soon as the first ticket has been bought. It entertains me to think that there's some poor character actually paying for something that doesn't exist. In Melbourne I used to like sitting in a little Greek restaurant called the Cafe Florentino. At about ten past eight in the evening. And seeing old Melbourne Grammar boys, contemporaries perhaps of our Prime Minister, hurrying with their wives down the stairs in order to attend one of my performances which I had absolutely no intention of starting for another three-quarters of an hour.
Through the thin end of an asparagus roll, 27 April, 1978, National Press Club, Canberra, Australia. Source