Hackpacker

One of Adelaide's biggest landmarks is the corner of Rundle Mall and King William Street, known as Beehive Corner. If you look up you'll spot the landmark insect buzzing over Haigh's Chocolate . Almost ready for its 100th birthday, the first store appeared here in 1915 and their luxury chocolates have spread to Victoria and New South Wales. But there's something special about getting them here at the source. Their chocolate frogs pre-date Harry Potter's sweet-tooth as they've been selling them for 67 years. Today they offer them in peppermint and dark and reckon they sell more than a million a year. But the frogs are getting pushed aside by Adelaide's Panda-monium and you can now buy large chocolate blocks in the shape of Adelaide Zoo's Wang Wang and Funi . Plus there's truffles, blocks and choc-coated fruit. But the best thing about visiting the Haigh's store is coming out with a free sample - they usually insist on giving you a taster at th

Cellar doors used to have this exclusive feel of a mate letting you in the back door to sneakily try a glass. But now they've become part of the marketing plan. So Rockford Wines try to re-create that lost intimacy with their Stone Wall lunch by creating a secret dining society. I'm let into this elite noshery in the Barossa Valley only because a friend of mine has been a member since he was 16 - even at that age he was tall enough to be mistaken for a tree so he must have eluded any ID checks. He's warned me that this lunch will take half the day but I need to get there early for the first glass. Predictably I'm late, negotiating the Krondorf Road but mostly because for a secret society it seems deceptively easy to find. They pop the first cork in the Stone Wall tasting room, which my friend is right. It's worth arriving early for a gutsy flute of the 1993 Black Shiraz. Sparkling reds get the wrong end of the bottle when it comes to most Northern Hemisphere wi

For the last couple weeks I've been watching - with a mix of amusement, bemusement and some hope - as one of Flemington's best loved joints re-invented itself. The new signage reminiscent of McDonald's brought a smile - is the King thinking of a dynasty of chain stores? The new location on Pin Oak Crescent is confusing because the existing location was always buzzing and bookings were theoretically possible but often bungled. And the hope? Well, I just wanted the food to be as good as when the King slummed it in a grubby arcade and you came away with change from a tenner for that steaming bowl of Malaysian soup. We arrived late for our reservation and there was a huge crowd bubbling over into the street. It was opening week and there were floral tributes piling the windows, so I expected we'd be worshipping at the feet of the King for a while before our audience. But I was wrong. The new venue seats 200, so our reservation was honoured and we're zoomed through to

On Friday the Melbourne Writers Festival program was a hefty insert in the Age . In the past it came as part of Saturday’s weekend supplements, but it’s all part of the new energy buzzing through the festival. New director Steve Grimwade put his program out on Friday to coincide with online bookings and the program boasting more than 400 events has more in common with Friday’s hip EG than Saturday’s brunchable browser, A2. The big news in the program is Joss Whedon as the second keynote. Tickets have probably already sold out but it does give an excuse to show off Joss Whedon on writing for new media: Mark Scott presenting The Quest for Truth interests me less. We know where the ABC supremo is coming from already and there will be a lot of talking up ABC 24. Cory Doctrow on Copyright Vs Creativity speaks more to the challenges of our time: namely how can we continue to create quality content when it is free? The argument is often made that we should be giving away content, “gett

National Novel Writing Month is the brain child of Chris Baty, a San Franciscan who took November off to write a book and found a few friends to join him. It 's become a global phenomenon with more than 150,000 participants. Chris chatted about the future of writing, the Office of Light and Letters , book piracy and the bright future for the story in the age of laptops and Kindle. Hackpacker: What made you start NaNoWriMo? Was it a tool to beat your own procrastination? Chris Baty: The "why" of it all is such a good question. It wasn't because I had a novel in me that I was dying to write. I'd always loved novels and worshipped novelists but had never really thought I would write a book of my own. Until I started planning the first NaNoWriMo, I believed that novelists were a (superior) alien race that had been beamed down to Earth to delight and intimidate the rest of the planet. Then, in 1999, I quit my full-time job and try to make a living as a freelance wri

As AC/DC prepare to unleash themselves on Melbourne in three gigs next week, artist and metalhead Ben Couzins has created a fitting poster tribute to the rock gods. ACDC Lane ( slash omitted because it apparently offended the Registrar of Geographic Names) has become a lunchtime tourist attraction for grey suits to admire Couzins' images from across the band's 37-year career. There's a cheekiness to the posters plastered all over this city lane that makes even non-fans smirk at their pomp and majesty. The lane was reclaimed for rock in 2004 after ditching its dreary former moniker, Corporation Lane. The renaming was partly due to the It's A Long Way To The Top video that dragged the band and bagpipers down nearby in Swanston St to the confusion of 1970s Melbournians. But the ACDC Lane is a nod to Melbourne's music culture while that same culture is getting a bureaucratic thumbs down . A crackdown on Melbourne's liquor licencing has forced the closure of the To

Many Australians still think of the Queensland capital as a cultural backwater. Although it's Australia's third largest city, the memory of conservative premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen still casts a shadow. Once every three years Brizvegas hosts one of the world's biggest arts events, the Asia Pacific Triennial (the sixth is abbreviated to APT6). Gathering works from Iran to Hawaii, one gallery isn't enough to hold the exhibition so it rambles through the Queensland Art Gallery (known unprosaically as QAG) across to the Gallery of Modern Art (or GoMA to his old army buddies). Entitled People holding flowers , this years coverboys decorate most promo materials, marching across the gallery floor . Chinese artsists Zhu Weibing and Ji Wenyu created the seriously dressed businessmen each holding aloft a lotus flower to play on Mao Zhedong's Hundred Flowers campaign of encouraging artistic opinion. Ironically the flowers and their bearers are identical much like political t

On this morning's walk we were overtaken by women and children in their finest. 'It's a celebration,' they said hurrying past. Last night’s news came to mind and we asked the next rushing passer-by if it had something to do with the Hajj. 'Yes, Hajj celebration,' as she jogged past with her kids towards the massive congregation on the lawns outside the flats. The smile on her face – whether at our interest or our ignorance – seemed to invite us to find out more, we followed into the worshipping. Eid-el-Adha (Festival of the Sacrifice) celebrates the end of the Hajj, or the pilgrimage that Muslims are encouraged to make once in their lives. Lasting around three days, the festival commemorates Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son for Allah, and observances include prayer, alms for the poor and sacrificing a goat, camel or sheep. Here in Flemington, there was sombre intoning from the Iman, prayer and a sermon, collection tins, but thankfully no livestock in

A little while ago I wrote about being inside the mouthful that is the Centre for Books Writing & Ideas . A few other people must have been having trouble with the name because it is now the Wheeler Centre . At a function this morning the curtain slid back to reveal a Lonely Planet founders, Tony and Maureen Wheeler. According to the speeches, they're funding top-class or "Melbourne standard" events at the new centre named in their honour. It's all part of their Planet Wheeler foundation . The first program of events was unveiled in a glossy brochure. The big gig is A Gala Night of Storytelling , which boasts some of Melbourne's biggest personalities from Paul Kelly to John Marsden all telling stories passed down through their families. It's an intimate look at the cities literati. Its an exciting start to Melbourne's biblio-hub.

This weekend I went to the first workshop at Melbourne 's brand spanking new Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas . It's the jewel in the crown of UNESCO's City of Literature and, based on the construction work going on out the front, there's a bit more polishing before it's fully open to the public. Even still it's up and running in a pilot mode with most of the resident organisations already moved in and some even starting their events. Six resident organisations - Australian Poetry Centre , Emerging Writers' Festival , Express Media , Melbourne Writer's Festival , Victorian Writer's Centre and SPUNC - all seem to be in various stages of unpacking. The centre itself starts programming events early next year. It's an impressive building from the inside and out - keeping the State Library's classic look while making it contemporary enough to be a work place. There's still a few bugs to iron out with the entrance which was still draped i

It's the race that stops the nation and keeps Melbourne's milliners in business. Living not far from the track means that I've seen heaps of feathered finery so this Melbourne Cup I snapped a couple of fascinators while escaping the throng. Made from feathers, flowers or fur and later on in the day bits of bread, beer caps and raceday flotsam, the fascinator is best seen in the morning. By the end of the day they're teetering on the edge like the drunk on high heels who is probably supporting this elaborate construction. The wave of style washes in early as punters are keen to find their place in the carpark and flush away a few bets on dead certs. Somewhere in the balancing of headgear (when does a fascinator become a hat?) there's a horse race, but mostly it's about drinking. After a long day of waiting to not be invited into a celebrity tent, most stagger home or shout at cab drivers. Some take time out to vomit in local resident's letterboxes so w

Way back in the 1990s a group of musician pranksters called the KLF pranced across stages and charts declaring themselves The Ancients of Mu Mu. Most people thought they meant the baggy dress-like outfits preferred by the overweight and fill-in arts teachers. But it wasn't just one of the most interesting big-ups in hip hop at the time. Mu was actually an abbreviation of Lemuria, a land created to explain the travels of the indescribably cute lemurs. Zoologist Philip Sclater couldn’t work out how fossils of the cuddly critters from Madagascar could end up in India, Malaysia and the Middle East without clocking up some serious frequent flyer miles. In 1864 he came up with a solution: a continent that must have once joined these separate continents, so lemurs scurried overland until Lemuria sunk into the ocean. It became Atlantis for baby ewoks. With the benefit of theories like continental drift, the fossils are easily explained and the disappeared landmass seems hokum, but the ide

As you're driving from Melbourne towards Warburton, you might notice your health being toasted by a Father Christmas-like gent by the side of the road. Out the front of the Sam Knott Hotel in Wesburn there's a wood sculpture of an icon that decorated Australia's pool rooms and pub for just over a century. The subject of the sculpture is Sam Knott, a prospector who came from England in 1888 just as Victoria's gold rush had run dry. Sam found work other work including in the pub that now bears his name. The current bartender reckons he was repeatedly paid the same pound note once a week that he religiously returned to cash register to clear off his weekly drinking slate. In 1906 a photographer from the city snapped the enthusiatic drinker at the bar. When he remarked that he enjoyed his drink even though it was before noon, Sam cracked his famous line "I allus has wan at eleven" which became part of boozing and branding history. Carlton United Breweries loved th

In 2008 Melbourne's skyline saw the building-up of a large Ferris Wheel in the re-vamped Docklands . The Southern Star was gleefully nicknamed the Melbourne Eye (likening the Antipodean to its London sibling ) and, as manufactured tourist attractions went, it served as the ideal centrepiece for a new shopping centre. For just under thirty bucks, Melburnians would find themselves (according to the marketing material) 'rising gently to 120 metres in one of 21 air-conditioned cabins' for a half-hour ride. Southern Star opened in late-2009 amid excited projections of over 30,000 tourists visiting a week. It even promised views as far as Geelong. But early in 2009 a heatwave warped the big wheel and it was quickly shut down . Opened for just over seven weeks, it seemed that the designs couldn't take the heat and it seemed better to be safe than sorry. The $100m project has gone further into the red as the wheel needs to be repaired elsewhere and looks like it won't be

There was a marketing questionnaire that came from Lonely Planet asking authors how many reviews they reckoned they'd written. I really wouldn't have a clue. As a guesstimate, there's hundreds in any guidebook you write then there's a gagillion food reviews, plus about a billion shadow reviews. These are the reviews you start writing then work out that your subject is never going to make it in, so you keep writing it just for yuks. Some of them are pure fiction while in others only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Here's a couple from the notebooks - including my Scotland blog : Seven-11 The ambience is bright, fluorescently so, with an emphasis on brand names and logos that lends a pop culture chic. Chef “Hi, I’m Dave”, whose career we’ve followed from the Dandenong Rd’s Shell Servo, offers us the five chocolate bars for two dollars, but go for the house special – the caldo cane . Rolling over on a unique warmer/disinfector, the “dogs” (indulgen

More travellers are looking to go flightless either for green reasons or just to slow down and enjoy their trip. Unfortunately as border security tightens and global piracy increases, taking a boat to Australia is getting tougher. Your best bet is to try to hop a freighter. The romantic days of crewing on a freighter are gone, so today you’ll have to pay. From the UK to Melbourne, for example, you can expect to pay around AUD$8,500. That’s the tough bit out of the way, now you can lie back and enjoy the journey which will take almost 40 days. Bring a book or, better yet, a set of encyclopaedias. Travelling from Singapore to Darwin is quicker and cheaper but few companies take passengers on this route. You can travel on from Melbourne to Tahiti, California or even Canada. Ship life is fairly comfortable with meals provided and your own cabin, shower and possibly TV, plus you’ll get to make a few interesting stopovers you might not have planned. You can start planning with companies like

When I had to write about definitively Melbournian experiences for Lonely Planet's the City Book I included this: hunkering down in a Fitzroy pub to watch local band the Lucksmiths If you own that book, it's time to get out the red pen, because this essential Melbourne band is no more. And their final show wasn't in Fitzroy, but at Richmond's Corner Hotel , one of the city's great remaining pub venues. It was a bittersweet gig after a long farewell tour but the cheeky chaps behind Melbourne's best indie/folk/pop outfit put on a great final show. Stage banter between Marty, Tali and Mark has always been a big feature and this gig featured songs interspersed with good-natured scuffles about Scrabble rules and a nod to the ex-Fitzroy landmark Punters Club, which was "dear to our hearts if not our livers". They were always a Melbourne band - where else could a song like "T-shirt Weather" be such a powerful anti-depressant? They played songs fro

Thursday the MWF got all digital. There were sessions dedicated to marketing in the info age and showing off the latest e-readers . I got along to three sessions but the whole day proved too much of a test of stamina and battery life. The opening was called the State of Digital Publishing . Victoria Nash and Elizabeth Weiss grappled with the huge subject from the publisher point of view. They were concerned about the rise of the $9.99 e-book and how it had pushed them into what Elizabeth refererred to as "Get all out books out there and have them competing" mentality. Victoria mentioned piracy and how they saw it as "protecting our authors' copyright and obviously our revenues". It all looked very industry-focussed and I felt like the author was out of the picture. Thirty minutes in Bob Stein got a word in about the future. He pointed out that more than a million books are available on public domain and that the book industry was facing the same challenges

As the line to 10 Conditions of Love sprawled out the front of Melbourne's Town Hall and ran a full city block up to Russell St, China's decision to oppose the film's screening was looking like the best publicity the could hope for. Without all the hackings , this 54-minute film might have got a limited release and only appeared late-night on SBS. Instead the flag of East Turkestan appeared on national and international news , international film festivals are saying they'll pick it up and Australian politicians are supporting a national struggle they may not have heard of two months ago. Festival director Richard Moore kicked the film off saying "How sweet it is to push play this evening". The film itself follows the life of the Uyghur's most vocal proponent, Rebiya Kadeer, who was imprisioned in China for her actions. It uses the limited footage that has come out of the western province of Xinjiang (New Frontier) intercut with interviews with Kadee

When Sydney and Melbourne tossed a coin to decide where to put the capital of the new nation, it landed on its side. The two rival metropolises had to settle for a capital that was exactly halfway between both of them. This happened to be a sheep paddock. They've done a lot with the paddock. Architect Walter Burley Griffin "planned an ideal city, a city that meets my ideal of the city of the future". For his trouble they named a lake after him and proceeded to bugger up his plans. By the time Bill Bryson arrived in the late 1990s he pronounced it "an extemely large park with a city hidden it." I've alway had a soft spot for Canberra having gone to university in the Bush Capital. There is plenty of Bryson's parkland and once all the politicians jet home for the weekend, it's a very livable city. One thing I can never understand is why it has such a large concentration of "Nationals": the National Library , National Museum and, more