Kirjahaku

Suppose that you could travel back in time to a Melbourne city street from 150 years ago or even longer. What might meet your eye that has eluded history's gaze? Shutter City presents city street views spanning the hurly-burly decades of the 1850s to 1870s, between the gold rushes and Marvellous Melbourne. Robyn Annear peers into every shadowy corner to reveal postcard streetscapes as miraculous time-capsules, packed with hidden-in-plain-sight historical detail. Her discoveries - she calls them 'sparks' - illuminate and decode each of Shutter City's street views. Among the sightings: barbers' poles, drinking fountains, the three gilded balls of a pawnbroker's sign, gleaming white cups at a coffee stall, street-vendors' carts, neighbourhood dogs (and a cat), assorted ghosts, and ladders - lots of ladders. Let Shutter City be your time-machine and Robyn Annear your guide: her lively and insightful commentary weaves the street views and their 'sparks' into a vivid narrative of a near-forgotten Melbourne and the photographers who captured it.

The demolition firm of Whelan the Wrecker was a Melbourne institution for a hundred years (1892-1992). Its famous sign - 'Whelan the Wrecker is Here' on a pile of shifting rubble - was a laconic masterpiece and served as a vital sign of the city's progress. It's no stretch to say that over three generations, the Whelan family changed the face of Melbourne, demolishing hundreds of buildings in the central city alone. In A City Lost and Found, Robyn Annear uses Whelan's demolition sites as portals to explore layers of the city laid bare by their pick-axes and iron balls. Peering beneath the rubble, she brings to light fantastic stories about Melbourne's building sites and their many incarnations. This is a book about the making - and remaking - of a city. 'Old landmarks fall in nearly every block ...and the face of the city is changing so rapidly that the time is not too far distant when a search for a building 50 years old will be in vain.' Herald, 1925.

'Just a little way down Collins Street, beside Henry Buck's, is a perpetually dark but sheltered laneway called Equitable Place. Here you'll find a number of places to eat and drink. Settle yourself in the window of one, shut your eyes, and picture this scene of yore ...' In this much-loved book, Robyn Annear resurrects the village that was early Melbourne - from the arrival of white settlers in 1835 until the first gold rushes shook the town - and brings it to life in vivid colour. Bearbrass was one of the local names by which Melbourne was known and Annear provides a fascinating living portrait of the streetlife of this town. In a lively and engaging style, she overlays her reinvention of Bearbrass with her own impressions and experiences of the modern city, enabling Melburnians and visitors to imagine the early township and remind themselves of the rich history that lies beneath today's modern metropolis. The original Bearbrass won the A.A. Phillips Award for Australian Studies in the 1995 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. ' ...Annear writes with an historian's eye for detail and a flair for ironic observation. An affectionate journey, rich in detail and character.' The Age