Back in early 1996, I was planning to buy a flat. Maribyrnong was the suburb of choice. I really liked one which I inspected in Newstead or Navigator Street – the floor plan was much better than that of most other flats.

And it was about 3 minutes’ walk from the Anglers Tavern, a riverside pub with one of the best beer gardens in Melbourne.

There was just one thing which held me back from buying it – the flat was on the ground floor in a location not too far from the river, on what could be considered the flood plain.

Being sort of a ‘Local’ (living then on the edge of what is now considered part of Maribyrnong, but back then was alternately Maidstone North or Footscray, depending on whether you spoke to the council or the post office) I knew all about the floods. After all, how could I not forget the flood of 1983 (the night of my cousin Johnny’s wedding) which closed the bridge, or the one of 1987, or the one which filled the Anglers Tavern in 1993.

Hence I decided not to put in an offer, and instead bought a flat on the upper level of a block on higher ground, opposite the Maribyrnong Community Centre (which incidentally is the emergency flood evacuation point for Maribyrnong township).

For the six and a half years that I then lived in the Maribyrnong township (isn’t ‘township’ a much more charming name for a place than ‘suburb’) there were no floods, and nor have then been any major flood incidents there in the 20 years since, when I have lived on much higher ground in Avondale Heights.

But that all changed on Friday morning, when I checked the push notices on my phone on my way out the door and saw the details of the evacuation alerts, followed soon after by a bemused call from a friend who lives in an upper level flat in a street which was in the process of getting flooded.

As it turns out, the flood level on Friday reached 4.22m, breaking the most recent flood record of 4.2m set in 1974, and falling just short of the 4.26m recorded in 1916 (the all time record for the Maribyrnong is 4.5m in 1906 according to the SES website).

I am just surprised that this is the first major flood in so long. How could we go almost 30 years without a huge flood?

In 1170, after a falling out with his former friend and sponsor, Henry II, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas A Beckett, was murdered in his Cathedral by four knights from the King’s household.

History since then has generally accepted that Henry’s frustrated utterance ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ was taken as an implicit order to those knights to commit the murder.

I have been thinking a whole lot about this episode in the past week or so, since the former CEO of the National Australia Bank, Andrew Thorburn, was forced to resign as CEO of the Essendon Football Club after only one day in that new role.

There are legitimate reasons why people might object to Thornburn becoming CEO of an AFL club. His tenure at the National Australia Bank came to a premature end soon after the Banking Royal Commission several years ago, where he and the chair of the NAB both appeared to be both tone deaf and most lacking in repentance for the shortcomings of their bank’s highly profit driven conduct to the detriment of their customers.

But his well known career as a banker was not why he was forced to resign from Essendon. It was that it emerged that he was the Chair of an Anglican Church ministry known as ‘Cities on a Hill’. A pastor involved with this ministry raised concerns about abortion and homosexuality in 2013.

Our technocratic premier, Daniel Andrews, saw fit to mount a public attack on Thorburn on the basis of his involvement with this Anglican ministry, arguing that he was not fit to hold office at Essendon due to his involvement with a religious group which had expressed such views.

Andrew Thorburn is no turbulent priest, although he appears to be highly active in the Anglican Church, and Daniel Andrews is no king, even though he has the arrogance, authoritarianism, and haughtiness of one, but I still see parallels between his actions in condemning Thorburn and those of Henry II 850 years ago in implicitly ordering the murder of Archbishop Beckett.

In 1170, when kings actually ruled wielding actual powers, dissent from those elements of civil society which were powerful enough to counter the powers of the state could undermine the authority of the king, sometimes legitimately. The head of the Christian Church in England, Thomas A Beckett, was in a position to do so. Killing him was an attempt at silencing dissent.

Daniel Andrews is a technocrat who controls the state apparatus within Victoria. He has demonstrated in recent years that he does not tolerate any dissent and feels threatened by the very existence of Civil Society, which represents other sources of legitimacy and social stability to that of the state, which he directly controls.

Business, Religion and Sport are all parts of Civil Society which are are vital to our community, and which he has intruded upon during the period of the pandemic. In attacking Thorburn, he has seen an opportunity to assert his post-Pandemic authority over two aspects of civil society that he does not and can not directly control – religion and sport.

Premier Andrews has over reached himself in his role as Premier in condemning the decisions and values of sporting clubs and mainstream religious organisations in criticising the appointment of Thornburn on his religious affiliations. This is the sort of attack on private beliefs and civil society which is best suited to a nation where civil society is much weaker and where the abuses of power of the state are more frequent and systematic, such as Putin’s Russia or Chavez’s Venezuela.

I also find the people siding with Premier Andrews as hypocritical in their talk of greater tolerance. Being a Libertarian, I would love to see greater tolerance for everyone. What I instead see is that there has been a shift in the cultural conversation where those who were oppressed are now joyously embracing the role of oppressors. There is no tolerance, just intolerance from a different source.

It reminds me of the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs and Yosemite alternate in chasing one another depending on who has the most lethal weapon in their hand.

But it is more serious than that. It is not that long ago that being of a particular religion or not in this country determined whether you were eligible to hold public office or join certain clubs. That Daniel Andrews is prepared to intervene politically and argue that someone of a particular religion should not hold office in a sporting club is a matter of concern for everyone in this state and in this society. It is an intervention which undermines the freedom of expression and conscience of everyone.

His politically motivated religious intolerance is a disturbing step towards a religiously motivated intolerance, whether directed against people who have religious beliefs or those who (like me) are rather skeptical of such beliefs.

www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/he-is-going-out-on-a-high-peter-fitzsimons-steps-down-as-head-of-republic-movement/news-story/51f14c397135f3765aa2b284cb75bf7c

www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/south-melbourne-pub-rolls-in-100-barrels-for-the-swans-faithful-20220923-p5bkgy.html

Funnily enough, I ended up doing lunch today at the Rising Sun Hotel in South Melbourne.

I though I knew most pubs within a 20km radius of the GPO, but I had never been to the Rising Sun, a pleasantly old school pub with the most emphatic AFL theme to its decor, predominantly based on the footy club which used to play a few streets away at Lakeside.

The news report that Wendy’s is to open in Australia is welcome.

There is just one thing niggling away at me – obviously the reporter is not aware that Wendy’s already launched in Australia in the mid 1980s, but did not last long.

Hopefully they do better this time.

www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/restaurants-bars/us-cult-fast-food-chain-wendys-to-launch-in-australia/news-story/a28b10ea5c61cc8cc86504a71cbf7f61

deadline.com/2022/09/john-lydon-johnny-rotten-queen-elizabeth-tribute-god-save-the-queen-1235113117/amp/

www.betootaadvocate.com/headlines/pymble-pirate-foams-at-mouth-while-lecturing-mosman-barista-about-merits-of-becoming-a-republic/

I’m quite sad today at the passing of our Queen. She has been a unifying figure for so long and it is hard to imagine the world without her.

I have been pondering for a while the sad disappearance, through either redevelopment or renovation, of most of the old school typical Australian pubs I remember from years gone by.

What I crave, I guess, is a pub with its last renovation and furnishings from the 1970s, such as red vinyl covered chairs, and laminated tables, and hopefully a bar area which was installed in the 1930s.

I did lunch today at one such pub, and it was a delight.

First, to explain the name of the Railway Hotel, which is in Nicholson Street in North Fitzroy. There used to be an inner circle rail line, disused since the late 1940s, which ran from Royal Park til Clifton Hill. You can still see traces, such as the bridge in Royal Parade spanning a disused rail line, the red brick former railway station at North Carlton, and bits of railway intentionally left where they crossed the roads in the area. Otherwise, the only remnant is a bike path along a thin strip of parkland.

And, located close to where the North Fitzroy railway station used to stand, there is the Railway Hotel.

I think this is only the second time I have ever been there, and it has a unique charm to it, particularly due to various of the historic quirks about it, beyond the long redundant name. The bottle shop window is still painted with gold letters advertising Mildara Brandy, and gold letters on the door from the public bar (closed usually) to the bistro area where I sat proclaim it as the Ladies Lounge.

As the publican said, it is a country pub in the city – which is a rare gem indeed these days. It’s last renovation must have been in the 1970s (the end of six o’clock closing in 1974 prompted many pubs to do a renovation in that era), but it is immaculately maintained, as are the chairs and tables of that era. No sticky carpet, just a well laid lino floor covering which is easy to mop.

There is a concrete beer garden out the back, past the toilets, but this beer garden has more charm to it than many, as it features a large lemon tree and a banana tree, amongst others.

All of this appeals to me far more than the bulk of contemporary refurbishings of pubs, with their purple carpets and poker machines, or the current slightly better tables and bar areas fitted out with dark red varnished timber or polished metal sheets.