Billboard, Hawthorn

Above the railway line near Hawthorn Station there is a much neglected Art Deco billboard.

The billboard has a lovely shape with stepping curves on the top corners and a raised section at the centre. Even the bottom corners are stepped but in this case squared off rather than curved.

I has been used in recent times but the last ad the billboard sported for a computer company if now obscured by graffiti and hastily pasted posters. The metal sheeting in the is even peeling away from the wood support in the top left corner.

It's a shame because with a bit of restoration it could do what every advertiser wants, to stand out and get noticed.

Tuck Stand, Glenferrie Oval, Hawthorn

This is possibly my favourite grandstand any where in the world.

It has nothing to do with Aussie Rules football, which I adore, or any sport because I have never seen a match here and I don't think I've even set foot in the stand itself let alone taken a seat.

Current AFL team Hawthorn played here until 1973 and continued to use it as their training base until they moved to Waverley a few years ago. The stand is named after the Hawks legendry player Michael Tuck who played a league record 426 games, all for the club in a career spanning 1972-91. Naturally, Tuck was selected in the Hawthorn Team of the Century and the painting commissioned to commemorate the selection of that team shows the grandstand in the backgound.

The stand was designed in 1938 by Stuart Calder and has been listed by the National Trust.

The streamline design is spectacular. The circular tower at one end contrast with the somewhat blunted cut-off look at the other. I have heard there may have been plans for a matching tower at both ends but I haven't seen any proof that it was planned that way.

In my opinion there isn't a view that is not beautiful. Maybe if I had stood in the outer, shoehorned between the railway line and the boundary fence in the mid-winter rain watching St Kilda get done I might have a different view on the subject. But all my Hawthorn inflicted misery has been at other footy grounds so I get to visit Glenferrie and appreciate it for it's beauty.

Out at their new hi-tech training base at Waverley, Hawthorn have established the Hawks Museum. I was out there on Monday and was thrilled to see the door to the museum office. It was the old door to the President's Office at Glenferrie.

Peter Haby, Club Historian and Museum Curator, told me that the door had been removed during a renovation of the offices at Glenferrie Oval in the early 1990s. Head trainer and former player Andy Angwin had salvaged the door and kept it in a storeroom until he could pass it onto the museum.

I'm glad he did. It's a beauty.