The past, potential and perils of swimming in urban rivers. After quite a long dormancy period, in this episode of This Must Be The Place Liz has a follow-up discussion with a researcher she met recently while speaking at an MPavilion event (“Time Travel: Can Inspiration from our past save our holiday future?”). Loretta Bellato is a PhD researcher based in the Swinburne Centre for Urban Transitions, whose work crosses over with some of the topic Liz spoke about at MPavillion – particularly the historical origins of Victoria’s imperilled public swimming pools in river enclosures/river pools. Loretta’s research is focused on the potential of regenerative tourism, including a case study of efforts to regenerate the Birrarung (Yarra River) into, amongst other goals, a swimmable urban river. Relatively few people now would brave Melbourne’s brown “upside down” river – at least not in its lower urban reaches – but in this episode we hear about some of the people who are working to make the Birrarung swimmable; and about people who already swim in it including at the longstanding swimming hole Deep Rock. The discussion ranges from pollution and perception; what regeneration and regenerative tourism mean; transitions theory; ‘Wild Swimming’ and the UK’s legal history; other examples of urban rivers being made swimmable again; Melbourne’s river pool locations of the 20th century; and the demise of river pools - many of which were diverted into/replaced by the concrete post-war Olympic pools that are themselves now fast becoming obsolete. Liz has spiels about the role of health regulations, insurance, signage and fences as applied to open water swimming locations. Featuring Deep Rock, Warburton, the Thames, Copenhagen, Hepburn Pool, Kyneton, Shepparton, the Campaspe, Buchan Caves pool, and Bondi’s poopy past amongst other stories. If you’re interested in participating in Loretta’s PhD research, she can be contacted at [email protected] . The song ‘Swimmers” by Taylor Project is stuck on the end for good measure.

In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth reports from Launceston, Tasmania, from the Urban History Planning History conference. (Listeners should also note the earlier interview with Alysia Bennett at the same conference, offering a very different take on how to pronounce ‘Launceston’). As well as hearing from the UTas historic tram that periodically trundles through the expansive campus car park, (and from some local windiness), in this instalment we hear from Professor Nicholas (Nick) Phelps of the University of Melbourne. Nick describes how he went from being an economic geographer studying Croydon in the UK (“the butt of jokes”) and its attempts to fashion itself as an ‘edge city’; to a general interest in suburban settlement patterns and identities. His talk at UHPH - Centering the Periphery: The Real and Imagined Centres of Casey, Victoria – centred (pun intended) on Casey, a suburban local government area in the south east of Melbourne. Casey is a geographically huge area (which Nick compares in scale to Metro Miami), and Nick and co-authors (including erstwhile TMBTP host David Nichols) were interested in Casey’s efforts at fashioning ‘centres’ in the context of incremental largely residential growth. Part of the presentation included revisiting Casey’s earlier history as the City of Berwick, which in the 1970s pursued what we would now consider ‘futuristic’ (as in, an imagined future we now scoff at) plans for a ‘metro city’ of 100,000 people with its own green belt and (as was the style of the time) monorail. That city-shaping plan was shelved, although similarly huge scales of growth have since nonetheless occurred. Incidentally, some parts of Casey apparently still have a reservation for a monorail. As in Hugh Stretton’s Ideas for Australian Cities, we discuss the idea there are two broad aspects to people’s lives, with one secluded and quiet (the traditional function of a residential suburb – at least for certain people/men), and the other the outward facing connected ‘buzz’ generally the function of a city centre. Nick considers whether and how suburban areas like Casey create the second kind of place. The discussion compares places like Casey to those of British New Towns under Development Corporations. For example Milton-Keynes, designated in the 1960s while passing through phases of mockery, is now the fastest growing city in the UK and an attractor both of new residents and new industries. We also discuss the prevalence of projects like monorails in edge city plans around the world in the 1970s – Nick suggests the ways we now scoff at such plans reflects a larger shift in planning, away from a belief in “thinking about the future in quite grand terms”. Part of the ensuing reticence is an aversion to some of new town planning’s architectural dagginess, implausibility and paternalism. But there are trade-offs: planners have also tended to lose the capacity to have positive, large scale-discussions about the future, as well as some practical mechanisms for timing and delivery of new settlements. These include the use of land values toward supporting some notion of a shared public good, like providing facilities or shaping centres longer term. The episode also ranges from land acquisition and developer contributions, to national settlement patterns, local governments, 1970s economics, TV, Albury-Wodonga, green belts and how to pronounce names like “Launceston”, “Traralgon”, “Leicester” and “Gloucester”.

In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth reports from Launceston, Tasmania, from the Urban History Planning History conference. (Listeners should also note a subsequent TMBTP interview with Nick Phelps at the same conference, who offers a different take on how to pronounce ‘Launceston’). As well as hearing from the UTas historic tram that periodically trundles through the expansive campus car park, in this instalment we hear from Alysia Bennett about her conference presentation and ongoing work on ‘right sizing: addressing housing challenges through activating marginal spaces, conditions and rules’. Right sizing, a concept Alysia and others have been developing, refers to working within existing houses to enable upsizing and downsizing simultaneously. Without necessarily creating a new fabric, ‘right sizing’ is about creating small and large dwellings at the same time, with houses that can switch between the two. Part of this is historically grounded - looking at how parts of Australian cities are already being used as forms of covert density, for example with the integration of secondary dwellings, dual occupancies and subtly-tucked apartments into historic areas like Battery Point in Hobart. These include additional dwellings that ‘stealth’ themselves as garages in terms of their presentation to the street, exploiting the fact that garages and parking spaces tend to be invisible to and automatically accepted by both people and planning rules. Alysia’s work has shifted from looking at ways to increase density through apartments (the predominant policy interest in density in Australian cities), toward finding existing examples of density within low-rise urban and suburban areas – looking for design and regulatory opportunities that build on better elements of what people are currently doing incrementally. We hear ideas about who might benefit from right-sized housing; how house layouts can work with alignments of things like doors and wet areas; the role of monetising housing space; and models of ‘plug-in’ ageing-in-place facilities like accessible bathrooms. Alysia is a Lecturer at MADA, Monash University. The Right Sizing project is ongoing and also involves Professor Dana Cuff of UCLA and Damian Madigan of UniSA.

This episode of This Must Be The Place is part of the Digital Death Trip segment, where we investigate geographically themed ‘tragedies’ selected at random by the custom-coded ‘Digital Death Trip’ bot. The code uses the API to the National Library of Australia’s Trove archive to randomly select a Victorian town, then a random so-called Tragedy from it. It compiles a case file, then Liz follows up with some research about the incident, its place and time. Because Liz collected too much info, this digital death trip podcast is in 3 parts. This is the 3rd and final episode. Listen to 1 & 2 first! Digital Death Trip has picked two random and distant Victorian locations, and two random tragedies: The 1902 East Malvern Tragedy and 1906 Pyramid Hill Tragedy. Both are ‘triple tragedies’, so run in parallel. They also end up connected in ways that start to seem not quite random. On November 14th 1906, in a murder-suicide reported as The Pyramid Hill Tragedy, Constable Oliver John Lang killed himself and his two daughters (Olive and Doreen) at Pyramid Hill, an agricultural town in northern Victoria where Lang had been stationed for 5 years. Noting Constable Lang had repeatedly spoken about shooting himself and his family, an inquest found that “a heavy responsibility lies on those hear such words”, especially threats made by “anyone holding a public position such as that of a constable of police in whose hands are often the property liberty and perhaps the lives of others”. In 1902, in a murder-suicide reported as The East Malvern Tragedy, German merchant Arthur Mueller killed himself, his wife (Cecile) and one of his children (Willy) in a prestigious eastern suburb of Melbourne. Themes include police and law in settler-colonial contexts: the roles of police stationed in rural areas, and the fragile line of law. Also Land Law. Land Acts facilitated ‘closer settlement’ and ‘selections’, later ‘soldier settlement’, as tools of colonial expansion. Through land titles, Pyramid Hill was made into a late 19th century agricultural settlement, and police had a vital role in the system’s administration. Fathers and family law: fathers and grandfathers, and inheritances (good and bad) are key. We discuss custodial law in 19th and 20th century Australia, and the legal principal of “father’s right” through which fathers were always granted custody of their legitimate children. The stories share knowledge and lies: advanced lying skills central to traditional morality and legitimacy, unnoticed patterns, unknowing, and what you can or should do with knowledge. There are echoes through to a recent mystery in Pyramid Hill, the disappearance of heavily pregnant intellectually disabled woman Krystal Fraser in 2009. A final theme is cultural references to ‘ghost towns’ that seem isolated not only in space but in time. Wake in Fright, Twin Peaks, The Shining, 100 years of Solitude, Blazing Saddles. And country song Long Black Veil: “nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows but me”. Featuring a wintery visit to the Pyramid Hill op shop, cop shop, abattoir, and cemetery. This is the last instalment of 3. We return to hear a few updates Liz could not help researching further. It includes specially written Taylor Project song Ghost Upon the Hill: “on the hill there is a lookout, I can see that long dark train, even when you close your windows, it comes back again, there’s a ghost upon the hill”. Further post-script: Robert Mueller, youngest son, survived and moved to Germany. He married there in 1925. Also, re: the early ‘cinematograph’ the children went to at the Athenaeum. Most cinemas in early Australia were in inner city theatres. Each reel was about 3 minutes, usually a short documentary display: boxing, footy, horses. The show would have included magicians. Mueller's servants took the children to this new popular entertainment spectacle. And while they were out, Mueller made preparations to kill everyone.

Because Liz collected too much info, this digital death trip podcast is in 3 parts. This is the 2nd episode of 3. Listen to episode 1 first! This episode of This Must Be The Place is part of the Digital Death Trip segment, where we investigate geographically themed ‘tragedies’ selected at random by the custom-coded ‘Digital Death Trip’ bot. The code uses the API to the National Library of Australia’s Trove archive to randomly select a Victorian town, then a random so-called Tragedy from it. It compiles a case file, then Liz follows up with some research about the incident, its place and time. Digital Death Trip has picked two random and distant Victorian locations, and two random tragedies: The 1902 East Malvern Tragedy and 1906 Pyramid Hill Tragedy. Both are ‘triple tragedies’, so run in parallel. They also end up connected in ways that start to seem not quite random. On November 14th 1906, in a murder-suicide reported as The Pyramid Hill Tragedy, Constable Oliver John Lang killed himself and his two daughters (Olive and Doreen) at Pyramid Hill, an agricultural town in northern Victoria where Lang had been stationed for 5 years. Noting Constable Lang had repeatedly spoken about shooting himself and his family, an inquest found that “a heavy responsibility lies on those hear such words”, especially threats made by “anyone holding a public position such as that of a constable of police in whose hands are often the property liberty and perhaps the lives of others”. In 1902, in a murder-suicide reported as The East Malvern Tragedy, German merchant Arthur Mueller killed himself, his wife (Cecile) and one of his children (Willy) in a prestigious eastern suburb of Melbourne. Themes include police and law in settler-colonial contexts: the roles of police stationed in rural areas, and the fragile line of law. Also Land Law. Land Acts facilitated ‘closer settlement’ and ‘selections’, later ‘soldier settlement’, as tools of colonial expansion. Through land titles, Pyramid Hill was made into a late 19th century agricultural settlement, and police had a vital role in the system’s administration. Fathers and family law: fathers and grandfathers, and inheritances (good and bad) are key. We discuss custodial law in 19th and 20th century Australia, and the legal principal of “father’s right” through which fathers were always granted custody of their legitimate children. Pre: Family Law Act custodial grievances, we hear Lang killed his family partly from a vendetta against his former father in law, Sergeant Frank Jordon (of East Malvern!). The stories share knowledge and lies: advanced lying skills central to traditional morality and legitimacy, unnoticed patterns, unknowing, and what you can or should do with knowledge. Rumours of “certain allegations” were one reason given to explain Lang’s violence, otherwise attributed (as with Mueller) to a fit of mania. Jordon, meanwhile, seemed to know what was coming but be powerless to stop it. There are echoes through to a recent mystery in Pyramid Hill, the disappearance of heavily pregnant intellectually disabled woman Krystal Fraser in 2009. Police suspect Krystal was killed by the father of her unborn child, and that people in Pyramid Hill know what happened but are not coming forward. A final theme is cultural references to ‘ghost towns’ that seem isolated not only in space but in time. Wake in Fright, Twin Peaks, The Shining, 100 years of Solitude, Blazing Saddles. And country song Long Black Veil: “nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows but me”. Featuring a wintery visit to the Pyramid Hill op shop, cop shop, abattoir, and cemetery. Factoids of early railways, cinemas, mobility scooters, migrants, TB, police filing systems. And a specially written Taylor Project song, closing with: “on the hill there is a lookout, I can see that long dark train…” This is the 2nd episode of 3, where we return to the 1900s to hear more about Lang, Mueller, and their contexts.

This episode of This Must Be The Place is part of the Digital Death Trip segment, where we investigate geographically themed ‘tragedies’ selected at random by the custom-coded ‘Digital Death Trip’ bot. The code uses the API to the National Library of Australia’s Trove archive to randomly select a Victorian town, then a random so-called Tragedy from it. It compiles a case file, then Liz follows up with some research about the incident, its place and time. In this instalment, Digital Death Trip has picked two random and distant Victorian locations, and two random tragedies: The 1902 East Malvern Tragedy and 1906 Pyramid Hill Tragedy. Both are ‘triple tragedies’, so run in parallel. They also end up connected in ways that start to seem not quite random. On November 14th 1906, in a murder-suicide reported as The Pyramid Hill Tragedy, Constable Oliver John Lang killed himself and his two daughters (Olive and Doreen) at Pyramid Hill, an agricultural town in northern Victoria where Lang had been stationed for 5 years. Noting Constable Lang had repeatedly spoken about shooting himself and his family, an inquest found that “a heavy responsibility lies on those hear such words”, especially threats made by “anyone holding a public position such as that of a constable of police in whose hands are often the property liberty and perhaps the lives of others”. In 1902, in a murder-suicide reported as The East Malvern Tragedy, German merchant Arthur Mueller killed himself, his wife (Cecile) and one of his children (Willy) in a prestigious eastern suburb of Melbourne. Themes include police and law in settler-colonial contexts: the roles of police stationed in rural areas, and the fragile line of law. Also Land Law. Land Acts facilitated ‘closer settlement’ and ‘selections’, later ‘soldier settlement’, as tools of colonial expansion. Through land titles, Pyramid Hill was made into a late 19th century agricultural settlement, and police had a vital role in the system’s administration. Fathers and family law: fathers and grandfathers, and inheritances (good and bad) are key. We discuss custodial law in 19th and 20th century Australia, and the legal principal of “father’s right” through which fathers were always granted custody of their legitimate children. Pre: Family Law Act custodial grievances, we hear Lang killed his family partly from a vendetta against his former father in law, Sergeant Frank Jordon (of East Malvern!). The stories share knowledge and lies: advanced lying skills central to traditional morality and legitimacy, unnoticed patterns, unknowing, and what you can or should do with knowledge. Rumours of “certain allegations” were one reason given to explain Lang’s violence, otherwise attributed (as with Mueller) to a fit of mania. Jordon, meanwhile, seemed to know what was coming but be powerless to stop it. There are echoes through to a recent mystery in Pyramid Hill, the disappearance of heavily pregnant intellectually disabled woman Krystal Fraser in 2009. Police suspect Krystal was killed by the father of her unborn child, and that people in Pyramid Hill know what happened but are not coming forward. A final theme is cultural references to ‘ghost towns’ that seem isolated not only in space but in time. Wake in Fright, Twin Peaks, The Shining, 100 years of Solitude, Blazing Saddles. And country song Long Black Veil: “nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows but me”. Featuring a wintery visit to the Pyramid Hill op shop, cop shop, abattoir, and cemetery. Factoids of early railways, cinemas, mobility scooters, migrants, TB, police filing systems. And a specially written Taylor Project song, closing with: “on the hill there is a lookout, I can see that long dark train, even when you close your windows, it comes back again, there’s a ghost upon the hill”. Because Liz collected too much information, this digital death trip podcast – Pyramid Hill and East Malvern - is in 3 parts. This is the 1st episode of 3.

The "Living in the Music City: If you've got a spare half a million" event was held at the Toff in Town in Melbourne as part of the 2019 Festival of Urbanism. It was co-sponsored by Monash Urban Planning and Design, along with the Henry Halloran Trust, and the University of Sydney, and by the City of Melbourne as part of their Music Plan 2018-2021. The Festival aims to raise the debate about urban health, and other key topics. “Living in the Music City” combined a panel discussion of policy and research issues around live music in cities, followed by a performance of songs. Both sections examined the past and future of Melbourne’s live music venues in the context of the city’s housing pressures. The name for the Music City event comes from a research project several Monash University academics are involved in, “Interrogating the music city: cultural economy & popular music in Melbourne”. The subtitle – “If you’ve got a spare half a million” - is a reference to the Courtney Barnett 2016 song ‘Depreston’. This episode is the recording of the second half - the musician part. The musicians are: Frank Jones (https://www.frankjones.com.au) Sarah Taylor (of Taylor Project www.taylorproject.com.au) Brett Lee / Pirritu (@pirritumusic, Instagram: @pirritumusic, YouTube: https://youtu.be/7w7kXZV1Pgg) Liz Taylor (senior lecturer in urban planning and design at Monash University, also playing violin on some songs here). Songs: My Brown Yarra (by Frank Jones, performed with others) Ngurrampaa (by/performed by Brett Lee / Pirritu) Buddy could you spare a dime (Sarah Taylor, cover of Yip Harburg song) Greenacres Lane (by/performed by Frank Jones) Secret Shape (by/performed by Brett Lee / Pirritu) Slow Tram Comin' (by/performed by Sarah Taylor) For Barry Dickins (by/performed by Frank Jones) Time I Spoke (by/performed by Brett Lee / Pirritu) Detroit (by/performed by Sarah Taylor) Pine Cone (by/performed by Brett Lee / Pirritu) Suburban Rendezvous (by/performed by Frank Jones) DePreston (by Courtney Barnett, performed by all).

“Living in the Music City: If You’ve got a Spare Half A Million” will be held at Melbourne’s Toff in Town on September 2nd as part of the 2019 Festival of Urbanism. The idea of the event is to look at how live music and the night-time economy are shaped by the cost and availability of housing. The first half of the title, the Music City, derives from a three-year research project “Interrogating the music city: cultural economy & popular music in Melbourne”. The second half of the title – “If you’ve got a spare half a million” - is a reference to the Courtney Barnett 2016 song ‘Depreston’. The song’s lyrics refer not only to the spatial dynamics of the cost of housing in Melbourne, but to migration and change in the city generally. The event will look at housing and music through a combination of academic panel discussion, and live song performances. It includes both panel discussion and music partly because it’s more fun, and partly because it’s always strange to talk about music without including music, as in a 1979 quote best attributable to comedian Martin Mull, that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” (but – why not?), or an older quote, from a 1918 New Republic article, that “writing about music is as illogical as singing about economics”. There might be a bit of the latter, “singing about economics”, because both now and in 1918, singing about economics does happen, and you don’t have to look far for songs with words like “money”, “dollar” or “rent” in them. For this episode I’ve looked back over 2 years of This Must Be The Place podcasts to find some episodes where we’ve talked about aspects of live music and its relationships to place. The episode comprises 7 relevant clips from previous episodes – these are compiled here kind of as re-runs. Or a nicer wording might be that they’re ‘curated’ selections, a ‘best of’ or ‘hits out’ collection, of This Must Be The Place talking music and place. Including: • Interview with Seamus O’Hanlon, Author of “City Life – the new urban Australia” • Musicians, memoirs and maps: a bookish Curtin-side chat with Sarah Taylor and Sam Whiting • Revisiting “Melbourne on Foot” (1980 book): St Kilda walking tour with Prof Graham Davison (also Richmond walking tour) • Dogs in Space to Olives in Toolleen: Small bands, small farms with Charles (‘Chuck’ Meo) and Ceilidh • Visit to Clunes Booktown Festival: Incl. David’s Talk on “Dig: Australian Rock & Pop Music, 1960-85” • Lachlan from the Ocean Party on why hotel hell is actually pretty swell Register for the Festival of Urbanism events here: http://www.festivalofurbanism.com/2019/2019/9/2/living-in-themusiccity-if-youve-got-a-spare-half-a-million

In this episode of This Must Be the Place Liz and Laura are joined by Monash Urban Planning and Design students Lachlan Burke, Sylvia Tong and Will McIntyre to share perspectives on whether and how urban planning can work across borders. They first talk about MAPS (Monash Association of Planning Students); how they gravitated to studying urban planning (from biology, environmental engineering, development studies and philosophy); and the upcoming MAPS 2019 Festival of Urbanism Commuter Race including how a MELWAY (the iconic street directory) will help with navigating it. Lachlan and Will then reflect on lessons learned across their planning studies and the international development projects they’ve been involved in, from Midigami (Sri Lanka) to Mongolia. Lachlan discusses two aid projects he’s been part of in Sri Lanka, including post-tsunami housing reconstruction in Midigami - the subject of a presentation by Sri Lankan researcher Dr. Rangajeewa Ratnayake at this year’s Festival of Urbanism. Will shares insights from a lifetime of exposure to cross-cultural and interdisciplinary development projects, including those that formed his father’s work for the Asian Development Bank. It was while working on green infrastructure projects in Mongolia that Will first became interested in the broader scale and context of urban planning -“I realised you need to know how the city works in order to be able to implement anything”. The episode reflects on the challenge of development projects maintaining long-lasting outcomes. For example, new elevated housing built outside of tsunami buffer zones suffer longer-term from water pressure issues. Wells dug without adequate hydrological analysis (or evaluation) suffer from repeated contamination and collapse. Across the examples run questions of accountability and evaluation, and the need for greater community ownership (versus issues of donor fatigue). And the borders of communication and translation, broadly understood – how to bridge planning words and knowledge across languages and cultures, and across disciplinary boundaries. “There are different ways of doing things that we’ve never considered, and you’ve never considered, but let’s work together to discover those”. Mentioned in this episode: • TED video about public spaces that was Sylvia’s motivation to study Urban Planning: https://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_burden_how_public_spaces_make_cities_work/transcript?language=en • Engineers Without Borders and human-centred design: https://www.ewb.org.au/blog/implementing-a-human-centered-approach • Planning Institute of Australia members and academic subscribers can access this paper by Ian Woodcock documenting a local example of interdisciplinary and human-centred planning for railway station design: Woodcock, I. (2015) The design speculation and action research assemblage: ‘transit for all’ and the transformation of Melbourne's passenger rail system, Australian Planner 53(1), 15-27, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07293682.2015.1135818 • Festival of Urbanism- Donor-driven Tsunami Housing in Sri Lanka: Resident Outcomes and Experiences: http://www.festivalofurbanism.com/2019/2019/9/2/donor-driven-tsunami-housing-in-sri-lanka-resident-outcomes-and-experiences • Festival of Urbanism- Quick MAPS: Monash Association of Planning Students Commuter Race: http://www.festivalofurbanism.com/2019/2019/7/29/quick-maps-monash-association-of-planning-students-commuter-race . Anyone can register to take part in the Quick MAPS race to 3 landmark pubs in Melbourne’s CBD ,with only a MELWAY (or other non-phone map) for navigation. Saturday 7 September. • If you sign up for the MAPS Festival of Urbanism Race you can get 25% off the Melway 2020 edition! Liz’s life circa early 2000s was confined largely to page 29.

This episode of This Must Be The Place is a bit different – normally I talk to people, but in this episode I (meaning Liz Taylor, Monash University) actually just read out an essay I wrote recently about my experience of living in a building with combustible cladding. Also about reading Kafka (and Graeber) and…well that’s the basic premise. I’ve called it Trial by Cladding. “I recently finished reading Franz Kafka’s 1925 novel “The Trial”: the unsettling, absurd story of a young middle-class man suddenly caught up in a farce of bureaucracy. The protagonist Joseph K spends a year fighting charges which are never named, but of which he is presumed guilty. He is increasingly consumed by obscure court proceedings which, officious lawyers assure him, are very serious, but that he need not dare try to understand. Disbelief ebbs into resignation. Weekends disappear with worry, and inconvenient appointments see him start to slip up at his job at the bank. The fact he doesn’t know what he is accused of, or whether or not he did something wrong, becomes irrelevant even to himself. “My innocence doesn’t make the matter any simpler”, K reflects: “I have to fight against countless subtleties in which the Court is likely to lose itself. And in the end, out of nothing at all, an enormous fabric of guilt will be conjured up”. I started reading “The Trial” after my apartment building’s last Owners Corporation meeting, because I wanted to directly understand the adjective ‘Kafkaesque’, and its applicability to our situation with combustible cladding. Like most people I knew Kafka was shorthand for absurd situations - famously “Metamorphosis” begins with the character waking up as a giant insect. From its popular usage I understood ‘Kafkaesque’ to mean a comically complicated process – which the situation with combustible cladding certainly already was. But I think “The Trial” had also once been mentioned to me in passing by a Croatian colleague who described her suspicion of cheerful government descriptions of policies. To her, having grown up in communist Yugoslavia, these inevitably signalled something cruelly incompetent going on in the background. Like in “The Trial”, she said. In the confusing boredom of an Owners Corporation meeting concerned with the strange details of the urgent need for us to remove chunks of our building, I was drawn to finally reading “The Trial”. At the least, I thought it might provide a lighter perspective on our situation. Like tens of thousands of others in Victoria, I own and live in an apartment in a building containing combustible cladding - similar materials to what fuelled the 2017 fire at London’s Grenfell Towers, in which 72 people died. In the wake of the Grenfell fire and of a 2014 fire at the LaCrosse Building in Melbourne’s Docklands, Victoria’s Cladding Taskforce determined that the presence of combustible cladding, including aluminium composite panels, on high rise buildings is unsafe and non-compliant. Perhaps surprisingly, the onus for rectifying non-compliant cladding in Victoria has been placed with apartment owners. Not with the builders, developers and other professionals who specified and used the materials and sold the apartments; not with the insurance agencies fond of advertising how awful it would be if a random problem were to happen to your house and ‘won’t you be glad you had insurance’ when it does; nor the local and state government regulators (and private building surveyors who replaced council building inspectors from the 1990s) who signed off on the buildings. Instead, owners who bought purportedly compliant apartments are compelled to fix an urgent problem created by government and industry, and facing bills of typically $40,000 to $60,000 per apartment to do so. In most cases they are poorly equipped to navigate the financial and broader costs. But as Joseph K reflects, “innocence doesn’t make the matter any simpler”…[more in episode]