This podcast is supported by VPLA. Victorian Planning Environmental Law Association. Welcome to the Planning Exchange where we interview built environment professionals who are doing interesting work beyond the ordinary. I'm Jess Noonan and I'm joined by my colleague Peter Jewell. Today we're speaking with Dr. Derham Groves. Durham studied architecture at Deakin University and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Art History at the University of Minnesota.
He taught architecture at RMIT from 1985 to 1997 and the University of Melbourne from 1999 to 2019. And was also a senior fellow in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne from 2020 to 2024. Derham is the author of many articles and books about popular culture, architecture and design. Derham has been a fan of Sherlock Holmes, and by extension crime fiction, generally since high school, and has published extensively on this topic amongst many others.
His most recent book, Walt Disney's Forgotten Australia from Mickey's Kangaroo to Outbook at Yale will be published in Feb, 2025, Derham. Can you give our listeners a brief background as to how you got to where you are and how you became so interested in Sherlock Holmes? Well, thanks for inviting me Jess and Peter. Yes. I was born in 1956, which is an important year in Australia because amongst other things, television came to Australia.
So in essence, I grew up with television working class family grew up in Belmont, Geelong, which was a working class suburb and went to Oberon primary school and Oberon high school. All through those years, right up until the death, I was, I thought I'd be do medicine and become a general practitioner. But suddenly I thought, Oh, don't think so. And that caused a bit of a dilemma because honestly, I, up until that point, I hadn't thought of anything else to do. And two things.
influenced me to do architecture. One was the television sitcom, Mr. Ed The Talking Horse. In that particular show Wilbur Post, who owned Mr. Ed, The Talking Horse, was an architect. And I mean, my parents didn't know any architects. I didn't know any architects, but Wilbur seemed incredibly interesting to me. He, lived in a nice house, worked in his barn in the backyard, talked to Mr. Ed, who didn't talk to anyone else but Wilbur.
Wilbur also had interesting neighbours and a pretty blonde wife, and I thought, Yep. This looks pretty good to me, I must admit. So that was one influence to study architecture. The other was again in the same year, which was about 1974. I saw the Ascent of Man. The Ascent of Man was one of the first. Big documentaries and television documentaries hosted by Jacob Bronowski and one of the episodes was on architecture and it just blew my socks off, I must admit.
The thing that impressed me most, and I still remember, is that in this summary of world architecture from you know, cavemen till the, to the 20th century, Brunowski finished his study of architecture at Watts Towers in Los Angeles which were built by an itinerant Italian tile cutter Simon Rodia. And, and I just thought, wow. So even from the beginning, I was aware that architects didn't always. make great architecture that ordinary people could, could do this. So, so that's, that's what I did.
And that's how I came to study architecture, basically. So it's not, not your traditional kind of route into the, into the discipline. And your interest in Sherlock Holmes, where did that stem from? Well, my interest in Sherlock Holmes started in Form 1 at Oberon High School when Mrs. Vines, our English teacher read The Speckled Band out loud in class. And I was pretty much hooked from that point on.
And so all through high school I grew more and more interested and all through university, but it, it took a little while to make the connection between architecture and detective fiction, but it, it was, it was certainly there university and the way it manifested, if you want me to go on there, I did my undergraduate at Deakin University in Geelong. So still live with mom and dad. And what I designed for that final project, which was my choice, was a Sherlock Holmes Centre.
And it consisted of a theatre, a cinema, a museum, and a library. And I did this building, so this was in about 1980 and my tutors , absolutely hated it. I think I got 55 which probably would have crushed most people, but I thought, no, they just didn't understand it. They really didn't. This is, this is actually a lot worth a lot more than 55 in all sorts of ways. So I, Persisted with it. And I, I sent a copy of it to Richard Mundy, who was the editor of Transition in those days.
And he liked it. He thought it was fantastic. And so he actually published a long article that eventually came out in Transition on the Sherlock Holmes Center. And from there, the University of Minnesota picked up on it. And in 1984, I went to the university of Minnesota. And the reason for that was that the university of Minnesota has the largest Sherlock Holmes collection in the world. So I went over there, worked in special collections, et cetera did some of my masters there instead of RMIT.
And it, you know, it was a fabulous opportunity that I had. And, and so, you know, Not bad for a thesis worth 55 out of a hundred, actually, I think. And, Durham, we've probably got some listeners thinking, what on earth has architecture got to do with Sherlock Holmes? Can you talk to that connection?
Yes. I mean, architecture, I think, and Sherlock Holmes, and by wider association, detective fiction generally, the thing about, well, I think, I think architecture essentially is about storytelling. And of course, when you come to detective fiction and, and architecture, you get the scene of the crime. And so it's places very important, I think, in architecture and in, in, architecture and detective fiction.
And certainly when you've got a writer like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories, it becomes very important in terms of where things are in space and where people are in space. And, and this sort of notion of storytelling through objects and space, I think one thing is, is tied up with the other. You know, quite closely, actually.
So that's why that that's the sort of initial link, I guess, between the two, because, you know, the scene of the crime in crime fiction is an essential part of that genre of writing, really. Durham, I understand you've written several books about Sherlock Holmes. Now, before we talk about that, some listeners, believe it or not, I'm a bit of a Sherlock Holmes fan, but they won't know who we're talking about. Can you just, can you give like one minute description of Sherlock Holmes?
Okay. But if they don't know who Sherlock Holmes is, I'm not quite sure why they're listening to it a podcast like this, surely everyone knows who Sherlock Holmes is. Well, we live in 2025. True, I guess. But, but I mean, this is the incredible thing about Sherlock Holmes. There's been so many iterations. The last one was Sherlock, you know, benedict. Cumberbatch, et cetera.
I mean, it's it every, every 10 years, Sherlock Holmes has reinvented for that generation, but Sherlock Holmes the first story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a study in Scarlet in 1887 and Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories. And really up until that point Detective fiction was not was different in the sense that the authors often didn't lay out the sort of clues, so that the reader could perhaps follow the, the, the thinking process and come to some conclusion.
Up until then it was, it was, you know, it was just, it was impossible to do. So that was. Doyle's great innovation, I guess, to actually lay it all before the reading public and let them try and solve the, solve the, the, the, the crime. And it was, it was based on Sherlock Holmes power of observation and about place and using logic.
Yes. Scientific principles was the way he actually Describe that, that sort of process and, and really, I mean, 18, 87, I mean, you, you know, it was quite a a, a, a revolutionary thing at that, at that particular time. So you've written several books about Sherlock Holmes and Place. And that's why we've got you here for the interview is all about place. Can you describe the connection between Sherlock Holmes and place and how you write about that. Well, I mean, it's interesting.
And I think it's, it's probably important that Doyle's father was an architect. I suspect even though, you know, he was tragically a drunk. I'm sure his son, Arthur Conan Doyle. You know, picked up many things from his father and architecture generally. Certainly the thing that, that initially stood out for me was that you know, you've got Sherlock Holmes, who's the detective. You've got Dr. Watson, who is his off sider and friend and biographer.
They're the two main characters, but the third main character, when you actually look at those 60 stories, is 221B Baker Street, which is where Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson lived. And in what, what amazed me when I first read those stories, even in high school, was this notion that personality can be expressed through place and time. And furniture and the positioning of these particular things. Is there also a historical connection between the scene of the crime and architecture?
Well, I mean, this is when things took on extra meaning for me, I guess, because my masters which was published As a book in 1991, which was my first book what I wrote about really came out of this, you know, remember I did my undergraduate on Sherlock Holmes, came out of that. And what I wrote about, the book was called Feng Shui and Western Building Ceremonies. And what I, my wife is Chinese.
So I, I was interested in, in Chinese, thought processes and and theory in terms of Feng Shui, partly because my, one of my teachers at, at Deakin, a guy named Philip Gibbs had just come from Malaysia to teach us. And he had done a lot of work on the Malay house.
And what interested me was the sort of You know, the, BOMOS which was sort of like the masters of ceremony, witch doctors who, who actually said, look, you know, this is where you put the house and you have to start digging the foundations at this particular time. It was all, all about put, you know, trying to find the right spot, trying to find the most auspicious place. And so okay. Philip had done all of that work.
This is, we're talking now, you know, early eighties Feng Shui was not a, everyone now knows about Feng Shui, but back then not nothing much in English had been written about it. And so I wrote about that, but I didn't think that was enough. I thought, okay, let's write about Feng Shui, but let's compare the Chinese practice to the Western practice. And So I also went into things like foundation stone ceremonies, topping out ceremonies, all of those sorts of things.
And it occurred to me when doing that sort of research, that traditionally, the actual site of architecture and towns, etc, were actually crime scenes. Because in the day architects would often arrange sacrifices to be made. Regarding their buildings, et cetera, to try and give these buildings a spirit and a sort of sense of place. So when you actually look at the history of architecture, I mean, the site of buildings once upon a time were crime scenes.
Basically and so that to me started to sort of make me think about the importance of this genre in terms of architecture and and the way it fitted into You know, deep history basically. Gives a whole new meaning to the term, you know, contextual, responsive design and those sorts of things. Yeah. Like how you're actually designing when you consider the historical components of a particular site, which is probably not something that's done all that recently. I know.
And, and later on that sort of developed into the sort of notion of, you know, so many houses have these sort of secret history. So you know, where people work. Died or killed and, and we never, we never really hear about that sort of part of the history of the house. So these things you know, stuck in my head and I started to write about those things. Also I was teaching, of course, I, enjoyed teaching second year.
And one of my favorite design studios was actually getting the students to read one of the short stories, the because there's 56 short stories. So it's not a, Not a long read. And what I would get them to do, I'd, I'd actually select a site somewhere and they would have to design the house for either the victim or the villain in that particular story. And some of the results I got were incredible really.
And. It seemed to me that the power of that methodology, I guess, was not only the fact that, you know, that they were looking at doing what Doyle did with 221B Baker Street, for example, but when you're actually learning to design architectural design, the importance of actually having a narrative, a story that underpins these things. Became very important because when, when students would get stuck, they always had the story to go back to.
And, and I think that's, that's a real key in terms of you know, learning stuff, basically. Do you think the art of storytelling in architecture is still there, or is it something that's not that it's no longer taught at something that's really just, you know, learned on the job. I mean, you see, again, you know, timing is everything I guess. But of course, I, you know, I was. And still am a postmodernist in terms of architecture.
And of course, postmodern architecture, I think is all about symbol and, and story. And that to me is what things like the, the Feng Shui is about symbol, you know, and story actually putting importance on symbols and and weight of symbols. And so all through postmodernism, I think people, you know, the story was very important. Now, of course, postmodernism perhaps is a fallen out of fashion or whatever you however you want to call it.
And so perhaps Perhaps the story isn't as important as it was. But, I mean, if you look in terms of the importance of story and place, I mean, you know, we live in Australia, so you just have to really look at the, at how You know, First Nations people actually tell stories in terms of the, the landscape, et cetera. So it's, I think it's always been there. It may be latent at the moment in terms of but, but it's, it's a fundamental, I think, to the understanding of place now.
Okay. You can say, well, look, creation myths are one thing. Sherlock Holmes is the other, but But there is this tendency, I think, for people to actually poohoo popular culture. And I think popular culture is such a valuable resource where, you know, you've got, that, that people like designers just don't draw upon anywhere near enough. And I think it's a powerful thing that people have really, through a kind of snobbishness, I think turn their, backs on, really.
We thank Victorian Planning Reports, our very first supporter. If you want the A to Z of planning decisions in Victoria and excellent editorials, please get yourself a subscription to the VPRs. Details on our website. I understand you've curated several exhibitions about detective fiction and plays. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about those? Not the standard fare.
Yeah, well, I mean, many of these exhibitions I think have been really quite important, I think certainly, certainly in terms of the way I started to think about things. One of the early ones was a thing called Crime Scenes that was held at the Monash Gallery of Art in 2001, I think it was. And it was a pretty amazing concept where, and, the gallery gave me tremendous support. And what we did was we actually commissioned six, I think it was six Australian crime writers.
And they had to write a description of the scene of the crime that was about 500 words long. Then I, I took one of the, one of the, these stories or each story I paired with a artist or an architect and the artist and the architect had to read the story and actually recreate the scene of the crime. in the gallery. And then finally, we brought in a team of homicide detectives who wrote up a kind of charge sheet describing the scene of the crime from their point of view.
So here in this exhibition, you had the scene of the crime from the point of view of the author, scene of the that being then represented by. Artists and then by police. So it was the sense of place from three different points of view. And, and to me, that was you know, a very interesting exercise in, in looking at, at what I've been talking about.
So on that, just on a more international perspective, what in terms of cultural tourism when you've got historical crime fiction that, that people get interested in a place because of that. Do you think there's much scope for that or is there a market for that? Absolutely. I, and I mean, I think if you look at George Simenon's. The body of his work with his May Gray books. I mean, all, you know, in Paris, et cetera it, it's, it's capturing a place from a different point of view.
And I think that's, the whole, that's, that's the whole attraction of it. It, it's, it's looking at some place from not a kind of tourist point of view, but almost an insiders point of view. In terms of, you know, the story that is told. So I think it's, I think it's very important. And again, I don't think it's probably thought about, or exploited is not the right word, but you know what I mean?
I don't think it's, it's, it's acknowledged enough, really the, the importance of these writing about these places. So, so all there's lots of opportunities, I think, to reflect on these things, especially when you're, when you're in another discipline, like, Like architecture, I think. We're all into exploitation on this program, aren't we, Jess? Jess, you like crime fiction. Do you like, do you associate it with place? No, I've never thought about it like that.
But, but you do like crime fiction. Yeah. Look, I haven't read a lot of it, but yes, in theory, but I've never made this connection in my mind about the, you know, the connection to place and the connection with the architecture and planning. So it's a really, really interesting one. I'll definitely be reading. Landscape architecture as well. Yeah, absolutely.
Tell us how your interest in detective fiction has led to an interest in everyday architecture and design, you've sort of covered that, but can you tease that out a bit more? Yeah. Look, look, I think when you actually boil it down, Most crime fiction is, actually based on a kind of mundane everyday existence, basically, and it's the, sometimes it's, it's those objects that have no intrinsic interest or value that become incredibly interesting and valuable in terms of the, the investigation.
To this extent, I guess there's almost a kind of surreal element to it where you actually are looking for the extraordinary in the ordinary. And that's something that, that came out of that. And I used to teach a subject at Melbourne uni called popular architecture and design. And it was incredibly popular with students. It got, it, it became too popular for its own good, basically. It nearly had, I think it had 300 students in, in, at the end.
But because of that, well, you could do amazing things. So We one year we, for example, I'd, I'd pay students off and, and I'd always publish. I used their, I used, I had a huge budget for this because of the numbers that enrolled, but I could, I didn't like tutorials. So normally you would use this money to employ tutors, but I didn't do that. I only employed one or two. So I had this. big pot of money.
And they let me pretty much, well, perhaps I didn't even know that I was doing it, but I spent it how I wanted to. And so I would always try and publish student research. And so we would do these huge books, 400 pages. Every student would, would get a copy and I'd send them to libraries and things. So one year we did kebab shops in Melbourne. We did laundrettes in Melbourne. We did op shops in Melbourne. We did tattoo parlours in Melbourne. We did h cara, car, car her texture in Melbourne.
All of the, all of these sorts of ordinary places. And the, the interesting and important thing about that sort of work is that you can, you know, so the kids would document the, the, the shop or the building, do drawings, photograph, interview, the people get their stories, et cetera. But in five years, many of these places are gone. So these documents were the only documentation of these places in and around Melbourne.
So all of this sort of stuff really came out of my interest in, in crime fiction, which then sort of spilled over into popular culture. So the reason I didn't do a PhD In architecture is I did it in in popular culture in Minnesota with Caroline Marling. My thesis, PhD thesis was on do it yourself Australian letterboxes and the post war do it yourself movement. So I've always been interested in, in this sort of everyday notion of design and place.
And, and this really did come out of my interest in crime fiction. So it sort of sounds like this idea of, you know, picking up on the details that perhaps other people don't notice becomes obviously very important in architecture. Would you say the same about town planning. Yes. And I mean, it gets back to crime fiction, of course, because you're actually, you, it really emphasized the importance of observation, basically.
And so whether it, whether your, your discipline is architecture or landscaping or town planning, it really is this notion, I think, of observing things and actually deliberately, deliberately looking at the ugly, let's, let's say, which, you know, as a kind of venturious, Robert Venturian kind of view of the world. But, but it's important, I think, in disciplines like planning to, to let serendipity happen, to actually find these sorts of coincidences and actually start to follow them through.
And I don't think that's, that's done enough or encouraged enough. I guess in town planning that the extent of it is really probably around heritage considerations and what is heritage listed and what isn't heritage listed. And obviously there's always disagreements about what should be and what shouldn't be.
Yeah, look, I mean, heritage, I think, is, from my point of view, I really, I mean, where, where, where I live in, in this particular suburb, and which is, I think, typical, this is in Brunswick, I mean, often, what annoys me is the way that town planners, Often hide behind heritage considerations, or, and, you know, town planners in councils.
So they often, they often don't look at things on, on, you know, the merits of a project in terms of context and scale and all of these things, as though, you know, it, it, they're frightened to approve that sort of stuff. So they actually send it, you know, that they hide behind heritage. regulations, I guess, often in lieu of actually making a brave and considered decision. That's, that's my view at any time. You're going to get us cancelled.
We've just lost all our local government planners throughout the world who are going to think this is some far right sort of podcast. So, Look, we'll just go back to, we'll just go back to the detective fiction and in detective fiction, urban environments are often characters.
In their own right, and we talked a little bit about this talking about cities, how can planners and urbanists ensure that their designs have a story or identity that contributes to the city, to the life of the city and one thing before you answer, I mean, a lot of places now, you know, post war suburban don't have that intrinsic natural character. Some might say that the traditional urban centers or inner cities had. So it's that telling a story. So it's not anywhere place.
Yeah. Is that a very complicated question? I'm sorry. Well, you said about the sort of my, Perhaps right, right wing, I don't think it is, but anyway, right wing view of, of heritage. And that's, that's, I should, I should, I should point out that after doing my after finishing my undergraduate thesis, the Sherlock Holmes thesis I sent a copy to Gough Whitlam and with a note saying, you know, here is my, here is my thesis. And I thanked him very much for.
What he did, and which of course made it much easier for me and my generation to actually go to university. And with, with context, we've got many, many international visitors. Gough Whitlam was a socialist prime minister in the mid seventies in Australia. I'll call him a socialist. Yes. And he made Higher education free, correct. And and he was, he's widely acclaimed by some and others think that he was not so great, but anyway, I'll, I'll just give you that.
Correct. And, and I mean, I, I think he's the greatest prime minister Australia has ever had, certainly in what he did. Anyway, Were marked on that assignment. No, I didn't. I didn't. I should have, I guess. I got a lovely letter back from him thanking, thanking me for sending him my thesis. I sort of got the impression. I wasn't the only one of my generation who did. like that.
But what he did do, which might amuse you, he complimented me on my ingenuity of writing a thesis on architecture on Sherlock Holmes. He thought that was that was rather a cunning, cunning thing to do. So if I do sound If I do sound right wing now, which I don't think I do, more, more perhaps libertarian, but anyway, I certainly started out. What do they say? You know, if you're not a socialist at 20, you haven't got a heart. And if you're not conservative by 30, you don't have a head.
However, to answer your question, and I, and I think, and I think this actually does come back to my comment on heritage in councils, etc. I think the important thing there is to, for those heritage consultants, the planners, etc to actually, do the research on the story of that, of that suburb. And I mean, there are so many stories out there all worth telling that just get lost.
So, so instead of worrying about, you know, some kind of architectural detail on a veranda or something, it would be a much, much bigger contribution for them to actually say, well, look, here is, here is the history from, you know, it might be the, the, the popular history or the official history, but here is some of the history of this place.
And offer that up as a kind of valuable resource for planners to make some of these decisions about, yes, this particular design is appropriate or this particular design isn't appropriate. It seems to me that would be a much more positive kind of response to heritage planning then some of the decisions that are made. I think the difficulty now though, as well is that heritage means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. It does.
You know, we're not, it's no longer just the physical built form. It's the history behind buildings. It's the, you know. Yeah. It's, it's a very broad topic these days. It's but I think, but I think that should be. More to the front, let's, let's say that that sort of notion of and, and I'm not talking about perhaps the official histories, even some of the, even some of the personal histories of, of a place. I mean, you know, where, where I live in Brunswick, it's, it's It's amazing.
It's almost as though the brick industry, which was in Brunswick has been forgotten. The reason, the only reason that Brunswick has the parks that it has, ironically, is because those parks used to be clay pits and then filled in with garbage. And then eventually, you know, they, they couldn't build on them because the soil was unstable. So we've got these, these big parks in Brunswick due to the Due to the brick industry.
Now, now, I don't think anybody entering this particular suburb and looking around would get any notion, or not very much notion, that that was the history of this particular suburb. For context listeners, Brunswick is an inner city suburb in the north of Melbourne, it was very much a working class suburb very hard scrabble sort of suburb. And now it's just been taken over by hipsters. Correct. It's the hipster capital of the world. I know. It is. Aaron fits right in there.
That's right, that's right. He's riding around on his bicycle. Especially, he needs a jumper. Now, now, sorry, we shouldn't bag out our guests. This is terrible. Very unprofessional, Jess, of you. Now, detectives often navigate urban spaces in unique ways. Using alleyways, hidden pathways, or overlooked details. What can town planners and urbanists learn from these depictions of cities as dynamic and layered environments sort of you covered that a little bit, but you want to add to that.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it would be would be fantastic to sort of for some designer, say, looking at Melbourne's laneways or or doing some work on that to look at something like. the mystery of a handsome cab, which was a very early Australian detective story. I mean, I think that there's a lot that people can broaden their sort of approach. And the, the other thing, which I think is forgotten or perhaps ignored is, is the role of generalists.
I mean, I know now that, you know, everybody has to be a specialist to have any credibility at all, but the sort of poly, polymath and the sort of generalist seems to me to be sadly neglected because often they're in the best position to actually make the sort of these sort of connections really. And so. I think, while we all sort of thought, okay, well, of course, it's, it's very important to become specialists at things.
Often that, that creates a kind of blinkered view of a discipline, a place, et cetera. And I think it's the, the role of the generalist. In architecture and probably other disciplines has been discounted over the years. And I think that's not a, not a good thing on the surface. You think, well, it's, it is a good thing, but it's not.
I mean, Sherlock Holmes in a scandal of Bohemia, he said, it is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data, insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts. Do you think this kind of quote is applicable to the world of planning and design. Well, it is, it is to a certain extent, although I don't mind, you know I think we have to take there should be some artistic license, but I think it is important to actually to get at the heart of the thing.
And, and I guess that's what I'm, what I'm arguing for is that people should actually get at the heart of the thing. And, and often, I think the heart of the thing is actually the story and, and the story is the important thing. And that really should be elevated in terms of what people do or, or, or. Don't do. So I think all of, you know, all of these things are important and can be applied to the, the discipline that, that we all belong to basically.
You have introduced a whole different way of approaching planning and probably architecture through the lens of detective novels and other fiction. What other non traditional fields might also offer insight to the city management, design, planning world? What, you know, what other non traditional fields? My view is that there are many if once you actually start, I mean, I don't, when I go into a bookshop, I never, I never look at the architecture section. I always go to the art section.
I don't think you, you really learn that much from, you don't learn that much new from reading about your own discipline. I think you have to cross, jump somewhere else to get something. Now, for example and, and this is probably a smaller example than you that I might give, but for example, I mean, for years One of the things that I've been pursuing, I mean, since, since undergraduate school, is the correlation between knitting and bricklaying.
I mean, I'm a great, I've been a great fan of bricklaying for years and years and years, and, and did a lot of work with architects and and the brick industry here. When you actually start to look at brick walls, not as brick walls, but as knitting , it alters the whole view because they're, the two things are very similar in terms of the analogous.
And so you can actually knit a brick pattern and you can build And, and I got my mother when she was alive and I was a student, she, I, I would get some 19th century brickwork and turn it into a knitting pattern and she would actually knit it up for me. I always had this fantasy where I would design a house for a family dad, mom, and the kids.
And while the house was being built, You know the, the mother presumably would knit jumpers for the entire family based on the same brick pattern that was on the house. And as an opening ceremony, they, they Mom, dad, and the kids would stand wearing their jumpers in front of with the brick pattern on their jumpers in front of the house with the brick pattern on that somebody would take a photo and then they would move in. My point is that I think it's it's when people make.
Big leaps, big jumps that, that things can move and things can get exciting, really. And, and suddenly you think, wow, I'm, I'm onto something here. You, you know, that's the key. I think it's, it's, it's a sort of. You have to open yourself up to this sort of notion of serendipity. You, you have to be willing to actually, you know, catch these ideas as they go past and run with them. Some will work out, some won't.
But, but for goodness sake, that's the, I mean, that's, that, that's what makes life interesting. It's not just, you know, banging away at the same kind of failed methodology that is going to do it for you. I don't think, you know. Well, you don't know what your podcast extra is going to be next time. Well, I hope it's taking up knitting. I, it should be. It's it's amazing. Well, we need new approaches and new approaches lead to, can lead to massive failures.
Burnouts, whatever, but that's the, but that's, that's human, you know, that's the human condition, isn't it? And, and we should, and, and that's the other thing at university when I, you know, it's just like, it gets to the point where students aren't allowed to fail. And, and I used to say, well, if you can't fail at university, where can you, where can you make your mistakes? You know, so.
It's important, I think, to for students to actually feel that they have a kind of you know, a safety net and that if you actually try to do something different and it doesn't work out, you know, you don't totally crash and burn in that environment. It's very important, I think. But these days, you know, it's like some sort of corporate. Bit of bullshit, basically the way you've, everything has to be, everything has to be done well, you know, the generation of the perfectionists. It is, it is.
And that comes back to this notion of the generalist. You see, we just lost all the university administrators. So now we've done, we just moved on to podcast. This could be our last podcast. Yeah, this is under podcast, extra culture corner. Something you've read, seen, watched. Listen to, experience lately, that might be of interest to our listeners, and it doesn't have to be on topic.
Well, it's, it's interesting you ask that question, because at the end of last year Pursuit which is a online Melbourne Uni magazine, which I've written a bit of, bit for, they asked me the same thing. They said, well, What have you read or watched or seen or whatever? And the answer that I came up with was last year, the highlight of my, almost the highlight of my year, I think was well, I have three grand grandchildren 10, seven.
And three and the middle one, Max, who's seven is a keen footballer. This, I have to take responsibility for this. He is also supports Geelong the cats football team, and he actually played his first Oz kick game at Marvel stadium, and it was just such a thrill for him to actually kick the ball on the big oval, but it was. It was a bigger thrill for me to actually watch him. It, it was, it was just such a great thrill.
And, and for Christmas, one of the things he wanted was football socks, Geelong football socks, and a mouth guard, which, you know, I bought for him in his Christmas box. And his father, our son said, you know he slept with that mouth guard one night. He actually, had it in his mouth and fell asleep with it.
And just last weekend, we were having a kick to kick and there he was fully dressed, Geelong jumper, Geelong shorts, Geelong socks and his mouth guard having a kick to kick with the grandpa, which was fantastic. So Derham, you know, I'm a massive Cats fan as well. So I understand the passion and the madness and the madness. This is, I'm sure you've all got your teams that you're crazy about. Now, Jess, what's your podcast extra for this special, possibly last.
Well, Pete, I've been doing a lot more Pilates at the moment. Reformer Pilates to help my. I think it's my back, my lower back, my shoulders from carrying one child on one side for too long. So that's really been helping me with my posture and sitting and not being in a lot of back pain. So that's been great. How about you, Pete? Well, we'll just, I've just harvested this last weekend, 19. 2 kilograms of honey from one of the hives. That seems like a lot of honey. It is.
Yeah. It was the, the very hard working bees. Have you got a license for your bees? You have to be registered and I've got two hives, but the beautiful, beautiful bees, they make great honey. But the other thing, just I'm trying to learn a poem a month to fend off dementia. So I just noticed that trying to, like we all know, sort of. stanzas of poems or something like that. But when you try and learn a poem, and you know, the best way of learning is to write it down.
And you keep coming back to that poem that you're learning. And once you get it, it's fantastic. So I would urge our listeners to try something like that, that they enjoy in their life. Just try and forget about all the white noise going on, but just try and grab hold of something and learn something. So anyway, you've been a great and of course Sherlock Holmes retired to Sussex and kept bees. So you have something in common with the great detective himself.
Well, I wish I had his opium habit, but you can't buy it anymore. Jess used to be cocaine. It gets cocaine. It was used to be a massive cut. Anyway, we've been definitely canceled. We're going to get our doors kicked in. Jess. This has been great having you as listeners for the podcast. This could be our last one. Thanks, Derham. You've been. A really wonderful guest and now we're going to be canceled. So Jess, all the best to you. It's been great doing podcasts with you.
I don't, I don't think I was that bad, surely. What do you think, Jess? Anyway, we'll know soon. Thank you, listeners, as always. Thanks for listening. If you would like to hear more of our podcasts, hit the follow button on Spotify or the like button on SoundCloud or the subscribe button in Apple podcasts. Please also visit our Instagram page, LinkedIn or website for behind the scenes footage of our podcasts and to get the latest on upcoming or recently released episodes.
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