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SUNKLAND JUNCTION

A creative collaboration between visual artist Emma Ikin and writer historian Alex McDermott, 'Sunkland Junction’ is a celebration

of Frankston’s rich creative history as well as the artists own personal and imagined mythologies.

The semi-mythical protagonist Frank Stone wanders through a stitched together Frankston made up in equal parts memory, fiction and urban legend. Along the way exploring the lattice work of connections through time, the landscape and the characters who reside there.

These become the weaving stitch moving between stories such as the forgotten architectural ‘vision of the future’ of the Heart Arcade, Stanley Bruce’s recreation of 1930’s Hollywood on a remote hilltop, the little-known meteorites of Cranbourne and the modern day silent disco walkers dancing wildly on the pier at dawn.

Set to a luminous soundscape by Melbourne sound designer Jason Heller.

This project was created with the generous support of Frankston City Council Artist Commisions and the Southside Festival

SUNKLAND JUNCTION CONTEXT NOTES

Granite Tunnel beneath Devil’s Elbow

In 1861 a granite bridge was built over Kackeraboite Creek. The granite was quarried from a nearby paddock, and built by settlers in the neighbourhood: ‘and
they had every reason to be proud of the result. Such structures are not built nowadays, and the bridge only needs to be seen to be admired.’ 1
After completion of the bridge the road running over it quickly became the main highway down towards Point Nepean. A blacksmith set up a shoeing forge.
Someone else set up a sly grog shop. Highly popular with horse-riders and bullock- teamsters passing through.

Plenty of crashes occurred on the sharp bend. The gully acquired the unofficial moniker ‘The Devil’s Elbow.’

Having travelled through the elaborate granite brick tunnel beneath the Devil’s Elbow, Kackeraboite Creek empties into Davey’s Bay.

The Sunklands Junction and Oliver’s Hill

Frankston sits at the junction of three topographical domains:

- A granite seam

- Clay (extracted for brickworks, and other manufactures)

- A dune system (the sunklands which extend beyond Mt Eliza and Mt Martha,
covering much of the Mornington Peninsula).

Davey’s Bay is named after James Davey, who arrived in Australia age 21 from Cornwall with his father in the late 1830s. He built a jetty where the Sweetwater
Creek runs into the Bay, to send materials – timber, firewood, livestock, hides, tallow to the Melbourne markets.

A fisherman and carpenter, James Oliver, built a hut near the mouth of the creek, and tethered his boat at the jetty. He spent a lot of time sitting up on the hill, looking
to see where the fish were, then sailing out after them. The hill eventually became known as Oliver’s Hill.

The Pier Hotel and the birth of Frank Stone

At the mouth of the Kananook Creek a man named Stone built a shanty pub. It did well, situated at the junction of the road south along Port Phillip Bay and the ‘fish
track’ to Hastings. Travellers would leave from here, heading along the beaches towards Mordialloc.

The Stones had a son. They called him Frank. The pub became known as Frank Stone’s hotel. It was not many yards from where the zero-point of the Frankston
township was subsequently measured out from.

A more elaborate hotel was subsequently built on Frank Stone’s shanty pub site. The Pier Hotel became a central meeting point in Frankston life: social gatherings, public
meetings, political agitations all seemed to find themselves there. Elements of the early timber and brick structures are embedded in the modern Pier Hotel today.

Frankston Seagulls

Early morning Frankston
When still dark.

It’s a city of gulls
Humans are non-existent.

The gulls will tolerate you
To a certain point.

Carrum Carrum Swamp

Carrum Swamp was wetlands country until it was drained in the late 1870s to make farmland and residential areas. In recent decades much of it has itself been built
over with large industrial estates. A handful of Swamp Gums remain, isolated sentinels left over from before.

Swamp Gums (Eucalyptus Ovata) are some of the longest living eucalyptus trees. The handful that remain in Carrum could be well over three hundred years. By this
reckoning, they are the only living creatures who were around when iron meteorites crashed into Cranborne and surrounding areas in the 1700s (or thereabouts).

Meteorite Strike

A series of meteorites crashed across country ranging from Langwarrin to Pakenham a few centuries ago.

The two largest masses, the Cranbourne and the Abel meteorites, were almost entirely buried in sand. Only a small spur of each was showing
above the ground when they were discovered – about the year 1850.

The surveyor who made a magnetic survey of Victoria, during the years 1858 to 1864, relates that old colonists remembered the time when
natives used to dance around the projecting spur of iron on a farm near Cranbourne. They beat their tomahawks against it and seemed to like the
metallic sound it produced…'

Joan Lindsay and the Sea Nymphs

Artist and novelist Joan Lindsay lived with husband in a house called Mulberry Hill in Langwarrin South. Built in 1926 in the American Colonial style, it incorporated an
1880s cottage on the same site. Two-storey weatherboard, Sea Nymph (Amphibolis Antarctica) seaweed was embedded within the walls for insulation, as was common
in early Australian buildings near the sea. The Sea Nymph most likely sourced from the extensive beds in Westernport Bay, brought up the fish track from Hastings.

Bunurong Water Tower

Frankston and surrounding settlements were all built on land traditionally owned by the Bunurong People of the Kulin Nation. This includes the waterways, creeks and
natural reservoirs which the micro-region is populated with.

The Bunrong Water Tower is in Bunurong Park, an area made up of the sand dune system which historically ran from Cranbourne to Frankston. The Water Tower was
built in the late 1970s, presumably when the area became a public reserve.

Its exact purpose, and where it is being fed from, is unclear.

Bruce Manor

In the 1920s Australian Prime Minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce built ‘Pine Hill’, a Spanish-style villa on Heatherhill Road, (just off the Hastings Road,) outside of
Frankston. At the top of a hill, it enjoyed fine views of the surrounding country and the Bay beyond.

'Almost startling in contrast to its rural surroundings, it nevertheless fits into the picture perfectly. The buff-pink walls, the shutters and doors of
vivid blue, and the surmounting roof of vari-coloured tiles, make a harmonious and pleasing splash amid the green of the wilderness.'

In the middle of fields of coastal wattle and assorted scrubland, Pine Hill ‘stood out like a jewel that has strayed from its setting.’

SOURCES

The Early history of Mount Eliza on the Mornington Peninsula, [1926]

Weekly Times, 2 nd Jan 1937

The Australian Home Beautiful, 1 st August 1927

Contemporary Building Magazine, 1 st August 1927

SUNKLANDS JUNCTION by Alex McDermott

1.
We need some more words
to describe the sound
a Raven makes.

All night beneath
beneath our feet,
abandoned satellite.

2.
Big fish swims through you.
Abandon satellite and don’t delay.
Abandon satellite and drifting.
Great white whale legs and humanoid chunks of you.

3.
Pieces of you spat up on the dirty beach.
Pieces of you all up and down the seaweed scale.

4.
Across vaulting dark gulfs then
of black and raven space.
That long harsh crooning twilight caw.

5.
(A moment later)
Time to dance
When the devil-dog
Is at the door.

Planets and oceanic noise techniques.
Smashing to timber pieces
swamping crushing waves swept through
broken off all future heads and legs.
Crashing down through barriers and guard rails said.

(A moment later)
The world going substance time slot noise
Crater field volcanic train expressway
Rocky field heart and legs unlocked
Interlock distance wild
Nuptial chronotope happiness
The great unlock.

6.
That long harsh crooning cragged craw,
drawn out across several galactic fields at dawn,
straddling street lights and wires and rooves of rain-tank silos.

7.
A coordinate point fractures cracked
backwash and sudden ripped back out
unblock the roadblocks and radio stations
make out the meteorite and dragged back tooth canals
The satellite crashing down on the roof of the sandy soil
the crusted top on top of which we also live
dragged back towards the town &
these street amphibious metals.

8.
So you become a coordinate point
until when you have to crack back
through black tunnels and bifurcate
until this must stop.

fire electric seaweed tangled frame
In the tunnel & the pipes,
all night beneath the skin of our bodies,
beneath our feet seaweed sea-nymphs like
some twining tendrils round
waves and undertow
drowns out the whole house
still the great unlock
until this must stop.
In the tunnels & the pipes,
All night beneath

9.
We need a new dictionary for the words and noises sounds the ravens make.
All night beneath our feet the murky dripping deep.
We need more names for the different swimming whales a raven makes.

10.
Born beneath Devil’s Elbow each day
the sun comes up through trees
Locked till unlocked broken gone again
back inside your radio station
it’s time for night
till this must stop.

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