an introduction

Hello.

This website began in October 2011.  My best intentions of building a devoted readership around a focused and coherent subject matter degraded quickly.

However, I must've done something right.  In early 2013, the State Library of Victoria—our finest institution!—informed me that melbournesurprise.com was to be archived in partnership with the National Library of Australia as an "electronic publication of lasting cultural value and national significance".

Upon receiving this news, I fell into a manic trance.  By the time I came to, it was nightfall, I had broken into the crypts beneath the State Library, the original diary of John Batman was bandaged around my bloodied left hand, and Ned Kelly's codpiece was tied atop my head, ostensibly as a helmet.

Barely had I regained my senses when a security guard rounded the corner, shouting:

Stop thy unhallow'd toil, vile Montague! Can vengeance be pursued further than death? Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee; Obey, and go with me; for thou must die!

Thankful that the underfunded State Library had restaffed their once-athletic security team with starving English postgraduates, I found myself able to easily evade my pursuer.

Exiting the building by the same mysterious route I entered, I implored a young man on a bicycle to "dink" me out of the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction, but he swore to take me no farther than Franklin Street unless I handed over the codpiece; apparently he needed a new mudguard.

After reluctantly acceding to his terms, I was deposited safely outside the City of Melbourne's boundaries.  A passing sociopath saw that I was still carrying the blood-soaked Batman manuscript, and, mistaking it for a compendium of Andrew Bolt's columns, offered me four dollars for it.

I accepted the money.