Blogfinger

Australian journalist Alan Barber (left) admires the Great Auditorium as Lois Hetfield and Charles Layton tell him how Woody Allen once made a movie there. Photos by Mary Walton

By Charles Layton

Alan Barber, who runs the newspaper in Ocean Grove, Australia, turned up in our town on Monday. Lois Hetfield, the Chamber of Commerce’s administrator, showed him the Great Auditorium, and then the two of them, plus a couple of Blogfinger staffers, settled in for some coffee and chit-chat at the Barbaric Bean.

While we were talking Mayor Randy Bishop dropped in, and he and Barber proceeded to swap stories and make comparisons between the two namesake towns at opposite ends of the planet.

Barber is vacationing in New York City. Since he was so close by, he said he couldn’t resist seeing his “sister city,” so he hopped on the North Jersey Coast Line and came on down.

He explained that Australia’s Ocean Grove, southwest of Melbourne, was founded in the 19th century by Methodists from our own Ocean Grove. The coastal area where they established a camp meeting, based on the one in New Jersey, was the domain of Aboriginal Australians at the time.

Barber’s newspaper, the Ocean Grove Voice, is a bi-weekly, or “fortnightly” as they say down under. He was born in South Africa, grew up in the United Kingdom, where he became a newspaper photographer, and moved nine years ago to Australia, where he had friends and a brother. He settled in the area of Melbourne, which he considers Australia’s most interesting city, and then “discovered Ocean Grove by chance, really.”

The spot of land where the first Australian Grovers settled, next to a beach, is now a park, but the Camp Meeting Association still survives there, although it isn’t the dominating presence it is here.

The Australian Ocean Grove was originally a dry town, under a covenant that is still sometimes cited when someone wants to prevent a business from acquiring a license to sell liquor. Still, alcohol is now served in that town’s restaurants and bars, and Barber said the local coffee shop, The Olive Pit, just got a liquor license as well.

That’s not the only difference between here and there. Barber said the beach area there has no sidewalks and no boardwalk, just dunes. The town has two business districts with a total of 60 or 70 shops, plus there is a big shopping mall. A second mall is in the works, he said.

Ocean Grove, Australia, has about 12,000 residents now, but Barber expects it to grow to 25,000 in the next 15 years “because there’s a growth area at the north that’s developing.” Bishop told him that our Ocean Grove has between 5,800 and 6,000 people, but that our population can swell to as many as 21,000 on a busy weekend, counting day trippers and hotel guests. (Hetfield said we have about 500 hotel rooms now.)

Barber told Randy Bishop (left) that The Barbaric Bean reminded him of The Olive Pit in Australia. One difference: The Olive Pit just got a liquor license.

Barber was especially impressed by our Great Auditorium, with its seating capacity of 6,500. He said the only performance space in his Ocean Grove is in a little place called The Piping Hot Chicken Shop, which features local blues bands and an occasional visiting band from Melbourne. Bishop wanted to know whether any of the street names in Australia matched those in our town, so we all started ticking off the names of our local streets — Lawrence, Cookman, Heck, Abbott… There was only one match: Ocean Grove, Australia, has an “Inskip,” Barber said.

According to Barber, his Ocean Grove has had a much harder time preserving its historic buildings. Development “is almost a free-for-all at the moment,” he said. People are leveling older structures and building “square boxes,” and there is no historical protection under the law. He said there was a local uprising that managed to keep a McDonald’s from moving in, but the town has allowed a KFC and a couple of smaller chain businesses.

As darkness was falling, Barber caught a train back to New York. He flies home to Australia on Thursday. He invited us to come and visit any time.

Oh, but here is a coincidence. Barber told us that while he was visiting here, the president of our Camp Meeting Association, Dale Whilden, and his family just happened to be visiting Ocean Grove, Australia. Barber said he was told the Whildens had dropped by his newspaper’s office to say hello.

If you want to read Barber’s newspaper, go to http://www.oceangrovevoice.com.