I'm in Melbourne this weekend so I thought that this cartoon might be appropriate, since the conservative, Family First Senator Fielding is from Victoria. The Spooner cartoon is a reworking of John Brack's painting The bar, which the National Gallery of Victoria had recently bought the work for $3.2 million from Tasmanian millionaire and collector David Walsh.

I'm here to meet Flickr friends/collegues associated with Altfotonet, see family, explore the urban life of Melbourne's CBD, and take some photos.

Painted in 1954, The bar depicts the ‘six o’clock swill’ of Melbourne pubs in the 1950s, where patrons hurried to drink their fill before closing time. Tthe painting, in turn refers to Edouard Manet’s famous work of 1881, A bar at the Folies-Bergère, and it shares with it the pictorial device of a mirror behind the bar that reflects the drinkers on the other side.

This interior view finds its counterpoint in Collins St, 5pm 1955, which depicts crowds of office-workers at the end of the working day marching dutifully toward the trains and trams that will take them home to the sprawling suburbia of mid-century Melbourne.

The inference of the Spooner cartoon? Fielding and Family First stand for 1950s Australia in the 21st century.