1990's
1991 - Forest Hill, Melbourne
With the Forest Hill Pancake Parlour opening in 1991, Peter Von (Art Director) decided it was time to “Look up into the skies!”.
Thus his most ambitious challenge so far, ‘The Trans Pacific Maple Syrup Bulk Carrier”, fondly referred to as “The Granny Plane.”
The story as told by Peter Von...
“When a great stack of surplus aluminium tube arrived in the scrap yard it took me milliseconds to see its potential as an aircraft built to the same standards as a real plane and powered by a granny pedalling! I could see it all, the granny from the jam label bringing maple syrup from Vermont, her plane covered in blue-check gingham and a giant maple syrup barrel slung under of course, a wheel chair. With a phone call to the Corner Paddock Antique and Bric-A -Brac shop in Victor Harbour, I acquired a genuine 19th century American wheelchair in reasonable nick. I stripped it and re-coated it in a satin finish. Then I wondered how do I model up a granny? ... My wife’s mother of course as a model!
Next was the measurements, plywood, rubber foam, skateboard bearings and a head modelled by an art student (I can’t do everything!)
Now for the fun, the plane itself - A matching pair of aluminium propellers, once some sort of food processor, lay in the scrap yard mud. Painstakingly I reshaped them with a rubber mallet, stripped off the paint, cut the ends off and fitted them with elaborate brass trimmed hubs – beautiful when polished!
Slowly it dawned on me that I could do just so much, what do I know about mechanical engineering?
Mindful that the completed plane would be hanging in a public space, in Victoria no less home of litigation, I found Kingsley White. He was no academic, but an engineer with a mechanics outlook. He built the bits that connected everything, using cables with lovely shiny turnbuckles and coaxed electrical motors into cute polished granny-type caned boxes. I riveted the wing tubing, hand bending the aluminium tubing into perfect wings, ready for ‘Tom The Gun’ upholsterer to painstakingly cover with plasticised gingham. I later sewed the Lovely! Lady symbols into padded logos for the wings and the tail.
In a second hand shop I found some heavy leather piano mover straps that had been hanging up unloved for years, perfect to hold the giant maple syrup barrel slung under Granny’s plane. After hours of polishing they were baby’s bum supple and glowing. Now the barrel itself: styrene foam! The world’s lightest building material, wood grained so convincingly by my Paint Finishes teacher from Trade School (I said I can’t do everything) that it even fooled the inspector from the Dept. of Trade and Industry who was initially appalled at the safety idea of a great barrel slung under the plane and nearly canned the whole thing. Old brass bed knobs trimmed the lovely curved bracket with its piano straps.
Steve, a bikies welder (he of the tattoos, the biceps, the black German shepherd dog and the girlfriend more frightening than him) welded the aluminium scaffold tube frame for the air speed indicator, the compass and the clock ... all so important to an elderly granny pedalling all the way from the US.
It’s not obvious but granny’s steering wheel is little more than the bottom round wooden rung off an old Brentwood chair finished to match the wheelchair and sitting around a polished spoked belt drive wheel from a washing machine. Her instruments on stalks from some old machine are brass trimmed short lengths of tube and the curved glasses from dirt cheap kitchen clocks. Being the 1980’s, granny’s boots were leftovers from the swinging 60’s I found in an op shop, from the granny look era ... you know, all long hair, round glasses and limpid over-made-up eyes.
I actually made the giant maple syrup barrel (as indeed I made the rest of the plane) in my house, in what most folk would call the family room, but which we pompously call the ‘north wing’. The whole plane sat rather comfortably complete in this big room, the wings stretching out into the passage with just enough room to walk under, looking so grand and charming with Granny straining away at the front. At one stage Tom the upholsterer was parked out the front when two observant police, suspicious of the van, knocked at the door demanding to know why it was out there, suspecting (obviously) a robbery. On being invited in they were amazed, both at the fact that the plane was actually in the house but more at the fact that my wife allowed it! Consequently we became good friends and one of the policemen years later would still call in to see the latest.
Back to the polystyrene barrel ... I nearly wrecked the bloody thing, after mis-measuring and discovering it wouldn’t fit through the back gate. So I manhandled the light but awkward bundle over the four meter tall lattice into next door on my own, much to the annoyance of the neighbours dog.
The positioning of the Granny Plane out over the void from the balustrade at the Forest Hill Shopping Centre was a mammoth effort. Firstly it was incredibly hot when Kingsley White and I finally bundled the plane and Granny into the largest truck we could hire without special licenses. It was late because Granny wouldn’t fit through the access door or window and had to be stripped of all her special fittings and wheels! Of course we didn’t find that out until the last minute. We then found that the locally hired trucks engine was so worn that 60 km an hour was the best we could expect, all the weary way to Melbourne, where we finally arrived at the Forest Hill Chase Shopping Centre where Allen had assembled with the lads.
At Forest Hill Chase, a couple of days before, brackets had been welded up in the glass and steel roof by two brave souls who actually absailed into the totally inaccessible space to fit them. The velcro flaps in the gingham covering the wings, gave us access to all the assembly points and as the all-but-empty shopping centre lights came on that night, in an atmosphere of jolly banter the grand old lady’s bright and beautiful aeroplane stood ready to take off.
Then the trouble started ... Dogs barked, cocky’s screeched and chooks chortled as we carried the whole package to the edge of the balustrade. All 10 of us. Blokes draped with leather belts laden with every tool imaginable hung posed at the hanging points in the roof and a giant scissor lift stood on the next level down, poised for action. Yellow ropes were attached, hooked over points and all together we tugged – and she sat resolutely unmoving, too heavy to lift.
Allen and I looked at each other, Kingsley White swore and we all tried again. Impossible. Out came customers from the restaurant intrigued by what we were attempting and fascinated by the whole thing, until we had almost 15 people on various ropes – nothing. She wasn’t going anywhere. Then the security guards arrived reminding us that the shopping centre lights went off at 2am and we had only until 7am to complete the job. Answers! Some bright spark remembered a friend who was an army rigger, a quick phone call. In a jiffy he was there all ropes, boots and attitude. Now, amidst loud sighs of relief we tried again, all hands to the ropes! She lifted all right and virtually uncontrolled, swung out into the space, the tail dipping and smacking the long row of giant artificial plants arranged decoratively around the whole inside of the balustrade. Down they went, shedding fronds, filling and broken pots onto the rows of Christmas trees at the ground level. The noise had to be heard to be believed. The security guards were not amused, but there was more to come, much more ...
Without too much drama the chains were fitted, the blokes in the roof abseiled down, we all stood back congratulating each other when I decided she didn’t have enough tilt to one side to look natural. If looks could kill! In an atmosphere of raw agro the poor riggers went out and up again, struggling to adjust the plane to suit the “poofter” from Adelaide with the cracked glasses and mentally added another outrageous sum to their already considerable charges.
Now all that needed to be done before we all sat down for a great batch of pancakes and cold beer to celebrate was to fit the giant barrel and the wheels of the wheelchair and connect the electrics. Piece of cake! The scissor lift was activated, the barrel was ready to lift out over the balustrade and the next part of the drama unfolded as suddenly, all the shopping centre lights went out.
Swearing is seldom pretty and that coming from blokes in the scissor lift cage swaying over the void out on its farther-most extension was no exception. Fortunately the restaurant lights were still on, the only lighting we were able to use from now on, virtually the most dangerous part of the whole exercise and to this day I simply don’t understand how something dreadful didn’t happen. Basically two lads, fortunately best of mates, had to somehow fix the barrel to its support under the plane. Virtually standing, balancing, facing each other on the scissor lift cage top edges grasping each others belts with their free arms around the big awkward barrel holding it against their chests, they fumbled to put the bolts in without actually being able to see what they were doing as the barrel was in the way and it was so dark anyway! You could have cut the anxious silence with a knife; even the normally voluble security blokes were appalled and silent.
In the early light of dawn we switched on the power and Granny with a great lurch began her endless journey. She gratifyingly swayed gently as the gleaming propellers, connected by motorcycle racing chains to the motors, spun at just the right speed to match the pedalling. Granny was bent purposefully over her steering wheel poised on the edge of her seat, gleaming black boots and yellow bloomers pumping slowly up and down. It was all a grand, exhausting success, and it was just coming up to the 7am deadline.” Peter Von.
Accompanying the plane mounted on the balustrade Peter Von created a framed graphic display. Drawing on his years in the newspaper he mocked up a News Of the World front page of the Edwardian era, announcing the death of Von Richtofen the Red Baron, brought down by none other than Granny in her little blue plane.
He included a copy of Granny’s original air worthiness certificate and even a recognisable fragment of Von Richtofens Fokker triplane complete with part of a Maltese cross painted on the scorched fabric. (All of course phoney!) Once again, it was so authentic looking that the outraged proprietor of some aircraft museum rang demanding to know how they could even imagine the little scrap of fabric could be genuine and even accused them of misleading the public! Peter Von was delighted but passed the poor unimaginative fellow over to Allen Trachsel.
The “Granny Plane” pedalled purposefully every day and night for over 12 years at Forest Hill Chase, until being decommissioned and totally rebuilt for the new Fountain Gate Pancake Parlour which opened in December 2007.
The Maple Syrup Refining Plant
Peter Von then went straight into building ‘The Maple Syrup Refining Plant’ for Forest Hill to accompany the Granny Plane. You see, Granny painstakingly brings the maple syrup from the US, but it’s not quite to Pancake Parlour standards so it’s further refined by this ‘phantasmagoric’ contraption.
Virtually everything on this device at some time had another use; the old brass bath heater from the 1940’s mysteriously matching a copper boiler exactly (but found in two separate scrap yards!), a rejected acrylic dome over a copper pan in which mock maple syrup quietly steams away, a ships propeller stirring all the time under which sits an upturned copper tray from an old hot water service. The two are separated by a marvellous large copper coil and another dented old copper full of coke completes the end. In the middle, to the right, the highly coloured contraption on legs, trimmed with the obligatory brass gauges ‘the syrup’ is a genuine piece of Australian history.
Apparently it is a water purifying device once used by the Australian Army in the Western dessert and taken there in WW2. Peter Von teamed it with some ancient plumbing ‘s’ bends, parts of a jet engine and some flexible copper coil, all in the name of art. With a crooked acrylic dome steaming attractively, you’d almost nearly just about think it was real, and some people actually do! (or so we are told).
Forest Hill was the likely place to try out an idea that each restaurant should have an individual set of chess chairs. Peter Von found some used aluminium scaffold tubing of a big generous size, had it rolled by the local car exhaust system shop into big circles and re-welded. Tom the upholstering genius, fresh from his success with the Granny plane, deep buttoned the mock leather seats. Peter Von polished the scrap aluminium electrical cable guide brackets mounted with signature brass gauges and mounted the gilded cast iron and matching tractor seats with car gilded springs as decoration. Easy when you know how, but time consuming!
1996 - Jam Factory - South Yarra
It was in 1996 that Peter Von started on months of his most intensive work for the Chapel Street, Jam Factory Pancake Parlour. Simply conceived to conceal a giant air conditioning unit, an incredibly complicated and mechanically sophisticated mock mantle piece clock, in full Victorian era style was designed. It was monstrous!
The lads built a massive arched top construction in plaster held up by columns. The plan was to neatly slip a giant clock case in polished timber with a full sized figure of Harold Lloyd, the Hollywood star, in imitation of a scene from one of his movies from the early twenties, ‘Safety Last’ where he hung precariously from town hall clock face.
One of Peter Von’s major problems was where to get a figure of Harold Lloyd that would be convincing enough to carry the idea. He called Laila the blonde Adelaide bazoom sculptor . . . “Harold Lloyd, who the bloody hell was he?” was her helpful retort, “But I’ll do it ,” followed by “Gimme a photo.”
Naturally as promised, she did it! Merely modelling an uncanny and life like Harold Lloyd in no time. He was fitted with a suit and shoes from the Salvo’s. Laila cast some hands in rubber from her partners, coated the suit in clear glaze usually used to tart up tiled roofs, found a pair of 1920’s style round glasses and there you have it! As near to the real thing as possible ... expression of panic and all!
Along with all this Laila also created a Monkey Movie director complete with a megaphone whose job it was to control a mechanical mural in black and white for the restaurant inside, but more of that later ...
Many still do not recognise Harold Lloyd, his name or his work.
In his day, Harold Lloyd was more famous and popular than Charlie Chaplin and commanded a much greater fee, as his athletic feats were legendary. He made over 500 movies including 11 silent features. Lloyd’s astonishing stunts and gags were a lasting contribution to both American culture and to the international art of film comedy. Lloyd will always be remembered for his stunt hanging on for dear life to the hands of a clock precariously attached to a skyscraper. The clock face scene from “Safety Last” was his most ambitious and chosen as the theme for the area as the brief was to make sure anything built was faithfully Hollywood of the 1920’s. The Giant Harold Lloyd clock at the South Yarra Jam Factory Pancake Parlour is The Pancake Parlour’s homage to Harold Lloyd.
The story as told by Peter Von...
“To begin my part of the bargain and create the actual clock, I had firstly to get around the size. No more building in the family room at home! Fortunately, Regal Display, a local sign company found room for me at their factory and the gorgeous routed timber giant clock case started to become a reality. Mucking about at home on MDF, trying to create a convincing phoney blacked graining instead of the prohibitively expensive real thing, I gradually developed a technique so faultless that I actually surprised myself, the greatest critic.
With spirit stain, old brushes, fingers and a school eraser, my imitation blacked graining became the talk of the factory. I cut out a stack of large mock ‘gears’ in MDF which John "Tilly" Tillbrook eventually mechanised in such a way that exposed what appeared to be meshing inside the case. How he did it so that they rotated, stopped and went backwards while still looking utterly convincing, is still a mystery to me. I had a shallow, large acrylic dish made which the master Reg Stevens gave a glorious shaded gold finish to. I trimmed it with lots of fancy polished brass, and we had a pendulum just like that, still ponderously swinging years later.
Whilst I struggled with the giant milky white acrylic face of the clock attaching the computer cut vinyl numbers and the “Lovely! Lady face, Tilly in another state, was building what we think is the largest mechanism outside Big Ben in London. It’s certainly the most complicated. Simple in outward appearances, the actual movement with its masses of computer technology is itself probably a greater work of art than my contribution. The shear size of the works for a start, tucked away behind the frosted acrylic face, the massive gears and levers, not to mention the actual hands, laser cut from mild steel 16 mm thick, so heavy with the great bearing that joins to Harold Lloyds hand that they are difficult to lift! After months of building, the works contained in a steel tube frame were completed. The case I made in Adelaide, fitted like a glove, a scissor lift and fork lift were bought in for the heart stopping job of standing it upright, lifting it and hopefully slotting it gently into its final resting place under the now neon enhanced “Anytime is Pancake Time” arch. We might have known it wouldn’t be that easy!
OK, to be sure, it nearly fitted. I had left only about 10 mm gap for it to just slide in, not taking into account any larger error in constructing the plastered arch. Naturally as is always the way it jammed dramatically and infuriatingly in one small spot. Take some off the case or the arch? Votes were taken, points put forward, opinions stated! On pain of death, some brave soul, metres off the ground took some off my lovely wood grained case and we tried again. Next problem. The scissor lift refused to lift other than in 20 mm or so jerks, up or down: it was either too high or the bottom snagged. Not helped by the sheer weight of the whole thing which magnified each movement – it literally tottered on the scissor lift.
Finally Tilly the genius solved it by sliding, believe it or not pieces of thin cardboard one at a time under the scissor lift wheels, to much derision from the gathered workers. Predictably it worked, and the whole thing slid quickly and perfectly into the arch. The massive hands were manhandled into place, the pendulum was hooked on, the doors were shut with the lovely brass handle and Harold lifted awkwardly up into the special bearing.
It was nearly all over, months of effort were finally ready to roll, so to speak. It took Tilly hours to connect the electrical supply, stoke up the computers and tweak the controls before the great clock with Harold gently swaying from the one-minute-at-a-time jerking of the hands, totally and convincingly came to life. What a result!
Inside the restaurant, Nick Luke was ready to fit a giant frame on the back wall, high up onto which the largest mechanical tossing race I had done so far, in black and white cut-out form was to fit. Months earlier, back in Adelaide, I had hired a young Adelaide animation engineer, Eric Gittens, to mechanise this mural tied in with the monkey film director I mentioned earlier, made by Laila.
A carpenter, Johnno, an itinerant from the stage craft world and I endlessly, it seemed (and mindlessly) spent weeks jig sawing out sheets of MDF mounted with tossing race characters, which were to come to life on the hour as is the usual. Because of the heat we were forced to bring all this cut out MDF into the family room of the house yet again, to mechanise it. Obviously, as I tried to explain to the Missus, it would have been better outside, but the 40 degree heat meant, the MDF warped alarmingly and the stuck-on images started to fall off! Divorce at one stage seemed a distinct possibility when she came home from her work to find endless cut outs stacked all over the house, the edges freshly painted white, together with the tiled floor. “ Peter Von.
The Jam Factory site would next be enhanced by a giant coffee grinder. An exact replica of the American antique ones with the big wheels that Peter Von had been buying for years, ingenious fancy devices resplendent with flower transfers and brass trim. At a second hand barbecue store, Peter Von found a Webber lid, copied the fancy wheels in routed MDF in giant form, found a circular flanged collar (to become part of the body) and a huge wok lid. To hold the grinder wheels he used a small stainless steel beer keg from the scrap yard with holes through the middle and shaft and mock bearings to hold the big fancy routed wheels. Peter Von then made up an MDF box with a drawer to catch the coffee grounds, with a big brass ball knob and it was then mounted on cast iron legs. With a fence post knob on top, the usual brass gauge, suitable annotated and turned wooden handles to work the big wheels it was then shaded scarlet paint all over with blue bands around the big wheels and shadowed computer cut lettering ‘Anytime is Pancake Time’ in gold. Fancy flowery cut outs, which were genuine old transfers overlaid and varnished were added and all bright and beautiful for the outside seating area in the Jam Factory Pancake Parlour, where it is also subjected to the same public souveniring as all the other devices around the group.
1997 - New Location at Northland - Preston
In 1997, the Northland Pancake Parlour changed locations as the shopping centre was revamped. The poor old monkey in his tired dirigible was given a new lease of life as the camera man for LOVELY! TONE NEWS, on duty filming the Pancake Tossing Race for Ladies emblazoned across the far wall. The spring of his ‘Boys Best Clockwork’ motor was tightened up and a distinctive movie camera fashioned from a large aluminium kettle from a country sheep station kitchen fitted. The old cooking apparatus dumped, a complicated light show inside the original but improved yellow dirigible was in place and yellow fancy skids fitted, all substantially upgraded with a shiny post modern aluminium and brass module containing computer gear slung underneath. Tilly then constructed an ingenious and totally original track device in the specially strengthened ceiling to take the whole dirigible up and above the customers. This enabled it to move across the ceiling in tandem with the regular activating of The Pancake Tossing Race Ladies who were now racing (and tossing) in their own individual dirigibles, each one different and unique on the far wall. Tilly had even produced sound for the monkey so that he ‘talks’ to the customers. The monkey had at last come into the 20th Century.
1997 - Highpoint "Express"
A smaller ‘Express’ Pancake Parlour opened in the Highpoint Shopping Centre food court. With space at a premium, Peter Von came up with a little train which ran up above the customer’s heads. Reg Stevens did a fabulous paint job, blue over silver and red underneath to show up the iron wheels and the pistons fashioned from brass tube. Tilly mechanised the train so that it could sit in its own station and on cue emerge to enchant the customers with its mechanical ingenuity and visual wit. Brass brackets were brought from a brass ware shop and a railway track built with polished jarrah sleeper and toy train rails. Tilly built some baffling computer controls and the train beetled out its station every 20 minutes or so, tooting and puffing as it came and went, much to the annoyance of the surrounding shop owners but the delight of the customers.
1999 - The Little Train, Doncaster
When the little Highpoint ‘Express’ Parlour closed, the obvious place for “The Little Train” was the Doncaster Pancake Parlour, where it could augment the old pancake tossing race mural due for a refit.
Peter Von constructed a special gold trimmed fancy station with clear acrylic sides and a Victorian style roof so that the little train could be viewed even when quiet, so to speak. He extended the jarrah sleeper track so on the hour, after the tossing race mural came to life, Big Ben’s strikes boom through the restaurant. The cheering of the crowds in the mural die down, the little trains station lights up and its head lights come on. It gives a brave toot, puffing and chuffing (through the restaurants sound system) and it slowly makes it dignified way along its lone 10 or so metres of track. It’s shiny pistons go up and down, the copper and brass is a gleam, the little dog driver with his engineers cap peeks from the cabin cheekily poking out his tongue, to draw to a slow halt at the tracks end. Here he pauses to do a bit of puffing as it idles, then backs up into its special station. Shows over for another 60 minutes!
To celebrate the little trains arrival at Doncaster, Allen and Peter Von decided to dedicate the landing on the stairs leading to the upper level of the restaurant as an official train viewing platform, complete with a cast iron railway style sign to that effect. Here it is possible for kids (and adults alike) to see the train from the best possible spot.