2000's
2003 - Glen Waverley, Melbourne
In 2003, with the Glen Waverley Pancake Parlour getting ready to open another airborne device was considered. Peter Von (art director) designed a truly Jules Vernish rocket ship in full Victorian era garb. Again there were the tossing race competitors, but this time in rocket ships, each one different. The background on which they race was made out of a milky acrylic sheet, enabling John "Tilly" Tillbrook to produce an amazing night sky show of lasers blazing away behind the rocket ship girls, on regular cue.
Impressed, Peter Von proceeded to build a giant mother ship, but this time contain Granny in her own blister dome of clear acrylic, activated on time with the mural. Around a steel frame he carefully rolled sheets of obsolete wood grained thin MDF, strengthened with bands of blue ‘steel’ and studded with bracing bolts. In true rocket ship fashion he fitted fins of the same wood grained MDF very carefully crafted in his usual fashion. Next came the truly interesting parts. Using plastic pipe with standard angled fittings from the plumbing shop, he fitted polished stainless steel heat sinking flared ends (actually nothing more than salad bowls) The gold finished ‘thrusters’ clustered at the rear are actually plastic hanging baskets and around the giant main thruster is a fibreglass ‘pot of gold’ from the television series ‘Pot of Gold’ bought damaged at auction .. basically a giant cauldron.
The story as told by Peter Von...
“When buying the plastic sewer pipe and fittings from the plumbing shop I rejected the first lot offered because it was a little on the rough side having been on the racks for some time. To the amazement of the sales assistant who couldn’t help remarking somewhat passionately “Shit man, it’s only sewer pipe, who gives a stuff what it looks like in the bloody ground?” At times like this it’s always best to shut up, pay for it and leave. But I never learn ... Soon the whole bloody plumbing shop, trade customers and all were involved with comments like, ‘You’re gonna what?’ sort of thing ..
Because of the size, I had been keeping the big damaged fibreglass ‘pot of gold’ cauldron for a special occasion on the roof of my workshop out of the way. One day it blew down next door to the delight of the neighbours dog. Soon I was called to the fence by the puzzled neighbour enquiring if it was mine. “No, I said, never seen it before.” I then said, “It must be part of some satellite” and pointing to the damaged part and the blackening from its use on television as a cauldron. “Oh God” the neighbour replied excitedly, “I’ll ring up channel 9!” It took me 10 minutes to convince her that I was trying a lame kind of joke, before she’d give it back. I made a mental note – restrict my jokes to the initiated.
The nose cone for the rocket was one of my personal success stories; considering how tricky it was to build, (not to mention time consuming) and one of the only times I used computer based technology – fat lot of good it was! Starting with having to jig saw 30 MDF ‘ribs’ and glue them together to form a cone, the thought of covering them with a ‘skin’ of aluminium tapering strips fitting precisely, filled me with dread. So against my wishes I reluctantly had them laser cut to what I hoped were exact measurements. Of course I was dreaming, as somehow they gradually got out of line and the job of gluing the ribs to the cone of MDF took hours of snipping, fiddling, swearing and grappling with glue. The only good part was the tricky lustrous surface I managed to get on the aluminium using a worn out sanding disc on my finisher. If you must know, I hid the bad joins under plastic-chrome strips usually used on cars. The neat little polished balls trimming the rim of the nose cone are aluminium fence knobs, usually left in the rough and consequently cheap.” Peter Von.
All of the plastic pipes, the cauldron pot and the handing basket thrusters were given a magic ‘candy apple’ gold paint job by Adelaide based ‘Sign Language’. Tilly animated Granny to wave her jam spoon in her clear acrylic dome which also lights up when the accompanying Tossing Race becomes animated, thrilling the kids (and adults alike too). Tilly painstakingly created a special rolling and rocking motion for the whole rocket ship at regular intervals to coincide with a very convincing ‘firing up’ laser show from the thrusters and the cauldron coupled with the sound from the main restaurant speakers of a genuine lift off.
2003 - Eastland, Ringwood
In 2003 at Eastland Shopping Centre there was a generous space ready for a largish device coupled with the ongoing formula for matching mechanical mural. Peter Von had always wanted to do something three dimensional as a tribute to the old graphic of the saluting dog in the chef’s cap they used as decoration so often. So it was not difficult to persuade Allen, (If not Helen) that they desperately needed a ‘Steam Powered, Dog Steered Pancake-Delivering Gyrocentrifice’ for the main area ... basically a fancy helicopter (Just don’t let Peter Von hear you calling it that!)
Actually, it was some plasticised tablecloth fabric that he’d seen at Spotlight (pale blue with white tulips) that got him thinking how marvellous it would look covering the blades of a helicopter . Of course nothing as modern as a petrol driven airship design would do. It would have to be steam powered and totally non-aerodynamic with lots of detail (as usual) to puzzle the eye and confuse the mind. Nothing from the Victorian era Peter Von seems to be perpetually lost in was ever streamlined, so a basic frame of linked circles in polished aluminium was the starting point. He settled on ex-scaffold tube that although dinted he managed with wet and dry paper to clean it up to the point where it could be rolled after it was polished professionally.
Trying to find an aluminium welder willing to tackle such a large 65mm diameter tube proved challenging. Tyne bell Engineering readily agreed but got into strife almost straight away with severe warping, a common problem with welding aluminium. They solved this dramatically by holding one part down with a work bench loaded with heavy scrap, then driving a big fork lift back and forwards over the completed circles until the twists flattened out! Not to be recommended! It only worked without denting the tube because Peter Von bought scaffold tube which is drawn to stricter guidelines. Phew! Incredibly the completed chassis only weighed 13 kilo, a real plus when the finished job has to hang from the ceiling over the customers!
Next job was to find a sculptor experienced and inexpensive enough to competently make a replica of the "Big Cooking Dog" from the graphic as the pilot. Since it had to be also light weight and about German Shepherd size, foam rubber seemed to be the answer. Peter Von’s old friend Laila was too busy lecturing and recommended Hayley; a final year arts student who quickly and confidently modelled up the ‘woofer’ you see piloting it’s very own Gyrocentrifice. Peter Von made the leather-look upholstered red chair it sits in from foam, dress fabric, aluminium sheet and good luck. Even he was impressed with the final result.
The story as told by Peter Von...
“Sadly my days of salvage yard forays had suddenly drawn to a close after state government regulations were brought in governing access to material 'deemed dangerous in public access areas’ such as scrap yards. This meant I had to be more creative in my constant search for the ideal found object. It was to be my biggest challenge. I was yet again back in the family room, sneaking the aluminium chassis back in while the Missus was at work, confident that she wouldn’t mind the inconvenience of not being able to get to the cellar which was effectively her larder, for the big chassis in the way. Surely I couldn’t be expected to work out in the heat or the rain or whatever?
I’d already done a full working drawing of my proposed ‘Steam Powered Gyrocentrifice’ before the scrap yard ban hoping to find parts approximate to what I’d drawn. The challenge was on and the stops were pulled out! Starting from the front as you view the completed device today; the clear acrylic dome covering the stack of pancakes I had bought earlier on the off chance. It was such a great shape having been a sort of cover over a public telephone in a shopping centre. Although it was virtually unbreakable and incredibly expensive to produce for its original intention, it bore the scars of its past life, phone numbers and expletives scored into the surface by the dozen, dating back 20 years or more. No worries, I thought when I came across it at Trash and Treasure, I’ll just polish the marks out. Giving up after a fruitless hour I took it to my friend John from Adelaide Plastics, he’ll know. “Can’t be done old son, it’s made from carbon fibre and if I put it on the buff, it will wander all over the place and do nothing but root it up, mate”.
Great news! “Actually there is a way” he volunteered. “If you’ve got nothing better to do for the next few days, you could sand the scratches out, but do me a favour, leave the scratch saying ‘Darren’s a poof’' I love it!, ‘then polish it by hand with different grades of paper until you’re just down to Brasso, no heat mind you, that’s the secret”. So that’s exactly what I, or rather we did, as the Missus helped, feeling sorry for that old fool out there in his big glasses fogged up by frustration. We didn’t get all the marks out. (and left ‘Darren’s a poof’ simply because it was scored so deep, we had no choice.)
The dome had a section cut out of it originally which was ideal as the windscreen to the pancake stack. As the delivery vehicle travelled about the skies above Melbourne in the old days bringing pancakes to the Ladies in the Tossing Race, its blue rotors gently announcing its arrival, should the customer look up. Looking from the front again, the red gas tank and ring with burners to keep the pancakes hot were constructed from a pair of plastic hanging baskets, with plastic pipe ring and hand made copper and brass burners. The giant fry pan full of foam pancakes were the top of a giant plastic plant pot given a false bottom and a handle. Rather obvious, the fancy brass uprights were new from the Brass Bed shop, holding the windscreen. The gorgeous headlights were a combination of small hanging baskets (for plants) with stainless steel salad bowls as reflectors. They were trimmed with brass and held on brass tube supports with fittings from a lighting shop and yellow acrylic ‘glass’.
Moving along, the supports for the marvellous old Veteran era steering wheel were from a truck of about 1910, once part of the wings of a light aircraft with a dome nut adorned brass hub from some mystery machine. The steering wheel itself I bought cheap, conveniently burnt in one section which I cut out, aircraft style hence the gap. The dog, in rubber foam as explained earlier, had a central core of rubber garden hose that realistically flexed when the dogs paws, bolted to the steering wheel, were turned as if being steered. The beautifully made chefs’ cap in stiffened cotton was the careful creation of the main teacher of millinery at Trade School. The red wing chair base was nothing more than old tops or lids of cooking pots polished and clear coated and the instruments brass work from some old alarm clocks on brass tube ‘pods’. I trimmed the brass chair with brass bed knobs and shiny aluminium twisted rope, actually heavy electrical cable stripped of its outer plastic casing.
Obviously that’s a brass bath heater from the 1920s behind the red chair, a sort of chimney to the giant steam ‘boiler’ resplendent in red, trimmed with blue, with its fancy little fire door. The ‘boiler’ presented itself as one of the most difficult things to make on the whole project. I needed it to be extra light as the weight seemed to be climbing with every decorative bit I added, since I couldn’t find anything light and large. I solved it by buying a blow up rubber gym ball and built a classic paper mache shape over it. Eventually it worked but it took too much PVU glue and paper before it became rigid enough. I had to be extra careful not to lose the pure ball shape; it was a messy job that took way too long. The base of the boiler is actually a mix of two large plastic plant pots with cut-outs.
The brass bath heater became an ideal way to hide the two electric motors, one for the rotors, the other for the wood trimmed pistons and the yellow fancy wheels which, when activated looked so realistic, in an absurd way. Once again Kingsley White came to my rescue mechanising everything. I had great fun using cables to get the big tail to link and move convincingly with the steering wheel. Each time the motor turned the old steering wheel just enough to give perfect imitation of steering, the dogs whole body flexed due to the rubber inner core.
Eventually, with time running out and still the Tossing Ladies in their helicopters and gyrocopters moving mural to be done to match the Gyrocentrifice; I turned my attention to the rotors.
They needed to be unnaturally fat and shapely. Nothing like the thin modern efficient rotor, to balance the considerable mass of the Gyrocentrifice. I simply constructed a smart framework of rigid MDF. Light and strong over which a wizard of a seamstress, Jenny Nurnam, expertly and laboriously stretched and hand stitched the table cloth fabric. She created very satisfactory hollows and hills which looked even better when rotating on the hour, slowly you understand, nothing too risky.
Now as everybody knows, all steam powered Gyrocentrifice’s have not only skids to land on but special spring-mounted skids able to take shocks of rough weather landings. So hence the elegant ones you see before you today. Blue shock absorbing rubber sandwiched between two layers of MDF (my favourite building material). You may ask how such a rigid material could be coaxed into such sinuous curves – well as Clint Eastwood is fond of saying ‘Not a lot of people know that’ and no wonder.
In truth to get the shapes I merely cut them to the correct length and dropped them into his big fish pond for about 12 hours until I could twist them into any shape I liked! I then had to strap them to hold shape until they dried – perfect!
We’re getting close now and raring to finish, not much more than the boiler tubes to do dramatically bold from front to rear, gorgeous in candy apple blue and silver and resplendent in rivets. Plastic sewer pipe, the usual answer, paint finish by ‘Sign Language’, with a $1.50 plastic flower pot at the end. Starting very effectively from a fibreglass casting, I made of a big cauldron lid to keep the weight down, (now becoming close to the max for the restaurant roof) embellished with silver painted wooden letters from Spotlight, spelling out ‘PANCAKE TOSSING RACE STEAM POWERED GYROCENTRIFICE', in 19th century style.
Time to call in the troops ... Ian Dixon the ultra-fit surfer-turned electrician, turned up to connect up everything ‘sparky'. He rapidly wished he hadn’t, given the almost impossible task of electrifying motors through a maze of pierced pipes, cobbled connections, inadequate apertures, hopeless holes and perilous penetrations. Day turned into night as Ian weaved his magic, literally rewriting the electrician’s bible, whilst Jenny Nurham, the serial stitcher, tackled the blue tablecloth fabric of the moveable tail plane, hand sewing herself into history. Finally after the all night vigil from hell, the Gyrocentrifice stood all agleam and aglow in the morning sun, complete except for the rotors, too large to fit in the truck in one piece. Ian Dixon made the second mistake of his life in staying to see the Gyrocentrifice leave.
All was jolly until the truckies tried to lift it onto the small hand truck they had all agreed would do; to take it out into the street to the big van.
It was simply too awkward to lift! No one could get a proper grip. Eventually desperation took over and it happened, but as is the way with these things, the worst was yet to come. It was too tall to fit under the arch over the front gate by three inches. Simple, we tilt to one side, “Look out it’s going over!” big confab, “Sorry mate. Not going anywhere” sort of jokes.
There was only one thing for it and that was to take out the small trolley and carry it under the arch and out by brute force only. “No way”, I can still hear myself saying, “All the polished metal, if we even touch the ground!" Well truckies are not known to just stand around and so that’s exactly what they did, fingers actually scraping on the ground she went under and out with only one casualty. As the Gyrocentrifice had to hang from a central point, Kingsley White had calculated and provided a specially engineered cable, which was to attach to a hanging point in the roof. This cable had a yellow compliance certificate fixed in place on the very top point of the Gyrocentrifice when she went under the arch. The fit was so tight that this piece of stiff yellow card tore off! Now, without it at the other end, all the months of work, isn’t going anywhere, it simply won’t be put up. Do you think we would find it? We searched the street, the garden, even bribing some kids to look with promises of modest riches. To no avail, the certificate had simply disappeared! And with it any hope of it all happening over there. At this point, after working all night, Ian Dixon the electrician went home. Although the ‘Steam Powered Pancake Tossing Race Gyrocentrifice’ was disappearing down the road in a big truck bound for Melbourne, I knew the loss of the compliance tag would create a big problem for the boys over there: as it turned out I needn’t have worried, but that’s another story." Peter Von.
2000 - Scandalous Characters From The Olympic Games
Now for a change of direction, but just as challenging, was The Doncaster Party room. Allen requested a series of ‘panels’ celebrating the coming Olympic games to Sydney. Knowing Peter Von’s sardonic side he wanted them funny, but authentic looking as if taken from old newspaper reports. Delving deep into his old engravings, Peter Von began to put together the set of ‘Scandalous Characters from the Olympic Games of Yesteryear’.
Thus twelve ‘fictitous’ characters from past games in other places in the world were photographically enlarged to fill the walls of the party room. Each was individually captioned, each situation more absurd than the rest but seemingly for real. Peter Von enhanced the silly old engravings with drawings, leaving the best fun for the printed captions, absolutely his forte because of his newspaper background and knowledge of language of the past. The complete set fitted the party room walls perfectly, apparently so successful during the actual games that it was decided to leave them up. They are still there to this day.
2005 - The Giant Coffee Pot at Highpoint
In 2005 Peter Von embarked on his last device for The Pancake Parlour restaurants. The Giant Coffee Pot!
The story as told by Peter Von...
"Coffee being just one of the things Lovely! Pancakes ‘does’ so well, let’s celebrate it! First go looking for likely bits: no good going to the scrap yard, the rules changed years ago, and besides nothing good is actually turning up these days. So off to the metal spinner who makes the truck size wheat silo lids I then used to make the giant wind-up-watch clocks from.
Beauty! Out the back I find the perfect starting piece, a rusty but big circle of steel, a one off trailer that didn’t work. Not for sale? Bring in the Missus, ‘The Persuader’. Forty dollars lighter and ten minutes later, I noticed on the way out a cute largish spun flangey thing. Also rusty, but not terminally so. Now I’ve (potentially) got the base of a ‘giant coffee pot’ and the top circular bit so off home and into it. I start with the drawing now that I’ve got the scale, using the bits.
The criteria as I see it ... It has to be mechanical; it must be really big, imposing, lots of fun, beautifully finished and appearing to pour coffee convincingly enough to satisfy ME. Also light enough to bolt imposingly to the big windows at Highpoint and not be of any danger or annoyance to the customers.
Taking one of our own collection of antique coffee pots to go by, I’m impressed by the hexagonal enamel one with the glass top under which coffee used to bubble quietly. So I decided to replicate that one, only BIG, and what about a giant cup into which the coffee can pour?
The Missus, bans the making of this inside the house (as has been my usual antics). Besides, once made, how am I going to get it out as the base is 1200mm wide and the doorway 700mm?
So outside in the heat of the backyard, I start to fold up the sheet metal sides to make the final skin of MDF. Then out to Stevens Sheet Metal to roll up the spout in steel sheet. Thinking back to all those lovely fancy machines I saw in America, I design and cut out of the obligatory thick MDF, the fanciest brackets I can conjure up, together with a giant mock ‘tilting’ wheel and the curliest, funniest handle possible. Then out with the router to fill the garden with dust and the neighbourhood peace with noise. It’s so hot that I can’t handle the metal anymore so it's into the separate room at the end of the drive where we keep our rare veteran car. It’s about now that my age and arthritic hands kick in to make me decide to finish working and retire ... and soon.
Because this room has big opening glass doors to allow the car to be taken out, it’s filled with some of our collection of objects. This instance related to cars, so laboriously and with a heavy heart, I painstakingly proceeded to mask off all of the stuff in this room with sheet plastic to protect it for when I start to rub down the gaps on the corners of the coffee pot where the MDF skins meet.
I’d previously used an entire 5kg tin of car filler which had to be smoothed off. Although fitted with overhead fans I couldn’t use them for fear of spreading the copious dust, so in my enveloping dust mask I battled in the heat. About an hour into rubbing down by hand, the clear plastic sheet taped to the walls became so heat affected that it gave up, slowly lowering itself onto my sweat and dust covered body where it stuck. I think it was about this point that I started to weep and I had weeks still to go! I had already found long ago that it was no good farming stuff out to be done because most people simply couldn’t understand what I was on about, and I ended up simply wasting their time and mine, so I had no choice than to continue. I literally stuck to the job, so to speak. My spirits lifted when I was able to give the completed body a coat of the beaut blue enamel. All the hours I’d spent preparing paid off and when I attached the yellow painted fancy handle it looked so good that even I was excited.
I made the giant cup hexagonal to match the coffee pot, covering a wooden frame with thin MDF bent into shape via dunking overnight in the fish pond to soften it. When I painted it white, ready for the mock coffee to pour endlessly into it somehow I became even more excited! But how to make the ‘coffee’ pour?
Looking backwards into the past (yet again) I remembered how the old striped barber’s poles looked endlessly moving without going anywhere so there must be a way I can use that illusion, after all it’s simply a spiral to nowhere.
Another cup of strong coffee, more brain cells alert, of course! Off to the toy shop to buy some foam ‘pool snakes which were simply bright coloured plastic foam about one and a quarter metres long in solid soft rod form used to entertain kids in swimming pools. Right, wrap them around a solid core (actually my didgeridoo which was handy), bits of gapher tape and give it a spin – magic! Making it permanent with rubber glue around a long cardboard tube, fit a bearing to the top that fits into one of the spout ends, carefully brush with brown paint exactly the same colour as coffee and add some painted ‘shine’ highlights.
I next fitted a reliable motor inside the giant cup, a little outside my mechanical skills, believe it or not. Jjust in case I lined the cup with heat resistant foam which also deadened the sound of the motor. The big tilting wheel on the side of the device following the pattern of the giant coffee grinder wheel at the Jam Factory I made out of routed MDF (yet again). Once the shadowed computer cut lettering ‘ANYTIME IS COFFEE TIME’ was on the gorgeous blue and red wheel, the effect was utterly convincing. Only one thing missing now and proving difficult to find – a knob big enough for the clear acrylic dome (rejected by the makers as too wrinkly) at the very top. But what is brass and bold? When in doubt, the Op shop and there it was, up the other way, an old brass spittoon of all things! Perfect! The truckies arrived, as always believing they’d seen it all after the years they’ve been picking up ‘things’ from our place. For some reason they took a real liking to this one." Peter Von.
2007 - Fountain Gate, Narrewarren
Upon Peter Von’s retirement in 2006, director Simon Meadmore commissioned world class designers Kube for the Fountain Gate restaurant.
The Pancake Parlour’s expansion into the South-Eastern suburbs was the most expensive and attractive store in their 40 year history.
The “Granny Plane” that pedalled purposefully every day and night for over 12 years at Forest Hill Chase, was decommissioned and totally rebuilt for the new Fountain Gate Pancake Parlour which opened in December 2007.