Carlton Inn demolition 6th anniversary

"On the 15th and 16th of October 2016 Stefce Kutlesovski and Raman Shaqiri, (now and forever known as 'The Corkman Cowboys'), through their company 'Shaq Demolitions', illegally knocked down the Carton Inn at 160 Leicester Street Carlton."

So says the guerilla heritage interpretation in the piddly park they were forced to construct on the rubble of the demolished pub. Sort of rubbing a dog's nose in it when it shits on the carpet.

They were subsequently convicted and fined under several planning, safety and environmental laws and then convicted of contempt and given gaol sentences for not abiding by court orders to clean up the site and create a park.

The park is something to be seen. A patch of roll-out turf, four seats facing the graffiti covered neighbour's wall and a few scraggly plants.

Of course they played the victims:

“I’m no longer Stefce Kutlesovski, I’m the Corkman cowboy. I’ve not just been penalised once, I’ve been penalised for life"

But in the end they got what they wanted, and despite the fines, the cleared site was valued at $10 million and the Planning Minister Richard Wynne determined that a 12 storey building and replica Carlton Inn facades could be built on the site.

The Cowboys found some sidekicks to design something for the site. One came up with:

crystaline iconic form cut and separated from heritage mass

The other followed the addage, doctors bury their mistakes but architects can only gow ivy over theirs.

Neither appears to confirm to the minister's instructions.

However the planning amendment that supposedly would result in rebuilding of a facimile of the pub has the condition that:

If a permit is not approved by June 2022, as required by VCAT, the developer will have to rebuild the pub at their own expense

The outrage continues among ordinary punters who see the park as a joke and the empty site as an affront to the heritage and planning rules. See this Reddit thread for example.

It is now 6 years since the demolition, and the end of 2022 is rapidly approaching with no new building started. Presumably the approval will lapse and the site can be rezoned to prevent any future new building except rebuilding the Corkman just as it was.

I tried to get the empty demolition site listed on the Victorian Heritage Register. It should remain as a monument to developer greed and government incompetence or indifference to heritage.

Canarchaeology

Recent investigative archaeology looking for graves turned up some late twentieth century fill from utility service trenches. We found this coke can in a clearly stratified layer, above natural soil and beneath brick rubble that included both 19th century handmade bricks and ceramics and much more modern material. 

Turns out the guy with the largest Coke can collection in the world's name is Gary

There is a useful Coke can chronological typology if you ever have to date a modern fill layer yourself.

Some dating depends on small details - note the  1987 logo doesn't have the separating red lines either side of the 'l' which starts in 1988. In the late 90s, some block shadow was added, the swoosh was moved to below the lettering instead of through it, and the 'l' gained a full loop. This website is good for a range of cans. 

Since 2030 marks the 75th anniversary of the first Coca Cola can, its not too long before they become real archaeology in Victoria, where there is a 75 year threshold for recording historical archaeological sites on the state heritage inventory. It used to be 50 years but I suspect some of the people in the government heritage bodies started to worry about their own age putting them in the archaeological remains category.

The other very dateable part of modern cans of course, is the ring pull or pull tab. There are many pull tab typologies to obsess over and hours of time wasting to be done - or you can goggle them yourself. Here are a choice few

• A crown sourced international citizen science project
• Their Facebook page

• Ring-Tab Beer Cans Now Count As Historic Artifacts (in USA)

• Simplified typology 

• there was even a festival

• A bit of more serious research

And other bloggers have done even more hyperlinking than you can fit into an afternoon.