In the footsteps of Captain Wales

There are a few obscure references in that title!  

1. The first is to "The Footsteps of Mr Kurtz" an excellent book by Michaela Wong about President Mobutu of the DRC.  (That title is itself a reference to the main character in "The Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad.)
2. The second is to Prince Harry's preferred name when he was in the British Army.  He visited Footscray on Wednesday this week as we did on Friday.

We visited different parts of the area to Harry, and I doubt I'd have got on to the turf of Whitten Oval.  Our reason for visiting was to explore the Heavenly Queen Temple, which we had seen from the train as we went to Williamstown a few weeks ago.  A helpful staffer from the City of Maribyrnong had provided us with a map of the area.

Our route was starting at the station and more or less following the orange line, diverting to the yellow line, then the blue line and back on the green line.  These nice little cottages were in the area around the station.  I hope they survive.

Art of various sorts over the train line.  There is more on the big mural at the end of this post.

More art, this time on a fence around St Monica's Catholic primary School.  The hand-text below the Indian flag notes support by the City of Maribyrnong.

More modern buildings beside the Maribyrnong River.  There are disused railway tracks preserved along there as a nod to the history of the area.

The bouldering wall was a nice initiative in the supports of the bridge taking Hopkins St over the River.

A little obfuscation in the days of AI identity theft.

A distant view of the Temple.

This is "Flathead' made by Les "Lally" Saunders an Elder of the traditional owners as described in this blog about the Sculptures in the area.

We got a closer look at the mural pictured earlier on (3rd image) and I found this blog post explained about it.  It is of Franco Cozzo who ran a furniture store, on which wall it is painted.  According to an article on the Hun website (note: Heesco is the artist who has painted Yarram):

• Heesco is among a group of street artists behind the giant mural of Franco who has been a household name in the area for almost half a century.
• Franco made a name for himself after appearing on TV ads where he would spruik the furniture at his “Brunsawicka” and “Footisgray” stores, in a mix of English, Italian and Greek.
• Heesco said the local icon, painted with his arms outstretched, was welcoming people into Footscray.