It's been ages since I've posted anything about Australasian Radio Productions (a radio serial production company owned by novelist Morris West from 1946 to the early 1950s). As well as the Lewis and Skinner signwriting documentsI found at the Footscray demolition site in February (and that started me on this whole ghost signs adventure), I also found a series of books of correspondence to and from ARP - they were found together because both companies were bought out by UK advertising company Frank Mason which ended up in Footscray in 1960.
Anyway, today I was
passing by the former ARP studio in Smith Steet, Collingwood - it's now the
Travellers' Bookshop - and went in and spoke to the owner. I was
telling the story in West's biography of him hauling endless bags of
sawdust (for sound proofing) up the stairs to the soon-to-be first floor
radio studio, which was constructed very much on the cheap by a then-penniless West. She answered that she had been wondering why sawdust kept
falling inside an internal wall cupboard reaching up to the first
floor...she hadn't seen or heard any building works. :)
