“The time has come,’ the Walrus said, to talk of many things.” Well, not many – just one thing – and to break the news straight away Modernist Australia (in its current form) will be winding down in the next few weeks. It’s been a long 12+ years of posts and an intense last few where the lark of alerting you all to the MCM goodness within all our suburbs turned into a hobby and then unintentionally, a job, vacuuming away all personal time, mindspace and fastening ever-tightening manacles chained to digital devices and social media accounts. It’s time to call last drinks and give a few other pursuits which have been lingering for years, a proper run.MA will slowly over this year be transforming into a digital archive. We’ll be hosting all our old listings (over 2000!) for your continued viewing pleasure (fixing all the dead links) with any updates to their fates. But we’ll no longer be posting any new homes. We are not selling the site and won’t be handing over its an operation to anyone else (no matter how kind an offer). We’ll retain the domain. We’ll stay as a quiet entity on Instagram though we’re going to leave Facebook as it is, to our mind, not a worthy forum (and yes we know the same bloke runs both).We will post up a list of resources and a page to help you in the fight to save MCM homes but any new eye candy will have to come from somewhere else. Fortunately over the past decade, many other people and groups have sprung up to fill the void. We will list some great ones, in a later post. This site was never about money or monetizing (urgh hideous word!) and perhaps that was part of our unceasing conundrum. The Rolodex will end but that the work we started there is unfinished and our vast MCM community still demands a centralized, non-social platform based forum for the renovation, refurbishment and materials market, focused on Modernist design and Mid-Century architecture. By this we mean the entire universe involving all high and low – from the roadside pickup of Googie Retro artifacts to the sensitive upkeep of pedigree heritage homes, to historical and local knowledge sharing, because constantly checking a bookmarked collection of FB forums, historical sites, and organisations doesn’t cut it. MCM in Australia culture deserves something far more cohesive and collective. We open the floor to you, dear innovators, to run with that one. The thankyous for all the enduring support are many and some will come in personal emails and later posts, but let’s just say in true Fenechian spirit, we lovesyasall. And we thank you for coalescing around the Modernist Australia experiment in good spirit, humor and many MANY listing alerts.Like true divas our farewell will be protracted with a series of posts over the coming weeks evaluating what we have learned, pet themes, and whatever else we’d like to say before signing off. Stay tuned as we have one last go-around Modernist Australia.
