After many weeks of portents, the MasterCodemaker can now reveal the identity of the One, true architect of Melbourne.
For over 170 years Melbourne’s collective memory of its origins has complacently believed that Robert Hoddle, who gave his name to the eponymous “Hoddle Grid” that defines the city, was the designer of the city. Recent tagging in the environs of the State Library of Victoria now reveals, once and for all, that it was indeed Robert Russell, whose inaugural design for the City of Melbourne preceded Hoddle’s blatantly plagiarized version by at least one year. This controversy is well known within civic, historical and popular knowledge of Melbourne and its cartographic origins. However it is Hoddle the usurper whose name still defines the city. The MasterCodemaker has gestured to this ancient grudge in a number of earlier posts (most notably In Search of the Gelded Third Ho).
The MasterCodemaker can further reveal, as recent tagging suggests, that both Roberts Hoddle and Russell have been uncritically assumed to be historical figures from the world of humans.
Portrait of Bold Herder Tö in the State Library of Victoria
Found by Jampd: Feb 4th 2011
These portraits that hang in the State Library of Victoria would seem to suggest this (as well as myriad other images in the Public Records Office and the visual archive of Melbourne’s history). These are in fact proof artifacts planted in the collective conscious of the City by Ludean public servants in the 19th century. For both Hoddle and Russell were in fact rival Ludean MasterCodemakers who took the guise of earthly beings in order to undertake the work of urban codemaking for the commonweal of the Ludean nation.
Recent tagging clearly identifies the Ludean countenance of Hoddle (Bolder Herder Tö) and Robert Russell (Rebus Stroller).
Detail of attribution in bottom left corner
Forensic research undertaken into the signature on this portrait of Hoddle is in fact an encrypted message to the Ludean nation. When translated into the Third Language of Ludea it reads as “pretender and fraud”.
Found by Jampd: Feb 4th 2011
Portrait of Rebus Stroller in the State Library of Victoria
Detail of attribution in bottom left corner
Similarly, this detail of the portrait of Rebus Stroller in human form conceals the message in Ludean, “he whose story will one day be told”.
Now the day has finally come, as the culmination of play and the urban rezoning of Melbourne comes to fruition. The MasterCodemaker’s Urban Reclamation Planning application, once approved by the City of Melbourne, will install Rebus Stroller as the rightful surveyor and architect of Melbourne. Soon, commuters will cross the Yarra via the Rebus Stroller Portal, while visitors to the State Library of Victoria will stroll to it, fittingly, along Rebus Stroller Boulevard.
And to put to rest any nagging doubts as to the unique provenance of Rebus Stroller’s inaugural map of the layout of Melbourne, respective maps designed by “Russell” and “Hoddle” are documented in the MasterCodemaker’s Urban Reclamation Planning application currently under consideration by the City of Melbourne.
So as foretold in the annals of the Colophon Rippley Ti (Third Codex, OS::1001), the Gelded Third Ho will soon be also renamed by popular opinion, in your language, as the “Russell Grid”.
