Travis Head Goes Village: A Mural in Marrickville

PL reports on a rare sighting of Travis Head in Sydney's Inner West

George Stavros OG, the boss at Espresso Connect Marrickville

Around the time the ECB announced Brendon McCullum was toast, Travis Head’s moustacheoid mug was being rendered, in shades of green and gold, onto the wall of an Inner West coffee shop.

There’s something appropriate about that. After all, it was Travball that delivered the fatal blow to Bazball in Perth at the start of last summer. England took a long time to bleed out, and some might say they’re still bleeding, but it was that Head innings in Perth that signalled the start of the end for that bombastic experiment.

On first hearing the news, I’d speculated that locals had chipped in to celebrate the Sir Trav Slayer of Bazball, but that wasn’t it.

On Tuesday, Trav was in Marrickville shooting an advertisement for the summer that involved the painting of a mural on the wall of Espresso Connect Marrickville, purveyor of fine coffee machines and accessories since the turn of the century.

Et Al was all over this yarn. The People’s Republic of Marrickville is my turf, and I, as I explained to the crew shooting the advertisement, am a local busybody. Opening an interesting new business? That’s me pushing the door open when you’re fitting out the shop to see how it’s all going. In the process of making a new beer? Hope you don’t mind if I look over your shoulder and mutter about the tiresome ubiquity of pale ales. Drove over from the Eastern suburbs to queue up for Vietnamese? I heard. I got this former swamp covered.