Projecting some hope for the future of the Trak cinema

Burnside would surely wilt – spiritually and culturally – without the dear old Trak.

• Promising signs ahead for Trak cinema
• Regal Cinema back in Burnside Council control

Burnside would surely wilt – spiritually and culturally – without the dear old Trak.

All right, as the name tells you, strictly speaking it’s in Toorak Gardens. But its beneficent presence extends way beyond the bounds of that sylvan micro-suburb and into the bigger, governing bailiwick.

The Trak inspires, entertains, soothes and unfailingly beguiles the good burghers of Burnside at large. What’s more, it has provoked – certainly, for the 30-plus years I have been a patron – the quality of forgiveness.

You forgave it when the projection system malfunctioned and the audience was asked, ever so politely (as happened with Ladies in Black one Sunday late last year), if we wouldn’t mind awfully moving to another of its bijou auditoriums.

You forgave it when the airconditioning laboured that hot afternoon as you sheltered inside from the burning bitumen and relentless automotive boom of Greenhill Rd.

And you forgave its lack of a proper elevator when you saw another senior citizen insouciantly ride up to its silver screens on the single-seat chairlift, legs discreetly crossed.

Grimaldi’s Cafe manager manager Stephen Fahy says patronage had dropped off significantly since the Trak Cinema closed. Picture: Ben Cameron

There is little so morose perhaps as a shuttered and barred cinema. Yet the mood within the building that it has long ruled remains remarkably positive today.

The doctor’s surgery downstairs has closed for business, too, but – in a sign on the door – offers its faithful patients a warm welcome to new premises in Norwood. The law office opposite the stairwell displays an A-frame sign bearing the image of a car, along with the message ‘Can’t get a lawyer? We’ll come to you.’

The travel agency has a generous bundle of lavishly illustrated brochures advocating voyages and safaris. They’re worth picking up for their seductive images alone, even if right now your holiday ambitions reach no further than West Beach caravan park.

And the Trak’s own modest rack of flyers for upcoming attractions survives (just), in its entrance’s crepuscular corridor. It has a whole dozen left proclaiming the future screening of King of Thieves – ‘the unbelievable true story of the Hatton Garden heist’.

Boldly emblazoned immediately below the film’s title are the words ‘Coming Soon’.

We filmgoers devoutly wish this might indeed be so.

Supporting that ring of confidence, and underlining the undying positivity of the place, is the belief expressed by a staff member at the Trak’s restaurant neighbour. Its trade in gently smashed avocado and ‘26-year-old-recipe’ tiramisu is, naturally, assisted a touch by cinema patronage.

Asked by a regular customer about the Trak’s future, she was heard saying: “Somebody’s buying it.”

Films might not be projected right now – but hope undoubtedly is.