Nothing but Questions

A funny place, the dream house. I will admit, consciously I don’t really want to live in such a primative shack, but something in me must, because the words dream house flutter into mind every time I see one of these little cottages.

This cottage would have been kitchen, sitting room and bedroom to its inhabitants. Was there a skillion? Side note – an Ask Oxford search will not bring up a definition for skillion but Dictionary.com does. Skillion meaning ‘lean-to or shed’ – Australian.

Hearth and home
The chimney is very short. It wouldn’t have been practical to have a wooden section above a spark exhaling chimney, so it must be incomplete.

You can’t help noticing the impressive size of the exotic trees growing closely around the cottage. A mono-culture, were they self-seeded from an original or deliberately planted in an embracing circle? It seems to me that maybe the company of gum trees was not what this early builder craved. Protection from the wind, yes. Something from home, yes. How they must have loved to see their little European seedlings grow.

The trees possibly help date the cottage, and they could be adding some damage. A section of the roof has caved in, tree branch or old age – it is hard to tell.

How old is this structure and whose cottage was this? Is it held in the same family? Does it catch their gaze and talk to them quietly under the trees?

The door looks familiar. Brittle as it is, it doesn’t match the age of the house. The roof is a ring-in too – are there shingles underneath? I couldn’t see any trace of them. Bricks look hand-made, wood is weathered.
This building is near Wangaratta. If anyone knows more about it I’d love to hear from you.

Sharing the same area as the house is this.

Rammed earth walls?



And this.

The bricks look the same as those used in the house.

Little Treasures

I bought this book purely for the cover. Isn’t it lovely? I would not mind owning the cape the girl in the foreground is wearing, or the case, or the brolley. Or for that matter the hat and the sailing boat. The colour is still vibrant even though the book was published in America in 1916. It is a romantic illustration.

Click if you want to see a larger image.

My discovery inside was this hand-written library inscription. Isn’t it great to see absolutely no barcodes, not even stamps? The hand writing is personal and telling of a less complex time, and I think it adds to the charm of the book, especially since it gives it a bit more of a back story.

The inscription says Corindhap, which turns out to be a little town about 140 odd kilometres from Melbourne, between Ballarat and Colac. It was a gold mining town and once was called Break of Day. Google wasn’t giving me much more than that, so I will have to visit at some stage and see what I can discover. Two things I love about this – an old book floats back up miles away from its home – not strange at all – but lovely to think who may have held it before, and I get a travel suggestion for a $1.

Unsung

It is strange how a place can draw you in. It wasn’t the grandest house, but the red bricks attracted me, so beautifully clean and laid square. The house had white textured roughcast features. If you walked around to one side, a lovely round window, a bullseye, awaited your delight. Here, a blue kookaburra looked back at you, surprising, from the deep blue glass. See my new header above for an image of that. Through the lawn was an old edged path, god I love an old path, which curled its way to the front door. Perhaps the house may have been a little self-conscious of its big bones, but it was strong enough for generations.

That was what this house seemed to say to me – Don’t worry, I’m strong. I’ll last a long time.

The garden had old fashioned plants – bulbs forgotten to drift back up in spring. Grape hyacinths, daffodils. Roses, a camelia in full bloom. Plants that were busy together, their generous colour coming through as traces of an old pattern. The gratafication for years, perhaps, of at least one gardeners heart.

The fence, that often overlooked artefact, had taken good, careful labour to build. Moss found a cool, beautiful home there, time to settle and grow.

Standing empty, this home seemed to me to be quite at peace with itself. As I stayed awhile, taking photos in the quiet, golden afternoon, the mood took me as well. I felt slow and calm. Something without measure could be found in the company of this house. Intangible, I love that word, something that you are hard pressed to quantify beyond mentioning memory and bricks and mortar.

Nice step

Well that was the beginning of last Spring.

Summer brought the bloodthirsty carvers in, and here I am sad to tell you, this bright house bit the proverbial dust. I hear the council wanted a car park. Yes, a car park (can you hear Joni singing in the wind?), or, I expect, a new building without the craft.





It seems apt that they draw a hessian curtain around the destruction. I am sure it wasn’t to save a passerby the distress of watching the heartless affair. I am sure it wasn’t from embarrassment. I am sure it wasn’t to give privacy to a dying home.

This is how I will remember you. You were humble, and there are grander buildings than you being cut down everywhere, but the thing is, it is all adding up.

Finally a Kookaburra

Just a minute! Here is a kookaburra.

Do you know how long I have been trying to take photos of the kookaburras around my house? How long is a piece of string? Absolutely infinite in this case. The blighters always arrive when I am unprepared in dress, position or motivation. I have never been the type to run out in the park in my pjs so that gets in the way most of the time. So, finally, when I was in the country the other week, I found a kookaburra willing to pose for a photo . We reversed the car to get closer and still he posed. We opened a car window and he turned to give us a regal look. Satisfied we were no immediate problem to his majesty, he turned for a profile shot. He is a beauty. Merry, merry king of the bush is he. Long may you reign king kooka.

Spirit of Place

Not too many words today. Instead, I wanted to show you some of the photos
I have taken in the Shire of Murrindindi over the last couple of years. Murrindindi
shire has suffered beyond belief in the bushfires. It is a very large shire and as I
tend to stay in the valleys, I can’t include majestic hillsides, but my valley
memories are precious to me.

I will cherish this beautiful country for all my days.

Coming to see me.

I fell in love on the spot, beautiful horse. Stopped and took your photo from
the road.

Visited this place more than once. A place I love, down a magical road,
looking for a town that never was, but should have been, in between those
rolling hills.

Evidence of an old railway line. This bridges a trickle of water.

One country bus shelter. The chairs are pure country ingenuity.

I met this bird as it danced in the afternoon light. It had a chest of the richest blue.

Quiet, the sky changes every moment.

The clean limbs of a gum, the winter look of the exotic cousins.

Finding ants, you didn’t mind me. Sweetheart.

Orange Whip

About 7.30 am.

The sky looked so beautiful this morning…hotting up…the calm before the storm. Actually, I would like a storm, with sleet and bucketing, gushing rain. What are the odds?

Here it comes again

Melbourne weather!

Last week we had 3, or was it 4, days in the 40’s , lows (ha ha) over-night in the high 20’s. We cooked, we boiled, we swore. My favourite 40+ day was the Thursday, I think, when I felt phantom cool breezes in the late afternoon and had to have a cold shower to stop shivering. Everything in the house was warm, even the bed which is a new definition in horror. The fan died, it is hanging its head in the garage. The plants were shocked stiff, then dazed, then the brown crawled in.

It was a hell of a week but ever since I have been better adjusted to the heat. You can throw a few 30 + days at me and I have to ask…is it hot today? Isn’t it just pleasantly warm?

I think it took a long time for people to get over it all. I know I was tired afterwards. It felt like I’d just recovered from a flu. Slightly groggy, slightly soft around the edges.

Anyway, Melbourne, look what you’ve got planned for us tomorrow. We have wind, we have rain and oh, yes, we have another day of 43 degree heat. Where’s my icecubes.

From the Bureau of Meteorology:

Forecast for Saturday

Sunny day. Isolated light showers late in the evening. Winds north to northeasterly averaging up to 40 km/h tending northwesterly 35 to 50 km/h during the morning. Winds shifting cooler, gusty southwesterly 35 to 45 km/h during the evening.

City Windy and shower or two.

Min 24

Max 43

I ate enough ice last time to sink the Titanic .

Poor old Pentridge

Interesting combination – a latte in the prison reception building

On Sunday we went to see how historic Pentridge Prison (circa 1851 ) was holding up in the good suburb of Coburg. This site was part of Jeff Kennett’s effort to sell the government assets of the State of Victoria while he had the red hot chance. Apparently the developers got it for a tuneful $18 million. Lucky ducks. I have been concerned, ever since, that unsympathetic actions would be taken at this site, despite the reassurances of the developers.

Currently, there is a great deal of controversy over the proposal to build an 18 storey apartment tower inside the exercise yard at the south-west corner of the site – that means slap bang inside an historic section. I’m sure I remember all these promises that the heritage and ambience of the site would be conserved and preserved and all the other ‘erveds’?

According to The Moreland Leader , the National Trust has deemed the proposed tower ‘one of the worst heritage compromises in Victoria’, and described the proposal as ‘virtually ignoring the historic values of the prison ‘. The developers, on the other hand, intend to construct buildings of up to 10 storeys across many locations on the site. Well, that’s what I was worried about.

At the moment the council is blocking the proposal for the 18 storey tower but there is always VCAT for the developers – so, um, now there’s a worry.

The South-west corner – marked by the arrow

I can’t help comparing all of this to the conservation of the Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin, Ireland. Kilmainham is now a museum and its integrity as a heritage site has been secured. Obviously the imprisonment and execution of nationalist leaders and protestors gave this gaol a completely different place in the heart of the Irish public but still…I imagine there are more than enough stories in ‘The Bluestone College’ , as Pentridge was sometimes known, to justify its full preservation.

Changing the image of an old prison must be like pushing the proverbial up hill – indulge your senses is an odd idea.

I was wondering how the developers were going to try and cheer the place up a bit. Bluestone is not the easiest stone to soften without, for example, elaborately carved bargeboards, something which would be inappropriate for this site.

D division – where Ronald Ryan was hanged.

They have dolled up a section for visitors to inspect and you can walk in and see the roses and formal hedges planted along D division. It softens it but it is hard to reconcile the history with this formal garden aesthetic. After all, Pentridge is basically an historic, rather morbid looking bluestone prison.

You can’t see very much of what is going on but you can catch a few glimpses here and there.

The prison yard next to D Division, historic buildings on every side.

This is what thick bluestone walls look like when they are cut through to make a new entrance. It is interesting to see the way the wall has been built but I wonder how many holes they are allowed to cut?

Around the corner from Pentridge is another site which could have contributed to this historic precinct.

The plaque reads:

Coburg Historical Society Marker

Site of Police Station 1859 – 1877

The station was in a bluestone house erected by the Public Works Department.
It moved to a new address in Sydney Road in August 1877. The building was demolished in 1986.

This is how the site looks now. The Coburg Council demolished the property after
buying it from a Mr. John Edwards.

The smell has it

A sign in the back streets of the city.

About three million years ago (OK, last December) lavenderbay suggested I might like to answer this meme. Well, I am slowly catching up with things, so here are some of the smells that come to mind. I haven’t included the usual, house selling, bread baking and fresh coffee smells but of course I love them too.

1. List five smells you love.

1. Horses, of course, of course. Horses in wet weather or warm. The best perfume I know.
2. The overwhelming smell of leather in saddlery shops. I associate this smell with a little city saddlery I visited as a child. I wish I could remember where it was. It was in the basement of an old building, which you reached by walking down steps into a dimly lit Aladdin’s cave of wigwams for a horses bridle. The smell was absolutely heady amongst the polished saddles. I don’t think the modern supermarket style horse stores are quite the same.
3. Fresh basil and coriander. Magnificent.
4. Ripe nectarines – fresh off the tree and full of sun
5. Vanilla essence, notes of vanilla in anything really.

2. List five smells you don’t like.

1. Brewery silos that smell to me like burnt biscuits
2. Licorice makes my stomach roll
3. Anatomy museums. Formaldehyde. That creepy smell of preserved things.
4. Eggy, sulphur filled car exhaust while I wait at the traffic lights
5. Moth Balls – can’t stand the smell and I dislike my books smelling like that when I first unpack.

Feel free to have a go at the meme if you are feeling memey!

Greening the Ghost Town

Why do I leave for so long, blog? I don’t know but I must have needed the break. Look at the dust here. I had better shake out the curtains, vacuum the stairs and reply to the kind messages people have left for me. Firstly, a very belated happy 2009 to all that visit here. Happy Christmas and New Year too. One last blast on the party whistle for the holidays that have disappeared faster than I can believe.

What to write about? I am as rusty as the blog is dusty. I will put down my memories from Christmas ‘08. Just for the record.

Well, there was tinsel…

***Skip the next two paragraphs if long descriptions of Xmas decorations are not your thing.

I decided to find the retired decorations from my childhood. They were hidden in a big, cardboard box . Small, ropey pieces of molting tinsel. Sometimes a celluloid angel twinkles, still bright , dishevelled. Here are the holly leaves importantly carrying their sprayed on snow. I have never known a white Christmas, by the way, but at Christmas time sometimes the decorations pretend. Digging further I find a few fragile silver birds that rock when you hold them by the clip and some arthritic wire stars, more like star fish, that I can bend back into shape.

There is recognition and a slight smell of dust and something akin to what? Stationary? Something dry at least but more than that there is a secret ingredient I cannot name. Rustle, a memory shakes free – leaving out biscuits and lime soft drink for Santa…sometimes a beer. The powerful evidence in the morning of an empty plate and glass.

This year we had an artificial tree but I remembered the smell of the pine tree. The silkiness of the needles. Opening that box reminded me of that.

On the road again…

We had a hot country Christmas day – over 38 degrees. No sea breeze for me.

Paper crowns out of Christmas crackers- they always make me laugh. There is something very British sitcom about those hats. A wee bit awkward then people forget they are wearing them.

Christmas Pudding and custard – white hot sunshine outside.

Old pub in a quiet town, old brick walls, interesting bricked in door and uneven patterns (no I haven’t got over the brick thing) and a dream verandah of deep shade where we sat and watched the parade of absolutely nothing saunter down the main street.

Back at the ranch I was spending unwilling time with a hairy huntsman skuttling about behind the TV. (Sounds strange when I put it like that)

I realised recently that many of the hotter months of my life have been haunted by huntsman spiders.

Ironic really, because I am very, very, very, very spider allergic. So much so that I had trouble sleeping thinking about big hoary (should have been hairy) spiders waltzing into the bedroom at night. Closing the door won’t save you. They can flatten out!

Always there are rumours about giant spiders out in the paddocks. I never see those of course but G and my Dad do and they love to tell me about them. That isn’t a big spider…the two I just saw in the paddock were three times as big!

I was going to take a photo of the skittish house visitor but put it off until I couldn’t find him/her for love or money. Stifle my scream.

Christmas morning, fished a drowned ladybug out of the dogs water. An orange with black spots – not a red or yellow. I held her on my finger and sure enough she did a praying mantis and came back to life. Lucky lady.

Another day, watched The Third Man which I love but seem to watch mainly at Christmas time. Please don’t psychoanalyse that…love that moment when a light illuminates Harry Lime; the woman walking away from a burial site twice; the Ferris Wheel; the fingers through the grate and that brooding, crisp 40’s thing that makes me want to grab the dark red lipstick and go back in time.

I’s Christmas pud again on Boxing Day. Oh, it is so good. I am a Christmas Pudding freak and it doesn’t matter if it is 39 degrees (is it 102 Farnheit?) outside. Not one bit, and I do like my white sauce and can even handle a little hard sauce but that is so rich it almost crunches with sugar.

Some gardening with an eye out for those most shivery of beasts, the Joe Blake. Dad walking over in his well worn hat to remind me to take care. I made a lot of noise but still you never know. Snakes will usually get away rather than take you on except for, I believe, the Tiger Snake but everyone has their own theories. When I was having a coffee in town the discussion at the next table was about a brown slithery visitor. The “s” word is in the air all of the time and sightings serve as normal conversational fodder.

I read in an autobiography of an old bushman from the Victorian High Country that he has known Tiger Snakes to cross a river to try and attack him. What stayed with me is his description of the “fizzing” sound they make as their aggression increased.

Mowed the lawn in the back garden. My parents have an aviary with 10 little budgerigars. They silently lined up on one branch, facing me, to watch the progress of the mowing. Silent, observing and quite brave I thought. When the mower left they went back to business as usual. Love the budgies…they were inherited from the previous owner of the property but for the first time in my life my parents have birds and they are spoilt like everything else.

Love the sky up there in the country. I always say up there because Melbourne is about as down here as you can get before you have to make a swim for it to Tasmania.

The sky, sunsets, that hushed moment when the stars switch on and all those stars…magic to a city dweller awash, unwillingly, in artificial lights. Did you see it G? I said to him on the first night. That moment when the stars jump out at you. He did.

The space, everywhere, which is so considerable you can hear it. The wind when it gets up and cools a hot, broiling day.

Dogs, the company of glorious dogs.