Just a minute! Here I am. I ‘ve been chuffing along trying to balance work stuff and life stuff. Gawd, I’ve got to practice that. A lot. I am not good at it and I used to be under the delusion that I was fabulous at it, but anyway and anyway again…I always miss the blog world and its great company so I’ll just stutter along as I can.

So starting with a short one. 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. 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.

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.

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?

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.

Max 43

I ate enough ice last time to sink the Titanic .

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.

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!

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.

“True, you ride the finest horse…”

I found a white moth spinning on the kitchen floor the other day. It was upsidedown, spinning, performing backstroke. Young Belle the cat was just starting to show interest so I rescued the creature. I wasn’t sure at first about touching it although it was quite an elegant beast. I found a piece of newspaper and helped it to it’s feet. Shooed the cat away to her food bowl. Encouraged, the moth consented to a ride on the paper and we went to the back door. This took a number of attempts, as it kept marching off into space and fluttering to the ground. I even let it walk across my palm at last. It had a lovely, busy step.

Finally, I had moth ready for the backyard. The catflap was open which solved my problem of balancing the moth and opening the door. Outside was a magnificent day. I showed the moth the day, poking the paper out of the flap a little for him to see. He stayed perched on the edge of the words, surveying and seemed to be reluctant to leave. Maybe it was the birds? Maybe he was afraid? Don’t moths come in from outside? I carefully brought the paper back in and sensed something wrong with my new friend.

As I lifted the sheet he keeled over in the way things do in movies. A complete stop. He dropped dead! His wings were already neatly folded . What! It was a little sad. At first I though he was pretending just as a praying mantis had done to me once. Just tricking but he was already gone.

I suppose the pale fellow had a heart attack and died. Or something just ran out – a certain thread. It was probably his time – that’s what all the spinning was about. Still, better for him to see the beautiful tree in my yard once more than die under the forensic mischief of my cat.

I have a history of insect rescue even though I had forgotten that I did.

I have an old scar on my hand, a small one in the shape of a smile. I have had this scar since childhood and every so often I remember that I made it rescuing a moth from a spiders web. Well, I was young and I didn’t think about the spider. I did succeed in saving the moth and as the spider scuttled towards me I cut my hand by knocking it brutally out of the way of those shiny black legs. Ouch, I pushed the little flap of skin back down and it healed neatly into a little sign.

Yesterday, I was gardening. Taking my time. Watching things unfold. I saw four tiny spots of glowing blue hover above the lawn, close to where I was sitting. The blue was a dark blue, luminous almost an electric hue. At first I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. Mini-ufos? It was like that but don’t be silly. Slowly, or was it instantly, I saw translucent outlines and the pattern filled in. The blue was the bright decoration on the transparent bodies of two dragonflies. Tiny dragonflies. Their blue spots catching the sun, the rest a liquid shape too clear to see at first. Just gorgeous. They were sniffing about the grass, on an angle, head lower than tail. I watched these magic dots dart and pause. I wouldn’t have seen them if I hadn’t been taking a moment.

There comes a time in every young blogs life when the search term post must appear. My apologies to all who may not have found quite what they were looking for but searching can lead us all down the odd blind alley.

Paddock Thong

Of course, there is probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for this search but I have my own interpretation. Do I ever mention underwear? Why does the thong make me laugh? Could it be Borat and his mankini? Could this go back to the 90’s and my delight at Kramer from Seinfeld and the man-ssiere?

Ahhh, I loved this search because it made me think of undies /thongs, specially developed to wear whilst doing such things as feeding the cattle, rounding up the chooks or mending fences. A slightly rustic colour range, I’d imagine: thorn, stone, beige and carkey(mis-spelt because it is Friday afternoon and I have gone blankies). Still, carkey could be a good enough term except it raises images of a tarnished silver rather than the traditional mucky green. Army colours. Camouflage patterns. Very funny undies and durable…when I did a Google search using ‘paddock’ and ‘thong’ my blog ranks at the top of the list so that seems to say something… but I never talk about undies, just kangaroos and blokes wearing pairs of summery thongs (flipflops), on their feet. That is how keyword searches work.

Cows Bum

Well obviously, but I hope you didn’t mean me…lol.

Crabby Kangaroos

I’ve had the odd pic of a kangaroo and I am sure I use the word crabby so this searcher found themselves here. I guess any roo would be crabby if they were constantly being trumpeted as the new, lean, green meat.

I have no personal experience of kangaroos getting crabby or even slightly annoyed but it has been well documented that under some circumstances they can do you a nasty injury with their powerful legs. I guess, the secret is to not make them feel affronted or miffed. I am not sure what makes a roo miffed but usually, they just run away so it isn’t much to worry about really.

Giant Birds in the Melbourne CBD

Loved this idea. I haven’t seen any wandering between the sky scrapers or bobbing about in the Yarra but they could be there. I have seen the eagle {?) statue sitting solemnly with its back to the railroad near Spencer St. Could that be one. I suppose I may never know.

How to cope with 40 degree heat?

Fridge, air-con, laying low, blinds down, complain (optional but I find it helps), ice cubes, icy poles, sun screen, shopping in big centre with air-con if you can stand it, wet flannel on forehead , lots of iced water… I am the wrong person to ask because I usually go into shock when the temperature stays in the 40’s for a few days.

Pidgeons flying in head superstition

Pidgeons flying at my head was the subject of the post that brought this searcher here but I think ‘flying in one’s head’ is much more interesting.

gerello roast

It is ironic that quite a few people find me with this search. I have no idea about the ins and outs of cooking this type of roast. I know nothing. I hadn’t even heard of it until Jayne mentioned it some time ago in a comment here. Now I see the signs in the butcher’s window but it is still a mystery to me. How is it different? I am not sure.

That’s enough. Have a lovely weekend.

old tractor

Before I take my place on the verandah and enjoy the last of this warm Spring day I thought I would drop you a line and share a bit of machinery. Well, isn’t that the done thing?

I spotted this old tractor a while ago in a little Victorian country town in the Western District (well there abouts). I often see interesting things in front yards. Ok, well usually plaster flamingos and so forth but I find what people have sitting around on display quite amazing sometimes.

I know this type of tractor but I have forgotten its brand name. I know some people collect and restore them. It is a classic piece of farm machinery enjoying its retirement in full view of all who pass, with a stump and something else rusty and intriguing for company. What was its name though?