Trad Pads ancient and modern in the limelight of The Courier's peek into Ballarat homes

Brigitte Chitryk-Gross calls the Old Curiosity Shop home. PICTURES: LACHLAN BENCE

From a story in The Courier, Ballarat's daily newspaper 

This is one of a series of stories in The Courier about Ballarat homes. 

The Curiosity Shop fascinates the curious.  It sits behind a high fence.  Even the tallest have to stand on tippy-toes to gain the full import of house and garden.  The Courier's article is wonderful if you love looking at houses.  In The Courier's stories you will see some wonderful renovations - and a couple of very thoughtful modern builds (including one of my neighbours).  

Sit back with a cuppa.

Don't forget to click the slanting arrow to go to the full-screen view.

Enjoy!

Ballarat Interfaith Network introduces The Tree of Life Project - an all-inclusive end-of-year celebration for Ballarat

The Ballarat Interfaith Network

wishes its end-of-year all inclusive celebration

to be known far and wide.

In just under six weeks time,

The Tree of Life Project will be declared open. 

A preliminary program can be read on-line below or downloaded.

This program is still being finalised.

However, readers will get an idea of the structure.

It is not too late for anyone to come to us with their own project

and to get in the program.

There is still some room for the more the merrier. Contact details are on the flyer as well as the program.

Friends come to visit

I have had a visit to The Trad Pad this morning from my not-very-far away neighbour Bernadette and her family member, Danny Boy. As you can see Danny Boy does a lot of snuggling. What you can't do is hear him whistling, piping to Bernadetter. He is 57 years young - so he has been a part of Bernadette's life for a very long time

To market, to market, and to market at beautiful Buninyong

To-day I went to the Buninyong Markets.  Buninyong is a charming Victorian country village and now an outer suburb of Ballarat.  Once a month, on the third Saturday, it becomes Market Central.  THE market, so to speak, is organised by Rotary and you can find details here.

To my visitor's eye, I saw the market as a whole comprised of three sections.  Inside the Town Hall, seemed to be the Makers' Market: food, soaps, crafts, and so on.  Outside, the service lane coming parking area was taken over by things that grow.  This, to me, was the Farmers' Market.  This two/thirds was part of the Rotary bailiwick.

Next door at the Buninyong Uniting Church there was the third section: a Car Boot Sale.  I think some of the stuff there would not have fitted anywhere near a car boot.  There were crowds of stalls on the extensive front lawns of the church.  All manner of materials and things and books and things. Up next to the church itself is the church hall from where Uniting Church women served tea and biscuits alongside a table selling various goods and the whole in the midst of boxes and boxes of all manner of books.

I think it is a marvellous undertaking that Buninyong has embarked upon.  It brings people, goods and money to the village in a rather joyous jumble to make a marvellous whole.

To take a peek at the experience of going to market in Buninyong,

please go here.

From the banks of the Yarrowee River

There has been useful rain the bast couple of nights and I am hoping that I will be able to turn dead grass and weeds in the front garden into lawn.  I took a walk beside the Yarrowee River that is just across the road from my Trad Pad and the river was doing well - as you can see - in spite of one tree having a branch broken.

Music at The Buninyong Brewery

The Buninyong Brewery in spring

One of the loveliest Trad Pads in the Ballarat area is the beautiful Brewery, home of Merle Hathaway, at Buninyong on the outskirts of Ballarat.

I recently spent a lovely Sunday afternoon at The Brewery listening to a range of entertaining music, enjoying a marvellous afternoon tea, all to raise money for refugees and asylum seekers and organised by the Ballarat Circle of Friends.  The afternoon was a huge financial and social success.  It was standing room only with the overflow amusing itself conversing in the wonderful outdoors surrounding The Brewery.

Below are some lovely photos taken by my friend Ian Hall, visiting from Inglewood.

On the banks of the Yarrowee ... a new Trad Pad

2012 turned out to be a whole year's hiatus on The Trad Pad.  With hindsight, it is going to be a year that I wrap up thoughtfully and tuck away.  I am rather glad - in the end - that I didn't do anything public on The Trad Pad last year.

On the banks of the Yarrowee River, Ballarat

This year looks like being very different.  I have moved to a really real Trad Pad situated 2kms and a world away from the city centre of Ballarat in Victoria, Australia.  I am living in an historic old mining area across the road from the Yarrowee River at the foot of a forested hill.  In this out of sight, out of time part of the world the roads have no bitumen, no channelling and kerbing.

 Water in a formerly dry waterhole on the Yarrowee.

Below: blossom and oaks on the Yarrowee.

Until yesterday, directly in front of my place the river was dry.  After some good and much needed rain, there is now water in my part of the river.

I live right on the Yarrowee Trail - part of the Goldfields Track and the Great Dividing Trail.  Runners and walkers and bikers of all shapes, sizes, and ages wander past my place.  I have a large old Golden Ash in the front yard which is a beautiful and natural form of air-conditioning and perfect for sitting under on a hot afternoon.

And - as you can see from the picture in the title above - there is a verandah.

The cottage that is The Trad Pad is quaint, quirky and small and in need of some repair.  It allegedly has three bedrooms but I prefer to say two bedrooms and a dressing room because the third has the only built-in wardrobe in the place.  While it would take a single bed, I have two chests of drawers in there instead.  So it is not a sleeping room but a dressing room.

While there is a nicely sized front yard there is almost no backyard.  The backyard is a sort of triangle (the house is on a corner - the western wall forms part of the property's boundary) with a lane behind which once would have been used as a dunny-run - adjoining a square. The whole is gravelled instead of grass.  If it was grassed one would need barber's clippers to trim the lawn.  I have some of my potted plants there.

 

At the foot of the forested hill

Italianate and lakeside in Ballarat

The one thing I really loved about my recent visit to Ballarat were the houses and the most beautiful collection of houses I found were the houses of Windouree Parade looking across to Lake Windouree. Go here to see them. Of all these beautiful homes, the one I fell in love with was this modern but classic Italianate place. Please excuse Miss Eagle, while she indulges in an orgy of photographs of this glorious, white house.

Away: at Sovereign Hill, Ballarat

Into each life a little life must fall - and Miss Eagle has had more than a little life in the weeks of her absence from this blog. But she is back - with hundreds of pictures! News of her doings is spread across the blogs - 100% of the dear Readers are not necessarily interested in 100% of Miss E's doings.

There is the establishment of Dawn of Life. The organisation of a Prayer Vigil around the UN's Millennium Development Goals, Global Warming, and Make Indigenous Poverty History. The booklet for the PV can be downloaded from The Eagle's Nest and Desert. Eating is discussed here. The Conference I attended at Ballarat will, in due course, be written about at Desert. The tourist photos will appear here at The Trad Pad.

The Conference at Ballarat was preceded by doing the tourist bit - Sovereign Hill, the Gold Museum, the Eureka Centre, and the Fine Art Gallery. The, after the conference, Miss E came home on The Great Tourist Road through the Grampians and The Great Ocean Road.

For those who want to look at all the pictures of Sovereign Hill, you can go here. But if you don't have time for this I have put together themed collages below. Click on the picture to enlarge with the option of opening in a separate tab.

The Animals of Sovereign Hill

The World of Kitchens

Fences and Gates

Warmth and Light

Signs - English and Chinese

Windows and Doors