Melbourne: The City

It is Photo Friday. And the theme is The City. The photos below are of my city: Melbourne, Australia. They are slightly different from a lot of south-facing views of Melbourne. These are taken from the First Floor corridor in the offices of Flinders Street Station. The photos look across the tracks and platforms of FSS. The first one looks south-east towards the tower of the Arts Centre. The second looks south-west.

Extracting magic dust!

To-day is Show and Tell Friday.

This is hosted by the gracious Kelli over at There's No Place Like Home.

If you pop over there, you will see the guidelines for this little weekly fiesta.

Now you can see this item from both sides - above and below.

Do you know what it is?

This is the only one that I have ever seen.

If you have one or have seen one, I would like to know.
It has a polished wood side for gripping.

The business side is corrugated or ridgy.

Down

Down

Down

HERE IS THE ANSWER

IT IS THE MAGIC DUST EXTRACTOR

I have photographed all four sides of the box.

Click on the photographs to enlarge so that you can read the print.

The photo above has the price on it - 29/6 (AUD equivalent $2.95 cents)

Decimal currency came to Australia on 14 February 1966 - 41 years ago.

This may be even older

When my aunt, Molly, died I cleared out her apartment.

This item was in it.

Don't you just love this statement -

UNCONDITIONALLY GUARANTEED TO LAST A LIFETIME

It has outlasted Molly. Will it outlast me?
~~~~~~

POSTSCRIPT

Decided to do a Google search and came back with one entry - over at Ebay Australia.

A picnic-ing we went

Left to Right: Miss Eagle, Lindsay, Gina, Val

On Tuesday, some bloggers had their picnic. Not down in the woods but at Westerfold Park, Templestowe in the north-east of Melbourne. We were five. Gina of Patra's Other Place, Val of Val Has Her Say, and Lindsay of Lindsay's Lobes and his good wife, Anne and moi, Miss Eagle.

It was a bright, sunshine-y day but, oh, the wind, THE WIND!

Did it play havoc!!!

But did we have fun. Great conversation, great laughs, great sharing. Should be more of it! Can you please note the demographic. All of the above are retired! That's our demographic - like it or lump it! We are not Generation X or Y. We are not the yummy mummies. Nor are we students - we are graduates of the school of life! And we are literate, opinionated and we do stuff.

Out came the picnic basket. We each contributed to the lunch with food and so many bottles of the good stuff you would have thought we were digging in for the winter! Needless to say, our optimism was not equalled by our capacity.
My menu contributions were 4P Rolls. These are rolls in which the main ingredients are Puff Pastry, Potato, Peas and Pesto. You will have to pop over to Oz Tucker for the recipe.
For afters, there were fruit and cheese skewers. I am sure, dear Reader, you can figure these for yourself - but, just in case, a fuller description will be over at Oz Tucker.

Dear Reader, you will note another person in this photograph.

That's Anne, Lindsay's spouse, on the left in the sunglasses.

Please note how everyone is huddled and cuddled because of THE WIND!

Controversial crafts and feminist foibles

Miss Eagle has the glisten of a tear or two on her cheek. You see, I have just been reading Jane Brocket's latest post over at yarnstorm.

If there was only one blog I was allowed to read out of the whole blogosphere, it would be yarnstorm. Apologies to friends and fellow bloggers but that is how it is. I admire Jane's layout, her beautiful photographs, her interests, and her writing. Over the last twelve months, Jane's readers have lived with her the writing of her first book, The Gentle Art of Domesticity. The book has only recently been released and Jane has had to embark on the usual media round to talk about herself and the book. You can listen to Jane being interviewed on October 9, 2007, on BBC4 here.

Jane's post, linked above, brings a tear because there has been so much comment that has been questionable and invasive to the extent that Jane has had to go beyond her usual privacy boundaries to clarify a few things. For those of us who admire Jane, this was wonderful to enhance and round out our view of her. But those of us who admire Jane have also felt her pain - and we think why the h#ll should she feel compelled to do this if she does not want to.

Clearly, fulfilling one's creative instincts by knitting, quilting and making rock buns is controversial stuff.

• It clearly is not enough to have come from limited financial circumstances and earned a first class education by using one's intellectual capacity to win scholarships and grants.
• It is clearly not enough to have become a Master of Wine.
• It is not enough to be able to capably review both wine and fine English lit.
• It is not enough to have the tenacity to have won through difficult personal circumstances to build a secure and enjoyable family life - and to use your income to invest in the materials of your creativity.
• It is not enough to have one of the most popular blogs of its genre on the net and to have spun it into a published book.

Miss Eagle has earned long ago her stripes as a feminist but some of the thought processes of those who claim feminist instincts and leanings is stunning.

Some of us remember when girls were advised not to learn to type in high school. The 'wisdom' was that if you could type you would only ever be treated as a secretary and never make your way to management.

Well, didn't they get that wrong.

We now have droves of women in their middle years who wish they had first rate keyboard skills for the computer age - like being able to touch type.

Fortunately, Miss E's mother, Phyll, who spent years in the workforce as a secretary believed that office skills are something a woman could always fall back on - so not only can Miss E touch type at pretty phenomenal speeds she can also do Pitman's Shorthand at such a level that she can do verbatim minutes of meetings. Miss Eagle left school at 15 with these skills. Later came the degree. Later came management experience.

These days I see women like Jane and Di over at Clementine's Shoes and Suse over at Pea Soup - who are professional and academically qualified women - taking the traditional domestic crafts to new and imaginative levels. They combine careeers and professional demands with family life and personal creativity.

Duh! What is wrong with that! What sort of female oppression is that!

None of these women are forcing others into their mold - but plenty of women are queuing up to join in their conversation!

And isn't that what we feminists are about first and foremost - choice: choice in our personal lives, choice in our working lives, choice in our family lives; choice in the public sphere, choice in the private sphere.

Drop in on The Dandenongs

Hat Tip to Winza for the photographs This post is blatant promotion. Miss Eagle lives in Upper Ferntree Gully in the foothills of beautiful Blue Dandenongs. The Dandenongs comprise large tracts of temperate rainforest - tall, ever so tall Mountain Ash and valleys of tree ferns.
For more than 100 years, The Dandenongs has been a leisure and pleasure getaway for Melburnians - particularly in a hot, dry summer. Sometimes they come from day trips. The wealthy had/have week-enders in The Hills. These days it is B & B territory with wonderful restaurants.
At the moment, there is a competition on and you could win a wonderful week-end experience in my neck of the woods. So, I didn't want you to miss out on an opportunity. So please go here and enter. And when you win, please email me so that we can do coffee up at Sassafras or Olinda.

Art outs visitors all of a sudden

Estevão Silva da Conceição at work

OK, please let me in on the secret. Back on April 20, 2007, I posted on the documentary, Gaudi in the Favela. It told of Estevão Silva da Conceição's home in a favela (shanty town) in the centre of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Today, I have wall to wall visitors to The Trad Pad after doing Google searches. So, I assume his work and his name are in the media somewhere - because the visitors are from around the world - including my neck of the woods in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. So, dear Reader, please tell me what has started this? Is Gaudi in the Favela showing or in the news?

Postscript: 8.10pm

Please note the comment from tavella.

The reason for the visits is due to a BBC news item.

I hope everyone gets to see Estevao's work in Gaudi in the Favela.

Beauty can be created anywhere if we have the eye and the spirit for it.

As Estevao shows - these are more important than the materials, which can be quite basic.

Garage Sale at Upper Gully - Reflections

The second day of the Garage Sale is drawing to a close. Just a few more hours and the gates will close and the signs will come down. It has a been a moderate success. A lot of stuff has gone. A lot still remains. But, dear Reader, if you couldn't make it or you don't live in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne don't fret. Before the month is out, it is expected that a By-Online-Blog will emerge: The Doll's House. You will be able to see the pretty things. If you are in town, by appointment you can come to play in The Doll's House. So stay tuned for more. You can always email for more information.

Australia and Bowen: films. tourism and memories

I am getting in early this week for Show and Tell Friday.

So early that Kelli over at There Is No Place Like Home doesn't have Mr Linky up yet for this week so I will have to go back later and do the link up.

My Show and Tell this week is centered on Bowen, in North Queensland. Miss Eagle was born in Brisbane and lived there - at Wynnum and at Manly on the shores of Moreton Bay - until, in 1955, at the age of 11 she went to live in Bowen because her father, Jack, got a very good job there. There Miss Eagle grew up and married Joe, the Dear Departed Dearly Beloved - Phyl, her mother, said she married half of Bowen when she married Joe and she wasn't far wrong - and Herself, the first of three children was born in Bowen in 1964.

Miss Eagle and Herself, Bowen, 1964

In 1968, we left to follow the now widowed Phyl to live in Toowoomba where my sister, The Director, was now in high school at St Saviour's and two sons, The Nerd and The Actor, were born. So the thirteen years of my life lived in Bowen were formative - to say the least.

Bowen is a quiet tropical town at the northern end of The Whitsundays. One of its nicknames is Sleepy Hollow - not without justification. There is also the joke that it used to be called Blowen but it blew so hard it blew the 'L' out of it. That's not wrong. In Miss E's childhood, Bowen had three cyclones in three years. The first was an afternoon breeze by comparison with the next two which were severe and without any meaningful warning. The up-to-the-minute warnings that there are to-day have their genesis in the Bowen experience.

Our family home, 46 Powell Street , Bowen - destroyed cyclone, 1959. Could have been worse except for a new roof holding walls up.

Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman starring in Australia

Quiet Bowen is now in the spotlight. It is the site and set for Baz Luhrmann's latest film Australia which is due for release next year.

Australia is an historical drama set in northern Australia prior to World War II and centres on an English aristocrat (Kidman) who inherits a cattle station (ranch) the size of Maryland, USA. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle driver (Jackman) to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor only months earlier. It stars some Australian greats including Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Brian Brown, David Wenham. For more, see here.

Now the story has nothing to do with Bowen. It is centered on Darwin. Bowen was selected because of its round-the-year good weather - well, not counting those strong south-easterlies. Darwin is in the wet tropics; Bowen the dry tropics. And needless to say the filming is the talk of the town, the talk of North Queensland, the talk of Australia. Welcome to BowenWood.

Over the years much of the major industry and employment in Bowen - sugar, beef, railway - has declined. Tourism is an important lifeline for the town and Baz Luhrmann and his movie have undoubtedly given that a boost. But tourism is a major industry for the real Australia and it looks like "Australia - the movie" is going to be the central theme of tourism promotion to attract visitors to this country. It is expected to have an impact comparable with the impact of Crocodile Dundee.

Back to the Bowen of Miss Eagle's memory - explaining the picture at the top of this post.

In the background is the facade of a movie theatre. It is the Summergarden at Queen's Beach. In Miss Eagle's youth, this was the only movie theatre to screen on Sunday nights. But...it did not commence screening until 8.15pm on Sunday nights. This was because the last church service in town, at St Mary's Catholic Church, did not finish until 8pm. Then there was the travel time from town to the beach and the houselights dimmed and the movies were on.

The man is holding the poster of our Nic is Ben de Luca. Ben owned the Summergarden in Miss E's young days and still does. His brother, Frankie, was in Miss E's Grade 8 class. The rushes of Australia are being shown privately to the relevant film personnel at the Summergarden.

And if you are one of those who chooses your tourist flings around movie themes, here are some Australian suggestions:

Wolf Creek - South Australia, Northern Territory and Broome, Western Australia The Proposition - Winton, Queensland

The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith - Various locations in New South Wales

Man from Snowy River - Snowy River, ACT

Finding Nemo - Great Barrier Reef and Sydney

Mad Max - Broken Hill, New South Wales

Storm Boy - Coorong Wetland, South Australia

Ten Canoes - Arnhem Land

Crocodile Dundee - Kakadu, Northern Territory; Mackinlay, Queensland

Picnic at Hanging Rock - Mt Diogenes, Victoria; Mintaro, South Australia

The Castle - Melbourne, Strathmore, Bonnie Doon, Victoria

The Dish - Parkes, New South Wales

Kenny - The Melbourne Cup, Calder Park Street Drag Racing, Australian International Airshow, St Kilda Festival , Murchison

Jindabyne - Jindabyne, New South Wales

Babe - Robertson, New South Wales

Rabbit-Proof Fence - Flinders Ranges, Lake Torrens, McLaren Vale, Onkaparinga National Park and Recreation Park, Parachilna, Nilpena Station, South Australia; The Pilbara, Gibson Desert, Western Australia;

Astolat: now and then

Further to my previous post on Astolat...
I have found some older photos taken on 5 September, 1970...
by John T. Collins. See them here.

Brighton, gossip and the Willy Wagtail

Photo: Canberra Ornithologists Group

The Willy Wagtail (pictured above) is an Australian bird with a bad reputation among Aboriginal people. You see, he is seen as a gossip. He listens in on conversations and flies off and spreads what he has heard. Not nice. Miss Eagle thought of the Willy Wagtail yesterday when she was walking down the shopping strip at the Middle Brighton shops.

I love to see people stopping to chat while shopping. As communities become large and impersonal such individual signs of community diminish. So I noticed when I saw two middle-aged women in conversation in the middle of the footpath. One woman spoke as the other looked at her intently with mouth agape. As I walked past I heard only the words "and he..."

From the aghast look on the listener's face, I could only imagine what horrible news might have been imparted:

...and he sent the family company to the wall because he gambled everything away in the Mahogany Room at Crown Casino and now the children have had to be pulled out of Brighton Grammar because there's no money for the school fees.

...and he cleared out with the nanny. They are now living in France and his wife has been left with STD - sexually transmitted debt.

...and he......(you can complete this one, dear Reader)

Garage Sale at Upper Gully -and- Bluster and beauty at Brighton

Divestment

Rescued and refurbished - from the Hard Rubbish
We at The Trad Pad are divesting again with a garage sale on Saturday. Please email me for address and details. Piece de resistance will be this charming two seater cane lounge all freshly refurbished. It has a shabby chic-style bench pad with roses one side, as you can see dear Reader, and the other side is in an elegant pink and white stripe. Lots of other good things, new and vintage, will be on sale at reasonable prices.

~~~~~~
Blustery Brighton

I was in Brighton this afternoon. The beachfront was blustery. These pictures were taken at the end of North Road. The tide was in and the wind was making sea spray and white horses. Not quite cyclonic but significant force in the wind. Reports say 60kph - I'd say 60mph!
Away from the blustery beachfront and around in Durrant Street, I discovered the charm of Flower mee at No. 43. The talented Kathryn Weichmann pulls an array of wonderful goods and material together into a memorable whole. Kathryn told me she was in the process of clearing the decks somewhat to make space for the Christmas goodies. Can't wait to get Herself to schedule a visit with me to see what Santa has in store at Kathryn's hands.
Flower mee - Kathryn Weichmann, principal, 32 Durrant Street, Brighton. Phone: 9592 1480 Mobile: 0414 917 070

Astolat: an idyllic garden

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On Sunday, I visited a garden in Australia's Open Garden Scheme. I could have taken more pictures but the battery gave up. However, there are plenty of pictures in the slide show above to give you an idea of how wonderful it is - and the skills and resources it takes to maintain it.

Astolat, 530 Riversdale Road, Camberwell, Melbourne, Victoria was buiit circa 1882-1884 by Thomas Plumley Denham Junior, a solicitor. The residence is typical of late 19th century Italianate architecture of the Melbourne upper middle class. It has an asymmetrical building form, return cast iron verandahs, refined cement render detailing, intct fenestration, chimneys and a slate roof. The name, Astolat, is derived from Tennyson's Idyll of the King.

The garden was developed soon after the completion of the mansion and is recognised as a typical 19th century suburban villa garden. At the front of the house is an oval lawn formed by the carriage drive, a tennis court with original pavilion built in 1890, an elaborate timber picket fence, and well established tree and shrub species of the era.

From 1985, the garden underwent many changes as a reult of new owners. Many Australian native species were planted. Structural additions such as urns, a small circular temple, the recessed seating west of the court and new additional buildings at the rear of the mansion diverted from the original design and changed the Victorian feel of the garden.

In 1995, the present owners bought the property and have proceeded to slowly rejuvenate the garden and return it to its original Victorian glory. A tree replacement programme has been implemented and is slowly removing self-sown and inappropriate tree species, replacining them with species of the Victorian era. Garden renovations have created seven specific themses within the garden: a fern garden; tropical garden; cherry walk; woodland garden; hot perennial border; grey border; and a winter border.

These gardens act like rooms encouraging one to venture further, provoking curiosity to see what is around the next corner. The addition of themed gardens helps generate interest throughout the year through texture, form, and colour.

Australia is in the middle of the greatest drought since white settlement in 1788. This year, underground tank has been installed at Astolat beneath the lawn to the east of the residence. The capacity of the tank is over 300,000 litres and is fed from run off from the buildings and drains throughout the two-acre property. This development will ensure the garden will remain healthy and intact. The garden is maintained by the equivalent of four person days per week under the oversight of a qualified landscape gardener

Spring - busy-ness, joy, and perfume

Phew, I've made it back again. Health has been up and down and then over the last week Herself has been ill. A day at the Angliss yesterday and she is on the mend again.

But it's not only health issues. Spring is here and it hasn't been spring cleaning - but spring planting. Going potty - quite literally.

The oregano and marjoram had not been broken up for two years...

...so there are pots and pots of the stuff now...

...along with the break up of the parsley...

...and addition of coriander.

I have had these hanging pots stacked away for the last two years.

They came from the hard rubbish...

...the stuff people put on the footpath

This, along with mowing the lawn, prowling the hard rubbish now winter is gone, and organising our out door area for summer has kept me rather busy. So that is the work that Spring brings. But it is a joyful time. The blossom, both native and exotic, is wonderful.

I wish I could include the wonderful scents I experience as I walk around my neighbourhood.

Instead, here is some of the blossom on our huge potted jasmine perfuming The Trad Pad.

Water, water all around? Is there enough to drink?

You will have noted, dear Reader, that Miss Eagle has listed on the sidebar a few of her favourite nature/environmental blogs. Miss Eagle hopes, dear Reader, that you - like her - who blog beautiful things - and homes which there are no places like - take an interest in natural beauty in the great outdoors and its welfare.

Miss Eagle's great friend Denis (pictured above on the Murrumbidgee River) blogs at The Nature of Robinson where he posts about a recent enquiry about the state of rivers in his neighbourhood in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.

We live in a time - at least in Australia - where water is precious whether it is for our lovely gardens and parks, industrial use, or growing our food. We - the wider vote-carrying dollar-spending community - have watched corporations and governments do things which are not in the interests of the community as a whole. It is time, in Miss Eagle's view, when we took an interest.

Now, Miss Eagle is able to be informed and in touch through Denis about the goings on in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales but she would like to be as informed and in touch within her own neighbourhod: the Dandenong Ranges, south-eastern Melbourne, south-eastern Victoria.

Water is the very basis of our life. Miss Eagle has a general interest in rivers and watercourse and has always wished she knew more because she has seen so many wrecked rivers. Where does a member of the general public start, dear Reader? Miss Eagle has no science. She is not even a keen amatuer naturalist like Denis and Duncan.

Good advice gladly welcomed.

Muriel

Muriel Robertson, Robert Borlund's mother, is hereby declared by Miss Eagle as Mother of the Year. Greater love has no mother than that she fly half-way across the world to her son's bed of pain with a packet of Tim Tams. Television reports show a distinguished elderly woman from Perth with an English accent and say that she has turned up in Thailand with Tim Tams.

Spotlight on fairness

Herself and Miss Eagle have been strictly Lincraft girls for nearly two years. And quite happily. They are close to home and have everything we need. We have not set foot in Spotlight because of the way they have been unfair to their workers.

We, the members of Union Solidarity, knew Spotlight was being unfair and we went public to say so. Now the Workplace Authority has agreed with what we knew all along to be true. Spotlight has decided that John Howard's workplace laws are too complex and life would be easier if it negotiated a collective agreement with the Shop, Distributive, and Allied Employees Association.

So, Spotlight is back on the shopping list again. Sometime soon Herself and I will make the trip to Canterbury Road to see what has changed!

What the Dickens, Miriam!

Sit down all those who don't like the work of Miriam Margolyes. Good we can't see you. But then I can't see any gaps either. All I can see is a standing ovation. Is she the finest character actor in English or is she what?!

All this leads me, dear Reader, to direct you to this post at the blog of my friend Denis, The Nature of Robertson. Robertson is a village (population approximately 1,000) in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Miriam is a resident there. And she is an Aussie citizen. How 'bout that! All thanks to Babe.

My favourite Miriam role is in Ladies in Lavender. But I do want you to know that Miriam is touring Australia with Dickens' Women. If you saw Simon Callow bring Dickens to life when he toured Australia, then Miriam's show will make a nice book-end for you. Listen to Phillip Adams' interview here.

Health and sympathy for horses

Hooh, boy. Miss Eagle sure does feel sorry for the horses. You see, dear and gentle Reader, your correspondent has been, for about the last ten days, battling the 'flu. Way back in April, I had my annual 'flu injection. This is always a good protection and I rarely get a sniffle. This year was different.

Herself, though, tells me to stop grumbling. People have died of the 'flu this year, she reminds me. And this is true. There have been a number of infant deaths in and around Melbourne due to the 'flu. There have been frail and elderly people stricken with it and hospitalised and died. As for me, I have felt just one step away from the hospital door.

I am writing to-day, so I must be feeling better. But you see, there's no telling. How many days have I arisen with optimism in my heart and mind only to be feeling deathly ill by nightfall. I say to Herself that I have done my best to keep going. She replies that she thinks I should have hidden quietly in a darkened room and things might have been better much more quickly.

I look out the window and there is my neighbour across the street on a ladder cleaning her windows on the outside. As I'm looking at this there is the slow heavy whirring of the street-sweeping machine directing its mechanical energy to cleanliness too. Oh, such energy! Where is mine! I feel like inviting my neighbour over for a well-earned coffee break - but she has a baby and young ones. It would not be a fair thing to invite her into my germ-laden presence, now would it?

Over the last six years, my life experience has been one of off-and-on poor health. I have come to loathe the time it consumes from my otherwise active life - time that one never gets back. Upon recovery, one plays catch-up doing the things one would have done if one could have done. Then one tries to pick up what one was doing when so rudely and crudely interrupted. That piece of craft, knitting, cooking, the book which has been too heavy to hold. And all the while rebuilding life's little routines.

At least at the moment we are getting plenty of sunshine. Everything is so much gloomier and depressing when it is day after day of rain and cloud. I hope I feel like eating properly soon. At the moment my comfort foods of Arnott's Scotch Fingers and big glasses of milk are dominating the eating cycle. This cannot continue!