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!

Spring 2007

We still have twelve days to go until Spring officially arrives.

But to-day in Melbourne, the weather seems to have had its say.

Spring is here. Winter is gone!

Yippee!

An American branch of the good ol' family tree

This is my entry in this week's Show and Tell which is hosted by Kelli at There is no place like home. I had been planning this entry and, as co-incidence would have it, the theme for this week's Photo Friday is "Old" so I am linking this post there as well.

I love looking at this picture. This woman probably died before I was born. I think the photo was probably taken in the first quarter of the twentieth century but the clothes are what we would think of as nineteenth century. To me, she looks a strong woman - strong features, strong shoulders. Do you think she looks tall? I seem to think she might be. My Aunt Molly, in the later years of her life, passed some family photographs to me. She included with the photo the following note:

• This is Auntie Cross - as we knew her. She was Mum's aunt and the mother of Charlie and Violet. I think she was Mum's mother's sister but I'm not quite sure. Charlie went off to China and used to send Mum materials, gifts - all sorts of things. You might have seen floating round the house - either yours or ours - silver ash trays with a big coin the centre and a little one near the rim - or a little pewter bowl with copper wire outside. They came from Charlie and he once sent Mum a real eggshell china tea set - you almost could read the paper through it but when you filled the cup with tea and lifted it up the tea weighed the cup down and you finished with a lap full of tea - hardly the way to treat your guests. Violet was a great friend of Mum's - she was my god-mother. For her day, she was a bit of a rebel in as much as she just refused to get married, getting very choosy about the men who approached her. Eventually she decided to go overseas. She set sail for Canada - but on a shore excursion on the way over, she fell and broke her hip. She was put into hospital in Vancouver where, of course, she knew no one. The wife of the doctor who took care of her in hospital befriended Violet and it was at her home that she met Jack Roberts - and, if he was as nice when he was young as he was when he was old, it's not surprising she married him. He was a widower and she went back to America with him. Now, in those days, if you wanted to go to America as a resident you were put on a list and had to wait until your number came up which could be years. If Violet had ever come back here for a visit, she would likely have to stay here for anything from months to years even though she was married to an American. So she didn't see any member of her family until I arrived on her doorstep back in 1960 in Columbus, Ohio. Charlie died while on some sort of patrol (I don't know what he did, actually) but there was some talk that he was murdered by natives - if you could call any Chinese natives. All over the years, Violet and Mum kept in touch sending each other letters, gifts, magazines, etc. etc. They died within a couple of weeks of each other. [This was in the mid 1960s.] Violet and Jack had one son who is called Rodney - but sometimes Dallas. I, of course, met Dal and his wife, Virginia, when I was over there and we have sent each other Xmas cards ever since. They have five children - Mum and Violet were cousins so you can work out what relationship exists between you and Dal's children. One more word about Auntie Cross - she visited us a lot when she was alive. When I became engaged to my first husband, she took me aside and offered her advice for a happy marriage - "Always", she said, "oblige your husband in the bedroom." So that is Auntie Cross who would be your great-great Aunt!

So, dear Reader, somewhere in the United States of America - almost certainly in the vicinity of Columbus, Ohio - are cousins. First cousins twice removed? Third cousins? Well, lets just settle for that quaint term, "kinfolk", shall we?

Nectar: nature's own party drug

People, including Gina, have been blogging about parrot visitations. This week Poppalina has been blogging about her daphne blossoming. So I thought I would chime in with both parrots and daphne.

Two weeks ago our daphne burst into bloom. As Herself said, you watch and watch the buds longing for the time when that beautiful scent will invade your life. But, little do you know, others are watching too: watching for just the right moment for blossom to open, nectar to peak, and a strike must be made before anyone else gets to it.

So it was that a visiting pair of Crimson Rosellas feasted and partied in a quite single-minded fashion on the shrub outside our living room window.

Show and Tell Friday - Home School of American Literature

Kelli, this Show and Tell is especially for you - because you home-school your kids.

This was an Ebay find. I forgot to check postage on this and it was quite a shock because the book is s-o-o thick and s-o-o heavy. A lesson learned. I am always particular about postage since this purchase. But I don't regret the purchase. It is a magnificent old book in wonderful condition.
While the book promotes American literature, it is not exclusively American as it contains the works of major English writers. In fact, the three portraits on the cover include Tennyson beside Longfellow and Hawthorne.
The words on the title page are as follows:

Home School of American Literature or Easy Steps to an Education or The Lives and Writings of our Best Authors embracing The great poets of England and America, famous novelists, distinguished essayists and historians, our humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, statesmen in literature, noted women in literature, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers, etc./Compiled and edited by William Wilfred Bursall, A.B., Principal of Central School, Philadelphia; Rufus M Jones, A.M., Professor of Philosophy, Haverford College, and others/Embellished with nearly one hundred and fifty half-tone portraits and about 200 text illustrations by Charles Dana Gibson, Corwin K. Linson and Others/Published by Elliott Publishing Co., Philadelphia, PA.

The facing page to the title page has a photograph of "The New Congressional Library, Washington, D.C." On the obverse of the title page are the words:

Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1897, by W.E. Scull in the office of the Librarian of Congress, in Washington. All rights reserved/All persons are warned not to infringe upon our copyright by using either the matter or the pictures in this volume.

The book has a specific section for Recitation.

I purchased the book because I have a small collection of the works of Rufus Jones, a great Quaker writer. Some people think that if Quakers had saints then Rufus Jones would be one!

I find books such as these a delight - and some more might pop up in Show and Tell!

Blessings and bliss to you Kelli and to all Show-ers and Tell-ers

Shelter from the wind and the cold?

The camellias are trying to get in the living room window.

Could it be the weather?

Hands on - thread and fabric

The pictures below show some of the beautiful work on display at the Open Day last Saturday of the Embroiderers' Guild.

(Click on image for a larger picture)

Clematis and a tradition in tin

On Saturday, The Director and Miss Eagle attended the Open Day of The Embroiderers' Guild at Malvern. There is a slide show below of the beautiful things. But beautiful as all those things are, the most interesting was the Clematis tin. The Director drew my attention to it. It was sitting on the floor. The Director said: "Look at that! How many Australian women have kept their sewing things in a Mac Robertson's Clematis tin." Indeed. Our mother had done just that and how it brought back memories. Out came the camera and down I got on hands and knees to photograph it. A woman came along asking if she could help me and wondering what I was doing. I explained to her. It was her tin. She told me that she had found the tin among the things of her great-aunt who used it for her sewing things. The romance of the Clematis tin.

Do others in the blogosphere have a story about the Clematis tin?

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