A day out at Kryal Castle - near Ballarat - on 25 September

 At the entrance

The Dragon

 

 

A twin selfie

Baby dragons in their eggs

 

 

 

 

 

The Wizard's Office

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Library Dreaming : refurbishment : cultural precinct : community hub: the place to be

 

Last night, I attended the above consultation.   The consultation was done with Flightpath, an architectural consultancy, with two of their associates.  One , the principal, took the notes.  The second architect was said to have the knack for asking the good questions so he did most of the talking.  The third was a graphic designer who didn't say much at all but took his own notes. Lesley Morgan of the Ballarat Library and the Central Highlands Regional Library Corporation was there. Another person was there from the Council but, in spite of trying, have not yet tracked down who she is.  Besides those, there were about eight of us having our two bits worth - oops, giving our input.

Lesley Morgan is the manager of the Ballarat Library and a senior manager at Central Highlands Regional Library Corporation. She has held the role of Ballarat Manager for 4 1/2 years.Lesley has worked in libraries for 30 years in a variety of different roles, including Public, University, School and Tafe libraries. Lesley is a passionate advocate for public libraries, reading and literacy in general. One aim of hers is to assist in breaking down cultural barriers so that social inclusiveness becomes the right of all.

Click Here to visit the Central Highlands Regional Library Corporation website

Now I am not sure what this talk of re-making the Ballarat Library, perhaps making it a 'hub' is all about.  I have only been in Ballarat about eighteen months.  I have, however, come across this article from 2009 - a bare four years ago.   Then I came across this - which appears to be from April this year.

Now, we weren't told of this limited amount of money.  Perhaps the architects did not wish to cramp our style or limit our imagination.  However, for what we eventually got to talking about were were well past this financial limitation.  Why?  We named the elephants in the room which went beyond the boundaries of the Ballarat Library.  We named the parking space between the library and the civic hall - which has been left for a decade to rot in neglect - which, like so many parking facilities, has a period in its daily life cycle which means that is dead, empty, vacant, non-contributing.  And there is the on-going saga of the Civic Hall. My contribution on how to revive the Civic Hall and add to the area as a cultural precinct was this marvellous news of the eradication of urban blight in down-at-heel Newcastle:

So the wash up of all this? 

We few - we precious six o'clock few -  had our wide-ranging say.

We ranged from the library purists who wanted a library to be a library -

to those who were prepared to venture further

into the concepts of hubs and precincts.

One marvellous idea put forward which encouraged me to air the Westbury idea was the idea of flying the Ballarat historical and artistic and literary flag in a manner which is not done by our existing cultural institutions.  The proposer began with reminding us of the wonderful Will Dyson and progressed through a litany of distinguished cultural Ballarat-ians, male and female.

So we spilled past the 7pm timeline but in the end had to leave Library + Hub Dreaming.  Where will it take us?  What happened with the other two consultations?  Is anybody listening in a really meaningful way?  Will it become just a fleeting moment in time?  We wait to see.  I don't have a lot of confidence in the Ballarat Council's ability to make the most of opportunities, to respect heritage, to take good care of what it already holds.  I have come to this point of view because of the Civic Hall neglect and the Black Hill Look-out neglect.

Dell's beautiful garden at Ballan

This morning I had a most wonderful Sunday drive in Ballan.  I've been living in Ballarat for eighteen months but had only ever been through Ballan on the train ... and you don't get any idea of what a beautiful place it is or the size of it.  I had brought the camera.  As I came into town, I noted a very beautiful garden and after touring the town and snapping some other sites, I came to the garden below.  I was snapping away on and around the footpath and the nearby creek, when I turned the corner and looked towards the verandah where a woman was standing.  I spoke to her. Asked if she minded the garden being photographed and the photographs put on a blog.  No, she didn't mind.  One thing led to another in conversation and she invited me in and gave me the COMPLETE personalised guided tour.  I was in heaven ... and click click click went the camera.

The woman is Dell - and this is her garden.  It speaks for itself.

I can't show all of the photos I took.

Please go here to see an online album of the photos.

You can even select to see them as a full screen slide show.

Bread and Soup at historic St Peter's in Ballarat

 

 Bread and Soup and St Peter's.

At top, is the soup simmering away while Mass is on.

Those in serving in the Sanctuary remarked on the aroma 

all through Mass!

On the left is the Creamy Carrot & Coconut Soup.

On the right is the Butternut, Apple & Cinnamon Soup.

In the middle, is my Olive Bread.

I live in Ballarat where winters are very cold and very damp.  We haven't had snow this winter but it is not unheard of.  I attend St Peter's Anglican Church in Sturt Street, Ballarat. It is Ballarat's oldest church and famous for its historic peal of bells.  Now that winter is officially here we have taken to having Bread and Soup after the 10 a.m. Mass.  Yesterday, it was my turn.  I am basically a vegetarian so I was looking for something a little different in the way of meatless soups and I came up with these two which turned out to be very popular - with some people coming back for seconds.  So let me tell you what I turned up.  You can follow the original recipes (to which I link)  to the letter, if you choose.  I tweaked mine.  

Before I tell you the links and the tweaks, let me begin by saying that the basis of any soup meat-full or meat-less is a good stock.  This is the foundation on which the soup edifice is built.  Your basic stock can then be tweaked, modified, added to for a variety of wonderful soups.  Forty-eight hours ahead of my soup-making schedule, I made a huge amount of vegetable stock.  I used vegetables at hand, bought some others veges, and even threw in a piece of broccoli which had not been used for its original intention and now was past its prime.  I stored the stock in the frig - where, of course, as all soups and stocks do, it gained even more flavour.

Creamy Carrot and Coconut Soup

Tweaks here were few.  Needless to say, I multiplied quite a bit.  I roasted the carrots ahead of time to add to the flavour.  I used Coconut Cream instead of Coconut Milk.

Butternut, Apple & Cinnamon Soup

Tweaks here were:

• Roasting the Buttnernut Pumpkin to add to the flavour.  This is a good ingredient at the moment because Butternuts are plentiful.  They are wonderful for their sweet flavour and their tenderness - so please be gentle with them.
• I used one decent sized Butternut but added a few more apples.
• I used something called Dutch Cinnamon. I think it may be a little more flavourful than other Cinnamon. Anyway, it was beautiful in the soup.  After all, we do know how well apple and cinnamon go together. Now, I can assure you, it goes well with Butternuts as well.

As you can see from the photograph, I made my soup pots three-quarters full.  This was because there has been a problem in estimating numbers.  This was the third week. The first week too much had been prepared. The second week there was not enough.  The third week seems to have been just right and some people were able to come back for seconds as well..

I served this with my own bread, buttered.  I had some jars of sliced olives in the frig (they are great when you do your own pizzas) and turned my plain dough into Olive Bread.

All in all, the whole thing was well received.  The two soups were beautiful.  When I sup on the Creamy Carrot and Coconut, I think it is the best soup ever. And then when I sup on the Butternut, Apple & Cinnamon, I think exactly the same thing.

I highly commend these soups to Trad Padders.  They are different, full-bodied, flavour-full soups.  The people I prepared these for had not come across them before - so you also have the novelty value to impress people.  Happy eating!

 Next week at St Peter's

Justin is doing the soup.

It sounds wonderful.

It will be based on a chicken stock.

Come along!

All welcome! 

2013 winner at the Chelsea Flower Show - Fleming's Nurseries rendition of Phillip Johnson's Trailfinders Australian Garden

I am over the moon with joy that Fleming's Nurseries (they hail from Monbulk in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne) have taken out the champion garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in London.  The picture above is Phillip Johnson's design.  Below is the design fulfilled.

Fleming's have been exhibiting at Chelsea for two decades.  The mind boggles at the dollar investments - and the human resources investments - they have made.  And now Fleming's have hit the jackpot, the pinnacle. It is being said that, for the first time in the history of the Chelsea Flower Show, the judges were unanimous in their decision to award the grand prize to the Australian garden.

And here is Phillip Johnson speaking about the design and the garden

Vote with your dollars at Victorian Markets this Saturday and Sunday - 2013-04-27 and 2013-04-28

Fourth Saturday-Sunday Markets

4th Saturday	Where	When	Entry	Notes
Ballarat Lakeside	Windmill Drive, Lake Wendouree, Ballarat	9am-1pm	free	2nd and 4th Saturdays, except December - 2nd Saturday only
Bentleigh	East Bentleigh Primary School, 90 Bignell Road, East Bentleigh	8am-12.30pm	$2 entry	4th saturday excl. January;
Casey-Berwick	The Old Cheese Factory, 34 Homestead Road, Berwick	8am-12.30pm		Dec 20th from 4pm to 8pm
Churchill Island	Churchill Island, Phillip Island	8am-1pm		Every Saturday during January - 8th, 15, 22, 29
Hume Murray	Gateway Village, Lincoln Clauseway, Wodonga	8am-12pm		Every 2nd Saturday from Jan 8th
Keilor East	Centreway Park, Wyong Street	8am-1pm		Starts: November 24th
Lancefield	Centre Plantation, High Street, Lancefield	9am-1pm		3rd Saturday in December
Mansfield	Mansfield Primary School, Bottom Terrace. Entrance off Highette Street, Mansfield	8.30am-1pm		No Market in January
Monty	Montmorency Primary School 60A Rattray Road, Montmorency	9am-1pm	gold coin	entry proceeds go to Primary School
Myrtleford	St Paul's Anglican Church, Clyde Street, Myrtleford	8am-12pm		Each Saturday - January to May; 1st/3rd Saturday - June to December
Newtown	Cnr Shannon Avenue and West Fyans Street Newtown Geelong	8am-1pm
Preston	Bell Primary School Corner Scotia St and Oakover Rd, Preston	9am-1pm	$2	children free
Slow Food	Abbotsford Convent, St Heliers Road, Abbotsford	8am-1pm	$2	Parking:$2
Taste of Gold - Monash	Monash University Clayton Campus Car Park	8.30am-1pm		moved from Holmesglen TAFE; no market January
Traralgon	Kay Street Gardens, Kay Street, Traralgon	8am-1pm
Torquay	Torquay Central, Bristol Road, Tourquay	8.30am-1pm		every saturday
Yarraville	Yarraville Gardens, Cnr Hyde and Sommerville Roads, Yarraville	8am-12pm

4th Sunday	Where	When	Entry	Notes
Fitzroy-St Kilda	Corner Fitzroy St & Lakeside Drive	8am-1pm
Flemington (ex Melb Showgrounds)	Debney Park Secondary College, 169 Mt Alexander Road, Flemington	9am-1pm		Every Sunday; restarts 9th January 2011; Parking $3
Kinglake	In the Shed, cnr Heidelberg/Kinglake Road and Healesvill/Kinglake Road	9am-2pm		Ex Yarra Glen Railway Market
Manningham	The Manningham Club 1 Thompsons Rd, Bulleen	8am-1pm		gold coin donation
Mt. Eliza	Cnr Mt Eliza Way and Canadian Bay Road, Mount Eliza	9am-1pm		No market in December
Mulgrave	Grounds of the Body Shop, Cnr Jacksons & Wellington Rds Mulgrave	8am-1pm		Every Sunday;
Yarrawonga	Piper Street, Yarrawonga	8.30am-12.30pm

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.

A garden, a giant cabbage and a Trad Pad

I love this grow yer own garden ...
befitting a Trad Pad
Wisconsin, 1895.
Just one thing?  What was the keeping quality of the cabbage?

A Place called Robertson and The Nature of Robertson : a remarkable tiny village in the Southern Highlands

 At Robertson, The Big Spud gets a face

Read all about it at The Nature of Robertson by Denis Wilson

As readers of this blog will have gathered, Miss Eagle loves community, tradition and social history.  Miss Eagle's good friend Denis Wilson of The Nature of Robertson has posted to-day about a movie that has just been made about the town of Robertson.  It is called, very simply,  "A Place Called Robertson".

The Southern Highlands of New South Wales is a beautiful and special inland region - and people from the coast who can afford a weekender or holiday house have long recreated there.  These days the place is filled with all manner of tree-changers, including my friend Denis who settled on Robertson, a tiny village in the Southern Highlands, because the weather suited the growing of his favourite flowers, peonies. I say favourite flowers but I do wonder if they are still at the top of his floral list.  This is because, if you follow Denis's blog, you will notice his penchant for those teeny-weeny things known as ground orchids.

I have got to know Robertson, just a little, and some of its talented inhabitants, because of Denis.  You too can get to know Robertson if you read Denis's blog linked above.

If you go to the link about the movie you will find a link to the brief trailer.  I fell about roaring with laughter ... so heaven knows how I would behave at the movies.  The movie appears to be packing them out at the Empire Theatre in nearby Bowral and due to public demand there is to be an additional screening of the Robertson film on Friday March 22nd at 5.30pm for all the people who couldn't get in to the premiere.  It is not a fundraising screening.  

I wonder if the movie will travel.  If not, I hope the ABC or SBS pick it up soon so we can all enjoy it and so those of us who have had a taste of the friendship and fun and creativity of Robertson can reminisce as well.

See and read more here

Morning moon over Black Hill

I awoke just before 7am this morning (AEDST)
The moon has been full and it had not yet gone to bed.
Clearly my photograph of the morning moon over Black Hill
does not do the event justice.
Just sharing.

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.

Ballarat Interfaith Network is celebrating UN World Interfaith Harmony Week 2013

United Nations World Interfaith Harmony Week is an annual event observed during the first week of February each year.  Ballarat Interfaith Network is active once again in 2013 and a calendar of events has been organised in conjunction with the City of Ballarat.  Please see the flyers below for the program of events.

Cycling the Yarrowee Trail and the Goldfields Track in the Ballarat Cycle Classic - 10 February 2013

A sign was posted - literally posted as in "placed on a post" - yesterday at the northern end of the Oliver Street crossing of the Yarrowee River at Black Hill.  It's a "watch out" sign.  Apparently, cyclists will be out in force next Sunday and we who live locally will need to keep our eye out for them.  

Believe me, I am very wary of cyclists in packs or en masse ever since this occurred.   I recall reading or hearing a report around this time which said that when those at the front of the pack hesitated or slowed a voice or voices from further back were heard to shout "On, On!".  I am sure that many of us could report behaviour from cycle packs which indicates that many of them have a "we own the road" attitude.  Perhaps someone can inform me if there is a cyclists' code of behaviour or etiquette which might help me to understand this situation more than I do now.

Anyway, the whole thing is in a good cause - the Fiona Elsey Cancer Research Institute.  You can read more about the Ballarat Cycle Classic here. 

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

The Gate of the Year : The King’s Speech, Academy Awards, and the bookies’ odds #film #poetry

This post was originally published on The Trad Pad on  2 January 2011.  Happy New Year everyone ... particularly to those who did it tough this year.  Please take on board the thoughts of Minnie Louise Haskins

~~~~~~

Happy New Year! May the year be kind to you and bring you blessings, wisdom, peace, and prosperity!  The last day or two has exhibited some coincidence. Firstly, Hay Quaker published, in toto, the poem The Gate of the Year by Minnie Louise Haskins.

 Minnie Louise Haskins

Picture from here

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year,
"Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown."
And he replied, "Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!"
So I went forth and finding the Hand of God
Trod gladly into the night.
He led me towards the hills
And the breaking of day in the lone east.
So heart be still!
What need our human life to know
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife of things
Both high and low,
God hideth his intention.

Perhaps readers have heard this poem, or part of it, before.  It was made famous by the Christmas Speech of King George VI delivered in 1939.  You can hear the actual speech – it is quite moving given it is made at the time of the first Christmas of World War II – here.

Picture from here

Secondly, I decided to get out of the house for the first time since  Christmas Midnight Carols and Eucharist at All Saints, Mitcham and go to see the much lauded movie, The King’s Speech. It is the story of the relationship between the Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue, and King George VI.

The movie is being tipped as a frontline contender for an Oscar. In spite of competition from The Social Network in the bookies’ odds as set out here, it is hard to see how this movie could lose with its high proportion of former Academy Award winning actors.  The UK still produces the best actors – particularly in ensemble work as demonstrated in The King’s Speech – in the English speaking world.  However, it does an Australian heart good – particularly one coming from Queensland – to see and hear Geoffrey Rush mixing it admirably with such a talented cast. To think, this great man of Australian movies was growing up across Brisbane from me in the 1950s!
Those sitting around me in the packed movie theatre were clearly as impressed as I. 
I was however surprised at the ending. I don’t think, in such an historical movie, it is giving away much to describe the ending of this movie.  I thought the movie somehow would finish with the 1939 Christmas Speech. This is arguably the most famous, most remembered, and most quoted of all the King George VI’s speeches.  This doesn’t happen.  The movie concludes with the King’s Speech at the beginning of World War II.

Listen to the original speech here.