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.

ANZ LitLovers LitBlog - Germinal by Emile Zola - the book and the movie

 

I am a frequent reader of Lisa Hill’s ANZ LitLovers LitBlog. Perhaps you won't keep up by reading every book from every post - but at least you will have a good idea of what you should be reading. You will be in the know. 

I subscribe to the blog and get a missive in my email every day.  To-day's looks magnificent: Germinal by Emile Zola An epic tale. But, Gerard Depardieu fan that I am I think I will hunt down the movie after seeing the trailer below.

Make a difference this year: buy your Christmas Cakes, Shortbreads and Gift Hampers from Bumblebee and support some good causes

Memories of Mellah and Chocolate Mousse

Over at Miscellaneous Mum, Karen is indulging herself with Chocolate Mousse.  For me, chocolate mousse always brings back memories from my long ago childhood in the 1950s of what may be one of Australia's first 'instant' desserts, Mellah.  You can pop down to the comments of Karen's post to see my comment.

I went searching the net for Mellah and there is barely a mention - but I did find this...

Jenny Dowell goes to Just Grounds, Lismore ... and then there's the mural

On Twitter, one of the people I follow is Jenny Dowell who is the Mayor of Lismore in northern New South Wales which is a very beautiful part of the world.  This morning Jenny has been out and about purchasing fruit at the local market and drinking Fair Trade coffee.

 I have saved the picture of the mural separately and enlarged it -

because I think it's wonderful.

Please note the kangaroo in the foreground.

Storm - Ringwood - 20111109

Storm photos

Taken approximately 7.40pm

Rain started 7.44pm

Destruction - China First Thermal Coal Mine to destroy Bimblebox Nature Refuge - submit your comments by 7 Nov 2011

HELP PROTECT BIMBLEBOX NATURE REFUGE

As a friend recently said to me, 

'How many pages does it take to say "we're gonna dig a damn great hole?" '

Waratah Coal has finally confirmed that its proposed 'China First' mine would destroy Bimblebox Nature Refuge. The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) clearly states that 52% of Bimblebox would be open cut, and the remainder subject to major subsidence and interference from underground longwall mining. It would set a dangerous precedent for the mining of Queensland's precious conservation areas and contribute 3.3 billion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere, on top of a myriad of regional impacts.

NOW IS THE TIME TO HAVE OUR SAY. 

The period for public comment closes on November 7th. We have prepared a submission for people to send in, and have information for people who want to write their own. It is vital that we send a message loud and clear that we will not allow our nature refuges to be dug up for the sake of more coal profits.

Please visit the Bimblebox website HERE to find our how to make a submission.

I really appreciate your time.

Many thanks, 

Paola Cassoni

www.bimblebox.orgbimblebox@gmail.com+61 7 49853474

Bimblebox Nature Refuge

Alpha QLD 4724

Australia

Click to enlarge

Further Reading:

Resourcehouse Limited

Bowen Business Information Forum - PowerPoint type presentation in .pdf format

China First now a major project

Billionaires 'China First' Qld coal mine move

Clive Palmer scores biggest export contract worth $60b

China denies $US60bn coal deal with Clive Palmer's Resourcehouse

Palmer plans coal $6.5b behemoth

Palmer's Resourcehouse gets $1.2bn funding (Lateline transcript and video)

Bird may halt Palmer mine project

Australian Mining - Clive Palmer

Can a sustainable food culture allow the non-stunning slaughter of animals?

Should non-stunning slaughter of animals be part of a sustainable food culture in Australia - or, for that matter, the world.  Please give serious consideration to Lyn White's message below.

~~~~~~~~

 

As you know, a big decision will be made this week when primary industries ministers from around the country meet in Melbourne to decide whether to close the loophole on non-stunned slaughter in Australia.

I'm writing to invite you to an important rallyorganised by Animals Australia on Thursday evening at the MCG, where the ministers are due to discuss their decision on this issue. Already 14,000 Animals Australia supporters have written to these ministers imploring them to show mercy and remove the exemptions that are allowing some abattoirs in Victoria and South Australia to cut the throats of fully conscious sheep. We need your help to send one last and all-important reminder as the ministers arrive for their dinner meeting, that caring Australians are depending on them to make the right decision.

• Where: Gate 2, Melbourne Cricket Ground
• When: 5:45pm, Thursday, 27th October (finishing 7pm)
• What to bring: Just yourself, we will have plenty of posters for people to hold
• More information: Call the Animals Australia office on 1800 888 584

Miss, of all the cruelty I have seen inside abattoirs, non-stunned slaughter of animals represents the single greatest cause of distress, pain and suffering I have born witness to.

Fortunately we understand that several ministers are already of the opinion that non-stunned slaughter is unacceptable, which means there is real hope to end this brutal practice in Australia. This rally may be the tipping point that gets the others over the line.

Please join our experienced campaigners for a peaceful gathering on Thursday evening and help us ensure that all animals in this country are extended this most basic legal protection.

I hope you can join us, Lyn White Campaign Director

P.S. You may be aware that the official meeting of the primary industries ministers will be held on Friday morning. We are rallying at their Thursday evening dinner meeting as it is expected that their position will be determined at this time. I hope you can attend, but even if you can't, you can have your say on our website right now.

Musk Farm and Wombat Hill - great Australian gardens

Food history: Australian Family Recipes 1868 to1950

I love a bit of food history.  Food history is not only quaint and historic recipes.  Possum Pie, Beetroot Beer and Lamingtons: Australian Family Recipes from 1868 to 1950 by Victoria Heywood is a social history of lives gone by.  As of the first of this month, a wonderful contribution to Australian food history has hit the bookstands.  

Click to enlarge

Victoria came across many weird, supposedly edible, things in 17 years travelling the world as a journalist, but none so strange as some of the dishes she encountered back home in Australia when researching Possum Pie, Beetroot Beer and Lamingtons. In a writing career spanning 20-odd years, Victoria has written extensively about food, sex, health and travel for magazines and newspapers both here and abroad, and is the author of numerous other books.  One that would be of interest to Oz Tucker lovers is:

More about this book here

Bring the family down for a FREE sausage sizzle and 

some other tasty treats from original Australian cookbooks 

and hear Victoria Heywood chat about her new book:

• Where - Westgarth Books, 77 High Street, Northcote
• When - 12-1 pm, Saturday, October 15, 2011
• Phone - 9482 7117

World Matters 2011 Writers - Missing Peace @ Montsalvat - 14, 15, 16 October 2011

Diamond Valley Oxfam, Montsalvat, ELTHAMbookshop

Present

The 7^th Annual

World Matters 2010 Writers - Missing Peace

14, 15, 16 October

Venue: The Barn, Montsalvat, Hillcrest Avenue , Eltham   

 The Great Hall, Montsalvat

Session 1 - Friday 14 October 7.00-8.30pm

Superb storyteller Elliot Perlman is known for Three Dollars, The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming, Seven Types of Ambiguity. He discusses his epic new novel The Street Sweeper dealing with memory, love, guilt, heroism, the extremes of racism and unexpected kindness.

Chair: Sally Warhaft, Journalist and Commentator

Session 2 - Saturday 15th October
10.00am: Registration and Morning Tea
10.15am: Welcome: Stephen Lavender, Diamond Valley Oxfam
10. 30am: A Noongar Voice

Miles Franklin, Commonwealth Literature Award and Premier’s Literary Award winning author, Kim Scott, shares his colourful, warm optimistic view of the indigenous heart of our country and the need to honour the languages in which we first learn to speak. Kim will discuss his recent novel, That Deadman Dance, and children’s picture books Noongar Mambara Bakitj and Mamang.

Chair: Morag Fraser
This session is supported by Nillumbik Reconciliation Group

12. 00pm: Lunch Time Launch:
The Boy and the Crocodile

Teaming up with artists from Arte Moris, a not-for-profit art school in Dili, East Timorese children have painted scenes from the Legend of East Timor, a parable about the kindness of strangers narrated in Tetum and English. Proceeds from the sale of the book go to the Familia Hope Orphanage.

 

This session, which includes lunch, will be held in the Great Hall and costs $15.00
Supported by East Timor Women Australia who will run 

a fund raising handicrafts stall at World Matters

Session 3 - Saturday 15 October
1.15pm: Growing Up

Listen to unexpected stories that emerge when cultures clash and the mix of identities that make up a life. Elaine Kennedy’s Waiting for a Wide Horse Sky details the plight of migrant factory workers in South Korea. Tanveer Ahmed’s Exotic Rissole is an irreverent, funny memoir spanning rural Bangladesh through to western Sydney, looking at the complexities of managing tradition with modernity.

Chair: Jane Sullivan, Literary columnist, The Age.

Session 4 - Saturday 15 October

2.30pm: Futility of war

‘The war’, wrote one of its fiercest opponents and 19th century diarist Charles Gerville, ‘was founded in delusion and error.’ Chief political correspondent for SBS, Karen Middleton, An Unwinnable War, philosopher-historian Ian Bickerton, An Illusion of Victory, academics Fay Anderson and Richard Trembath, Witnesses to War, present their views and research on the mythmaking, propaganda and the tensions between political and military decision .

Chair: Carole Wigg, Medical Association for Prevention of War

3.45pm: Afternoon TeaSession 5  - Saturday 15 October

4. 00pm: Family Disturbances

Novelists Tony Birch, Blood, and Francesca Rendle-Short, Bite Your Tongue, discuss the worlds without sanctuary where characters find the strength of innocence amidst violence and genuine evil. Presented within a world of obsession and trauma the writers ask whether any of us is immune to the forces of destruction.

Chair: Morag Fraser

 Session 6  - Saturday 15 October

5.15pm: Poetry for Humanity

This perennial and highly popular session at all World Matters presented by Adelaide based Friendly Street Poets Elaine Barker, Ros Schulz and Serbian born Jelena Dinic. These empathetic poets couple their concerns for humanity with great poetic skill and strong personal voices in their profoundly moving, sometimes dark, writing that quietly and at a deep level open up their subjects for reflection and contemplation.

Participating chair: Elaine Barker

6.15pm:Twilight refreshments

Session 7  - Saturday 15 October

6.30-7.30pm: Singing History

John Lander, former Australian Ambassador to Iran and Permanent Delegate to UNESCO, sings songs
that are personal musical reflections in situations of conflict and disaster including the Song of the Children of Chernobyl which world premiered in Minsk. John will be accompanied by one of Australia’s finest pianists
Matthew Field.

Session 8  - Sunday 16 October

6.15pm: Morning tea and Registrations

10.15am: Welcome

Stephen Lavender, Oxfam and Helen Coleman, Mayor, Shire of Nillumbik

10.30am: The Voice of Reason

Professor Ian Lowe, The Big Fix, Living in the Hothouse, pre-eminent scientist, environmentalist, cultural commentator and president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, thinks we have a chance, but we have to act now. Ian’s new book is an environmental and community call to arms – through logic rather than fear-mongering.

Chair:Morag Fraser
Supported by the Victorian Climate Action Calendar

Session 9  - Sunday 16 October

11.45am: Missing Peace-Spotlight on Sri Lanka

“We all have to take positions when the temple bells ring.”

A child soldier with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Niromi De Soyza, Tamil Tigress, activist Jeremy Liyanage and photographer Michael Baranovic share their insights and the compelling need for freedom amidst oppression.

Chair: David Feith , Teacher,Globalisation, Monash University

1.00pm:Lunch $15.00

Session 10  - Sunday 16 October
1.45pm: Singing For All He’s Worth

Essayists Raimond Gaita, Arnold Zable and Morag Fraser pay warm and thoughtful homage to an extraordinary life and a late-blooming creativity that was as heroic as it was humble. Melbourne citizen Jacob Rosenberg, liberated from the Lodz ghetto lived to become a unique poet and writer of novels and memoir.

Session 11  - Sunday 16 October

3.00pm: Our World in Poetry

A good poem is one that the world can’t forget or is delighted to rediscover. Australian Poetry from 1788, is a landmark anthology of Australian poetry with over 1000 poems from 170 Australian poets, including translations of Aboriginal song poems, as well as short critical biographies. This afternoon we hear poets Geoffrey Lehmann, Ian McBryde, Emma Lew and Craig Sherborne.

4.00pm: Afternoon Tea

Session 12  - Sunday 16 October

4.15pm: Digging up a Past

Whereas it was once assumed that Australia was settled by humans only in the past few thousand or even hundred years, research dramatically proclaimed that in fact Aborigines had been living here before the human race inhabited the Americas. Among the individuals who proved that Australia did have an ancient history, Emeritus Professor John Mulvaney, AO, CMG has been the most persistent and successful. Digging up a Past is a lucid engaging story of Australian history coming of age.

Session 13  - Sunday 16 October

5.20pm: Banning Islamic Books

In 2005, a few days after al-Qaeda terrorists killed many people in the London tube, newspapers in Sydney began a campaign against what they said were terrorist books on sale in a bookshop in Lakemba. Shortly afterwards Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, attempted to get eight books banned by the Film and Literature Classification board. Richard Pennell, Pam Pryde and Emmett Stinson discuss the dire consequences of knee jerk reactions and laws that attempt to muffle dissonant voices.

6.00pm:Twilight refreshments

6.15-7.15pm: Raga Dolls Cost: $15.00
“ it’s good to be reminded of a mythical world of honour,beauty, optimism and even a little wit.”

The Raga Dolls Quartet, co-founded in 2000 by composer and violinist David Osborne and piano
accordionist George Butrumlis, has long championed such a world. Come and listen to their vibrant original new Australian music and retrospective reflections on an age where domestic music-making and small scale ensembles abounded.

Festival Pass: 

$60 includes 13 sessions, morning and
afternoon tea and twilight refreshments

 
Daily Pass: 

15th, 16th October: $30.00
Each Session: $7 unless otherwise stated
 

Students: 

$40 Festival Pass; $5.00 per session.
Lunch $15
Prepaid, early bookings are essential:
ELTHAMbookshop@bigpond.com
970 Main Road, Eltham 9439 8700

PLEASE NOTE:

Meera of the Eltham Bookshop has written to me saying: 

Please let fans of your site know 

that if anyone quotes your blog the cost for each session will be $5.00.

With regards,

Meera

Miss Eagle says:

Don't stand upon the order of thy booking

but get thee to thy booking now.

This program is tremendous.

If you don't believe me,

then you haven't delved into the links I've provided! 

elthambookshop@bigpond.com

970 Main Road Eltham

9439 8700