Northern news

A buff coloured A4 size envelope appears in my letter box.     

                                                  

The hand-writing belongs to The Old Girl from northern Victoria.  I am not expecting anything from her. I inspect the envelope; there are a few small holes. Silverfish or some-one picking at it? I turn the envelope over, looking for contents clues; it feels like a thickish bundle of paper.

I open the envelope to find her local newspaper and no indication of which page I should turn to.   It’s all a mystery. A process of elimination seems to be the way to go and I start at the beginning. I turn over the front page.  I turn over the second page and then the next page and the mystery is solved.

It’s an article about Day’s Mill at Murchison, a 19^th century flour mill, whose restoration began some 30 years ago. Currently work is being carried out on the gatehouse to the property and not a moment too soon. The gatehouse thirty years ago was a neglected, small  red-brick building sitting by the entrance gate to the property.

At that time, I was fortunate enough to be chosen by Parks Victoria as one of the volunteers on a team of people who were to spend their days crawling around the mill, the homestead and the outbuildings, photographing and listing the contents.

We took tents and camped alongside the driveway; the shower block was portable and, in the evening after drinks, we sat in an open barn where the local ladies served up good home style country cooking, which was demolished in double quick time.

It was a wonderful experience and all this time later I am still interested in current happenings.

Day's Mill

Welcome back!

Vegemite.  You either love it or hate it.  It is very salty, has been described as having a meaty taste and you will find it in many Australian pantries.  In the Trash Palace we don’t run to the luxury of a pantry, but a jar of Vegemite sits on the top of the fridge.  For ease of access you understand; anything in immediate sight has a better chance of being consumed on a regular basis.

Vegemite has returned to the fold after some years on the globalized financial and commercial merry-go-round. Sucked up by the vacuum cleaner of international company buying and selling, Vegemite has now returned to our shores. Starting out in Melbourne in 1922, it attracted American interest and part ownership, early in the piece. This was the beginning of a joint venture with Kraft Foods and in 1952 Kraft Foods took over sole ownership of the company.

After that the plot thickens and Vegemite was swept into the ongoing and convoluted world of takeovers, mergers and other commercial flim-flam.  Recently the merry-go-round momentum slowed and Vegemite jumped off into the arms of Bega Cheese.

A marriage made in commercial heaven.  After all what is better than a sandwich of white bread slathered with butter,  thick chunks of sliced cheese laid on same and Vegemite generously applied the top piece of bread.   Press together, slice and eat.

Good to see you home again Vegemite.

Visiting ACCA

Today is Australia Day, with differing viewpoints about whether this is a day to be celebrated in its current form by all Australians.

Having said that, I’ll now say this:  today I went to the ACCA where there is an exhibition looking at contemporary art of the indigenous people of south-eastern Australia.  I see this exhibition as a fitting place to visit on Australia Day and one where opinions of the artists may not always be aligned with those opinions of non-indigenous Australians.

It was also a visit that deleted one of the items on my ‘bucket list’.  I had only limited time to look about the ACCA building, as I wanted to concentrate on the Sovereignty exhibition.

Walking into the building I headed to an entrance where this banner was hanging.  If you look closely you will find words on this banner.

In the next room were a series of artworks reflecting indigenous views of  white settlement.

As you can see, the idea of Australia Day as the non-indigenous population views it, does not always accord with the view of the present day indigenous population.  

 Walking through to the next area I found more than one display of interest.  Above is a possum skin cloak, these were worn for warmth on a regular basis, particularly in southern regions, and were sometimes use as burial cloaks.

On the wall behind me hangs a beautifully woven example of an eel trap. The indigenous people had two forms of eel traps here in the south of the country.  One form was creating  a trap within a watercourse by using rocks to divert the eels and the other was the portable variety shown above. It  was lowered into the water, to trap any unsuspecting eel who swam into it. One swift manoeuvre and the basket was lifted out of the water and the eel was captured.

On a wall near the possum skin cloak was a collection of black and white photographs of scar trees.  This collections showed the scars left on trees after the bark was removed to make shields, canoes or coolamons, shallow containers used to carry water or food. 

My interpretation of the above poster was that of the original indigenous  hunting grounds being taken over by the sheep belonging to European settlers and the large orange dollar sign  representing the wealth the sheep brought to their owners.

My last stop was to admire  examples of cloaks ..........

Glenda Nicholls used jute as the basis for the cloaks and added possum skin, seeds, shells, feathers and other symbolic materials.

.......................  and beads.

The beads are the work of Maree Clarke and are long, up to over 40 metres in length, seeds, nut and feathers are used to make the finished necklace.

For anyone interested in a closer look, they can take an online walk around the exhibition; it's as easy as clicking on this link.

Enjoy.

   

Recent Investigation

The Moat Café below the Wheeler Centre has been on my ‘to-be-checked-out’ list for quite some time and today it was crossed it off that list.  I was on my way to do a spot of hospital visiting and had some time to spare, so I stopped off to investigate.

It was a rather horrid, windy, dusty, hot day and some time in an underground haven out of the heat, dirt and filth seemed like a good idea.  It seemed an even better idea when I sat down, looked through the menu and found The Moat version of an Eton Mess.  Perfect antidote to the day outside.

Almost perfect – it’s not your standard Eton Mess, when it has tapioca as an ingredient but this minor variation on the theme didn’t stop me from ordering it. The ingredients are:  vanilla tapioca pudding,  rhubarb, strawberry, mint & lemon curd.  A tarted up and distant relative to the original Eton Mess.

A slightly messy photo of The Moat version of Eton Mess

I ate it all, tarted up or not, like a good little girl. And then I ordered coffee, helped myself to a book from the shelves and in Cameron Forbes’ Australia on Horseback I read an account of the Warrigal Creek massacre in 1843.

A glass of wine or a book? Difficult decision.

Warrigal Creek was not far from my childhood stamping ground and at that time also the name of a large pastoral property, situated in the area of the creek of the same name.  This killing of aboriginal people was a black mark on the history of the district, and was very rarely mentioned.

According to Cameron Forbes' version of the story, it happened along these lines:

Brataulong Aborigines had killed a nephew of Lachlan Macalister, one of the more powerful of the Scottish settler’s.  In reprisal, the so-called Highland Brigade, formed by Angus McMillan the leader of the Scottish clan, set to and cornered the Brataulung at Warrigal Creek and killed what has been estimated at between 60 and 120 aborigines.  

According to local legend, and unsurprisingly, the creek ran red with blood.

Forbes’ account is in total contrast to The Valley of the Sky, a small novel which we read in the first year of my secondary education, some 60 years ago.  In the school version, Angus McMillan was a benevolent ruler of the lands he took in Gippsland, on good terms with the local aboriginal people and butter wouldn’t have melted in his mouth.

I close Australia on Horseback and this reflection on a dark part of Australia’s past, drain my coffee cup, pay the cashier and reluctantly return to the blast furnace outside.