Curiosities

Macedon memories

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I was recently reminded of my wonderful 2010 nature writing residency at Rosebank in Victoria, thanks to the Victorian Writers Centre. It was a world of mists and deciduous trees, of old gardens and evocative rocks.

The lovely old stone cottage was dwarfed by the huge oak tree at its front.

I met my first medlar tree there– a living mediaeval curio.

I saw streets lined with golden autumn leaves, as here in what I think was Lancefield, where they had a great Saturday market-in-the-mist.

I roamed all around the Macedon area, including Cobaw State Forest and its sleeping boulders.

For a fungi-lover like me, the cool high country was full of hitherto unseen treasures.

Of course I went to Hanging Rock, very early before the school hordes arrived. As I heard the pan pipes playing in my head, I can see how Miranda could have disappeared… no path was obvious…

And the Rock does not exactly hang, but is scarily wedged.

When I left, this is what I wrote in the guest book:

‘I came to Rosebank from the bush, not the city, but it has been no less a new experience – a taste of rural civilisation in this quaint cottage of honeycomb-hued stone, with only the roos and the smell of woodsmoke to remind me of home.

I take away a mind full of fresh sensory treasures to colour and flavour stories yet to be written. Many were close at hand: the awesome Oak; the crunch of its acorns underfoot; the strange sci-fi fruit with its pronged antennae that turned out to be the mediaeval Medlar; the bright yellow carpet that the Twisted Willow bestowed, after filling the lap of the last chair of summer with gold; the graceful hot pink and orange drooping of of the European Spindle bush; sunlit morning mist turning the sheep on the hill pink; the cute little mouse that grew bolder each night, and its astonishing capacity for pellet production.

‘Some were further afield and higher up: snow gums and mosses and bright fungi, including my first Fly Agaric, the archetypal white-dotted glossy red toadstool of childhood fairtytales. 

Most of all, I will remember the rocks – on Cobaw and Hanging Rock and the Camel’s Hump – great rounded creatures with mottled hides, like stranded humpback whales; the pockmarked guardian pinnacles at the Rock which does not hang, but straddles; only its freckled bulbous stomach, under which I scurried, can be said to hang. If Patricia Wrightson’s Nargun lives anywhere, it’s there.

‘But this is a home I have been lent, not just a house, and domestic things have entered my head too: the unconscious game of avoiding the broken board under the carpet in the hall floor; the dear little yellow and white enamelled pot, the nest of cast iron pans, the beautifully balanced and weighted vegetable knife, the old scullery sink, the deep, deep bath that retains the water’s heat – and, not least – the BiIlby egg cup from which I ate my Lancefield market free range eggs!’

Thank you, Victoria.

Waldheim pioneers

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This is the view that Gustav and Kate Weindorfer would have had when they chose to build a chalet here at Waldheim (Forest home) near Cradle Mountain.

They are credited with inspiring the formation of this world famous national park. Gustav used to say he wanted ‘a national park for all people for all time’.

I encourage you to read this brief summary of their extraordinary story. 

The original Austrian-style chalet burnt down and a reproduction now exists, with interactive information. Kate facilitated his spending a lot of time up here building it… and there were no roads then. I found the relics of their efforts quite saddening.

Gustav liked to use the King Billy Pines common in the area, due to the straight grain of the timber. Shingles and boards for walls and floors were all from this timber.

On the Weindorfer Forest walk just behind their home there are some very large and old King Billy Pines.

Overall, it was a fantasy forest of twisted shapes and moss creations.

It looked like the moss had engulfed everything that had halted or lain down; I’m not sure I would call the inhabitants of this forest ‘trees’.

In fact, I think I disturbed some of its creatures in mid- action. Tolkein kept coming to my mind.

Sometimes the moss made a less fantastical shape, yet this perfect ball didn’t seem natural either…

The local wombats, appropriately furrier than our NSW ones, seem to have adopted the visitors’ amenities block as their home.

I was told that the local echidnas, smaller than ours, are also furrier… and with less spines.

Whinge alert:

My stay at Waldheim was less than idyllic, not the atmosphere for which I was hoping, as roadworks on the guest cabins’ carparks happened to have been postponed until the very two days I was there. Weather is paramount here.

So not only could I not partk next to my cabin but the roadworking machines outside the window and the smell of tar made it hard to rest after the next day’s walk around Dove Lake.

That walk was stunning, as you’ll see next post, but I needed that rest!

Living history

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The oldest timber house in the Hastings survives today, totally thanks to the volunteers in the Douglas Vale Conservation Group. In fact, it thrives today, as Douglas Vale Historic Homestead and Vineyard.

I finally got around to visiting it, and found many resonances and memories … and good wine. Founder George Francis would be proud of it.

The entry via a vast and ancient bamboo ‘forest’ is atmospheric for a start.

This vineyard has been producing wine since 1859 and I was charmed that its first plantings were of Black Isabella grapes, as I’d had those vines at my 1895 Minmi house.

Of course I bought a bottle of Black Isabella Ruby Port (Portobella) from the wine tasting and sales centre housed in the old oyster factory, showing ties with the Dick family, who had started the oyster industry on the Hastings River.

A vine of that grape grows along the front verandah of this little house. The house is modest in scale, even with its added-on rooms, and it was fortunate to have been rescued from the vandalism that occurred after the last occupant, family member Patsy Dick, died in 1993.

Although made waterproof with tin roofing, the original she-oak shingles can be seen under the verandah roof.

The whole house is unapologetically a working museum cum vineyard, not a reproduction/re-imagined historical monument. 

It’s free to look around the house, the outbuildings and gardens, with knowledgeable and enthusiastic guides to explain what you are seeing and what has gone before.

Apart from the unvarnished broad floorboards and wall and ceiling boards, I loved the displays of the historical layers of wallpapers and linoleums.

There were detailed family trees and much background information.  A Heritage site, it’s a dream for local history buffs.

I was intrigued to learn that George Francis had likely learnt the craft of winemaking when he worked on a Hunter property where German vineyard workers were employed. My German ancestors, the Nebauers, came here for that exact purpose…

As was the safety custom, the kitchen was in a separate building, and its Beacon fuel stove was the same as my Nanna’s, the kerosene fridge the same as I’d once had. History seems very close here.

The windows are small, the doors low, the decorations minimal, the chimneys few, the fireplace not real marble, but timber painted to look like it; this was not a rich man’s home. Maybe that’s why it is so relatable.

And by sheer coincidence, in Patsy Dick’s room, to show his trade as a grave digger, the timber grave marker used was of a Munro couple. I am a Munro.

And my father’s name was Francis…

Douglas Vale welcomes volunteers but do at least pay it a visit. You won’t be sorry!

Tropical oddities

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Lake Tinaroo being man-made, there ought not to be crocodiles there, but freshwater crocodiles are in there, although not often seen.

Lake Eacham is a crater lake and it does have one freshwater croc, albeit again seldom seen.

So it was a treat to have a trail runner point out this one basking on a log near shore.

Is it yawning or smiling?

The flora discovery was that some tropical Queensland trees grow flowers out of their bark, a behaviour called ‘cauliflory’.

The wonderful resource of the Queensland Plants Identification Facebook page  revealed this for me.

Firstly this one, abundant to the point of  showiness, is Yellow Mahogany (Epicharis parasitica). 

And then on the Bumpy Satinash (Syzgium cormiflorum) was this one, spotted on several walks. These only flower every twp to five years so we were lucky. The fruits that would follow are often called ‘White Apple’.

We later saw other trees, on other rainforest walks, where the flowers were more fully open, fluffily fringed like gumnut blossoms.

In the garden of Inge’s Tinaroo home we spotted this weird green-fruited tree and discovered it is a Hairy Fig (Ficus hispida).

The fruits of these three tropical trees are naturally loved by cassowaries.

Growing on the bark makes the fruit accessible to more than high flying birds, or to opportunistic ground foragers once the fruit falls.

This sci-fi apparition is a cycad, I learn. Our Facebook boffins say it is a female Cycas ophiolitica, but out of its usual range.

As it is in Inge’s garden, it was likely planted, and she has pruned the dead leaves, so the crown we see is fresh growth, which developed very fast.

These cycads are descended from the first seed-bearing plants, around 200 million years ago, and although they look like palms or ferns, they are actually related to pines, as cone-bearing.

Tropical Queensland has opened my mind to many flora possibilities that I’d once have dismissed as fanciful.

But there were many simply wonderful plants in those forests, as well as weird ones. Next post…

Of froth and fury

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On a recent coastal walk, I met a wild sea with white whipped waves, a long damp beach with receded evidence of a very high tide, and a strand composed of murky froth.

The blobby yellowish-grey froth always puzzles me, as it looks quite disgustingly un-natural, polluted. It was especially revolting this day as it wobbled slightly in the wind.

But sea foam is actually a natural phenomenon — find out more here

What does not move are the rocks — extraordinarily varied in colour and composition, layered and exposed to different degrees.

Yet again, I wish I had a geologically-savvy friend with me to explain these  odd pairings of materials, worn down differently and left in strange sculptural poses.

Some are more consistently like a pebblecreter’s dream, millions of small pebbles held together for another eternity.

How long ago did time and wild storms send them tumbling from the cliffs above, to begin their weathering, their sculpting, from the fury of wind and rain?

Such thoughts certainly put our puny human lifespans in perspective…

Nîmes nostalgia

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This will be my last post from my travels. I could have done many more and will surely keep finding things I had wanted to share, but I thank those of you who have stuck with me.

I’d have to say that I was most impressed by the attention to what Roman relics remain… like this, preserved out the back of the very modern museum, in a garden of the typical plants of the time, especially aromatic ones.

Or this, one of the two surviving main gates of the old Augustan walled town: 1st century, kept on what are now main streets.

I also loved the charm of the later old streets and apartments, with their wrought iron balcony railings; this one was unusual in having a decorative upper trim, like a metal picot edge.

Where I stayed was a delight, with three French windows and aged blue shutters, right above a lively street, with buskers and bands, street stalls and crowded cafés. Being in the old town, no vehicle traffic… except for the small garbage trucks, collecting by hand in the wee hours.

I saw a lot from my front row seat. 

Just across the way, in the next little street, was a church which ran a soup kitchen once a week.

Nîmes was busy with shoppers for the many boutique offerings… but also regular beggars.

Although I had the wonderful big Les Halles covered market close by, I also went to this one on my last Friday. I loved that stallholders were by now answering my questions, asked in my Aussie French, with floods of French, so it can’t have been too awful…

I could have stayed in France just to eat… the great variety of crusty breads in different flours; the aged cheeses with crusts like rocks and tastes I will forever miss.

There were many marvels in the museums, while not answering all my questions.

The Museum of Old Nîmes was unsatisfactory as to how and why and if ‘serge de Nîmes’ became the ‘denim’ of Levi-Strauss jeans.  

The old wardrobes made me wonder how anyone slept in a room with such overly decorated monstrosities.

The Museum of Fine Arts had an amazingly intact Roman mosaic floor, discovered in the 19th century and relaid here. I noted that while the central piece is figurative, the rest is geometric, including several Escher-like patterns.  Was there anything creative they had not thought of?

I enjoyed this Museum, but did wonder why the 18th century painters gave Cleopatra a perpetual wardrobe malfunction. No matter who she was meeting, like Mark Antony, she seemed unable to stop her dress slipping to expose a boob. Those handmaidens need talking to… 

I come home with a head full of new understandings and images, so I thank the friends who made this trip possible, this experience of a lifetime, surreal though it seems in retrospect.

Kattang curiosities

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Kattang Nature Reserve is full of wonders, some more curious than others.

While looking like an exotic tropical fruit, this plant is a native, with the rather demeaning name of Common Milk Vine, Marsdenia rostrata. It is so called for the milky sap it exudes. Unlike Marsdenia viridiflora, Bush Banana, this large fruit is not edible.

However, this native vine’s fruit certainly is edible; in fact, it’s delicious.  With the offputting but apt common name of Cockspur Thorn, Maclura cochinchinensis, it is the scourge of bushwalkers or regenerators but its sweet fruit is beloved by birds… and people! 

To me its taste is reminiscent of Jaffa lollies, its texture soft like a raspberry.

(The yellow spots on the leaves are apparently not typical.)

Most curious of all, this yellow item that has been puzzling me for weeks turns out to be a root of this same Maclura, I am told, albeit in a different place. Fungi, decaying plastic?