PARK! the herald angels scream ...

Wishing youse all a very merry Christmas but frankly I got very Victor Meldrew yesterday after a 3-hour drive from home when I joined the mongol hordes at the shopping mall. Just look at this selfish parking. and here is another one - who ignored the difficulty I had reverse parking into the spot behind him, despite my deliberate provocation of getting as close to his open window as possible,

that guy sat in his car reading with his foot on the brake for 40 minutes while I went and returned from the queue in the post office I just don't believe it or as That's So Pants would say "What is wrong with these people?".

My Day

This is what I was looking at tonight around 7:30 PM. Several hundred acres of The Western District. Very very close to where Victorias first/earliest settlers settled. Those bloody Hentys. My Nan always claimed that our lot helped the Hentys get their luggage off the boat.

My farmer is interstate so I went round the boundary at 7:30 to make sure no cattle were on the road. Noticed a sign flat on the ground, face down.

Should have stopped to read it and restore it because halfway along the hillside road there had been a serious landfall.

Woops. Think Top Gear in Bolivia who would have been laughing as they roared along the remote and narrow unstable precipice.

So of course I came up behind the sign at the other end of the road, the one that everybody else just went around. Sigh. Obviously there are other road users but I saw none of them. Total peace and quiet and fresh fresh air.

For contrast, earlier, at 11 AM I was 40 kms away in town seeing the Absolutely Fabulous movie and I thought it was. Edina finally having some kind of realisation about her shallow life pool as her grand-daughter picks up the fashionista baton. All the fun of vicious comment/observation on puerile media frenzy and every other societal sin "we're in the south of France darling, everyone's a criminal",  and "Kate Moss has never been so in-demand as since she went missing", a Princessian mountain of flowers at the crash site, with a collection of plush toys and childish portraits of Moss [and a pair of Hunter wellies with Glasto mud on them], with Edina reprising her star turn 'falling out of a car', and Hotel Du Cap, Nobu, Jean Paul Gaultier in several scenes as a Riviera beach fossicker, Bubble the dippy PA in the background laughing as she read a book by Friedrich Nietzsche. Star turns by Rebel Wilson as an Air Hostess, Joan Collins, funny Jerry Hall, her daughter Georgia, Lily Cole, and Barry Humphries playing a now aged old flame of Patsy Stones in his best Sir Les Patterson lewdity, and I am sure I saw John Galliano pass by. I now know that they all mouth 'Thurrssday' when cameras appear. 
There was an Al Wei Wei joke, book publisher jokes, and poor Lulu was trashed rotten as always. The only time the other 5 women in the audience laughed was at the 'discomfort of unknowingly eating wasabi' scene. The script was only as shallow as the viewers cultural frame-of-reference. I was impressed by the choice of Janis Ian At 17 [a commentary on society's beauty standards] for Saffy to sing in a gay club and leave them all in tears. Her wonderful "duck saliva" response [in the Hearst Corporation EYE magazine which was as close to the legendary UK  NOVA as the USA could get]  to the moronic interview question that passed for  record promo - "what is your favourite beauty product?" has been a treasured memory of mine.
I was amused that the Coming Feature trailer was for The First Monday In May a documentary about the very people "we MUST have Rihanna" that Ab Fab was ridiculing. There was some serious cast overlap too.
No muddy roads in either film.
My no-shades-of-grey day.

Western District awash

The farm fence was submerged this week by all the rain here in the Coleraine area. Hibernating snakes all got a wet wake up and a sheep was swimming down the street in Casterton.

This image is the same place as the one above, taken from the bridge the next day with all the flotsam caught in the fence wire. Bit of work ahead to replace it all. At least the dams and tanks are all full.
This image of the nearby Nigretta Falls

is from The Age and please do click this link to it's entry World Of Waterfalls. Not only did flying kangaroos wreck their rental and inspire them to publish several images of kangas leaping across their bows but they went in November when the falls were dry - here is their image of that:

World Of Waterfalls I wish they could see it now.

Koalarama

On my way home from shopping [in Hamilton, Victoria 3300 the heart of the wonderful and woolly Western District]

eventually he left the road ...

and went up a tree.

That was all cute and groovy and I mooched further toward home only to find

a tortoise on the road. sigh. of course I had to pick it up and put it safely away from the hurtling logging trucks which most certainly would not swerve to avoid a fatal end.
If Copperwitch [hi Coppy] was writing this post she would make it hilarious. She shops at Southland which probably has koalas and tortoises too.I can only sigh.

Casterton's Annual Kelpie Muster

Well darling readers I was there this morning for the 20th annual shebang and this pic is the actual muster where skilled working dogs compete on the banks of the Glenelg River. Below are the other competitors mounted and waiting with their dogs.

Dogs dogs woof woof it was dog city from far and wide you wouldn't believe the range of number plates from distant places. The next pic is my friend Julie Honey and her famous clever dog FLASH a rare Miniature Kelpie - he's the one in the red bow tie winning the Kelpie Egg&Spoon Race in the main Street.

I mainly shopped the muster - the stubby holder, bumper sticker and food food food. Tomorrow is the great auction of talented dogs where they go for thou$and$.  I don't really need a pet but I may be a sucker for the concurrent auction of a special edition VicRoads rego plate with a Kelpie on it. Watch the freeways my friends. Woof Woof.

I went to Casterton

It is only 30 kms up the road and very pretty in Autumn.
Dame Mary Gilmore, the woman on our $10 banknote lived in Casterton, Victoria in 1907 when this substantial hotel was designed and built.
However, she escaped and the hotel is now closed down. Young Mary Jean Gilmore had been taken by her husband to the Strathdownie sheep station and if I look up I can actually see the Strathdownie road from my window.  Vistas can be good out here in The Western District.
When that hotel was absolutely thriving in a wealthy community 30 years on, it got some neighbouring buildings in a completely different style.
Murrell's Shoes is charming example of Art Deco and has not been ruined:

It bravely faces the stonkingly Art Deco Casterton Town Hall. Totally Style Moderne in every way.

That dog-on-a-rock is there because Casterton [named for a place in Ireland] is the home of The Kelpie muster - an event where $12,000 has been paid for one dog [I wonder though, how mixed the seller's emotions were as he left without his clever doggie].  Those red dogs which are so focussed on sheep herding originated in the Victorian Casterton when it was noted by her Scotsman owner that "one of Kelpie's pups" would be just as clever at moving sheep as she was. There are A LOT of sheep around here.

No Kelpies needed at No Place For Sheep however. A most excellent Australian blog I commend to you. Follow the link to vent your spleen on Bananaby Joyce, Donald "7/11" Trump or the witless Tara Brown who has been in a slummy Beirut slammer for much more than 60 Minutes.

Annie gets a goat

My goat Millie. She now has an old water tank for a shelter and several layers of carpet to sleep on. She makes sweet little bleats and is supposed to eat all the blackberries. Which she surely will after finishing all the bread and lettuce I have given her.

The Quarrymen rock the west

Yesterday I got this image of a western district quarry when I went there to order some driveway surfacing.
It was beyond fascinating and sorry to say it is also beyond my descriptive capability to do the thrill any justice. Of course there was a huge huge tiered hole in the earth and many trucks. Actually there was every truck ever used by three generations of quarrymen. They could sell tickets it was so amazing. However, the guy asked me not to reveal the location "if you put that photo on the internet". I hope you like it as much as I do.  It's the earth's crust, people.

Australia Day in Hamilton 3300

Does your local carwash have a sign asking you to NOT leave any EXCESS hay clogging the drains?

HAY.

I love the country.

Cape Bridgewater, 3305 Vic.

St. Stephen's Day having lunch at the cafe on the beach with my friend Stephen and a walk through the fascinating rocky limestone tundra with mystical wind turbines all round. Packed with visitors and hikers and all wonderful - read this and then GO there.

Yulecart 3301

I hope your weekend was as funny as mine. I saw the Yulecart Agricultural Show. There were ponies of course and inside the Heritage listed bluestone hall there were roses and wool.

The hall was built by the community using bluestone recycled from Strathkellar Homestead. The names on the prizewinning exhibits were the same dozen as on the boards displaying those who served in the 1914 war and the 1939 war. There's a continuity out here in the country.

Wildlife and wild life.

That yearling is not supposed to be in my yard, but safely behind the fence across the road. The owner does not live on the property so I had to go to the pub "G&T please" to find out he lives miles up the road, go there [.05] and back. Life in the country is different.
I have moved house since the trucks in the rain post 8 weeks ago on 4th June, not that it has stopped raining. Into my last house, my final address of so very many addresses, on 20th June.  I am experiencing involuntary spontaneous smiles.
No unpacking yet, just clearing.
My new challenge is snakes. They are everywhere. Each new encounter slightly less shocking so that by this morning when I lifted a sheet of wallboard in the shed, I just put it down again and hope the snake went back to hibernating.
This image is yesterday's baby snake with it's head, sadly, flattened by that sharpened spade on the left.

I am waiting on Acme Mail Order to bring me six VibraRandom repeller stakes - only one is needed apparently, but I take no prisoners when I act.

The 'snakes here' sign is to keep the imminent shed-clearing guys from forgetting that baby snakes bite too. The large parents, are of course somewhere on the property, yet to surprise anyone. The stakes emit vibrations through the earth that snakes can sense via their jaws as danger, and hopefully relocate. It is supposed to also repel rodents, ants and rabbits.
The team of three who are coming to clear out the shed estimated two days and multiple trips to the Transfer Station.  I have prepared a first-aid kit and written out the phone number of the nearby hospital as well as the police station between here and it, so I can alert the cop that should I streak through his town with a snakebitten shed-clearer I shall be doing 140 kph -

like that.

We all know that being completely prepared for an event, surely guarantees it won't happen.
Tourniquets are out, pressure bandage is the way. The snakes are, of course, lethal Tiger Snakes.
There are benign reptiles as well:
Raking up the debris after slashing and burning blackberries on the roadside, I uncovered a large Blue-Tongue Lizard curled-up and hibernating I assume. The fire rolled right over the top without affecting it.  Later while mowing rough grass I mowed over the top of it's twin and thankfully it was not harmed either although when picked up, the tongue shot out in a cobalt blaze designed to strike fear into my heart. They are not called blue-tongues for nothing, it is such an intense shade and obviously works as a deterrent because I really don't want to see it again.
Next week the local highlight is dogs and dags at SHEEPVENTION and I shall be there.

Beyond the windscreen today

Those are my snaps of some of the trucks which hurtled along the B160 today making no speed allowance for the pouring rain. There were 20 in the first 40 kms of my trip, and the ratio continued over the entire 220 kms I drove. Most of them were actually logging trucks but I couldn't photograph any of those as they all took up too much of the road and were doing about 120 kms ph.

Manager of The Port of Portland, Victoria, Malcolm Geier said woodchip truck movements in and out of the port would total 290,790 by the end of the 2015 financial year. 
From Portland to Japan to make Hello Kitty lav paper probably.
"Australia is Open For Business"

 I'm out here, so you don't have to be.

over the hood

West out of Lake Bolac Victoria in a brief burst of sunshine in a day that otherwise just rained and rained, and here comes the 77th logging truck of the day.
They roar east, they roar West. After 6pm with no light but pouring rain, 22 of them hurtled past me in the 40 kilometres East of Skipton alone.
Please do follow the link for the story of the great twister of 2006.
I am out there, so you don't have to be.

The Western District today

approaching Dunkeld and seeing Gariwerd loom a different colour every time is always thrilling and I think of the Jardwadjali and Djab Wurrung people who lived here 500 years ago and how mystical it would have seemed to them, as it certainly does to me today.

after 500 kms the sign toward home also seems fairly mystical

500 kms of long straight flat road needed enlivenment

and yet I live to see another sunset.

My Western District Day

... comprised driving for 3 hours and meeting this roadside welcoming committee of Merinos in MERINO Victoria 3310
which is a lovely place. The pub has a movie theatre, beat that Melbourne.
Then I drove another 3 hours at 100 kms p.h. and am so weary I am doing this FFS.

wind turbines Mt Mercer

My days are lately spent on this road over the Fagg farm on Mt Mercer where there are 50 wonderful white wind turbines. 50.

they are BIG

If Wordsworth the poet had been wandering along this road and came upon a host of snowy wind turbines, those daffs that dazzled him would have been history.

Laborious victorius

Going down the road to vote in Buninyong.

getting closer. Mount Buninyong is a magical place.

Random outcome of a good close car park under those green branches saved me no time in the massive queue. Buninyong Primary School was the place, in one of those 'Gillard Government School Halls'. I wish time travel could have brought The Rev. Thomas Hastie who established the Bunny bush school in 1847. That horse float was a highlight.

RIP Wilbur

Update July 2014 - since 2010 when I wrote this:
"In the centre of Rokewood with a lovely view of the church spire (and the pub), Wilbur the hog accepts the admiration of passing travellers. I finally stopped to capture his magnificence for your enjoyment He knows I don’t eat ham or bacon or pork."

Wilbur has passed away, peacefully in his sleep with a full tummy.  His death was widely reported in various daily  papers. I went past today and the junction was not funny anymore.

*******

This week I drove the C146 and enjoyed, as I always do, the sight of this spire emerging from distant trees and telling me I have reached Rokewood where my Tuxedo-Cat Miss Kitty lives on a farm with my friend.

The church under this spire was built in 1862 by

Edinburgh-boy Alexander Davidson who

had eloped here with his cousin Eugenia Cooper, to avoid

a scandal and be married by their uncle the Revd. John Cooper.

They built themselves a substantial cottage in Rokewood and as well as his uncle’s church under that steeple, he designed bluestone mansions right across Victoria’s Western District for all the rich graziers competing with each other for the most rooms and biggest ballroom -
Kurruc-a-Ruc and Wurrok both in Rokewood, ,
Mooleric, and Barwon Park in Winchelsea,
Barunah Plains in Inverleigh, Narrepumelap in Wickliffe, Darra at Meredith,
Titanga and Gala at Lismore, and just up the road from me -Yeowarra which was originally called just YEO -

Photos of all these rockpiles can be found at the National Trust Register

And here’s a fact for Hot Andrew - Between June 1885 and March 1887 Davidson held the appointment of Architect for the Melbourne Tramway Trust and designed the MMTB building at 48 Nicholson St Fitzroy.

Bat-immobile

Clearly Batmobiles do not function in daylight on
Nepean Highway, Moorabbin.

My photo, c.1990, using Nikon SLR and I could just spit for missing the front end like that. 
While I am in some other world, the car is now at Movieworld QLD.
Anton Furst got the Oscar award for his production design on the 1989 Tim Burton batmovie and this particular vehicle.

Things are quiet Chez O'Dyne, out in the paddocks looking after 3 cats (and one can open doors), and a very furry dog which is shedding it's coat. Apparently German Shepherd people refer to this as "blowing their coat". It's everywhere and the ducted vacuuming just blew up.
Mainly it's quiet because I am recovering from being 'flamed' by a grouchy relative who doesn't approve of my posts.
If you are reading this you must be on the list of bloggers allowed by the last time AOD went under the radar.
Life is too brief to be bothered with people who bring nothing but aggravation.
Batman thinks so as well. He has left his busted Batmobile to the pit crew above and flown away. Haunted creatures of the night and aren't we all.