More on Bindi....

HERE is a snippet of Bindi and her gang of brothers and sisters eating up their food. Bindi is on the right, she has a little spot on her back and we can pick her out of the bunch. Very cute indeed.

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Mia and I took a train into town and a tram up Elizabeth Street to Grattan Street to my work. We had to get off in the middle of the road, wait for the tram to leave the stop, then cross the road when we got a green man to do so. I just got through explaining to Mia that we could not cross to the hospital yet because the tram needed to leave and we would get run over when these two young guys ran in front of the tram yelling "Stop you fu*$ing idiot" to the tram driver. I was so damned mad at them, they could have been run over right in front of Mia and I. For the record, Mia told them both what "stoopid idiots" they were. That's my girl!!!

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Saturday night was spent at my friend's place with my 4 kids and 4 of her grandkids and they had a ball. Face painting, dancing to music, playing games and then watching Spiderman on TV. Lots of laughs and then home exhausted.

Hope your weekend was as good :)

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One more thing, could you all please send positive thoughts to a fellow blogger whose love of her life Don is in hospital in Sydney at the moment? Such a wonderful family deserve nothing less.

Histroy Friday... St Kilda

St Kilda Kiosk, 1950

St Kilda is a seaside suburb of Melbourne that was one of the first towns established back in the 1850's. It was a popluar place to want to live because it gave the immigrants that came to live here in Australia relief from the harsh dry conditions they came to know. The seaside breezes that came in during the afternoons on a hot Summer's day being the big drawcard.

During the 1880's St Kilda became a buzzing area of construction, lots of palatial mansions and hotels being formed by stonemasons. This was especially in an area that was called St Kilda Hill, and in seaside streets, that we know today as Fitzroy, Acland and Grey Streets. The lower areas of St Kilda were not as affluent in nature.

During the Depression of the 1890s, however, St Kilda began to decline. The seaside area became an entertainment precinct for Melbourne's working classes after a tramline was extended south from the Melbourne central city area, and the wealthy people moved further south to more exclusive suburbs such as Brighton.

A rustic view of Luna Park.

Luna Park and The Palais Theatre.

An Italian Engineer named Carlo Catani developed many of the wonderful adornments that we can see today along the foreshore of St Kilda and he began his construction of these back in 1906. Luna Park, Palais Theatre ( where I went to my first concert to see Fergal Sharkey), St Moritz Ice Rink (destroyed by fire) and many other landmarks such as gardens with arches that the community can enjoy even now.

These developments attracted the people of Melbourne and even tourists to come enjoy the seaside towns many festivities and would become a place to make wonderful childhood memories. My own Grandparents grew up in St Kilda together in the early 1930's and many a fond memory of Luna Park and endless Summers spent at the beach are enjoyable to recount still. As my Pa said, "There was no money because of the depression, swimming was free, so it is what we did".

Despite migrationary trends, St Kilda retains a large Jewish population. The legacy of Jewish people in the area is evidenced in the large number of synagogues in the area and the Jewish Museum of Australia, the only one of its kind in the country, which is located in Alma Street.

St Kilda has a very unique arts culture, aswell as attrracting famous artists to its wonderful venues. Many festivals are held throughout the year. St Kilda Festival, Gay Pride March, Melbourne's Midsumma Festival, Melbourne Underground Festival, just to name a few. Of course, I cannot go on without mentioning the wonderful Esplanade Market held every Sunday.

St Kilda is located only 7 kilometres from the CBD. It is a great place to stay. Try out a Bed and Breakfast, or one of many Hotels. Access into town by tram makes it easy to get about and see everything without lifting a foot off the ground.

There is something for everyone 24/7 in the seaside place of St Kilda.

Lest We Forget...

They shall not grow old,

As those that are left grow old,

Age shall not weary them,

Nor the years condemn,

Let the going down of the sun,

And in the morning,

We shall remember them!

Our New Addition...

This is our new baby girl "Bindi". She is a bitsa..bitsa everything, very very cute. We will be picking her up in a few weeks, she still needs some milk from her lovely mummy dog. She has a great temperament and she smells so gorgeous, just like puppies do.

You cannot see it in the images above, but she has a little spot on her back, and that is how we know it is her amongst her siblings.

When I was a little girl, I had a dog named "Mate", he was an Australian Boarder Collie, similar to THIS one. Then, when I moved house to live with my beloved hubby, we had a puppy that didn't stay a puppy for long named AAMI, she was a Rottweiler.

Now, we will be getting Bindi, and she will be a nice medium sized dog when fully grown. I am looking forward to getting her. She will be the first dog our kids have ever owned. They are excited too.

I hope to get one of THESE when it is my birthday in December, LOL. It cracked me up when I found it. Ya gotta laugh ya know!!!!

Friday's History Lesson- Joke, Poem and Slouch Hat.

During any of the wars that Australian Armed Forces have been active, it is widely known that Aussies are a jocular bunch of people. We can take the piss out of each other and, if it even comes to a brawl(fight, fisticufs), then there would always be a beer shared at the bar to make up. So, for this coming ANZAC DAY, instead of a dreary post on what we all know the atrocities of wartime, I am going to present a history post on a joke, a poem and lastly, the Aussie Slouch Hat.

Beginning with a joke, told to many by veterans....

On some air bases the Air Force is on one side of the field and civilian aircraft use the other side of the field, with the control tower in the middle.

One day the tower received a call from an aircraft asking, "What time is it?"

The tower responded, "Who is calling?"

The aircraft replied, "What difference does it make?"

The tower replied "It makes a lot of difference.

If it is an QANTAS flight, it is 3 o'clock.

If it is an RAAF plane, it is 1500 hours.

If it is a Navy aircraft, it is 6 bells.

If it is an Army aircraft, the big hand is on the 12 and the little hand is on the 3.

If it is a Royal New Zealand Air Force aircraft, it's Thursday afternoon."

Following is a poem I found, written anonymously, found in a notebook not that dissimilar to the one my own Grandpa carried with him throughout his occupation in the 2/14th Field Regiment from 1940 to 1946. He served up in Darwin and then over at Papua New Guinea. He had stories, jokes, wishes and even recipes on how to cook meals for an Army of men!!

FRIENDS.
If nobody gave us a helping hand
And nobody seemed to care,
If the prizes of life all went to the strong
and nobody gave us a share.
If nobody had the time to give
A thought to you and me
And we had to struggle as best we could
What a hopeless world 'twould be.
Lending a hand to help the weak
Can lighten another's load,
Giving our best with a willing heart
Can brighten a lonely road.
'Tis something to live for, someone to love
That purpose in life depends,
And there's nothing to equal the gladness and joy
Of making and keeping friends!

(Anon)

THE SLOUCH HAT

A symbol of distinction and pride, Australian Soldiers have adorned their heads with the slouch hat with its side turned up. The turned-up side was held in position by means of a hook and eye fastener, and badges were backed with a distinctive cloth rosette in the corps or regimental colour. So, if you were from one section, you would have a certain badge to signify this. The badges have changed over the years, from Boer War to post WW2.

People know when an Aussie soldier is about, whether he is causing a rucous with his jokes, swooning people with his poems or wearing his distinctive slouch hat.

Lest We Forget

First Birthday..almost missed it...

I Don't Do Mornings has just passed it's 1st Birthday!!

I have posted many topics over the past year, from the birth of a foal.

My good old days of being an Air Cadet. To my debutante ball.

Let's not forget WE VAMOOSE. There will be more updates on this real soon, stay tuned!!!


Speak Kiwi.

A Camel Toe Cup anyone??

Our visit to CERES there and HERE.

Beach Holiday at Rye.

Sarah graduated kindergarten.


Lest We Forget.

Let's Do Coffee.

History Lessons Begin.

Australia Day in our new house.

I have met many good friends in joining in this crazy thing called web logging. You can read each of their stories if you click on the links on the side bar..I mean, I don't need to tell you this now do I?? Nahhh.

A few weeks ago, I experienced the most wondeful thing. A young boy wanting to give anything to anyone because he was excited, he was excited because he had a bone marrow donor, from the USA. Amazing, the registry is a Worldwide network. THIS is the Aussie one. Don't do it as a gift to me for my blog birthday..do it for someone for their life.

Thanks so much for letting me share my blog with y'all,
hope you have all enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed putting it all together .
Cazzie!!!

Friday's History Lesson, a day late- Cairn Curran Reservoir

Baringhup is the place we camped out over the Easter break(refer to previous post for this). The Loddon River (usually) flows past the campsite and the water is used as irrigation by farmers whose properties are next to the river. There are various pumping sheds that work intermittently to pump the water up to their farms. The water released is controlled up stream at the Reservoir also, that is during times of flood. This prevents erosion of the banks of the Loddon River.

A short drive from our camping grounds takes you to the Cairn Curran Reservoir. It was constructed between 1947 through to 1956. A two megawatt Power Station at Cairn Curran generates electricity when irrigation and or flood releases are being made.

The above image was taken by myself. I am standing on a road that would normally be submerged in about 100 to 120 foot of water in the reservoir. The damn wall there with the hydro power station would usually be full with water. Indicative of the lack of rainfall Victoria has had these past few years.

This is the lowest we have ever seen the Reservoir. My husband has been camping up here for nearly 18 years. Slowly, we witness the water drying up. The ground is really cracked and the soil is crunchy to walk on where the bed of water used to be. You can see footage I took HERE (please turn your sound off though, as there is alot of sound of wind passing by the speaker on the camera).
We used to bring our boat here and fish for trout. We could see on the scanner the depth of water and also see shades from beneath. These were not fish, evidence now seen, they were stumps from trees. We also found a few boat anchors too!!

Here is an image (above and below) of the remnants of an old homestead. Again, this is usually submerged. It must have been a grand house in its day, the stone work is amazing. It would have at least 100 foot of water over it too. I just found an article from The Age Newspaper that gives tribute to the homestead pictured above. Please read it HERE, it is (sadly) a very interesting find.

This is an image I found of an old homestead that was submerged beneath Cairn Curran. The Lancaster Homestead. I wish I knew this before as we could have gone to find what is left of it now. Probably the chimney, they seem to survive everything those old chimneys.

Hopefully the drought will break sometime soon and the reservoir can fill up again. This would make life alot easier for the folks up there and also for the reservoirs down here in Melbourne. Local bush talk says that when Kangaroos start to produce Joeys( baby Kangaroos that is), that this is a sign that a drought era will soon break.....we can all only hope, and continue to conserve water best we know how.

Easter Break 2007

We went camping to a place just out of the township of Malden in central Victoria. Malden is an old Goldmining town, seen HERE on the map, it is one of many towns in the Goldfields region of Victoria. Above is a picture I took of one of the shop fronts you see in the main street. Remeniscent of days gone by.
Each shop has it's own style and has some wonderful arts and crafts to purchase. The old Butcher Shop and Bakery do wonderful trade at this time of the year. There are galleries, cafe's, antiquities shops aswell as a sweets shop that the kids love to look through. (This Easter we did not go in, because Easter Bunny got the kids too many eggs to begin with!!)

An image from the top of the main street. There was a festival held in the main street on Easter Monday. We opted to stay at the camping grounds, Malden is inundated with people and I didn't feel like scrumming around trying to find a spot for the kids to sit in front to get a look at what was coming down the road. Holiday time is for relaxing, not worrying right?

Instead, we were able to witness the crossing of a herd of sheep from beside the Loddon River at our camp site. A man held a red flag to stop traffic on the country road so that the sheep could cross the bridge safely.

The kids were excited to see this take place. A couple of motorbikes with shepherders aboard rounded them up (the sheep not the kids, LOL). They took them off down the dirt path along the riverside to another paddock to graze.

Minus the sheep, I sat at the campfire and sketched the scene you see now. I can''t seem to find the scrap book used...maybe it will turn up in one of the suitcases I haven't unloaded as yet. Or, perhaps it was used to start a fire? No matter.

Tomas, enjoying our last day at the caravan park. It was a pleasant 30 degree celcius day.

Sarah, up to her knees in the Loddon river. Usually, the water level would be much deeper than this, probably up to Sarah's neck I guess. Evidence the drought is here.

"Can we take one home Mum?" Sarah and Mia with their cousin's toy poodles.

A picture hubby took of some Kookaburras in the camp area. They were making a rucous near the toilet block. Unusual to see so many together, I think we counted 5 of them all together. (Great snaps honey).


Tomas getting cocky on the motorbike. He gave it a great run while we were away. The track he is using is actually in the Cairn Curran Reservoir. The water level has been over 100 feet in depth right there. We took our boat there when I was pregnant with Tomas and that is what the depth finder read.

I will post about Cairn Curran complete with film on Friday for the History Lesson. There are great shots of an old homestead that is usually submerged. There is a picture Nicholas wanted me to put on, it is his first time on his own on the motorbike. Well done Nu-Nu!!

Now, I have got to get back to hanging out washing and get some lunch on for the kids. I have ended up with a sore throat, perhaps from the smoke from our campfires over the past few days? Hubby ended up with some sort of allergic skin rash overnight last night and he still ahd to go into work with anti-histamines on board :(

I accrued one more kid from my cousin's place on the way home from Malden (she has 5 children) , he is having a great time in the big smoke here. After all, to me..what is one more added to the bunch? The more the merrier....have a great day, and I hope your Easter was enjoyable too.

My baby is TEN....

Today Tom is double digits, 10. It does not seem like ten years ago that I spent 30 plus hours in labor trying to push out a 6 pound ball of flesh. He just didn't want to come!! They had to turn him and twist him and pull him out with the salad "tongs"..woops, I mean kielland forceps. My, did he have a bruise on his poor little head. Well, HERE he is in the flesh now.

Got Tom a chocolate mud cake for his birthday and we are going to see Mr Bean's Holiday at the flicks today. If it were better weather we would have gone to Luna Park...another day perhaps..

Anyway, Tom has worked long and hard to become a great student at school, and it has been reflected in his parent teacher night when he gave his own presentation to me. His teacher said he has the best manners he has even seen in a student, always admits if he has been incorrect, yet stands up for himself if he feels he has done something right. I am so proud!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOMAS.....TEN..DOUBLE DIGITS TODAY MATE!!!