Stairs Again: A Lazy Afternoon

I was up early on Christmas to open up for the breakfast program. We had a good crowd through for brekky.
After we closed I gave each of the volunteers who had made the effort on the Holiday morning a token gift of Swiss chocolates. I keep saying it, but our volunteers make all the difference for our programs. We couldn’t open on public holidays and weekends if we had to rely entirely on paid staff.

The rest of Christmas was a lazy day for me. Our eldest daughter E, has gone on a mad keen Christmas cooking frenzy over the past couple of years. It is an amazing luxury to sit back and do nothing until it is time to clean up.

On Boxing Day I was again in the city early for work. After that we had a BBQ lunch and went for a lazy drive out to the Maroondah Reservoir near Healesville .

It was a gorgeous afternoon so we went for a walk around the park. The park lies around the dam wall of what was once part of Melbourne’s water supply. It is a series of well manicured gardens, a mix of native and exotic species.

This piccie shows the dam wall seen through some of the plantings. The dam was completed between 1920-27. I guess that means most of these trees are between 80 and 90 years old.

We seem to be picking places with plenty of stairs just lately. Not as many as the weekend before last, but if I keep doing this I’ll be in danger of getting fit.
And this is from near the top of the same stairs.
The gardens are quite relaxing with plenty of places to picnic or simply sit and rest.
We strolled across the top of the dam wall. I paused to take some shots across to the other side. The lake being a former river valley has a shoreline of little bays and inlets.

This is what was the water works intake. I like the touch of the rotunda you wouldn’t see the extra effort on public structures these days. Maroondah is no longer part of the water supply as it is too small to be of relevance, so now it is just a public park.

From the far end I took a few photos.
The view down across the dam wall.
And straight down, the people at the bottom give a scale.
This view is back through the park. As you can see many of the trees are exotics. I think the conifer in the centre of the frame may be one of the American redwood species. (West Coasters What do you think?) The conifer to the left is definitely a cedar of some variety.

Then we turned and went back across the wall.
Finally before we left the park I attempted to get some shots of this Noisy Miner nest . Unfortunately this was about as good a shot as I got. The nest was high in a tree and quite well hidden. While I was setting up for the shot we saw a couple of adults feeding the chicks, but by the time I had the camera ready this bird was sitting still, keeping an eye on me. Noisy Miners are interesting in that, like many Aussie birds, they have a strategy of grouping together to help raise a single nest of chicks. Mum, dad and older siblings all have an interest in raising the current crop of youngsters.

A Chrissie Brekky

As many of you know, I manage a charity service that provides breakfast (and other services) to people who are homeless.

Well Christmas is almost upon us. We have debated for some time what to do for “our guys” over the Chrissie period. We have come up with a couple of solutions.
There seem to be a profusion of Chrissie lunches, some in the days leading up to the 25th and some on the Holiday itself.

So breakfast being “our area of expertise”, we decided to put on a BBQ brekky. Well our brekky has happened and I am pleased to say it was a roaring success.
We provided lashings of steak, lamb chops, sausages, bacon, eggs along with bread rolls and assorted condiments (plus of course our more usual fare of toast, cereal, coffee and tea for those who wanted it). We had a generous donation from a local church to cover the cost so we went to town on the amounts.
By the time we opened we had a large grill full to overflowing of food ready to go.

It was a real pleasure to see the delight of many of our guys at the sight that greeted them as they came in.
One of our regulars for example, a guy who is old beyond his years and who wears an eye-patch and has massive facial scarring from the ravages of cancer treatment, chuckled with glee when he was told he could pick whatever he liked and could come back for as many servings as he wished. Another fellow said he loves eggs and hadn’t had one for over a year; he came back for at least half a dozen.

These guys have so little and live such desperate lives. Their joy at something so simple was really one of those moments that help make a tough job more than worthwhile.

The other thing we are managing to do for the guys is to keep our service open throughout the entire Christmas period. Christmas coincides with summer here. This leads to a great number of charities and other services not only closing for the holidays themselves but in some cases closing for weeks. Fortunately because we have a very dedicated team of volunteers we are going to be able to stay open right through Christmas and January.

Now a couple of piccies.
On our way home on the weekend we stopped a couple of times so I could grab the chance to capture some evening shots.

This first was captured near Yarra Glen.The silvery look is partly due to a combination of haze and cloud, but is also an artefact of a very narrow aperture because I was shooting almost straight into the afternoon sun.
The next is taken a little later from a point called Garden Hill.It is looking across miles of suburb to the distant Melbourne CBD.

Finally, again from Garden HillThe city with a 300mm telephoto as the Sun set behind.

A brief note about the self-publishing experiment. Formatting is almost complete. I have to chose a different name for my publishing venture. I am also working on layout and images for a couple of web pages. This last has not been going very well as I have not been at all happy with what I have put together so far.