Two out of Two!

When I posted this WIIW I said “I don’t think this is a toughie”

And I didn’t because 3 out of 4 of my test subjects (AKA my family) came up with answers that earned good points.
Then when John G said “bloody hell.... I have no idea”, I wondered if it was a bit harder.

Linda G didn’t have a real guess but said “Whatever it is, it's rusty! (There. I get partial credit for that, don't I?)”

Yes, Linda it is rusty so as your statement is factually correct I suppose you have earned some points. 49% for barrack room lawyer Linda :-)

Marcy was more creative with “is it a speaker of some sort? An old fashioned kind like on a boat? Honestly, I don't know, but I agree with Linda, it looks rusty! Which means metal, right?”
I can see that it does look like it has a shape to keep moisture out, and yes it is metal, so 49% + 10% for a good effort. 59% for Marcy.

Susan said “Oh, pbbbbbbt! You NEVER think your pictures are "toughies". Well, I beg to differ. (It's either that or I'm just plain dumb, and I refuse to accept that possibility.) I have to agree with Linda, though, that whatever it is appears to be rusted and in dire need of cleaning. Beyond that, beats me!”

I am hurt Susan, hurt :-). Actually when I put this up I thought of you Susan (no not because it is old).
You often post about cars and have posted about you and your hubby’s interest in things like Model A Fords, so I guessed you would have seen one of these or could work it out from the background. More on that in a moment, 49% for Susan.

Carolyn V, guessed “The first thought I had was chocolate (I'm a little hungry) and a rusty tractor.”
Definitely not chocolate, but your second guess is exactly what my experimental subjects guessed. A rusty tractor is near enough to earn serious points 60% for Carolyn!

But our star once again is Jennifer (AKA Old Kitty) with her guess: “It's a bit off a very old car!”

It is! 100% for Jennifer!

I found this old car in Steiglitz. Steiglitz is a ghost-town in Victoria dating back to the  Gold-Rush era.
The part in the piccie is the hood on the crank-case vent of this old car. New cars have the vented fumes running back into the inlet manifold to burn off the oil fumes. But in the bad old days those fumes just vented into the atmosphere.

I thought the give-away for anyone who has looked closely at engines would be the Welch plug behind the hood, but maybe I have looked at too many engine blocks in my time :-).

In which Al goes to Heaven?

Yesterday after stirring out doors very late,( hey if I can’t sleep in on a cold winter’s morning when could I?) Deb and I headed off for one of our weekend trips.
This time we headed for Walhalla named for the heavenly residence of the old Norse gods.
Walhalla is a Gold-Rush Era town that sits in a deep, narrow valley between the mountains of Gippsland in eastern Victoria.
Like many of the gold rush towns Walhalla all but melted away after the mines closed in the early 20th Century .
But what remains gives a hint of what was and is quite charming.
The Walhalla Star Hotel still serves it original purpose.

These old shops now cater to tourists - the Grey Horse which looks to have been a stable once is now a café.

A word about the trees, the tree still in autumn colours is what we loosely term an “exotic” in Oz. That is a plant native to foreign shores. Most Oz trees are Eucalyptus and so evergreen. The mountain slopes  in the background look much the same all year.

This is the vault of the old Bank of Victoria in the town.
 
When the mines closed the bank was demolished and relocated to the town of Moe away to the south. The Vault itself was not worth removing.
 Despite being only one of the banks in town the amount of gold that was stored here was staggering.

The bottom figure is based on $600 per ounce. What is gold now $1600 per ounce?

As I said Walhalla  sits in a narrow valley, land was so short that the old fire station

 was actually constructed across the creek.

Not just a "piccie of the day"

I was just going to put up a piccie of the day tonight because I was home late. But when I started I got just a little more ambitious.
Being the weekend Deb and I were out and about. We headed north-west of the city today, out into the gold-fields.
Deb and I paused  by the lake at Daylesford.

Where we had a delightful snack of local cheeses and coffee.

Then we continued to the west along a road we have never used before, past very scenic country interspersed with Nineteenth Century gold mine tailings and in places the ruins of quite elaborate engine houses that once housed the steam engines that powered the mines.

We fetched up in Clunes which is a town stuck in a time-warp. Clunes was the first gold-rush town in Victoria. This is the Anglican church there, as you can see they planned to build in two stages.
 
But then the gold played out and the town all but melted away so the second stage of the church was never built.

Finally on the way home I paused to catch shots of a rather nice sunset.

Bingo!

Kathleen, Marcy, Pearl, Sarah, and Michelle hit the nail on the head with their guesses of a tin roof, or corrugated metal etc for this image. The image is cropped from a section of the roof of this very old, and very small garage.As you can see from this sign it is now closed for business A few weeks ago on one of our weekend rambles Deb and I wandered up to Lake Eildon. Rather than taking the sensible way home we continued clockwise around the lake following unsealed mountain roads up over Frenchman's gap and down into the near ghost-town of Woods Point (where the garage resides).

This tiny isolated town was first settled in the 1860s in one of Victoria's many 19th Century gold-rushes.
By 1864 the town had grown until it had 36 Hotels!

Most of the gold played out by the 1890s. Although the last mine did not close until 1963.
Being so isolated and with no other industry the population collapsed to about 40 in the 2006; census around the same number as its previous number of pubs! As it is an Aussie town there is still a pub there today.

With new technology and the high gold price new mines have just started up nearby. so it will be interesting to see if the town grows again.

Scattered all through the bush around the town are the relics of the old days. The remains of a 1940s Blitzwagon (referred to as a Canadian Military Pattern or CMP truck in Canada and the UK)

The main street is lined with tiny miner's cottagesIncluding this one, the smallest miner's cottage I have ever seen! It seems barely big enough to fit in a bed and a chair! I've seen bigger cubby-houses!

The post office.It was late when we arrived so we did not stay long. The road (dirt track really) climbed through switch-backs into the mountains towards Marysville. It was around 160km (100 miles) home about a third over dirt. I am used to dirt roads so I expected it would take about two hours, the road was so bad it took us nearly four hours! Over half the time in that first third.

Just before dark I paused to shoot this rill, which cascaded down the mountainside and under the road.

One of the better sections of the road.Actually, this bit is like a highway compared to most of the rest!

Now finally, in case I don't post again before I should say to all of you; thank you for a great year and have a very Merry Christmas!

Death and Wildflowers

A very quick post tonight.

Yesterday as is our wont Deb and I got out and about.

We stayed relatively close to home, deciding to have a late breakfast and head for an abandoned gold-rush era cemetery.

After a light shower in the morning it turned into a beautiful spring day.

You can see from this piccie what a bright sunny afternoon it became.
Welcome to the Queenstown cemetery which was in use from 1860 until 1981.

Most of the 380 recorded graves were from the gold-rush and pioneer era.

Showing the standards of the time there are believed to be a significant number of unrecorded and unmarked graves of Chinese gold miners. Evidence of most graves including the recorded ones has vanished, destroyed by a bushfire in 1962.

My intention was to make a record of the graves and cemetery (I love cemetaries).

But I was quickly distracted. Because spring means wildflowers.

There were hundreds, many of which I have never seen before. Remember I have only lived in Victoria for a few years and Oz has an incredibly regionally diverse flora.

Just two of the beauties I captured were a Spotted Sun Orchid (Thelymitra merranae)
And a close up. Isn’t it exquisite?

A white Hyacinth Orchid (I think) I’m not sure of the species, more research is in order.
Speaking of research I posted this piccie of a cute bird, but didn’t know what it was. It turns out s/he is a White-browed Scrubwren (Sericornis frontalis).

Thanks for the reminder Amanda

Next: Killer Plants

A Tale of Two Castlemaines: Part I

Well this week has (so far) been very hectic.

Yesterday, I was in the city from 4:00 am to run a team of volunteers in Melbourne City Council’s annual “Street Count” program. To Council’s credit they are attempting to be proactive in addressing the problem of homelessness in the city.

Street Count is an attempt at getting a snapshot of the number of people sleeping rough in the city to inform their policy development. Local charities and individuals are asked to help with labour for the count.

So from 4:00 am I was watching the safety of three groups of volunteers as they checked a large area along the Yarra River and around Flinders Street Station.

Flinders Street Station Source Wilkimedia commons

Last Year it was cold and wet for the whole count. Fortunately, this year it was dry. Although, down here in the Southern Hemisphere winter is setting in so it was cold (by Oz standards) and dark the whole time.

I’m pleased to say all volunteers returned safely to the count HQ, without incident. We all shared a hot breakfast to warm up while we completed the debrief session.

Now, my Uncle Harry Tour guide hat is going on again.

Maybe a month ago on one of our day trips, Deb and I shot up towards Castlemaine in central Victoria, a couple of hours drive from home.

On the way up I paused to take a few piccies of places that grabbed my attention.

In Kilmore there is an old Town Hall with a grand facade.

But if you look behind it is no more than a front.

We then passed Hanging Rock which featured in Peter Weir’s 1975 movie Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Like so many other places in Victoria, Castlemaine is a former gold rush town that was founded during the 1850s.

At a site called Red Hill on the outskirts of Castlemaine are the relics of some of the old gold diggings.

This area contains shattered remains of the original hill.

As no remediation work was ever carried out on the old diggings what is left of the hill continues to erode away.

These old iron pipes were used in the area to carry water for sluicing the gold. If you look closely you can see they are riveted together from smaller strips. They have been hand made by local blacksmiths!

In the town itself are the grand buildings typical of the newly prosperous Nineteenth Century communities.

The town hall

The courthouse

The “Imperial Hotel” has fallen on hard times, but the front still has the most intricate wrought iron lacework.

The grandest building is probably the “New” post office opened in 1875.

And tucked behind the post office is the Nineteenth Century version of the internet: the telegraph office. Opened in 1857 Castlemaine’s telegraph office is the oldest remaining telegraph office Australia.

Last, but very far from least, The Castlemaine library opened in 1855 and still in use.

Uncle Harry Saves the Day

I am tired and cannot think tonight. Yet, I have an urge to post. I guess I must be well and truly becoming a blog junky.

Well we were out and about again on the weekend.

But because I can’t think I’ll put on my Uncle Harry hat and play the tour guide.

Two hours drive from our humble abode lies the Central Victorian town of Clunes.

Clunes, like many towns in Victoria was founded during the 1850s Gold Rushes.

In fact Clunes was where the first gold was found in Victoria and was the home of the first gold rush in the then Colony of Victoria.

Clunes had a boom in the early days. Like many gold rush towns it went into decline when the local mines closed. Development stopped dead.

Today walking down the main street is like stepping back into the Nineteenth Century (apart from the cars).Most of the shops look like they are still in the 1800s including the sign-writing.
In fact I guess most of the “old” signage is in fact not too old. The town was used as a set in the 2003 film Ned Kelly, starring Heath Ledger.

Clunes is today taking advantage of the time warp it seems to be caught in with some businesses aiming squarely at tourists and day-trippers (that would be me).

Some carry things to excess
Of course there are all the conveniences we expect in the Twenty First Century.
Including a "modern Garage".

Like many of the gold rush towns there was enough money around to build some reasonably impressive public buildings.

The Post Office.The Town Hall and Police Court.And finally a building to keep the writer (and reader) in me happy.
The original library.