SOME PERSONAL HISTORY, NATURAL HISTORY AND ART

This week Laurie and I have taken a short holiday travelling around the central Victorian goldfields area. This is the area where several early discoveries of small amounts of alluvial gold were found in 1850 -51, leading to the Victorian Gold Rush. 

This map shows the 'gold triangle', an area roughly between 

St Arnaud, Ararat, Ballarat and Bendigo. Some of the still visible results of the huge wealth generated by the gold finds are the grand public, and private, buildings that were built in that period. The town centre of Bendigo is a particular favourite of ours.

This week we also went to St Arnaud for the first time. I was really fascinated to see this huge, leafless Cotoneaster that was covered in clusters of berries. It was growing beside one of the many early banks that proliferated in the late 19th century.

Here is the grand Town Hall at Eaglehawk, which is 6 kms north west of Bendigo.

Of course there are many smaller modest buildings. The surprise in this one is... 

...the very elaborate ornamental lychgate for such a small cottage.

In 1852 at the age of 17 my great grandfather, Frederic Taylor James, arrived in Victoria from the UK and, after a period in Melbourne, walked the 153km to the gold diggings in Bendigo. Four years later he married Maria Smith and built a house on this site, above, where they brought up their 10 children. The current house dates from the late 1800s. 

You can gauge the age of some of the private gardens in Bendigo by the height of the trees. This Cabbage-tree Palm, Livistona australis, now soars above the house below. The European colonists were fascinated by the flora of Australia and many larger old gardens feature plants like this and the Bunya Bunya pine, Araucaria bidwillii.

However, they also loved the familiar flowers from 'home'. An example that caught my attention was this rose bush with a large number of beautifully coloured rose hips...

...and one fully opened flower. 

This is the Teddington Hut Camping area, the starting point for our walk in the Kara Kara National Park. The forest is dominated by a variety of medium sized eucalyptus trees with a sparse understory of acacias and other smaller shrubs and is described as one of the most intact remnant Box and Ironbark forests in Victoria. These eucalyptus trees have the characteristic of producing flowers throughout most of the year. As a result the forest supports abundant, nectar and pollen eating, bird and insect life as well as small mammals. We saw (and heard ! ) flocks of Sulphur Crested Cockatoos as well as two pairs of Kangaroos that we had obviously startled.

 

I saw this Rainbow Lorikeet in a private garden feasting in a Western Australian Eucalyptus Caesia... 

...and then, this Kookaburra in the later afternoon light. The abundance of bird life is the principal subject of the murals by Andrew Bourke and Jimmy DVate in the small town of Wedderburn.

I was quite amazed to see the whole façade of the Uniting Church painted with this colourful mural.

To the right side of the church is this mural on the rear wall of the next building.

The side wall of the adjacent supermarket has very large mural facing the main street.

This is a detail of the left hand side of the photo above.

Finally ikebana. 

I made this ikebana three months ago when the hydrangeas had started changing to their autumn colouring. A single flower and leaf is combined with a bare branch from the Coastal Tea Tree, leptospermum laevigatum, in our garden. The ceramic vase has two side openings. The autumn flower is contrasted with the wintery looking branch.

Greetings from Christopher

11th July 2021

Congratulations to Ash Barty !!