Daylesford Dispatch - Sunday, 14th October, 2012

Dear Friends, we finally have a perfect Spring day again here and we are hoping to make the most of it by spending some time in the garden. I need to stake my broad beans & thin out the spinach, and Wes wants to do a little planting, mowing & pruning. It has rained nearly every day this week and the good news is that none of it has fallen into the kitchen through the big hole that Al cut! It looks as though he & his mate traced the leak in the roof to the satellite dish, re-adjusted its position and solved the problem. Now we just need Al to come back & replaster the ceiling before the possums fall through the gap!

We’ve enjoyed a very busy week with the Art Show in full swing as entries come in…finally. Every year we panic that we won’t have enough paintings & each year the artists leave it until the last minute to send in their entries. We have 76 paintings from 21 artists to date, so I think we will reach our goal of 250 paintings.

Also, we have a well-known Australian artist, Ross Paterson, doing workshops on the Friday and Saturday of the Show. We decided to let all the local & Ballarat schools know, and already Trentham Primary School want to bring all 70 of their students over on the Friday – Ross is delighted with this response, and so are we.

We’ve managed to fit in a couple of enjoyable social occasions, starting with an early dinner on Friday night with Penny & David Reilly, Daylesford friends that we have drifted away from in recent times. We shared a totally vegetarian meal at A Taste of Spice, the best of our three Indian restaurants, and enjoyed catching up.

As well, last night, we drove to Burwood for a wonderful reunion with the Borgs, Terry, Victor, Georgina & Laura & Ben. We were very close with them all for a long time, then drifted apart, as sometimes happens. However, we reconnected with Terry on Facebook earlier this year, and we discovered that Laura has spent the last 12 years in Thailand running an orphanage for HIV & suspected-HIV babies and children, mostly on the smell of an oily rag. Laura was back in Australia for a visit and Terry threw a barbecue in honour of Laura’s visit & birthday. We were quite emotional catching up with everybody – Victor is not in good health, but still has his beautiful smile and lovely Maltese humour; Terry has retired and is enjoying life in her spacious unit; Georgie and her friend, Richard, have jointly bought a home in Richmond which they love; Laura is as alive and fulfilled as we have ever seen her, and we had to be introduced to Ben as he was a young child when we last saw him. The girls are especially fond of Wes because he took them to Carlton games and they forsook their father’s team, Hawthorn, for the Navy Blues as a result. We saw friends of Victor & Terry’s that we had not seen since the early 90s and amazingly we all recognised each other. 

 

Laura & some of her current family in Thailand

 

 

 

 

 

                    Once again it has been too wet for early morning golf, and sometimes too wet to walk the boys, so we will be pleased when we can start having regular exercise again. I decided not to re-enrol for Strong classes this term as I need to conserve all my energy for the Art Show, and it would then become an extra pressure I didn’t need. Wes has put Hepburn Voices interviews on hold until after the Art Show, so he and Barbara spend some time doing administrative tasks every week, and will get back in harness after Cup weekend.

Today our breakfast was the last in the old Ice Cream Parlour as it will be converted to a Health Food Store, starting from tomorrow. There were eight of us and we had a lovely time chatting around a small square of tables. Michelle is planning to reorganise Harvest Café next Sunday morning to give us similar seating. When we play Mah Jong on Wednesday, we will have to choose a new spot as well.

I’ve just spoken with Viva and she sounds better each day. Her GP put her on industrial strength antibiotics to help eliminate her cough, and she hopes it will have disappeared by the time she finishes the course. I am still forbidden from making her laugh, as that always brings on a coughing fit, and as making her laugh is a natural part of ringing up, it is quite difficult to keep conversation interesting, but not too amusing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fast Finishing ‘All Too Hard’ beating previously unbeaten ‘Pierro’ yesterday in the Caulfield Guineas – Black Caviar’s little brother finally hits his straps…

Daylesford Dispatch - Sunday, 7th October, 2012

Dear Friends, it is a cold, blustery day here & we’ve cancelled all plans to work in the garden or do anything at all outside! I emptied 40mls from the rain gauge, most of which fell yesterday I suspect. We are not long home from a lovely breakfast, and as we were driving back here, we saw John & Jan Smith farewelling their Monash Rotarian friends outside Food Gallery, where they had been having breakfast. John had arranged for members of his old Rotary Club to spend the weekend in Daylesford and has shown them a wonderful time, most of which has involved eating. They started at The Old Hepburn Hotel on Friday night, where they enjoyed country hospitality and huge meals; breakfast yesterday at Red Star Café, also in Hepburn, followed by lunch at Tuki, and dinner at Bronwen & John Scarffe’s home. In between they were having massages, doing retail therapy, and probably catching up on sleep!

Gingerbread Collingwood players & footy that arrived during the week from the Kirbys – too good to eat!

We’ve had a very busy week, mostly connected with the Art Show – planning the Opening Night, selling raffle tickets, reminding artists to put their entry forms in before the last day, and advertising the free painting workshops that will be run on the Saturday & Sunday of the Art Show.

Wes and Barbara spent time on Hepburn Voices, and did hydrotherapy in Ballart, where they picked up the new Art Show signage, which will be going on the Post Office & Town Hall buildings. I did my usual activities, including Mah Jong and a trip to Ballarat on Friday to collect Wes’s watch & my bracelet, which had needed repairs.

On Thursday we drove to Melbourne, where the temperature hit 29° to visit Gallery247, to see firsthand the computer programme that has been designed for Rotary Art Shows. We were very impressed with what we saw, and it is especially suitable for large city Art Shows – we just have to talk to our committee to see what they think about it, before putting a proposition to the Rotary Board.

After spending the morning there in Moorabbin, we drove to Beacon Cove, where we enjoyed catching up with Lovely & Malcolm and shared a very yummy lunch together. Our mutual friends, Kathy & Ged, set off on a two-month overseas trip on Friday, and we toasted them in prosecco, especially as Ged has finally left Telstra after 42 years.

Lovely recent photo of Jessie, Mary & Michelle

Yesterday we were on the gate at a very wet Farmers’ Market, and while Wes braved the elements under an umbrella, I spent most of the time getting keys cut for the Rotary Shed, and checking that they worked! We had hoped to have sold oodles of raffle tickets, but the weather made it impossible as people were scurrying around under umbrellas or rugged up to the nines.

 

We then changed out of our Rotary gear and drove to Reservoir where we had been invited by Matt & Sara to attend the joint birthday party of their two daughters, Genevieve & Ava. We had a ball – not just seeing them, but also spending time with Joyce & Manny, and the rest of their delightful family – Mark & Grace, who have two daughters, Mia & Lily; Shane & Mel, who have a two-year old, Katia; and Jessica & Geoff, who married earlier this year. Manny is in his element with all these grand-daughters and he is putty in their hands. Joyce enjoys looking after them during the week, and doing all her craft activities – she has her own shed, and has taken over some of the garage, but Manny is stoutly resisting any incursion into his shed. Joyce has Mark on her side, so I think she will win in the end. It was cold & wet, but tents were erected, barbecues were lit and we just put on coats to stay warm.

When we arrived back home, we fed the boys and went to bed to catch up on programmes we had taped. We set the clocks forward to allow for Daylight Saving which started today, and, although it was dark and raining at 5.30am, by the time I was going to the Sunday Market at 8am, it was dry, and I was able to take the boys for their usual treat of cabbage leaves from John & Yvonne.

 

 

Jeff Hoolihan & Peter Saundry – catching up after a few years