A little bit of schmaltz...

The Bridal party with Kissing Cousins.

Blame the schmaltz on Scout who asked me how the Wedding went.
It was a fantastic afternoon and evening. There is nothing like having cause for celebration and then celebrating!!
I read a Traditional Apache prayer before saying some personal words. Here is the prayer...

Now you will feel no rain
for each of you will be a shelter for the other.
Now you will feel no cold,
for each of you will be warmth for the other.
Now there is no loneliness for you,
now there is no more loneliness.
Now you are two bodies
but there is only one life before you.
Go now to your dwelling place
to enter into your days together
And may your days be good and long on the earth.



Dancing Girls

Wedding Day

Just a quick thought, as I am trying to get some much needed sleep tonight before my sister's wedding tomorrow.
All roads to love tend on the rocky side and my sister has had her fair share of difficulties (including just recently getting through cervical cancer). She has met up with a man, who seems, at least to me, to be a very good hearted and wonderful person. And I will be wishing them both all the very best tomorrow. My post is about the difficulties of saying all I want to say succinctly in the few minutes that I will have to fill, in the middle of the ceremony. Which, in itself, will be brief.
Anyway, I only hope I can rise to the occasion. After that I will very merrily celebrate!

The old shell...

“If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”
Gaston Bachelard

I am saying goodbye to a house (which I have just sold) that has sheltered me and many friends over the last 20 odd years. I do not live there now and left it a few years ago but it lives inside me as a treasured repository of many memories good and bad!
The house has a distant view of my old State School and is near a bridge which spans the Yarra River. This bridge was one, I and my adventurous friends, used to scramble under to find the most dangerous way possible to cross the river. It is near the site of my first smoke (I have since given up tobacco) at the age of 12. A parkie, sitting on a bench near the river helped us kids light our first pipe! It helped fund my studies in England and Germany and has held many a fine party.



I managed to renovate the back of the house and transformed it (with help from an Architect friend) into a kind of teahouse space. I found all the recycled wood to build it with and had a lot of joy directing the building. The house always resonated with me and I found it very difficult to make the decision to sell. As I thought about it I realised I had owned it for over 20 years which, is a far longer connection with a house than any of my childhood abodes. I had found my base there in more ways than just physically in space.

So, farewell old shell, and thankyou!

Invasion Day ( Australia Day)

A Welcome fire ceremony

I inadvertantly found a good way to celebrate Australia Day. I had planned to go on an Indigenous "Walk through the landscape" the day before and after taking part in the event discovered that that was the best way to celebrate being born to this ancient continent. I took Aurora down to a place called Pt Nepean, which is the Northern arm of the entrance to port Phillip Bay.


Beach at Pt Nepean, looking towards the Heads.

The site has an interesting layered history. The Boonerwurung people have been here for a very long time. Even though the land is now coastal the Boonerwurung were originally known as river people. The Yarra (a river that flows into Port Phillip Bay) used to travel all the way to the site which is now the entrance to the bay. There the river flowed down a 90 meter drop, keeping the area around it in a perpetual mist. The marine mapping is revealing how the geomorphology of the region reflects the oral stories of the descendants of the people here today. The area where the waterfall was is now known as the Rip and is a very treacherous stretch of water. It is now the narrow entrance to a huge embayment, with massive quanities of water squeezing in and out with the movement of the tides.


Echidna who we passed by on our walk.

A military camp was first established near here in 1803 and denotes the first landing of the English to these shores. This first group found it very hard to subsist and eventually took off to join the colony in Tasmania. One man stayed behind and ended up living with the Wathaurong people on the other side of the bay for 30 odd years before the great land grab began in earnest, with the arrival of Batman and Fawkner. William Buckley was his name and I will post about him another day!


Magpie, also a local.

Many moons later a quarantine station was established at Point Nepean, followed by a Military training camp, which was decommissioned in 1997. All this has meant that an amazing site has been left fairly much to its own devices (well, except for all the unexploded ordinances, introduced pests etc, etc). But it is now being handed back to state control and being turned into a National Park. Indigenous custodianship of this transition is in place and there is hope to be able to set up an Indigenous Cultural centre there.


Walking group looking at a midden (a campsite used by the Boonerwurung people many moons ago)

The walk was great. After learning many things about the traditional uses of the plants that we were seeing and some of the implements, we ended up on a beautiful beach. Here we were given a traditional welcome ceremony by Carolyn Briggs, a Boonerwurung Elder. Each participant was given a gum leaf passport as a sign we were free to be in the area and welcomed by the Indigenous people present and their ancestors were acknowledged.


Aurora, checking out a cave on the beach , holding a digging stick.

So, what better way to celebrate our national holiday, that by one camp is called Australia Day and by another Invasion Day!?

looking up...

Here's a pic of my daughter and an older friend at the first of the Two Bays pier visits. We have just completed a 10 day project, conducting water quality studies all the way round both Western Port and Port Phillip Bays on Pelican1. We visited seven piers to talk about water quality and share information about the project. We also had two days taking volunteers out to monitor the health of seagrass and had on board the boat, a broad range of people all connected by a mutual desire to look after the bays. I had thought that I would be hopping on and off the boat but I managed to stay for most of the project as my daughter was able to stick on with me the entire time. It was certainly a very different kind of holiday for her, a real working holiday!

Two Bays launch

I used to pride myself that I could take an occasional photo worth looking at but today, at my own launch of a project, I managed to wreck every single shot. But as the skipper said, "At least everything else went well."

I have been working, with the Pelican crew, on a project that takes in the two main bays in Southern Victoria, Port Phillip and Western Port Bays. We have got together about 5 government agencies who are now working with us on the boat, to create a water quality survey of the Bays. The project will also be interacting with the community through a series of pier visits and we are running two community science events. Anyway, it is all about all working together and trying to convey environmental stuff in a fun way.

I will get on board tomorrow for a short stint around Western Port Bay.
We are also having fun with the Weedy Sea Dragon, who came to the launch and is pictured above in a photo semi-saved from oblivion. Watch out for some nerdy science over the next few posts!

wilddogvalley view

Looking towards the Wilddog valley.