HOT WEEKEND

We've been experiencing some very warm weather here in Melbourne this weekend.

Friday night we welcomed the weekend with a bottle of champagne or should I call it a sparkling white these days.
Saturday morning was pleasant and after the morning ride, Sue needed my help to purchase more Nespresso pods at the huge Chadstone shopping centre. Let me say that I consider this experience as a form of punishment. I'm sure I have been a good boy lately but nevertheless, we battled the multitude of shoppers. The incentive of a coffee and muffin helped to soften the experience. We do love our Nespresso so I guess it was worth the trip.

We had it mind to enjoy dinner Saturday night on the deck with a light meal of prawns cooked on the BBQ. Marinated in chili and garlic with virgin olive oil - not bad at all. The salad was rocket, toasted pine nuts, Parmesan cheese dressed with Vin cotto. Naturally we did enjoy some wine with that but I've forgotten what it was.

As Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) once said for Tourism Australia
 "Chuck another Shrimp on the Barbie"
We prefer Prawns - big ones.



A perfect summer light meal.



So I thought I might just mention another frivolous little group of wines that we occasionally enjoy called "Arrogant Frog". http://www.arrogantfrog.fr/ We've been buying these wines mainly because they bring back memories of our times in the South of France in the Languedoc region. Paul Mas is the Vigneron and he has a marvelous sense of humour. He even has a Frog Blog - http://www.arrogantfrog.fr/blog/

A red, a pink and a white - Paul Mas also sends us a sticky and a sparkling.
All his wines I describe as cheap and cheerful (and not too shabby)



Don't you just love his labels?

Sunday Morning - it's in the high 30s and the low overnight is predicted to drop to only 23 overnight. It seems that summer has decided to relax in Melbourne for the next week. While I write this, it's 6.00 pm and it's now 39. It should be a warm welcome for Leigh and Sophie, our friends from Paris - they arrive next week and we are looking forward to offering some Aussie hospitality. Naturally Leigh is a cyclist................................

As I rode home on the Sunday at 10.30 am, the temperature was rising into the 30s. This picture depicts a small bay within Port Phillip bay. Those little white spots on the water are Pelicans.
Sights like these make me feel privileged to live where we do.

For the previous few weeks, Sue and I have been reliving "the West Wing" one of our very favourite series. We have them all from 1 through to 7. It drives Sue to distraction that I need sub-titles to keep up with the dialogue. I think we just might be watching another two episodes tonight with coffee and cheese.



Time for another West Wing tonight.



For a Blogger friend from Belgium.

Ladybird - how about Aussie Kim??????

“I do enjoy this win, especially here in Australia, as well.

It's been a country where I've always loved coming to and where I've always been very well-received,” she said today.

Hope your weekend was relaxing and eventful.

SATURDAY SONG James Reyne

There is a time when you stop in your music evolution - I'm sure this true for most of us. For me, I think it was the 80s. I became responsible, bought a house, got married (again), started a family.
I was still listening to Van Morrison, Rod Stewart and Phil Collins with a sprinkling of Blues and Jazz.
We had a lot of great Aussie music which seemed a little off centre from the usual British and US music at the time. Maybe we realised we could do our own thing.
Great Aussie bands emerged - Men at Work, Australian Crawl, and others.
Australian Crawl were a local band from our Bay area. James Reyne had an unusual voice but the band wrote great songs of sun, beach, love and growing up. One of my faves was "Reckless", even people older than me (at the time) liked this song.
Here's James Reyne doing Reckless after the demise of Australian Crawl (which incidentally is a swimming style) with some "Cobbers" of his in the music industry - just having a bit of a lark together.....

Friday Funky Feline Foto

This is our Rosita - once run over by a car and went missing for a week. Beforehand she was quite stand-offish but as the years have rolled on, she's developed a pat-me personality. We think she must have been brain damaged in the accident to have had such a change of personality. Anyway we love her as much as high maintenance Blue Burmese who is starting to lose her level of pecking order to Rosita. Go Moggy.


It's my couch, and don't even think about joining me (unless you rub my tummy).

Saturday Song sometime tomorrow

Who? Not quite sure yet.

AUSTRALIA DAY from a different perspective

Australia Day is celebrated on January 26 to celebrate the landing of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove, Port Jackson. The fleet headed by Captain Arthur Phillip firstly dropped anchor in Botany Bay but he established that this was not the place for a settlement so after sailing up the coast to discover Port Jackson, he returned to sight two ships flying the French flag. One of these ships contained the French Commodore Laperouse, never to return to France. In desperate weather conditions, Captain Phillips returned to claim Australia for England.

Captain Arthur Phillip orders the raising of the English flag in Sydney Cove - January 26, 1788.

Although we celebrated Australia Day in honour of the landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove, our Indigenous population and sympathisers, call it Invasion Day. I guess it's from your own perspective. I think our original Australians might just have a point.


The below words are not mine - they came from an article on Pastor Doug Nicholls. I mentioned in a previous post that his son and I attended the same school in the 60s.

AUSTRALIA DAY SPEECH IN BATMAN PARK
The following speech was reported on the front page of the Northcote Leader on Wednesday Jan 30th-1957. 'Northcote had provided a very large crowd to take part in the Australia Day celebration arranged by aboriginals and friends on Sunday afternoon at Batman Park. The crowd soundly applauded Pastor Doug Nicholls when he suggested, as his theme, that the bridge between white and aboriginals should be bridged'.

Pastor Doug Nicholls

PASTOR DOUG NICHOLLS said:“Would you take Aboriginals into your home and make both friends and workmates of them? They do it in New Zealand, even if to a limited degree”. Doug Nicholls, footballer, curator, fighter for the race of which he is a full blooded member was on Sunday afternoon, the orator. He had prepared one speech, forgot he was carrying notes, embarked upon a whimsical oration which none of his hearers could have bettered had they been white or black."

THINK ABOUT
“This is a great day, this birthday of yours. We come to share it with you. Someone said to me recently that we should go to the Yarra Bank and organise a day of mourning for what happened 169 years ago. The mourning would be in memory of a great people. Those who were the old Australians. But we are happy to come here today. This place is ours you know. It reminds us that Captain Cook met our ancestors. But it also reminds us practically on this very spot they also met John Batman and signed a famous agreement. I don’t want to embarrass our councillors, but what we are thinking of is that in 1837 Batman made an agreement by which he and his undertook to make a return for a perpetual lease of 5000 acres in the Northcote vicinity."

DO YOU REMEMBER ?
"Do you remember what we were to get? Each year the rental was to be 100 blankets, 100 knives, 100 tomahawks, 50 pairs of scissors, 50 looking glasses and 50 suits of clothes. Bless me, I could do with a suit, but I don’t know about those looking glasses and tomahawks. Then there was 50 tonnes of flower. I can’t see any flour about. Perhaps Mayor Spain will do something about it next week” (laughter). Mr Nicholls said that since Captain Phillips landed with his cargo from the gaols of England, Australians had made great progress. The nation had become great. The cities were hives of industry and wheat and wool grew in the great open spaces.
“You are a great nation he went on. A great people. You have bridged the gulf between the old and the new, between the gaols and thriving success. But you have not bridged the gulf what Harold Blair calls the Old Australians and those who came in the middle. As I see you here today supporting the only Northcote celebration of Australia Day at a function run by Aborigines. I ask myself why this gulf between the two peoples remain. Is it because you are making it racial discrimination? You may be, you are a great people, but is there any reason why we should not march beside you?"

'WE WANT OUR CHILDREN TO BE TREATED LIKE YOURS'
"Is there any reason why we should be relegated to river-bank shacks instead of being helped to rise above our present ‘degradation’ (applause). Is there any reason why one of us should not go on the council which controls the land which once was ours, or even to Canberra? A voice: Why not? We want chances, opportunities, our children to be treated like your children” the Pastor went on

'You know there is quite a difference between 1914-18, 1939-45 and 1957. Do you remember how they came to us in those terrible years and asked, "Aboriginals can you fight?" and we said, "Try us", and our blood flowed with yours in Gallipoli, Tobruk and New Guinea. But have we been asked anything since? We are different from you only in colour. Are we encouraged?"

THE HAND OF FRIENDSHIP
"Do you extend to us the hand of friendship? It is these things which on this day of your birthday, we ask you to give to us after all these 169 years." Among those who supported Mr Nicholls were the Mayor, Councillor Mr A Spain, other councillors and there wives; Mr D Clancy, President of the Aboriginals Girls Hostel Committee; the famous Aboriginal singer, Mr HaExert from The Northcote Leader - Jan 30th 1957rold Blair, and the Aboriginal Moomba Choir with Isabel Kuhl and Merv Williams as soloists.

OWED A DEBT
Cr Spain said Northcote owed Doug Nicholls
"The Prime Minister, the other day, claimed that Australia was a land without class distinction. We know how wrong he is. We know not only what happens here, but we have reports about other Australians in Western Australia.
In two wars, in industrial and primary development we have shown that we have courage, initiative, skill and leadership.
I can only join with Doug Nicholls in asking "When we have all these things - is the little matter of doing justice to our relatively few Aboriginals too big a task us?
Surely it would be rubbish to suggest such a thing."(Applause.)
"This afternoon shows that this is a cause which has caught the imagination of the people," Cr. Spain said
"Let us hope this is the beginning of wiping a blot off our splendid record."

HIGH STREET NORTHCOTE

Saturday morning I decided to go to my track training session early and take a ride on my road bike. The indoor velodrome is in the municipality of Darebin. I grew up in the northern suburbs of Melbourne in Preston. It now comes under the district of Darebin. (pronounced Darrabin)
Recently it was commented by one of our fellow bloggers that we seem to have a lot of our suburbs named after English towns. That's true and both Preston and Northcote are such suburbs. Friends in the Loire have connections in the UK and Michael showed me his book on Preston, (G'day Mikee)

From the Darebin historical website
The social history of Darebin begins with the Wurundjeri people - the traditional owners of all the lands and waterways in Darebin. The Wurundjeri are part of the Kulin Nation & one of the 8 clans that form the Woiwurrung language group.
1839/40 � Government land sales in Northcote area. Early purchasers included William Rucker, (Ruucker's Hill) Thomas Wills, Job Smith, Michael Pender (Penders Grove and Penders Grove Primary School) and other speculators.

At 7.15 Saturday morning I took the road bike out of the car and started riding towards High Street, Northcote.
I had in mind to see how much High Street had changed since my teenage days. I remember times of going to the matinee sessions at the local theatres. From memory I can count maybe five in the 7 kilometre stretch along High Street from Westgarth to Reservoir.
There was the Westgarth Theatre that still operates to this day. At the top of the hill (Rucker's Hill) going north was the Northcote Theatre and although the grand building still exists, it  is now a reception centre as is the next one in Thornbury.

The Northcote Theatre, THEN.....



Today - yesterday really.............

 As I rode towards Preston, I was searching for the theatre that I went to often. In my teenage years it became a dance hall. It seems to have been demolished as I could not locate it. High Street then rises again towards the suburb of Reservoir where the last movie house used to be. As kids, we often went here when we moved from Preston to Reservoir. It was fun to roll our Jaffas down the aisles.

The Westgarth still going strong almost a century later.

A closer view. The Westgarth has take on a bit of a cult Culture these days and does the occasional specific festival - I can't explain how many times the Blues Brother have played here.
A Woody Allen festival would be an annual happening.

It's strange to revisit your roots. You get a feeling of both a certain belonging yet not belonging as you've moved on. Still the memories are still there.


Further up the road in Thornbury was this grand Movie house now a reception house,
restaurant and cafes below.

Some further facts about Northcote:
In my primary school years I met kids of my own age from many different nationalities. Not far from home was a migrant hostel and the children went to my school in Preston.
Many were from Italy, Greece and the UK. Several of the Italian kids joined our cycling club when we were teenagers. Some are still my friends today.

From the Northcote Historical Society website.
DAREBIN'S ITALIANS http://www.decc.org.au/eleven.htm
Today Darebin’s Italians have a range of organisations such as clubs, senior citizen clubs, Churches, cultural, sporting, social and welfare groups. It is common to hear Italian spoken in the street and the language is taught in many local schools. There are numerous Italian shops and businesses all through Darebin. The children of the ‘50s and’60s immigrants now walk many paths in life from trammies to pasta manufactures to doctors, concrete magnates, lawyers, accountants, teachers, politicians and artists.

After Primary School I went to study fine art at the Preston Technical School - One of the Prefects was Ralph Nicholls, an Aboriginal boy and son of Pastor Doug Nicholls. Australian Rules Football drew his father, Doug Nicholls to the local area from the Murray River region, then to religion and he became an advocate of black/white relations. His achievements would require a post of its own and still not do him justice. He is still looked upon as a son of Northcote.

DOUG NICHOLLS COMES TO NORTHCOTE - PREMIERSHIP PLAYER
It’s here where Doug’s association with Northcote began. In his first game for Northcote against Brunswick 9000 people turned up to see an aboriginal play footy. He had the spring of a kangaroo, the speed of an emu and the battling strength of a murray cod. In no time the crowd was on its feet. Doug played exciting high marking ‘marn grook’ style footy and everyone forgot that he was black. Doug always played the game and not the man, his opponents were his friends. In 1929 Northcote won its 1st premiership with Dougie the star recruit.

It was a great little ride through memories of my childhood. I'd really like to take Sue back to show her the environment I grew up within. Could I go back to live. No, I like where we are now.
But those memories still linger.