[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] L [/dropcap]ast week for our Quiet Hero we brought you the inspiring story of the Year 12 students from Bayview College, in Portland, who have chosen a fantastic way to celebrate the end of their secondary schooling.
Instead of spending “Schoolies” getting drunk and partying until their clothes start to shred, these Year 12 students have headed to Vietnam for “Schoolies with a Cause”.
They are spending their time not only exploring another culture so different to their own, but are bending their backs helping on various work projects at the Thanh Loc School.
This week, for something a little different, we decided to share some images from the Schoolies with a Cause Facebook page so you can see the students in action.
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What a great addition to your resume as a graduating Year 12 student – choosing to spend Schoolies helping out people less fortunate than yourself.
(And thankyou, again, to Katy Sullivan from the Pickled Pelican in Portland for providing us with our coffee and cake vouchers to give two of the key people involved in this project, Rod Stone and Nicole Reefman.)
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] D [/dropcap]o you remember growing up and reading a pile of adventure books that, as wonderful as they were, all featured characters from places other than Australia?
The Secret Seven, Mr Biggles, Treasure Island, Peter Rabbit, Alice in Wonderland, The Diary of Adrian Mole and even Harry Potter…all classics, but all British.
Today, however, there are so many terrific Australian young children’s authors and the personalities, history and culture of Australia are front and centre of the storyline.
For this week’s Bookmarks, Michaelie Clark, from Warrnambool Books, has chosen the latest in a series of hugely popular books aimed at young Australian girls:
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] ‘ [/dropcap]The Our Australian Girlbooks have been hugely popular in the South West over the last year, and the newest collection is proving to be no exception.
With the fourth book in the ‘Lina’ set, A Lesson for Lina, recently released, the story of the young Italian-Australian girl who dreams of being a writer is now complete. As with the other Our Australian Girl books, Lina’s story is a fictional tale set in a real place and time in Australia’s history, with this collection centred around mid-1950s Melbourne.
(A Lesson for Lina is set in 1956 – any idea what event in Melbourne it might feature?)
Each of the collections (there are six so far) in the Our Australian Girl series is penned by a different author. The ‘Lina’ collection has been written by much-loved Melbourne author Sally Rippin, making it a stand-out in a stellar series.”
Ps. The Our Australian Girl series will have an equivalent series aimed at boys – Do you Dare? – that will be released early next year.
Author Sally Rippin has written more than 50 children’s books, including the Lina series. Image: www.sallyrippin.com
[box] Keep up to date with new releases and treasured classics from Warrnambool Books on their Facebook page.[/box]
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] F [/dropcap]ormer ABC journalist and now successful author Nikki Gemmell can never be accused of being predictable.
It has been 16 years since Nikki made the leap from journalism into writing with her debut novel, Shiver, and she has since written another four novels, two works of non-fiction and published a collection of her newspaper columns.
Michaelie Clark, from Warrnambool Books, has chosen Nikki’s latest work as her book for the week and it marks another surprise turn for the author:
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] ‘M [/dropcap]any people will have first become familiar with Nikki Gemmell’s work without knowing she had written what they were reading.
Her first, much-discussed best-seller was The Bride Stripped Bare, a work of literary erotica which takes a confronting look at the secret desire and anguish of a newly married woman. The novel was originally published anonymously, though she was soon outed as the author and her name later appeared on the cover.
Now the well-known journalist and provocative writer has taken a very different turn in her career – she’s just released her first book for children.
The Kensington Reptilarium is written under the name ‘N. J. Gemmell’ and is a fun, feel-good tale that is full of adventure. It follows the story of the Caddy kids, four young Aussies from the bush who find themselves in London in the care of Uncle Basti, a man who loves his house full of snakes – and isn’t a fan of kids.
This may be a new genre for Gemmell, but there’s no doubt she’s a talented writer with a knack for capturing attention and offering fresh perspectives – something that young readers are invariably attracted to.”
Nikki Gemmell’s latest work sees the author move into another genre. Image courtesy of www.nikkigemmell.com
[box] Keep up to date with new releases and treasured classics from Warrnambool Books on their Facebookpage.[/box]
[box] Bluestone Magazine recently brought you the story of the rejuvenation of 222 Timor St, Warrnambool. This week, we tell the story of one fascinating find during its restoration.[/box]
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A99E90;”] O [/dropcap]ld shoes, perhaps more than any other item of clothing, have the power to tell stories.
What is the story behind a single shoe discarded by the roadside? Did it land there by accident, through misfortune, or part of prank?
We throw old shoes over powerlines and tie them to wedding cars, and we refer to shoes in our folklore and our fairytales: “if the shoe fits, wear it”; Cinderella and the famous glass slipper.
Old shoes are personal. They hold an imprint – a literal footprint – of their owner that cannot be replicated and makes them so hard to throw away, especially when they were once worn by a loved one who has also gone.
Some shoes can outlive us, surviving for centuries beneath the dirt and rubble of demolished homes and ruined cities until they are at last unearthed by new activity.
How 222 Timor St, Warrnambool, used to look in 1968. (Image: J.T. Collins Collection, La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria.)
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A99E90;”] A [/dropcap] shoe that had been hidden for possibly more than 70 years was recently found at my grandmother’s former property at 222 Timor St, Warrnambool, opposite Swinton’s supermarket. It was the house in which my mother spent a large part of her childhood.
It is also one of the oldest commercial buildings in Warrnambool and is believed to have been built around 1850.
As we wrote about earlier this month, the building recently passed into new hands and its long-hidden secrets are being slowly uncovered: a hidden doorway down to the cellar, shoebox-size windows that had been boarded up and wallpapered over, and a child’s single leather boot that had been placed under the floorboards.
The boot is about 18cm long, with tacks around its sole and seven pairs of metal eyelets securing a cloth shoelace.
The old floorboards in 222 Timor have revealed their own secrets. Image courtesy Luke Taylor.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A99E90;”] I [/dropcap] thought it might have belonged to my now 89-year-old mother, but when I showed her the boot, she suggested it had most likely been hidden under the floorboards by a boot repairer – a Mr Long – who had rented part of the property from her father in the 1930s.
My mother told me she had read an article in the Reader’s Digest about shoe superstitions, including the placing of a shoe under floorboards for good luck. I couldn’t trace the Reader’s Digest article, but an online article by British shoe historian June Swann confirmed that in Britain, in particular, it was not uncommon for a shoe to be hidden somewhere in a house to bring stability and good luck to the household.
Hiding a child’s shoe – in either a wall, chimney or under the floorboards – was also believed to increase fertility.
Perhaps Mr Long, if he did hide the boot, hoped it would bring prosperity to his business. Or perhaps it wasn’t Mr Long at all, but a previous owner of 222 Timor St who stowed the boot away for good luck.
The full story is yet to be revealed and the boot, of course, is holding its tongue.
[box] A version of this story first appeared in the Warrnambool & District Historical Society newsletter, Warnimble, April 2013. The new owners of 222 Timor St, Luke and Nat Taylor, plan to hide one of their children’s shoes in the restored building…for good luck. [/box]
Colonial oven still makes a crust
Paul Sanders with the magnificent 135-year-old wood-fired oven that he returned to working order for his Dunkeld cafe.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] W [/dropcap]hen Paul Sanders and his wife Pauline Yule moved into an abandoned bakery in Dunkeld, they had no intention of doing anything with the clapped-out, 135-year-old oven that dominated one wall of their bedroom.
In fact when they first bought the Martin St property in 2001, the cast-iron wall oven and firebox were hidden behind workshop shelving. They removed the shelving and converted the whole space into a bedroom, before converting it again into a meditation space as part of their business operating a spiritual retreat: a curtain was draped across the oven to avoid distracting the meditators.
It was only in 2010 when they thought about selling the property that the pair learnt the wood-fired oven might be an under-appreciated gem.
“We had a guy come through from Melbourne who was interested in buying the place as a bakery…we called some wood-fired bakers and soon got a sense that maybe the oven was actually in good nick,” Paul said.
The Martin St building has become a favourite among travellers since opening as a cafe last year.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] T [/dropcap]he last bakery to operate from the building closed in 1976 when the major bread companies began to buy up country bakeries with the intention of closing them down. As part of the deal, the ovens were supposed to be destroyed.
“But the baker who had this place, Ian McKernan, said he just couldn’t do it, so the oven survived,” Paul said.
Paul and Pauline stayed on and turned the property into accommodation and a gallery, while, behind the scenes, they worked on bringing the oven back to life.
“We fired it up with a fire in it every day for six months and it began to drip tears – it started to cry – as all the moisture that had built up over the years started to come out,” Paul said.
The external thermometer, that also dated back to 1878, also needed a bit of tweaking.
“We worked out that 300 degrees was actually zero and went from there,” Paul said with a laugh.
After more than a century of taking the heat, the temperature gauge was a little out.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] B [/dropcap]y 2012, the pair had decided to expand the business into a cafe and freshly baked bread, of course, would be a house specialty.
“We tried with (dry) yeast bread at first and it got a bit hairy at a times with black, smelly smoke filling the cafe,” Paul recalls, chuckling.
After weeks of trial and error, the quirks and mysteries of the oven began to be solved, and Paul felt ready to expand into baking wood-fired sourdough bread – made from scratch – that would give the cafe a real point of difference.
There was only one catch: he didn’t know how to make it.
Paul Sanders and Pauline Yule ran several businesses from the old Dunkeld bakery before returning it to its roots.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] T [/dropcap]he first step was to import a quality leaven (‘starter’) from San Francisco and then enlist the help of a professional sourdough baker who spent a week in Dunkeld showing Paul the process. Paul also hired a baker, Gurwinder Singh, to take over the bread making.
Despite their best efforts, however, the first sourdoughs they made on their own kept falling flat.
“We couldn’t work out what we were doing wrong and kept calling up people for advice, but in the end it was our local yoga teacher here, Frank Jess, who turned out to be the best help,” Paul said.
Frank suggested adding more water to the mix – “we weren’t hydrating it enough” – and making sure the oven was super hot.
“We made our first perfect loaf in May last year and haven’t lost a loaf since,” Paul said with an element of pride.
The oven is capable of baking 300 loaves at a time, but Paul is happy to put through 250-300 loaves a week, most of which are sold at local farmers markets.
For a 135-year-old oven, it’s not a bad way to make a crust.
[box] The Old Bakery & Wild Plum Cafe, 97 Martin St, Dunkeld is open seven days, 9am -5pm. P: 5577 2663. The sourdough bread is available from farmers markets including Port Fairy, Ararat, Hamilton and Daylesford. Paul and Pauline have just listed their business for sale. [/box]
Read about more of our Quiet Heroes…
