Each week we post a gem from Gumtree – the online buy, sell, swap site – that is odd, unusual or just plain different. Most items are/were for sale in South-West Victoria or not far beyond.
This week is one that I posted on Facebook some time ago, but it is worth retrieving for Bluestone Magazine, as it remains one of the most original:
[box] Tub of clean crisp country air, collected from my farm. You can breath easy today with this limited item !! Can post, but as I am out in the country it may take a couple of days to ride horse into town. For those city folk wanting an escape to the country but don’t have time. Bring the country to you with this very limited offer. Only 1000 available at this stage. $9 a tub.[/box]
If you have been following this section, you will know that given we are called Bluestone, we thought it only fitting that each week we dig out a track that has the word ‘blue’ in its lyrics or title.
What better way to start the working week than with some sensational music?
It doesn’t come any better than this: lyrics by Bob Dylan, performance by the Indigo Girls – Tangled up in Blue. It is a truncated version, so not the full eight minutes it usually runs for…
(We have chosen this version to save you having to watch the Youtube ads)
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] D[/dropcap]O YOU remember junket? Perhaps you still eat it?
These two packets of junket date back to somewhere in the 1970s and, frighteningly, they still contain some un-used junket tablets. Vanilla or pineapple, take your pick!
We are not game to try them for taste, but if we were, the instructions assure us that we will enjoy a tasty dessert that is particularly good for convalescents.
For those who don’t remember junket, it was a cross between custard and a chilled milkshake. Sort of.
Junket tablets have been making a comeback. Perhaps you have some at a delicatessen near you?
My mother kept everything – and I mean, everything. Each week we will reveal another item from the collection.
“My friend the wind will come from the hills When dawn will rise, he’ll wake me again My friend the wind will tell me a secret He shares with me, he shares with me…”
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] G [/dropcap]rowing up in Warrnambool, we had one “ethnic” record in the house and that was Demis Roussos’, My Friend the Wind.
This was a fitting choice, as Warrnambool can be very windy. We all know this. We all talk about it, occasionally even obsess over it, and it is usually the first thing that people mention when you say you are from Warrnambool: “Oh it is such a beautiful place, but boy, it is so WINDY!”
Last Thursday, it was incredibly windy.
It was the kind of wind that scoops up the fully laden recycling bin from the kerb and dumps it three doors down. As I retrieved a fortnight’s worth of wine bottles from the neighbour’s verge, I thought, “boy, do we really drink that much wine?”
I then had another thought: why don’t we make the most of our wind?
Granted, a Festival of the Wind would need to be delicately titled, but there is potential for Warrnambool (and the South-West coast) to embrace what has hitherto been considered one of its drawbacks.
If Tasmania can embrace its weather, why can’t we? [Image: www.limelightmagazine.com.au][dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] T [/dropcap]asmania – or more particularly, Hobart – has done this very thing with its long, dark, cold winters.
Last year, it held its first mid-winter Dark MOFO art festival which included spectacular light installations around the city and, in one widely televised event, a group of hardy Tasmanians stripping off to dash into the Southern Ocean for a dip.
Tasmania is incredibly fortunate to be the home of philanthropist David Walsh, who has spent large chunks of his gambling fortune transforming Hobart into the vibrant, artistic, brave little capital city that it has become in the past decade.
Imagine if some of Warrnambool’s wealthier families – you know who you are – plunged some of their fortune into creating a funky Festival of the Wind (okay, we really do need to work on that title). It could be held during the September school holidays when, it seems, the wind blows its hardest.
The events could be wide-ranging and include such things as a kite competition with large-scale kites like those found at Semaphore Beach, Adelaide, where they already hold a kite festival every Easter (they cottoned on early).
Wind chimes could hang from public spaces. [Image: www.windchimesaustralia.com.au][dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] W [/dropcap]e could also host a kite surfing competition like Townsville (damn, they cottoned on early too), hold concerts featuring wind ensembles, encourage people to make and hang wind-chimes in public spaces, bring windmills onto Warrnambool’s civic green as part of a wind-power demonstration, create a ‘Second Wind’ dance party, organise kid’s boat races on Lake Pertobe, launch a competition for hairdressers to demonstrate their best ‘wind-swept’ designs, host a Gone with the Wind theme night at the Capitol Theatre…and on we go.
If nothing else, I think such a festival would put the wind up those who dismiss Warrnambool as being too windy.
Hello, it is Barney Bluestone here (one of the two Bluestone cocker spaniels).
Normally the two-legged people in the household write these introductions to Bookmarks, but this week it is my turn because it is a book about DOGS!
Most people think that dogs don’t like to read and that only cats read (especially newspapers; cats just LOVE newspapers), but where do you think the term dog-eared pages came from?
That’s right – from us dogs trying to turn the pages with our big old paws.
But I digress.
This is a wonderful book: it is full of gorgeous dogs and their stories. I am giving it four-paws.
Michaelie Clark from Warrnambool Books will now tell you why it is almost certain to be a best seller:
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] A [/dropcap]ward-winning Australian photographer, Andrew Chapman, has teamed up with fellow photographer, Melanie Faith Dove, to create Working Dogs, a spectacular tribute to the cleverest and most colourful canine characters of the countryside.
The book features unique and captivating photographs of man’s best friend, both hard at work and in more playful moments, with accompanying snippets of text to provide background and complement the atmosphere of the photos.
While focused mainly on Smithfields, Koolies, Heelers, Kelpies and Collies, the book also includes a section dedicated to ‘The Wannabes’ – the Pugs, Jack Russells and other small or ‘funny looking’ dogs on the farming frontline, who are no less important or enthusiastic in their endeavours, but who contribute more to light relief than the serious business of making a living on the land (though they may think otherwise at times).
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] A [/dropcap]s with Chapman’s Woolsheds and Around the Sheds, the photographs have been taken in various locations around the country, including several areas in South-West Victoria, such as Bushfield, Merino, Darlington, Port Fairy and Casterton.
(I am inspired! I think I may have to pen a book called “Work? Work? A cocker spaniel guide to doing nothing and getting away with it”. – Barney).
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Don’t miss our other Gumtree gems…
