Garden watering continued unabated. When would we get some decent rain?
However, the warm and dry summer weather had resulted in a bumper harvest for John’s first Bendigo tomato crop.
From this…
Every couple of days there was another basket full. We ate chilled tomato soup, tomato salads of various descriptions and complexity. I froze containers of tomato soup and bags of chopped tomatoes for later use. And still they came…. John does have a tendency to get carried away in front of nursery plant displays…
Back in October, there had been no obvious places in the kitchen area to put the two freezers that moved here with us: one upright, one chest. My solution then had been by a power point in the garage. By early summer it had become clear that the less insulated garage was going to be too hot a place to keep a working freezer or two. The upright was moved to the laundry.
I’d had hopes that we might dispense with the chest freezer altogether. The scale of the tomato harvest, though, saw it pressed back into use. Although I didn’t like the visual of it residing in the dining part of our big living area, couldn’t see another option. We got used to it.
The apricot tree, that was here when we moved in, presented us with a surprisingly large crop of fruit. Large, plump, totally delicious apricots. Of course, they all ripened at once, so batches of cooked apricots found their way to a freezer.
We looked forward to the crop from the peach tree – a larger tree than the surprisingly abundant apricot. But – much disappointment, and a new encounter… Fruit fly. We had not had these pests in our plum and fig trees in Melbourne. The peaches ripened, but when we started to pick them, we found that, despite a normal outward appearance, inside was rot – and maggots. Not a single untouched peach could be found. We picked the whole lot, put them in black garbage bags and left these sitting in the sun for a week, before consigning the lot to the rubbish collection.
Research was needed on how to prevent fruit fly infestation next season.
We continued regular sampling of local eateries, trying to choose a new place once a month, whilst still returning to those that were fast becoming favourites.
Friend M returned this month for another week long visit.
We decided to try out an hotel not visited before, but which I had read good reviews about. This venue was fairly centrally located in an older, hillier, part of town. Alas, there was no parking area dedicated to the hotel and we found ourselves cruising the nearby streets, which seemed to go at all angles, looking for a place to squeeze in the car, that was also not too far to walk.
Judging by some of the substantial older homes lining the streets here, this had been an area favoured by the more affluent, back in the golden era. In the strange juxtaposition that one finds in Bendigo, less than a block away had been a major gold mine – the Hustlers Reef Mine. Begun in 1865 and operational until 1921, this mine was dug to a kilometre deep, and its workings extended outwards for three kilometres under Bendigo. There are still some twenty kilometres of its tunnels down there – and this is just one of the many mines that was located along the Bendigo reefs.
Bendigo might be known as the City in the Forest, but it is also the city sitting on top of an extensive honeycomb of tunnels and mine workings, for the most part inadequately mapped. This is not a concept that I like to examine too closely
These days, the Hustlers Reef mine site features an interesting heritage walk and is a living memorial to the many miners who died in mining accidents in the Bendigo mines – some 2000.
A few days earlier, I had phoned and made dinner bookings – more as a courtesy thought, at the time, than from expecting the place to be crowded out. How wrong was I? It was absolutely packed. The tables were closely clustered together and the noise level was high. I was amazed. The reviews had been good, but not to warrant these crowds. Then the penny dropped – it was 14 February – bloody St Valentine’s Day! Obviously an occasion strongly celebrated around here.
The food – when it eventually came – was enjoyable enough. It did seem that the kitchen was overwhelmed by the numbers, though, as it took well over an hour from when we ordered to when we got the first of our meals. They didn’t come together. John’s was the last to arrive, by which time I’d finished mine – and I’m a slow eater. I was less than impressed and doubted whether we would return.
In the gold mining period of the last part of the 1800’s, there were over 90 licensed premises in and around Bendigo. Today, about 40 remain operating. If the traveller – or new resident – thinks there are a lot of pubs in Bendigo – there are! It certainly means one is spoiled for choice for great pub counter meals.
When we bought our first and only caravan, back in 1997, we left almost straight away, on extended travel.
Once we started spending periods back at home again, a few years later, thoughts turned to making a better parking area for the van and an area at the front of our sloping block was levelled. The logical next step was to try to cover the van from the elements, but this proved impossible on that site. There were council regulations about the percentage of the block that could be covered, but the greatest impediment was the existence of gas and sewer pipes “somewhere just under there”. John was not prepared to experiment with digging holes for a roof support… So, van and later Bus, remained uncovered.
At our new place, we had quickly worked out that an extension could be built to the front of the backyard shed, to house Bus. John had organized a firm to do this. They had taken care of the necessary permits – no problems. We had avoided what could have been an expensive glitch, by asking the man doing the measurements to double check that the roof pitch would accommodate the height of the Bus rooftop air con unit. Whoops….adjustments were made. That bloody aircon was more trouble than it was worth.
The extra roof area of the new structure had the added benefit that it would catch and channel more rainwater into our two backyard tanks. More “free” water for the garden.
February saw the completion of the “busport”. A grand and imposing structure for our old Coaster.
Bus was brought home from where it had been temporarily parked in the long grass at aunty’s place. I hoped it had no reptilian or rodent residents as a legacy…
What seemed to be an excessively hot summer continued to keep us confined indoors for much of the daytime hours.
I rose early most days, in order to water the recently planted shrubs, plus the pots brought from our old home. With permanent water restrictions in place for the area, watering with sprinklers or fixed systems was confined to the hours between 6pm and 10am the next morning. Quite adequate times, I thought, and justifiable considering the city’s past water history and the fact that central Victoria, north of the Great Dividing Range is drier than the south. Bendigo’s average rainfall is 510mm, or 20 inches on the old scale, whereas in our previous outer eastern area of Melbourne averaged around 800 mm or 33 inches. Quite a marked difference.
From the 1850’s, the issue of supplying water to the goldfields’ growing population had been addressed in various ways, some of them advanced for the times. The Loddon and Campaspe Rivers, to the west and east of the growing town, were obvious water sources and pipeline systems were built. For a while, it could be argued that Bendigo was better supplied than parts of Melbourne.
As with most of the State, the Millennium Drought, from 1997-2009, severely strained the Bendigo water supply system, with the relevant water storages dropping to 4% capacity amid real fears that drinking water would run out altogether, the city had an extended period of Stage 4 water restrictions, meaning that the piped household supply could only be used for cooking, domestic cleaning and hygiene. No watering of gardens or lawns. Clearly, gardens suffered. An earlier photo of our new house, shows a row of Westringia bushes along the front garden, which no longer exist. I assume they were casualties of the big dry.
Front garden before the worst of the drought impact
Another legacy of those drought years has been the decline of grass lawns – on nature strips in the newer suburbs and in domestic gardens – and replacement with, mostly, gravel and stones. Makes much more sense in a semi-arid environment, in terms of water conservation, although it could be argued that grassed areas reduce temperatures. I’m happy to stick with the stone mulched surfaces, and plants lots of shrubbery to counter any heat sink effects.
Gravelled nature strips
John, of course, was very happy with our stone mulched surfaces – no grass to mow! In that respect, he had not really been thinking things through, before our move, and had duly included our two lawn mowers and the whipper snipper in the transferred belongings. Since then, the penny had dropped and this month he advertised and sold these totally redundant machines.
I was pleased to find out that a response to the big drought had been the completion of a water pipe line linking the Goulburn River system to the Bendigo water supply, providing greater water security for the time being.
So, no complaints from me about getting up early to ensure my watering was done.
When we inspected the new house, back in July, the various deciduous trees were, of course, bare. By the time we moved in, spring had well and truly arrived and along with it, a new crop of greenery on said trees. This included what turned out to be five moptop trees planted at the front. These were not a specimen I had encountered before, but seemed quite popular in these parts. Frankly, they are not an ornamental tree I would plant, for preference.
The moptop closest to the street seemed very tardy in putting out its new shoots. At first, not knowing anything about them, we thought this might be normal variation, but it eventually became obvious that it was deceased. We decided it should come out and be replaced – but not with a moptop.
John was confident he could manage the tree removal himself – after all, he had tackled bigger trees at our old home, over the years. He was younger then, though! And had also been able to use the winch on the old Landrover in one lot of tree felling and root system removal. (Complete with very large European wasp nest, but that is another story. )
John’s genius solution to loosening the dead tree was to set up a winch between the brick pillar containing the mailbox and the tree. The winch would be gradually tightened, and the tree would be pulled to one side and eventually pulled out. That was the theory… In practice, the moptop proved the immovable object. The mailbox pillar separated from brick fence beside it and began to move. At that point, tree removal was abandoned for the time being…
This Adventurous Age 