Visiting bookshops and temples in Bendigo

A few days ago I made another trip over to the north east of Ballarat to the beautiful and still flourishing goldfields town of Bendigo.
Bendigo is just far enough away to be drier, hotter and sit in a different landscape.

I went with a friend to see the old Joss house, which sits a bit outside the city centre near the former Ironbark Chinese Camp. It is still a working temple, small and beautiful. Sadly, none of Ballarat's old temples  have survived.

My friend's father-in-law was the caretaker at the temple for for many years and she told me some stories about his time there over a delicious Italian lunch, in a restaurant just down from the best book shop in Bendigo.

After lunch I went off to the Golden Dragon Museum with its beautiful new garden precinct, traditional walled Chinese garden and two more working temples. I love Bendigo!

 Traditional and modern sit happily together in the museum's grounds.

 The brilliant colours of the elegant and baroque gateway sets off the nineteenthe century Victorian streetscape around it.

 A modern pavilion across the road is surely second cousin to the little pavilion in the museum grounds.

We finished up in the best secondhand bookshop in Bendigo which is less than five minutes away from the museum, in Farmer's Lane.

Where I bought a centenary history of the Australian Natives' Association 1871 to 1971. Then we drove home,  and it was still sunny when we got back to Ballarat!

Clunes Bookweek happiness

 Cold, bright and dry, a perfect autumn day for the annual Clunes Booktown weekend. The town was so packed with booksellers and books for the weekend, that I spent five hours blissed out looking at books, and only got halfway round the town. I also forgot to get a ride behind these beautiful horses - maybe next year.

 I took these pictures at the end of my day, sitting on one of the straw bales scattered through the town, waiting for the free (thank you booktown committee!) bus back to Ballarat.

 I was sitting right by my favourite bloke in Clunes, and saw across the road that we're still in a fire danger period. It's been so dry, with no real rain for a months.

 See that little group with a banner just at the right? (Just click on the image and you'll see them)

Yes, the Clunes footy club (and netballers) were raising funds with bags of spuds and sheep poo - both local products.
For those not familiar with the Australian idiom, 'Yoohoo!' is what my Mum and my grandmas would shout over the back fence when they wanted to have a chat with the neighbours.

I was sorry that I didn't have room in my backpack for either spuds or poo, although I did get a jar of quince jelly - but not from these lads.

Cake dreaming

 

I can't resist books like this - and I didn't.

 

 These are the cakes you would find in the agricultural shows of the 1950s and early 60s

This was the cake that all the girls in my primary school class wanted for their birthday,

and those marvellous mothers of the 1950s baked and iced them in every Melbourne suburb.

Although not my mother, bless her, she preferred to read rather than ice cakes.
I didn't get the Dolly cake, but she allowed me to read as much as I liked, took me on the long tram trip to the library every week and bought me many books. 

Now I'm truly grateful.

Ballarat Writers Festival

I don't usually go to writers festivals, workshops, symposiums or talks, but yesterday I broke my habit - and I'm so glad that I did.

I spent yesterday from 9 to 5 at the Writers Festival in Ballarat, run by the Ballarat Writers. Lots of my favourite sort of books discussed by the authors, editors and illustrators of fantasy and historical fiction and picture story books. All locally-based Victorian publishing houses and writers. The speakers were generous and in love with their work.

A really rich day.

The festival was held in the Alexandria on Lydiard Street. A beautiful old building with great food and coffee. It was such a warm spring day that we sat out on the balcony for lunch. Bliss!

When I left to go home the lights were coming on but it was still warm and bright. 

Spring is really here.

Couldn't resist it

I already have a job that involves old documents and dust and fascinating records. Just when I had decided to concentrate on work and writing and a little sewing, I was asked if I'd like to help to dust and label and bag and reshelve the old books at the Mechanics Institute. Of course I jumped at the chance.
 I love books, I love old books, and I 'm fascinated by the nineteenth and early twentieth century collection at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute.

This library is a little bit of heaven on earth.

The old building has been restored recently and now the books, which have been assessed, boxed up and assigned new labels as they are entered into the new database are being unpacked. See the old library chairs to the left?

Of course some blokes got overexcited and shoved a lot of books on the wrong shelves (see behind). But this will be put right.

And they will go in the right spot just like these. Maybe even in a locked cabinet.

But when all the work is done, people will once again be able to come to the library and read the books. 

Look, just to the right is one of my favourite second-hand bookshops, the Pot of Gold.

The weekend reading

This weekend I've been reading (or rather, attempting to read) a  traditional Chinese almanac. Spring has aroused a desire to complete all my most quixotic projects!

Expatriate?

Grace at Windthread found a caterpillar in her garden that is a native here. It shouldn't be living on the other side of the Pacific ocean and in the opposite hemisphere. Here's one in my garden last year. How did its cousin get over to Grace's place?

I've always loved these little creatures who travel around in their camouflaged sleeping bags. I don't know if these Australian insects are desirable residents overseas, however, and I assume they hitchiked over to the USA with the eucalypts.

Here are some pics from the wonderful book Snugglepot and Cuddlepie written in Sydney in the 1920s and an Australian childhood staple ever since.
It struck me, looking at Alicia's summer reading list on Posie gets Cozy, that while Australians read the great books from the UK and the USA, very few people outside Australia know about the fantastic, marvellous books that get written and read here. Pity really.

If you watch the beastie for a while, Grace, you may see it poke out it's head and front legs and haul itself off to a gum tree - or a rose bush. They seem to like rose bushes as much as the old gum tree now. They are completely harmless to people. Don't know about rose bushes.

I took the pictures from my very old childhood copy of  The Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, so the pages are torn and faded. I hope they worked out well enough.

Floating

I was given this book, a retelling of  Longfellow's Hiawatha, when I was seven, and I adored it until I lost it, but I never forgot it.

I found this battered copy at the Clunes book weekend.

I feel just like this now - floating, waiting. Maybe something will surge up from the deep waters.

Vermilion Pears

The Reader

All night I sat reading a book,

Sat reading as in a book

Of sombre pages.

It was autumn and falling stars

Covered the shrivelled forms

crouched in the moonlight.

No lamp was burning as I read,

A voice was mumbling, "Everything

Falls back into coldness,

Even the musky muscadines,

the melons, the vermilion pears

Of the leafless garden."

The sombre pages bore no print

Except the trace of burning stars

In the frosty heaven.

                                                   Wallace Stevens.

The Master

This week in a secondhand bookshop, I found The Golden Bowl, one of my favourites by Henry James and long missing from my shelves.

I also found The Master, a novel about Henry James by Colm Toibin.

Generally I avoid 'faction' but I picked this up and was entranced. I've read both books in tandem, over my four silent days. 

The Master manages to convey briefly but intensely  the novelist's whole life and character, by focussing on just four years late in James' life, and extending them through reminiscence and  memory. It isn't primarily a fictionalised biography. It is an exploration of  how a writer writes out of the grief and terror and sorrow of his life - and of the disciplined life of observation and work lying behind the novels.

I'm trying to reread my favourite James' novels, picking them up second hand as libraries don't seem to keep 'the classics' any more. Henry James gets a lot of criticism for his detachment, his long, stylised sentences and his occasional obscurity, but time and again I pick up a new book and find it is a reworking of one of his.

Happily I haven't quite finished The Golden Bowl and I'll still be reading it tonight.

Aren't blogs lovely?  I can't go off and have a coffee and chat about these books, my throat's too sore, but I can chat here. 

Shopping

And after silence there is shopping.

 

Silence

The days have beeen hot but without the fierce edge of summer. I've had to keep silent for three days in a row as I have a very sore throat and no voice to speak with.  I've been out walking, solitary in Victoria Park among the pine trees, just past the Pony Club.

This morning I went op shopping with a handy pencil and notepad. I found two little books from the 1940s.

The first one is full of autumn sun and silence.

The paper is cheap and the pictures are a little fuzzy, probably due to wartime restrictions.

But the colours are still rich. 

All is quiet in her forest

The publishers weren't afraid to use black and white pictures too.

and here is the illustrator

I love the threaded needle pinned to the edge of the sampler.