Summer lushness

I walked down through Victoria Park to see the annual begonia display in the Botanical Gardens by Lake Wendouree.

The luxury of the cool green grass in the gardens, when all the city is parched this late end of summer, was wonderful.

The conservatory was already full of people who love begonias.

I participated too, in the happiness of masses of wildly fluorescent, frilly and fleshy-petalled begonias.

Once begonia flowers were modest, tough little rainforest plants like these.

Now here they are, in their humid glasshouse, safe from the dry, alien summer of Ballarat. A triumph  of a hundred years of gardening art.

Finally in the local paper!

There's been a little bit of a competitive feeling around our place. Since we first moved to Ballarat Yin has been in our local paper, The Courier, a few times, being a chef, Slow Food Ballarat founder and contributor to lots of community events. This is the first time I've had my picture in the paper so I'm celebrating. I feel like I'm really a local, part of the newspaper record of Ballarat that's been going since the days when Ballarat was a gold mining giant. Now my descendants can find me in the newspaper archives.
http://www.thecourier.com.au/story/2542761/home-history-workshops/?cs=62

Here are three of the places around Ballarat that I've been finding stories about in the last couple of weeks.

 Old Pub (now renovated) in Ballarat North. There were beehives out the back here in the 1870s.

 This was a house, pub and a private hospital over the years.

Now a family home, this was once an old weatherboard house of 10 rooms that served as a better quality private hospital in the 1910s.

Velvet soap

I found a couple of desirable cottages when I went walking round Soldier's Hill this weekend.

Just look at that velvet soap ad! My Grandma used velvet soap, my Mum used it, I use it.

Clothes, floors, hair, dogs - Velvet soap washes all.

The packaging has changed from yellow and blue to patriotic, but there's a 1901 baby on each block.

Snowy walk

(Click on these photos - there is more to see)

My yearly wish is granted - in August, as usual, with the last fierce blasts of cold from the Antarctic.

Snow.

I was walking down Sturt St for a university event in the old Ballarat Trades Hall, when  the spatter of rain became a snow fall.

and as always in Ballarat when it snows, all the shops and cafes emptied of staff and customers, and people laughed and took photos of themselves and their friends.

I took lots of photos. Snow augurs a good year for me. 

The Unicorn Hotel in the snow from Camp Street.

Walking across Sturt Street to Camp Street

The Trades Hall, Camp Street. It is flying the Eureka flag, of course.

The snow got thicker. This is the old Masonic Hall.

People gathered outside the door of the Trades Hall and took more photos before we went inside for the signing - everyone had a phone out but I had brought a real camera and there was some envy.

The snow was softer when I left and went off to have lunch at the dumpling restaurant, 3 doors down in Camp Street.

.

Snow, green tea and dumplings. Bliss!

An old town dreaming

Tarnagulla last Sunday.

A quintessential goldfields town made of bricks and local, golden stone

Low wood and iron verandahs across the whole width of the street

Houses with weathered corrugated iron roofs and wire fences engulfed in roses. 

Grey worn wood, rusted iron back fences.

Looks like my mum's old copper ended up here.

Looking across the road.

Then we drove off to Dunolly.