White plum tree

It is the white Plum Tree

Seven days fair

As a bride goes combing

Her joy of hair.

As a peacock dowered

with golden eyes

Ten paces over

The Orange lies.

It is the white Plum Tree

Her passion tells

As a young maid rustling,

She so excels.

The birds run outward

The birds are low.

Whispering in manna

The sweethearts go.

It is the white Plum Tree

Seven days fair

As a bride goes combing

Her joy of hair.

John Shaw Neilson

Spring blossom makes me want to sing and chant all those lovely poems I learnt as a child.
John Shaw Neilson's poems are very singable. He's one of my favourite poets, a local Victorian, always a poor man - often working on the roads. His poems seem simple but grow richer and stranger as you reread them

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Spring

Daffodils early in the morning

And daffodils late in the afternoon.

Steam train joy

Steam Rail Victoria, a group of volunteer steam train enthusiasts, brought a couple of trains up to Ballarat again this weekend.

I love steam trains, and am fascinated by the rapidly vanishing industrial history of Ballarat, so I had the best trip today, travelling out of Ballarat station to Sulky and back - and travelling a little way into the past.

Look at this beauty, made over 130 years ago, when trains for the vast network of state railways were made in  Ballarat's Phoenix Foundry, right behind the town hall.

I was ecstatic to be riding behind this engine!

While she was being filled up with water,

the carriages were shunted up to the station by the engine with real muscle.

This is the train that the blokes all admired - you can see why.

It is a great old engine, made about thirty years later when the state railways had started to make their own trains.

The Steam Rail blokes got properly grimy and coal dusty.

We were travelling in the old wooden Victorian Railways country carriages.

I'd forgotten how much the old trains rock along. It was hard to get things in focus.

In these old, wood panelled carriages I had the ultimate luxury - not available on modern trains trams and buses - I could open the windows to the cold air!

I could taste and smell the coal smoke - lovely!

Unlike cars and buses, trains go by people's backyards. 

backyards tend to be unfussed and informal.

If you want to play around in a treasure trove of railway photos - bridges, crashes, railway footy teams, rope workshops - and all for free, try this link to the Public Record Office Victoria

Creswick in winter

We went out to Creswick last Wednesday, a beautiful cold, misty day.

Woodsmoke from the chimneys of many little cottages along the Clunes Road scented the air.

We stopped off at the cemetery first.

Where the Cemetery Trust (and in the country that generally means volunteers) keep things shipshape and welcoming for visitors.

The dead lie in the appropriate street, and social niceties are observed in death as in life,

 

And the living console the dead.

Then off back to town, stopping at the best milkbar in the district for lollies

You  can get pies, milk, plants, papers and  entertainment here and you can post your letters.

Outside is a magnificent tree I've admired since I first saw it. The native bush in Creswick was savaged in the goldrush and later a lot of land (not all) was replanted with pines and exotics for forestry, so this tree is special.

We walked through Calembeen Park, the site of the former Chinese camp on the Black Lead, now a spring-fed swimming pool and recreation centre.

When we crossed the bridge to the bushland area

We found a little plaque on the bridge that remembers Mr Hannie Kay.

Paddy and yoga

Paddy is seventeen, really old for a labrador. He spends a lot of time lazing around. However he is a tough old beast - we describe him as the Holden ute of the dog world - and he maintains his reputation for stirring.

Shut out from yoga practice, because he will join in despite shouting and most unspiritual insults,

he goes off to occupy The Forbidden Chair.

Lovely lollies

Also from the Creswick milkbar.
I went a little crazy - all my childhood faves! Raspberries, mint leaves, milk bottles, caramel butters, musk sticks - and snowballs.

Musk sticks are particularly marvellous - they really taste pink. Not a bit of fruit flavour in them. God knows what makes that taste, and I won't ask.

Snowball season in Ballarat

Snowballs are seasonal here in Ballarat, unlike Melbourne where you can get them year round. Wilson's keeps them in jars by the cash register - but only in season - and deprived of them during the hot months, I awaited winter with anticipation.

Three weeks ago the chocolate shop in Mair Street put up a sign  'Snowballs in Season'. Yes! I bought a bag of snowballs.


Then out along the Clunes Rd this morning I stopped at a milkbar (which will have its own post later) and bought two lovely fresh snowballs. The milkbar owner confirmed that snowballs had only been in season "about three weeks".

 Snowballs are delicate, moist marshmallow balls with a shadow of a chocolate coating and a flutter of shredded coconut.

I'll make the most of them while they're around!