Heathcote, Victoria

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Six and a half thousand cars a day flash through the Central Victorian town of Heathcote, on the Northern Highway half way between Echuca and Melbourne.

Historically, one of the locals tells me, the town was known as the place to stop “for a pee and a pie.”

These days, local businesses have recognised that traffic as ‘business potential’ and they’re luring them in with coffee – pub and coffee, antiques and coffee, gifts and coffee, bakery and coffee, wine and coffee; everyone’s jumped on the coffee bandwagon and you can find good coffee and pretty little courtyards in the most unexpected places.

The significant beneficiaries of all the passing traffic though, are the town’s two bakeries. They’re generally pumping and in the summer, it’s not unknown for a fifty-metre queue to form down the road – hence there are bakery expansions ‘on the drawing board.’

Heathcote (Pop: app 3,000), is a testament to the growth and rejuvenation of small town Australia. Like many of the little Central Victorian towns I’ve visited, it exudes an optimism that is almost palpable, as locals band together to help their place “reach its full potential.”

It’s one of Australia’s growing wine regions, famous for its award-winning Shiraz, and with around 70 wineries in the area (about 30 of them small, boutique family operations), people are flocking to the region to savour the tastes.

            Nestled at the foot of the McIvor and McHaig ranges, Heathcote came into being on the back of gold discoveries in the 1850s. At its gold rush peak, Heathcote had a population of around 35,000, with people predominantly living in tents and shanties on the gold fields. At that time, there were at least three breweries, 22 hotels, two flour mills, a bacon factory, a hospital, banks and several wineries.

Today, wine is the ‘new gold’ and a number of new varieties like Sangiovese, Viognier, Vermentino and Tempranillo are being grown in the area. Cellar doors are proliferating and the annual Heathcote on Show in June, the Heathcote Wine Show in August and the October Wine and Food Festival, are all putting the town on the wine lovers’ map.

For me, Heathcote is all about its long, pencil-thin High Street, bordered on one side by sportsgrounds, a few  businesses and houses; and other the other, by a string of very fine old shop fronts and elegant gold rush buildings. Chief among them are the old Court House buildings (1864-1989) [now housing a craft store], the Town Hall, the old banks (now repurposed), and the stunning little Mechanics Institute (1900), that I rather fancy living in. I’ll just have to find new premises for the Senior Citizens, the Girls Guides and the Lions Club.

One of the old banks is now base for a wine company and a chocolate café; and like most small towns, you get the classic example of the one-stop shop, offering everything from gifts, candles and toys to massage, alternative therapies, meditation, numerology and tarot readings. A chiropractor offering pain-free back treatment is wedged between the pub (Cougars, 6 for $21) and a winery cellar door; and a takeaway (or eat in) is wedged between a funeral director and a newsagency.

Real estate windows always make interesting reading and apart from a good number of houses for sale and very good prices, you can also pick up an olive grove (38 acres with 1,500 olive trees established 13 years ago), for AUD$350,000 - $380,000 – which seemed extraordinarily cheap to me; or  boarding kennel – house and business, for AUD$820,000 - $860,000.

I spent most of my time in Heathcote taking photographs and talking to people, so I’ll definitely need to go back. I’ll wait until spring, when all those vineyards nudging up against the town, come into leaf. I expect it will be beautiful then. There are numerous good picnic spots around the town and I rather like the sound of The Valley of Liquid Ambers – I’m not sure if that’s trees, or local code for some special liquid beverage that I probably shouldn’t drink while I’m driving. I intend to find out!

Clunes, Victoria

Clunes is all about books. The annual Clunes Booktown Festival is proof of that, when, in April-May, over 50 visiting book traders from around Australia join forces with the town’s seven permanent bookstores to present what many have called “an unequalled weekend of book browsing.”

That’s when thousands of secondhand, collectible, small press and out-of-print books go on sale; and people can attend workshops and author talks. It’s a book bonanza and anyone who loves books finds their own little piece of rural Victorian Heaven.

    There are around 22 international members of  the International Organisation of  Booktowns ( www.booktown.net) and Clunes is the first in Australia and one of only two in the Southern Hemisphere (at time of writing). [The other is Featherston, New Zealand]. During the Booktown Festival, the town’s main street is closed to traffic and the usual population of around 1,700 swells to an impressive 18,000 or more.

Booktowns are a European concept and by definition, a booktown is “a small rural town or village with a concentration of secondhand and antiquarian bookshops.” Clunes became a member of the international organisation in 2012.

All this is what drew me to Clunes. I’m a book lover and I’d heard a lot of positive things about the little town, which owes its existence to the Victorian goldrush. It’s an historic gold mining town, located in the heart of Victoria's Central Goldfields region, just north of Ballarat and about an hour and 20 minutes’ drive west of Melbourne CBD. 

I arrived ‘by the back door’ – a short cut from Blampiad that wound through a fascinating rolling, agricultural landscape peppered with startling green cones (old extinct volcanoes) dotting the horizon, and the relics of old mining buildings and dredging piles.

And suddenly, there I was, driving passed a bedraggled array of houses on the outskirts of town on a day that what was clearly close to inorganic rubbish collection day – big heaps of domestic dross piled at gateways waiting for collection. It wasn’t a tantalizing beginning.

But the Clunes State School 1552 was. Its impressive form dominated the end of Canterbury Street (where it met Paddock Street – which for no reason at all, amused me immensely). I was just beginning to think ‘this was it’ when I rounded a corner and came face-to-face with the quaintest little streetscape I’d seen in ages….well….since Maldon at least.

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There’s a ‘Wild West’ element to it all and it wasn’t surprising at all to learn that, like Maldon, Clunes is sought-after by film-makers as a location. In Clunes’ case there have been many but when Mel Gibson and his team arrived in town to film “Mad Max,” [1979], they set off a chain of events that continues today – in much the same way as “Lord of the Rings” fans descend upon the New Zealand movie sets, “Mad Max” fans arrive in Clunes on their motorbikes, park outside the pub and sit down for a beer and a yarn about the movie.

“When the War Began, “Doctor Blake,” “Ned Kelly,” “On The Beach,” “Halifax f.p and the recent remake of “Picnic at Hanging Rock” were all also filmed in part or their entirety at Clunes.

Many of the original old gold rush buildings are still standing and ‘in good working order’ and although it was quiet when I arrived at 10am, I could see why it was becoming increasingly popular. I liked its unhurried air, its sense of rural comraderie, evidenced in friendly smiles and happy hellos. As corny as that sounds, it’s a noticeable thing in small town Australia that I really enjoy. People are happy to stop for  chat, even when they don't know you.

        

Even as the day wore on, and locals and visitors fell upon the cafes like thirsty camels in a desert, the locals were still stopping in the street to chat – and when I say “stopping in the street,” I mean it literally. No one seemed at all bothered about the fact that roads were actually designed for cars

While I began this little tale by saying ‘Clunes is all about books,’ it is also without a doubt, about the people and the architecture. With every small Victorian town I visit, I am surprised all over again by the wealth of well-preserved old buildings, their scale and their presence in sometimes very small communities. And the revival of small-town Australia is flourishing. For Clunes, it’s been on the back of film sets, its Booktown Festival and to a degree, the decision by Wesley College, Australia's largest co-educational private school, to establish a campus for Year 9 students in the town.

Opened in 2000, about 80 students take up residency in the Wesley Clunes Residential Learning Village in the centre of town and become part of the local community for an eight-week period each term, where they learn how to take care of themselves in preparation for an independent adulthood. I couldn’t think of a better place to do that.
www.clunesbooktown.com.au

Gum nuts and Marble

The first thing I noticed about Cheltenham Pioneer Cemetery was its blatant advertising – the large billboard that stood at the main entrance to this Melbourne suburban burial ground, advertising the availability of burial spaces. “A monumental opportunity” they called it – “a variety of areas including roadside and hillside positions, prices from AUD$9,995.”

“Secure your position at today’s prices. Interest Free. Extended payment terms available.” (Though not too extended we assume). 

And throughout the cemetery, little signs declaring “New graves available here.”

It seemed at odds with the cemetery brochure which declared that the Pioneer Cemetery reached its capacity in the late 1920s, and a new burial ground, Cheltenham Memorial Park, was established nearby. So, if it reached capacity in the 1920s, how, in 2017, are they suddenly finding space for new bodies? It’s something to think about.

It was also hard to miss the entrance sign about the flowers. It seemed a bit mean-spirited to me – just another incidence of health and safety gone haywire. One is hardly likely to trip over a vase of flowers for example; although I suppose, in a worst case scenario, if one did, fatally bang one’s head on the edge of a marble tomb on the way down, then there wouldn’t be far to travel for burial – especially if you’re quick off the mark with your $9,995!

Cheltenham Pioneer Cemetery was the first general cemetery established in Melbourne’s bayside area. One hectare (2.49 acres) were set aside for it in 1862 and it opened for interments in October 1864. It has changed little (apparently), since 1931 and after a number of extensions, it now covers 2.43 hectares (6 acres), with those who have passed on, neatly arranged according to religion – Church of England, Baptist, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Church of Christ plus a small area of “Common Ground” where ‘Eliza’ (?-1877), a member of the Bunurong tribe, lies in an unmarked grave.

It’s a pretty place overall. Lots of trees. Neat pathways and well maintained graves. Interesting birdlife – and what cemetery doesn’t have a mean-eyed crow standing on a mossy headstone? Lots of happy screeches and laughter form the kids at the adjacent primary school; and an intriguing array of tombstone styles.

I’ve always had a soft spot for a cemetery. I’ve never seen it as maudlin in any way. Although, as I get older myself, I do wonder about this whole business of death and burial (and cremation) and the rituals that go with them. It seems unnecessarily expensive to me and I hate that cemeteries, funeral parlours (and insurance companies) are now out there, actively marketing. It seems intrusive and unnecessary to me - everyone keen to make a buck out of someone’s death.

As I looked around the place today, I did go through the exercise of imagining myself in a few of the resting places but try as I might, I couldn’t see myself ‘immortalised’ and remembered with plastic flowers, a garden gnome, or glitzy gold embellishments. The only spot that gave me any sense of peace at all, were the untidier graves under the gum trees – covered in twigs, shed eucalyptus bark and a million gum nuts. If you have to be buried in a public cemetery, hiding under a tree and being covered in twigs, bark and gum nuts doesn’t seem like such a bad way to go.

I always think a good cemetery is also about new life – plants and animals and birds establishing themselves in, on and around the gravestones. And today, a bonus – a whole bird family. New to Australia, I initially thought they were honeyeaters but in consulting the fat blue tome, “The Australian Bird Guide,” I’m pretty sure they are what is known here as the Noisy Miner (Manorina melanocephala), which is “a thrush-sized honey eater with a stout yellow bill and a bandit-like black mask.”

I’m open to correction.

Beaumaris, Melbourne

I don’t know a lot about the Melbourne suburb of Beaumaris. I just know I arrived here today, keen to explore. It was a two hour drive from Tylden, where I live, following eight notebook pages’ of instructions – a mental juggle, making sure I was in the right lane to take the right exit off the right freeway at the right time. It makes driving in New Zealand seem tame.

This afternoon I went walking around nearby streets. I was keen to check out the area – its houses, its shopping areas, its transport but I got side-tracked by the flora and fauna – specifically, the eucalypts. It’s so lovely to see all the suburban streets planted (mostly) with Australian native trees and plants – and just for the record, I see I took 27 photos of gum tree bark. One never knows I suppose. They could be just what I’m looking for one of these days.

 

Beaumaris, I’ve since read, is an affluent suburb 20 kilometres south-east of Melbourne’s central business district. It’s the suburb that fronts the waters of Port Phillip between Mentone and Black Rock Village. And that’s about all I know at this stage. The housing seems to be mixed stock – everything from old villas to swathes of 50s-60s housing, to the brand new contemporary – and further towards Black Rock and beyond (on the way to St Kilda), huge mansions hang on the slopes above the water.

The average mortgage monthly mortgage payment is AUD$2,383 compared to the Australian national average of AUD$1,800 or so and in many cases, you’d have to ask yourself, “is it really worth it?”

I see I have a café around the corner – a couple in fact. Very handy. The little cluster of shops on Charman Road also includes a coin-operated laundrette, a pet-grooming facility, real estate agents (naturally), a podiatry provider, dentist, the Happy Milk Bar, a florist, a bottle store, a takeaway pizza place, two Vietnamese restaurants and a choice of five hair salons. Most of my immediate needs seem to be covered.

There are flowering gums everywhere, brilliant, scented bursts of wattle yellow, exquisite magnolia, flurries of suburban lavender and – my favourites, whole streets lined with huge ‘paper bark gums’ (bound to be the wrong name) with their thick, cushiony white bark flaking off in impressive drifts.

I’m back home now and there are at least three honey-eaters coming and going, collecting nectar from the grevillea bushes. They have a beautiful call. Otherwise, all I can hear is pigeons, an occasional magpie, a car or six and the rhythmic tick, tick tick of the big grandfather clock. I like it a lot.