Friday Five: Victorian Alpine weekend

Last weekend we went to the Victorian Alps area for a few days and had a great time. Here are the edited highlights.

5 Highlights of the Easter weekend:

Happy and hoppy at Bridge Road Brewers

1. Two breweries and a winery - Bridge Road Brewers at Beechworth and Bright Brewery at Bright (oddly enough) both craft some excellent brews. My favourites were the Bling IPA from the former and the Razor Witbier from the latter. Bridge Road has a particularly pleasant ambiance and is tucked down a side alleyway, opening into a sun-drenched courtyard.

   

   Amulet Winery, with sheep

   Amulet winery makes sensational sparkling tipples from prosecco and moscato to Beechworth cider. They host a Highland Games next weekend, which apparently involves lots of fun, booze and caber tossing.

   

   Squeezing through boulders at Chalwell Galleries
2. Mt Buffalo - we went for a walk/run around this brilliant lump of rock that opens out into a massive plateau. There is a part of the track which squeezes between massive boulders, called Chalwell Galleries.

   

   The Horn, Mt Buffalo National Park

   The highest peak on the plateau is called The Horn, which is a cue for much giggling and striking views. 
   
   

   

   Beechworth town centre during the Golden Horseshoes Festival
3. Beechworth - the beautiful little town (population 2,645) is reminiscent of Arrowtown with its Easter Festival, including 'biggest crowd for the smallest parade in Australia' and the deciduous trees turning fabulous colours in the crisp autumn climate.








The heritage - the area is famed for its goldrush history (gold was discovered here in 1952); its links to Robert O'Hara Burke (leader of the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition) ; and Ned Kelly connections - the notorious bushranger was imprisoned here and tried at the courthouse.





A number of culturally significant buildings line the main street and a cute little museum is full of information about all of these disparate of history.





Warning: Here Be Hippies





Shopping - Him Outdoors likes to talk to strangers and, as we pottered about the shops, cafes, museums and galleries of the district he chatted to everyone including talking to the ladies at the museum about the possibility of reinstigating a famous wheelbarrow race, and the bloke in the Trade Aid shop about the necessity and humanity of a national pensions scheme. For the record, we bought cycling gear, brewery merchandise, poncy soap, licorice root (for the beer), and lots of food and drink.

Him Outdoors with a Ned Kelly pie

Friday Five: What People Read

Neanderthal Man at the bus stop by Sam Bosma

These are the results of a totally non-scientific survey (I suspect all of my surveys are conducted in this manner) of reading material for people on buses. It does not include kindles and i-phones. I've seen lots of people reading those, but the very nature of them precludes me from seeing the title, so this is my paper-based observation.

5 titles I have seen people reading on the bus:

1. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood - Marjane Satrapi
2. The Black Echo - Michael Connelly
3. Tourism Management 4th edition - David Weaver
4. In Search of My Father - Marion Elizabeth Fawkes
5. Australian Road Rules

Word of the Week: Kintsukuroi

Friday Five: Shakespeare's Last Words

It's final night of the Canberra Repertory production of Twelfth Night tomorrow, so it seems appropriate to list these versions of the great bard's final remarks as he lay upon his death bed. Obviously, there is no way of knowing if any of them are true, but that hasn't stopped scholars pontificating - it's what they do.

Five Claims for Shakespeare's Last Words:

1. "More light!" - spiritual plea or just asking someone to open the curtains?
2. "The rest is silence" - unlikely, albeit poetic.
3. "I've had 18 straight brandy-wines. I think that's the record." - Allegedly what his wife claims he said.
4. "I have had enough." - The most plausible utterance.
5. "Now what?" - This would be my favourite, if I had any say in the matter.

Quote for Today: The Necessary Mr Shakespeare

 

“It is only by holding our breath that we begin to understand how necessary breathing is. And the best way of bringing before our minds the true magnitude of our debt to Shakespeare is to imagine for a moment or two that he never existed. His faults then pale into mere insignificance. He was a necessary man.” - Robert Nye, The Late Mr Shakespeare

Holding out for a hero

Bernabe Mendez from the State of Guerrero works as a professional window cleaner in New York. He sends 500 dollars a month.

What constitutes a hero these days? Yes, I know you were wondering too. According to Bonnie Tyler, he's must be strong, fast, sure, 'fresh from the fight' and 'larger than life', whereas Hollywood would have us believe it is a man (only occasionally a woman) in skin-tight spandex, a cape and a dodgy face mask, with superhuman powers like flight, X-ray vision and ridiculous flexibility.

Photographic artist Dulce Pinzon has a slightly different take on the term. In her exhibition The Real Story of the Superheroes, she argues the notion of the 'hero' began to rear its head in the public consciousness more and more frequently after September 11th, as people celebrate the 'ordinary' firefighters, policeman, builders and street-sweepers who made a dramatic difference that day.

Minerva Valencia from Puebla works as a nanny in New York. She sends 400 dollars a week.

Born in Mexico City, she moved to New York aged 21 and is fascinated by the Mexican immigrant worker in NYC. Many of these unnoticed labourers work extraordinary hours in extreme conditions for low wages which they send home. Mexico relies on the money remitted by Hispanic workers just as the United States relies on their labour. Two nations depend on this manual militia of cooks, food servers, truck loaders, policemen, window cleaners, and construction workers.

Superman Noe Reyes from the State of Puebla works as a delivery boy in Brooklyn, N.Y. He sends 500 dollars a week.

Pinzon has photographed Latino immigrants in their work environment but dressed in the costume of an American or Mexican superhero. A short text includes the worker's name, hometown and amount of money they send home each week. The accumulation of these seemingly insignificant details gives them dignity and relevance and demands that values be questioned. 

Is a hero really someone who beats up the bad guys, or is it someone who cares for their family and seeks to create a harmonious environment, quietly getting on with their daily tasks and supporting the future of two countries. It's definitely worth a thought. Now pass me my cape; I've got some crusading to do.

Juventino Rosas from the State of Mexico works in a fish market in New York. He sends 400 dollars a week.

Friday Five: Meaningless Mnemonics

This weekend Daylight Saving ends in some parts of Australia (not the whole country, you understand; that would make a little too much sense), so our clocks will go back. In England, British Summer Time began last weekend, so their clocks went forward. I have a link on my computer which I check to tell me what the time is where so I don't have to remember whether it is a feasible hour to call family who happen to be in different time zones. 

Apparently there is a useful mnemonic to help remember which way to wind the clocks (although, of course, you should always wind analogue clocks forwards): spring forwards; fall back. I don't really like this handy reminder, not just because it's American (I concede that 'spring forwards; autumn back' doesn't make a lot of sense), but because it isn't exactly definitive. If you're me (which I am) you can just as easily fall forwards and spring back, so I feel none the wiser.

And, naturally, this brings me to a whole heap of 'useful' mnemonics. One that has always annoyed me is (another American culprit, I'm afraid) 'In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue'. Yes, it rhymes, and it scans, but then so would anything ending in two, and going 'de dum de dum de dum dum', so it's not spectacularly helpful. 

Likewise the one about the months - you know: 'Thirty days has something-ember, one two-syllable month, another one-syllable month and another month ending in ember; all the rest have thirty-one except February alone, and that has twenty-eight days clear, and twenty-nine in each leap year.' Which one of September, November or December is the one that doesn't have the thirty? Is April, July or August the two-syllable month, and which out of March, May, and June is the one-syllable month with the thirty days? See, not particularly enlightening.

There is one to remember the geological eras or epochs or periods or ages or whatever they're called, which is more trouble than it's worth. I like the sentiment: 'Pregnant Camels Often Sit Down Carefully. Perhaps Their Joints Creak. Possibly Early Oiling Might Prevent Premature Rheumatism.' While I do feel a level of concern for these poor camels, there are too many similar starting letters for me to recall which era/ epoch/ period/ age is which and I only remember that J indicates Jurassic, which I probably knew anyway. 

The meteorological mnemonic of 'red sky at night; shepherd's delight - red sky in the morning; sailors' warning' is permanently muddled in my memory by my brother who told me it was, 'red sky at night; shepherd's pie - red sky in the morning; steak and kidney pudding'. And yes, I did believe him. After watching the 1989 film, We're No Angels starring Sean Penn and Robert de Niro, I learned the correct way to cross yourself was 'spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch', but I have only ever had occasion to use this when on stage.

I quite like the 'Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived' version of history which deals quite nicely with Henry VIII's wives, but it doesn't necessarily help me to remember their names, only their outcomes. However, there are a few (five, funnily enough) that I have found worth-while.

5 Useful Mnemonics:

1. Every Good Boy Deserves Fun (for the notes on the lines of a treble clef)
2. Never Eat Shredded Wheat (the points of the compass in clockwise order)
3. Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally (the order in which mathematical equations should be approached: parentheses; exponents; multiplication; division; arithmetic; subtraction)
4. Stalactites hang tight to the ceiling while stalagmites might one day reach the ceiling (Incidentally, Him Outdoors learned that 'tights fall down' but then he is a boy and he does come from near Nora Batty land).
5. Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain (for the colours of the rainbow - red; orange; yellow; green; blue; indigo; violet. Many killjoys scientists have since argued that indigo isn't actually in the rainbow, but that makes a mess of the mnemonic, so until they make up a good new one, I'm keeping it in)

If it's good enough for Bungle, George and Zippy, it's good enough for me!