Hanging Rock, the best playground *evah*

On Easter Sunday my kids and I headed out for a spur-of-the-moment drive to Hanging Rock. (No dad around – he has a sports competition every year at Easter, so he was away.) We’d been only once before, when the kids were small.

Hanging Rock is what the publicity blurb calls a “rare and mysterious” volcanic formation, about an hour north of Melbourne. In truth it is a special place – a towering stone maze rising incongruously from a pretty farming landscape. It’s best known as the setting of the classic Australian novel and film “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, which is about the mysterious disappearance of a party of schoolgirls at Hanging Rock. Cue lots of floaty white dresses, sexual tension, summer heat and sun-dappled eucalypts. The story is completely fictional – there was never a local girls school and no one disappeared or came to a bad end at Hanging Rock – but the mythology is so strong (and the film so evocative) that many Australians think it’s based on a true story. This perception is supported by an exhibit at the base of the Rock, which presents the story as though it were history. There are tales (possibly also apocryphal…) of aspiring researchers visiting the State Library of Victoria and bursting into tears when told by the library staff that there really are no newspaper records because it’s FICTION.

Anyway… here we were at Hanging Rock. After fortuitously running into good friends and arranging to meet later for dinner, we headed up the path that winds to the top of the Rock.

A little way up we decided to veer off the path and be “explorers”, tackling the long spiky grass, scrubby banksias and challenging boulders. This is when I discovered that Hanging Rock is a BRILLIANT place for middle-sized kids (mine are 9 and 11). Hanging Rock is climbing heaven. It’s made of pockmarked volcanic stone, split into pinnacles and boulders and liberally appointed with footholds, spooky canyons, hideyholes and king-of-the-mountain triumphal pose opportunities.

Admittedly I have a pretty high level of risk tolerance and confidence in my kids’ good sense and climbing ability. I played lots of physically challenging games as a kid (my favourite was one I invented called “Daredevil” which basically involved climbing up and jumping off stuff). I’m willing to contemplate the possibility of broken bones, though my kids have managed to avoid this so far. I do draw the line at playing on the edge of sheer cliffs though… I have a great photo that I won’t post out of deference to my son’s feelings/pride, but it shows what an 11-year-old’s face looks like when he knows he just got too close the the edge and is backing the hell away.

Here’s the view from halfway up:

And the view from the top – with and without banksias!

Our sitootery! (OK, it’s a cubby)

I learned a great new word in Scotland: “sitootery”, a small summerhouse or gazebo where you can “sit oot” in the garden. My aunt and uncle have a cosy little brick house at their place. We, of course, have our cubby, which I have written about building and painting. I have rechristened the cubby a “sitootery” because I like saying sitootery. (The kids are not sure about this idea.)

The sitootery quickly settled into the garden, with a buddleia and violets growing up around it. Here it is in spring under a sprinkling of paulownia flowers:

..and in summer, with the paulownia in full leaf.

The inside walls are painted deep aqua – a rare colour that both kids could agree on. We happen to have a mozzie net in the same colour, which was handy when my daughter and I slept out overnight; we hung the net from the ceiling, put futon cushions down as mattresses, and it was like sleeping under a tropical sea. Minus the coral and sharks.

Here is the “sitootery” in my journal (i.e. what I did today when I should have been putting away the groceries):

Garden update: autumn abundance/chaos

With all this gallivanting off overseas, my garden has had to fend for itself for a while. I have come back to find the front garden in full late-autumn sprawl; the weeds green and luxurious, salvia and plumbago flopping across half the garden, and pretty much everything in need of a good cut back.

The backyard is looking a little more civilised. I’m thrilled with the Virginia creeper that in the past year has just about covered the wall (I wrote about it last May, here). Give it another year and it will be a solid wall of leaves.

UK: Things that made me go *wow*

Back in Oz. Last night I did a page in my sketchbook on highlights of my UK trip. You might need to click on the picture to read the text!

Feeling artistic in Edinburgh

Blogging on my phone on the fast train from Edinburgh to London. The view from the window: rainclouds looming over rapeseed fields.

I’m leaving Edinburgh after five days, which feels way too soon – I was just starting to get my bearings and discover all the good things to see. (Admittedly I spent a fair few hours sleeping, relishing family gossip, eating neeps and tatties and watching romantic comedies and a Bee-Gees special with my Auntie Margaret, which frankly was time well spent).

I love the shops selling beautiful handmade and locally designed things (yes, I am a shameless shopper when I travel); the museums and art galleries; the millions of charity shops (opp shops); the parks where I thought I was going to be wiped out by flying golf balls; and the city skyline which is stunning from every angle. I didn’t have enough time to do more than skim the surface of any of these things. But what I saw was wonderful.

I was inspired by lots of Scottish artists, including Elizabeth Blackadder, especially her stylized still lives:

I stayed in the upmarket middle-class suburb of Morningside (which my cousin says you have to pronounce with an ironically posh Edinburgh accent to show you’re “in the know”) where I pottered around commercial galleries and shops full of genuinely gorgeous stuff. (Also lots of opp shops with an unusually high number of fancy hats.) After visiting Acanthus, an interior design shop, I felt an overwhelming desire to paint my house in dark elegant tones and fill it with plants, wood, black bamboo, Asian ceramics and eclectic curios like the inside of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities. A strange sensation for me, because I usually find interior design companies very bland and dull, but apparently not so in Edinburgh. (Photo from their Facebook page).

I’m continuing to doodle in my new sketch book (I bought a bigger book and a better pen after my first attempt) though I have no technique and no real clue what I’m doing. I figure if I keep drawing, I might work it out.

Sketching at Hogwarts

Hanging out in Christ Church College, Oxford, where many of the Hogwarts scenes were filmed for the Harry Potter films. Waiting for the scholars to finish lunch so I can visit Hogwarts Hall. Go Gryffindor! (Actually I’m probably more of a Ravenclaw girl…)

Favourite London moments (so far)

Fun times during my first five days in London:

- At Westminster Abbey, a blue hedgehog sculpture on the tomb of a woman who died in 1596. Why a hedgehog? Why blue? Don’t know. Loved it.

- Music, music everywhere. Alone in the crypt of St Bride’s in Fleet Street (stumbled across when I took yet another wrong turn) with an organist rehearsing the world’s most melodramatic music above my head. Thai pianist Prach Boondiskulchok playing Bartok and Schubert at St Martin-in-the-fields. The City Chamber Choir rehearsing Monteverdi’s Vespers at St Paul’s Church in Covent Gardens. G&T, 1920s jazz and Hay Fever at the Noel Coward Theatre. Belting high notes at Wicked. Buskers – gypsy guitars, bagpipes, and a vintage mobile piano (not all at the same time… though I’d like to see that).

- The British Museum with my cousin David. Five hours of one extraordinary object after another. 13,000 year old wolverine pendant. Elegant Roman jewellery and delicate tools from 2nd century Britain – turns out I really, really like these. Ukiyo-e prints by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi – I had forgotten how much I like these. A huge jade turtle discovered at the bottom of an Indian fountain. We didn’t even get to the blockbuster items (Parthenon marbles, Rosetta stone…). I’ll have to go back.

- Roast chicken, beer and “Yorkshire biscuits” with Mahesh and Sara, my friends from Singapore days. Introducing our 11-year-old boys in London and Melbourne via Minecraft and Skype.

Favourite photos:

In Trafalgar Square, outside the National Gallery.

I was taking a photo of the squirrel in St James Park for my kids (we don’t have squirrels in Australia) when the girl walked into shot. Oh, please, could we make it a little more British?

Battersea power station, through the train window. I find this building quite scary. What I love about the photo is the reflections of the other passengers, which you can see if you look closely – a woman with eyes closed, a couple, and a standing man holding a baby.

UK calling

I’m in the UK on holiday – my first visit and traveling solo, which is an indescribable luxury. I’ve been here for six days and already my head is full to bursting with new ideas and images and experiences.

This morning, en route from London to Oxford, I bought a small notebook and pen so I could jot down what I’m doing before everything morphs into a big UK-flavoured blob of indistinct memories. This afternoon, in a moment of serendipity, I walked into an Oxford bookshop and found ‘An Illustrated Life’ by Danny Gregory – a wonderful insight into the visual journals of artists and designers.

My brain is so overstuffed with input that by the end of the day it was all I could do to buy Maccas and fruit and head back to my room (at Jesus College – beautiful gardens with the wisteria in bloom, gorgeous buildings, magnificent Elizabethan dining hall where I’ll have breakfast tomorrow – more sensory input, dammit) and flop on my bed to read and scribble. I like the idea of recording snippets of everyday life, and I’d like to have a go at creating a journal that incorporates collage, drawing and text. An indication of my mental overload right now, I drew what I could see from my bed – ‘Still Life With Diet Coke’ and the gargoyle outside my window.

I don’t want to post millions of travel photos (actually I don’t take many – just snapshots with my phone camera of random things I want to remember) but I might post a few as the mood takes me. Here are a few from today.

A set of wooden 3D geometric shapes at the Museum of the History of Science. I love these – where can I get some? Unfortunately they weren’t available at the gift shop.

Jesus College, where I’m staying.

View from my window. I especially like the sticker that tells me not to exit via the window. Good thought, since the room is four or five floors up.

View from the window. The noise I hear through this window is, based on my extensive research in both London and Oxford, the definitive sound of England: church bells combined with police sirens.

A cake version of the Radcliffe Camera, part of the Bodleian Library. Library nerd that I am, I’m very excited to be going on a behind-the-scenes tour of the non-cake version tomorrow.

Happy Easter, Pikachu

Wildflowers in Lerderderg State Park

A belated post after our camping trip to Lerderderg State Park west of Melbourne last year. This was our second trip; our first is described here.

We went for a long walk in the rain and I got a bit carried away taking photos of the tiny spring wildflowers that dotted the ground.