Marysville & the Yarra Valley

We've just spent the weekend poking our noses around Marysville, Buxton, Healesville and all places Yarra Valley. I could be wrong but I think it's my first trip beyond the city limits in about 6 months and I'm so happy to be well enough at the moment to do a small jaunt like this one.

We stayed just out of Marysville at a cottage within burbling distance of the river, along the road to Steavensons Falls.

I'd almost forgotten how lusciously earthy the world can smell; the real world of fern tendrils, humus, understorey and wet bark.

Other things very much enjoyed were:

• The wonderfully confusing sensation on my outstretched and upturned bare arm of a rosella's needle-sharp claws while its soft, plump, downy belly nestled just inches away as it pecked sunflower seeds from my palm

• Salivating upon seeing burlap sacks of raw coffee, a digitally controlled hot air coffee roaster and a Synesso espresso machine at Cellar Door in Healesville

• Mountain Ash smoked trout from Buxton (coming from someone who generally doesn't like seafood, this says a lot)

• Bruno's sculpture garden, gallery and workshop in Marysville

• The cherry tart from Marysville Patisserie

• Wandering around the waterfall

• Shitake chilli paste from Australian Harvest Fine Foods (especially combined with the semi-matured goaty goodness of Yarra Valley Dairy's chevre)

• Feeling my brain and body go limp with relaxation after the first spa bath in, well, a very long time

• The smoked smallgoods from a virtuoso butcher in Healesville

• Seeing J have a work-free weekend of relaxation, enough to shift into the sort of headspace where it's perfectly OK to bring home a bucket of Persian Fetta in olive oil and spices.
  

Most people return with photos of the places they've visited. We return with produce.

Gyuto Monks

The Gyuto Monks of Tibet are concluding their year-long "Good Karma" tour of Australia with a two week residency at the Incinerator Arts complex in Moonee Ponds (Victoria), which finishes this Sunday 27 August. If you live nearby and haven't met the monks on one of their previous trips (or even if you have) I encourage you to head over and take in the vibe. There are usually one or two monks working on the large but intricate sand mandala that, once it is completed, will be swept away and the sand poured into the river (or sea) after a colourful procession on Sunday afternoon.

I attended one of their half-day harmonic throat singing workshops during their residency at Gas Works a few years ago. I found it impossible to produce anything resembling the rumbling harmonic resonances that the three instructor monks managed to make sound like a monastery full of throat-chanting wizards and it didn't really help when one of the monks -- coming over to observe my technique and provide technical advice -- pointed at my throat, shook his head vigorously from side to side, then pointed at my navel, nodded and smiled. In what was surely the most gratuitous bit of translation for the day, the interpreter explained: "Not from here (throat). From HERE! (navel)"

What was I supposed to do with THAT?

Then the monk laughed, eyes a-twinkle.

(Translation: "Muhahahahahahaha!")

I swear for the rest of that day and into the evening every aeroplane flying overhead, every fridge motor running in the background, every truck I could hear driving in the distance sounded like those throat-singing monks.

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Full details of the last few days of their program can be found HERE. This year's sand mandala will apparently look something like this:

[Image from www.tibet-initiative.de]

My Encounter with the PM

It happened last week as I was walking back from a medical appointment along Grattan Street, opposite Melbourne University. I saw a car travelling slowly towards me with its headlights on. At first I thought perhaps a funeral procession (there were another two white sedans in tow, also with lights on). Then I saw the flag on the bonnet.

Is it Bracksy, the Premier?

No cigar.

Then I made out the plates: C-1

Ka-ching! The Prime Miniature himself.

He'’s a front seat passenger. I’'ll give him that much.

As the car approached I took off my sunglasses. Partly so I could see better; mainly because I wanted him to see my eyes. In the space of the next few seconds a stream of images poured through my mind, most of them related to social injustice and disadvantage.

I furrowed my brow and glared.

Well, he refused to meet my gaze, but he did appear to be intensely physically uncomfortable, as if caught in the process of trying to shift his body weight –-- while seat-belted –-- from one haemorrhoid to another. This will ever be a source of comfort to me.

Of course, he may always suffer like this in the vicinity of ACTU headquarters and Trades Hall (just up the road) but I’ had not seen the “"haemorrhoid"” look in the flesh (so to speak) before. I have to say though, the expression is remarkably similar to the one that comes over him these days whenever Peter Costello’'s within knifing distance ....