On the diggings ...

As my friend and I walk this old gold rush town, she tells me stories of the history of the town and together we have walked the trails of the soldiers and the miners who met so fatefully at the Eureka Stockade. We have sat in the old camp sites and had our ritual coffee and shared stories of what we know of this place. She talks of how the geography, unique for the mining of gold, was shaped by the volcanic flows of Mount Burrembete and Bolac whilst the lava from the sentinels of Warrenheip and Buninyong which seem central to the geography of the town, did not provide its bounty. I share the social history, gleaned in most part from,

the book, The Forgotten Rebels Of Eureka by Clare Wright, which puts the humanity of the gold fields into perspective.

These conversations have added a depth to my experience of my town which has been warming during this particularly surreal covid winter. I have also wandered with camera as my preferred one hour of exercise and begun to teach myself how it works. I often wish I was an instruction reader but I am not and so many things take me a long time to learn. The joy of this learning has been that it has forced me to focus on details and to see the world in alternative ways.

So my winter has taught me about the joy of sharing stories with a friend, and the pleasure that greater understanding, detail, colour and focus can bring. It has also impressed on me that what may appear fixed and unchanging, dull and devoid, when viewed through different lens, can be experienced as mysterious and beautiful, historic and fateful. To keep myself disciplined with my camera, I promised myself that I would share images that I liked and so to honour that promise, I have tried to attach my first ever video in the hope you enjoy some of my views of the dear old town with which I have begun a love affair in this time of covid. As is sometimes the case however , my intention has been momentarily thwarted by a technical glitch which may take some time for me to work through. A metaphor for 2020 perhaps ! Like covid, this glitch too will be managed and hopefully my next blog will be the vid. I live in hope.