Highly anticipated local production Camp Darwin directed by Kate Stones and written by Arjun Raina which will be making its debut with the Castlemaine Theatre Company tonight.
After a desperate year-long wait to be repatriated back to Australia from India at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, 150 Australian residents finally land in Darwin after boarding a government-assisted Qantas flight.
The play follows the experiences of six intrepid travellers who find themselves at the ‘Centre for National Resilience’ at the Howard Springs Quarantine Facility, each assigned to their own donga, they sit and wait, counting down the 14 days, ever hopeful that they never return a positive test.
Based on Gisborne-based playwright Arjun Raina’s experience at the Howard Springs Quarantine Facility during the pandemic, the play asks audiences to consider the nature of human resilience, the importance of connection and ultimately the unwavering desire to return home – wherever that may be.
The dedicated CTC cast hail from Hoppers Crossing to Bendigo and everywhere in between!
Camp Darwin will be performed at 35 Etty Street, Castlemaine, in a new and exciting space downstairs.
Performance dates May 15-31 (Fri/Sat 7.30pm and Sun 2pm).
For tickets visit www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1556179
Castlemaine motorcycle riders are set to gather once again this Sunday May 17 for the annual Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride raising money for men’s health.
The DGR originated in Australia and is now a worldwide fund raising effort to improve men’s mental and physical health.
On the same day around the world riders get dressed ‘Dapper’, dust off their old classic or modified machines and go for a ride.
Castlemaine boys and girls have raised over $70,000 in the last three years thanks to the generosity of friends, family and our community.
This Sunday, over 50 riders will gather at the Castlemaine RSL in Mostyn Street from 10.30am. The RSL continue to support this event with morning tea.
This year’s ride will take in Castlemaine, Harcourt, Chewton, Fryerstown and conclude at the Five Flags Hotel in Campbells Creek for lunch.
Be sure to give riders a wave as they pass through your region to let them know you care.
Unique to our local DGR event, Castlemaine has a featured guest speaker. This year, psychologist Darren Eger will offer some advice on the signs to look for regarding mental health.
Darren is part of a cohort of professionals who travel to country and remote regions promoting mental wellbeing. Calling themselves ‘Psychs on Bikes’ they hope to reduce the devastating effects of mental trauma among men.
You can support the Castlemaine riders by either registering to ride or donating to a rider. Go to www.gentlemansride.com select Australia, scroll to Castlemaine and either donate to a rider or generally to the Castlemaine ride.
Thanks to the organising team of Brian Rix, Mick Morgan, Dave Petrusma and Ian Lihou for once again putting on this special event.
This National Palliative Care Week, Dhelkaya Health, in partnership with the Palliative Care Consortium, will host a free community panel discussion at the Phee Broadway Theatre, located in the Castlemaine Library foyer, on Thursday May 14 from 11 am to 12 noon.
Titled ‘Getting to the heart of it – big questions, real answers,’ the session will explore important conversations around end-of-life care in an open and supportive setting.
The panel will feature guest speaker Adam Rutnya, Voluntary Assisted Dying Navigator for the Loddon Mallee region, alongside Hayley West, a local death literacy advocate, ceremony creator and independent death worker, and Jane Furze, Team Leader of Dhelkaya Health’s Community Palliative Care Program. A local GP will also join the discussion.
Attendees will have the opportunity to engage with the panel during a Q&A session, followed by morning tea.
The event is free to attend, and no bookings are required.
Community members seeking further information about Community Palliative Care services can phone 5471 3495 or visit the Dhelkaya Health website.
Award-winning Castlemaine artist Rob McHaffie will be the featured artist for the 37th Annual Rotary Castlemaine Art Show at the Castlemaine Town Hall on the King’s Birthday weekend, June 5–8.
“Castlemaine Rotary is delighted to have an artist of the stature and accomplishments of Rob McHaffie as our featured artist for our 37th Art Show,” said Rotary Art Show Chair Robert Cordy.
McHaffie moved to Castlemaine in 2019, attracted by the relaxed lifestyle and the vibrant arts community of the district.
Working across a range of media, including drawing, painting and sculpture, and informed by a keen observation of his everyday surroundings, his work is an eclectic mix of colour, whimsy and humour and is held in major public and private collections. Visit https://www.robmchaffie.com/ to learn more.
“Thirty-seven annual Art Shows is a record Rotary Castlemaine is rightly proud of and we look forward to showcasing artists from around the local district, the wider state and interstate,” Cordy said.
This year’s show will be judged by La Trobe University Bendigo Visual Arts Centre’s Paul Northam.
Artist entries are open until May 18. Artists seeking to register for the show should email artshowrcc@gmail.com to request an Entry Form.
Lily Tuck
After nearly four years of restoration work, the Chewton Wesleyan Church is now available to book online. Dating from 1861, the building at 205 Main Road has been through a number of phases, serving the local community as a Wesleyan and later Uniting Church, before becoming a community centre under the former Shire of Metcalfe and eventually coming into the care of Mount Alexander Shire Council. The council had considered selling the building in 2017 after it sat vacant for years but reversed the decision following strong community advocacy.
In its 2021/22 budget, the council committed funding to restore the building to a safe and usable condition, with works completed in early 2025. In August last year, the community was consulted on the preferred future use of the space. Responses pointed strongly toward a flexible, publicly accessible venue with potential for arts, wellbeing, civic and cultural activities. At the 17 March council meeting, the decision was passed to open the Church as a multi-use bookable venue, managed through the council’s online booking platform.
Among the discussion on the hiring fees, jokes between Councillor Maddock and Mayor Heydon were exchanged about the use of the space for a wedding. “Ambitious to have a wedding in under an hour,” Mayor Heydon said.
If you have the gumption, give it a try; hiring opens today. The first available date is May 15.
Hire rates are $60 per hour for commercial bookings, with a maximum daily charge of $360 for six hours.
Prospective hirers should note the building currently has no heating or cooling, and one unisex accessible toilet. Council has flagged that further facility upgrades may be considered in future budget rounds. For enquiries, contact events@mountalexander.vic.gov.au
Family and friends gathered at Aitken’s Corner Cafe (most commonly known to older residents as Rassy’s bakery) on Saturday to celebrate the 99th Birthday of Valda Rees.
The day saw them enjoy Sammi’s homecooked treats.
Many travelled great distances to join Val (as she prefers) a lovely, caring lady with an amazing memory who can share the history of her life and the folks she has connected with over her many years.
Val was born on May 6, 1927 at Newstead to Hubert Norman Ehrensberger and Daisy Slee. Her sister Dulcie and brother Harold are both deceased.
She attended Newstead Primary school and at 13 years of age went to Business College, then worked at Prestige Hosiery, initially as a junior clerk, and then secretary to the advertising manager. Her love of this area saw her move to the Argus Newspaper as an executive secretary in the promotions department.
It was during this period that she met the love of her life, Hilton James Rees, who also worked at the Argus, and they married in October 1952.
They subsequently moved to Adelaide where Hilton then worked at the Adelaide Advertiser, and welcomed two beautiful daughters, Clare in 1956, and Catherine in 1958.
Then began quite a few moves, firstly back to Melbourne in the early 60’s, then retirement in Taradale 1985, Campbells Creek, and then Castlemaine where Valda has lived for 26 years.
Hilton passed away in 2011 which left a void in Val’s life, but being surrounded by such a caring family and friends has kept her in good spirits, and her granddaughters, Rachel and Naomi, along with four great grandchildren are her treasures and visit regularly which she loves.
Val has shared how her Scottish family of six – the Alexanders – found their way from Edinburgh to Castlemaine.
Val, who now lives in Maryborough, said her family made the trip from Liverpool in England to Australia in April 1949, on the renovated warship The Georgic.
“I was ten, my siblings 11, nine and four,” she said.
“As the days of our four-week journey drew to a close, excitement was mounting that we were actually arriving in Australia at last. We had visions of wild animals and jungles, gained from our frequent viewing of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies. These ideas were quickly replaced by the reality of docking in Port Melbourne.
“It seemed half of Scotland was there to meet us. Friends and relations, all Scottish, jabbered, laughed and hugged us. We boarded a suburban train for Preston, where a great celebration was being prepared for the new generation of Scots immigrants. We then proceeded to eat, drink, sing and make merry, until the wee small hours of the following morning,” Val recalls.
“On the last leg of our journey, our landlady, we six Alexanders and the driver, who was enveloped in a haze of Scotch whisky, all squeezed into a Morris Minor, to travel to nearby Coburg!
“We piled out of the car and in to the landlady’s house and ran through all the rooms looking, touching and calling out to each other, ‘Hurray, a piano!’ ‘Look at all the cats!’, ‘It has more than one room!’ It had six rooms, also grass growing in the front yard and a back yard. From a two-roomed tenement building, two storeys up, in Edinburgh, this seemed heaven on earth. Our landlady was flattered at our admiration of her humble abode, for by Australian standards it was quite modest. Finally, beds were allotted, piano farewelled, each cat petted, and six new citizens of Australia settled down to sleep in their new home at 721 Sydney Road, Coburg.”
Val said they were two doors away from the Fire Station, which was on the corner of Gaffney Street, with a hairdressing salon in between.
“We were immediately befriended by the children from the Fire Station and the children from the hair salon.
“We loved Coburg and Mum, and Dad got jobs immediately, Mum at a clothing factory and Dad at ‘Ultrays’, which made hospital X-ray equipment. We lived just a few doors from St Paul’s Catholic School and were the only non-Australian children there and were made very welcome,” she said.
“One of my first friends was Maureen Ryan, age nine. We were in Grade Five (we stayed friends all our lives). Maureen said later, that at an assembly before we arrived the head nun had announced, ‘These children are arriving from war torn Europe and have never seen a banana.’ On our first day we were inundated with bananas. Very soon afterwards, the Greek and Italian children began to arrive; despite being unable to speak English, they were welcomed and integrated.
“We children had the run of Melbourne unsupervised. One day, having 10 shillings, an 11th birthday present, I caught a tram by myself from Gaffney Street Coburg, to the city centre at Flinders Street Station and visited the slot machine alley close by. To dress up for the day, I heavily rouged my cheeks with Mum’s lipstick. I got there and back without incident, and my family never knew about my birthday treat to myself.
“Poor little Ivor, aged four, who had not attended school in Scotland, was thrown in at the deep end. He wore a kilt to school, and the kids queried, ‘Are you a boy? Are you a girl?’
“He sometimes ran off home as the ‘Bubs’ teacher was a crabby old thing.
“When Catholics get together, we always have negative stories of the nuns and rarely talk about the kind, gifted ones, but Sister Mary Berchmans, our Grade Seven and Eight teacher, was a saint. I managed to track her down and visited her in 2005.
“Most Catholic girls went through a stage of wanting to become a nun and my best friend Maureen and I did too. Maureen went into a convent aged 12, but only lasted a week and got her Dad to come and collect her. Her sister-in-law Julie aged 13, went in and stayed for a year. I escaped their fate by saying to my Dad that I wanted to become a nun, and he said, ‘We’ll have none of that.’ I thought, ‘They won’t let me,’ so I dropped the subject.
“It took me a long time to figure out that Dad was joking as in ‘none/nun of that,’ so he inadvertently saved me, for if I’d said it to one of my teacher nuns, they would have probably snapped me up.”
“We attended St Paul’s Church, which rubs shoulders with Pentridge Gaol. The old Irish priest was a tyrant. His claim to fame was his yelling out at the top of his voice from the altar to any late comers, ‘Come up the front you!’
Val recently heard the ‘famous’ Phil Cleary speak at the Highland Society in Maryborough where he spoke of his youth and the “crabby old Father Norris” and was delighted to discover that Val also remembered the old tyrant.
“Growing up in Coburg, we loved the Brunswick Baths, Luna Park, ice skating at ‘The Glacarium’ in the city and swimming in the Coburg lake.
“My Aunt lived in Bell Street Preston and attended The Sacred Heart Church there, where my future husband Brendan was an altar boy. As we sometimes went to Mass there, Brendan and I probably scraped hulls, but we were not to meet for another 30 years.”
‘We’re going to live in the country,’ Val’s mother announced in 1951.
David Jeffries, Harcourt
It is now nearly four months since the fire noisily raged down the hill behind my house in Harcourt and took most of the trinkets of my past life away. There has been much personal introspection and naval gazing, a few tears, many clumsy attempts at stoicism and happily finding out who are true friends. I have tried to see it as a cathartic experience of transitioning from one phase of my life to another, a few times I wonder into silence as I gaze inward wondering what now, when will it end? But there is no time machine, there is no way to take the embers and dust blowing in the wind to glue our past lives and community back together to exactly what it was.
I have watched as some hit out and look for someone to blame, I have seen people show positive facets of their selves which were once hidden to all but closest family and friends, many others finding bravery even through their own sadness.
I have seen how a good community works, so many generous volunteers taking a step forward to offer a smile and their energy to help others. I have been humbled by their words and deeds, it has been a true litmus test of the wonderful humanity that surrounds us, fully visible at times like this.
I have seen how you didn’t need to lose anything material to be affected, some who lost everything seem on the face of it able to face this catastrophe, while others who had a home to return to wander around shell shocked, sadly some with miss guided guilt.
I now understand how just being a local or having friends, neighbours or family affected causes ripples in our emotions just as much, if not more than someone like me, for we are all built differently, there are no rules to this. There have been a few who have thrown out judgemental words, spewing out ivory tower wisdom, who should maybe walk in others shoes before they clumsily and all too quickly connect opinions in their heads to their vocal cords.
I have seen how government has stepped forward with generosity that you would not find anywhere else on this planet. I’ve never had great affection for authority but the assistance, both financial and otherwise people like me have been given has been not only extremely helpful but also therapeutic. The not for profit organisations like the Harcourt Progress Group and Anglicare, that have been silently hovering around me like butterflies, ready to gently step in using soft words to assist when asked, their hearts always ready when I needed to talk, I cannot fault them.
The CFA from all over the State who after days of fire fighting dropped by in the preceding weeks to visit me in my small camper on my blackened land by the crumpled roof and smouldering ashes of my life. Some brought me food and water, others gave me kind words and shared the odd dark joke or cold amber liquid – what can I say, great people, amazing volunteers.
The recovery centres and the people who volunteered in them, cooking and serving food, handing out all kinds of donated clothes and goods with a smile, making sure we had the small bits of life to help us make a start in our own re-boot.
To those who donated, turning up with boot loads of things to help others. To the organisations who sat at tables offering assistance and advice.
The VMR (the miniature railway in Harcourt), I have no doubt if they hadn’t stopped the fire just uphill from their station the centre of Harcourt would not be as it is now, so many others would have lost their homes too. A big thank you to them and others too who helped save their neighbours homes.
There have been businesses who have given material comfort, Snooze, Pillow Talk, Coliban Water, Woolworths, the Reece Plumbing Charity, Kosmac & Clemens, a young man at The Good Guys who helped me, other places who gave me things without being asked, too many to name.
I have heard some cynically say it is a tax right off without seeing the generous and gentle spirit in which they dealt with me and others, your harsh words are not welcomed by me as all did not want publicity, just wanted to help their community.
As I stumble on the genuine decency of those helping in the first stages of rebuilding, Blaze Aid who step in to help fix fences, Disaster Relief Australia who came to my land to clean up fallen trees, Forge Solutions who demolished the embers of my home with kind words and questions, there are more organisations, again too many to list, I also thank you, you have made this so much easier than it could have been.
From inside my personal maelstrom I feel compelled to publicly thank everyone for helping, individuals, businesses, not for profits and governments of all levels, also my beautiful friends and neighbours, you know who you are. I have chosen to do this publicly and believe and hope I speak for some affected, foolishly hoping my words give comfort, and possibly help put comprehension to others feelings.
I have come to the conclusion this sadly does not completely end, I will adjust to it as I move on at my own pace to get my life back in some semblance of order, this is going to be a long winding road for me and others. What was once for me 1 step forward and 2 steps back is now 2 steps onwards and 1 back, the hill will become less steep as I plod up it, your help has given me the energy to carry on.
Writing this has been part of my journey, I am sure there are many others who want to show their appreciation too, we will get through this but hopefully we will become not only more thoughtful, but an even more compassionate place in this world of conflict and disasters. Sadly we will not be the last to live through times like this.
Please if you need help seek it, if you need someone to talk to ask, it is there for the us all, you are not alone. I say this out of experience, the first words are always the hardest to say, accepting help is sometimes giving, sharing your burden with other welcoming broad shoulders is good for us all.
Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.
The Castlemaine Golf Club Championships were decided last Saturday May 2.
A large field of 77 battled it out to get their name on the trophies. Weather was good and all golfers were keen to get their third round started.
Jermyn led all the way, but a final round 80 made him vulnerable. The outcome came down to the very last hole.
The club’s low markers filled the top three positions. Jermyn 73, 74, 80 — 226, from Prendergast 74, 80, 74 — 227, Jason Thompson 75, 82, 74 — 231.
At the end of the day the Men’s trophy was awarded to Klai Jermyn with a score of 226. It was not until the last hole that Klai secured the win by one stroke from Rob Prendergast. This is Klai’s first championship victory. Congrats Klai!
The Men’s B Grade Championship winner was Peter Verlaan 255, runner-up Brad Sturgess 259.
Men’s C Grade champ was Grant Thomas 290, runner-up Kors Van Eyr 309.
The women’s trophy was won by Megan Carroll for the third time following three consistent rounds 91, 90, 92 — 273, with Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick runner-up with 95, 95, 99 — 289.
Megan looks forward to next year’s comp and the chance to become the first woman to win four consecutive championships.
The Women’s B Grade Championship winner was Sally McOrist 309
The Val Bassett Trophy for best three nett rounds went to Dee Sansom. The Bill Dennis Trophy for the same went to Peter Verlaan.
May’s Monthly Medal was awarded to Kristopher Walter (16) 66.
A Grade winner was Jason Thompson (scr) 74, runner-up Rob Pendergast (scr) 74.
B Grade winner was Kristopher Walter (16) 66, runner-up was Jim Dimopoulos (18) 70.
C Grade winner was Jan Barratt (20) 73, runner-up was Dee Sansom (34) 73
The Women’s May Monthly Medal was played on Tuesday May 5.
The medal awarded to Julie Cross (33) 77 and runner-up was Dee Sansom (34) 80.
Last Thursday April 30 a competitive field of 31 golfers took to the fairways contesting a Stableford comp.
Ross Stevens (14) produced an outstanding round of 40 Stableford points to claim top honours in Grade A. Tom Summers (handicap 9) also delivered a solid performance, finishing runner-up with 37.
The Grade B winner was Bob Franze (41) posting an excellent 39 points to take the win. Close behind was Peter Farrell (18) who also recorded 39 points.
Stephen Cooper claimed Nearest the Pin on the 7th hole and Andrew Wilson took honours on the 12th.
