Thirty Years From Now

My old mate Rick visited me yesterday. We're the same age, 55, having started secondary school together in 1964 at Malvern Grammar. Forty three years have gone so quickly.
"Jeez mate", said Rick, after he took a sip of the tea he made himself while I was cutting up a lump of beef and vegies for a casserole, "if we live another 30 years we'll be 85. Can you imagine that?"
Well it's hard to imagine Rick and I reaching 85, (especially when you think of all those enraged blokes giving chase and threatening they would kill us if if they caught us in the old 'egg the shaggers' days) but it's a nice thought, two old mates yarning and reflecting on life. Hopefully our minds and bodies hang in there, and in the next thirty years we can be productive and useful, maybe in ways that are not seen now. As Tom Hanks said in the movie 'Castaway', when feeling complete desolation on his return to civilization, "you never know what the the next day might bring," after years marooned on his island where his survival and eventual rescue depended on what the tide washed up.
On my morning walks lately, progress on Stage One of the Gembrook Sewage Project is interesting. There's a tracked excavator with a large auger, about 1200ml wide, visiting each property in the main street and those surrounding, and boring a neat hole about 1800ml deep, into which a black plastic tank is neatly fitted. There's a mini excavator digging trenches from the road to these tanks which are to serve as pits for effluent from each household. The plug of removed soil is carried out by the auger excavator and dropped straight into a tip truck. There are men in flouro jackets busy delivering, laying and connecting pipes and tanks and backfilling. The activity is almost feverish, continuing even when it rains; the men simply don raincoats and keep going. Remuneration must be made on numbers of units installed or connected, and not by the hour.
The sewage works began some months ago with the main pipe installed from Gembrook to Cockatoo. Traffic was restricted to one way at a time by generator driven stop/go lights at places along the main road for most of summer. If you were in a hurry or late for an appointment you could count on copping one or more redlights on the normally unrestricted country road.
When Rick and I first met, sewage had not long arrived at Mt.Waverley in Melbourne where my family lived. Prior to that we had a dunny in the back yard. The 'dunnyman' would come each week and swap the full pan with an empty one. One day we, me Jod and Meredith, at Jod's suggestion and encouragement of course, lined up at the window and 'mooned' him as he went out with the full pan propped on his shoulder.
My old friend Ida, who died a couple of years ago, told me that when she moved to Kew from Wonthaggi in the 1930's there was dunny in the back yard which backed onto a lane from which the 'cart' man would open a door and swap pans. One day Ida's mother was in such need of relief that she stayed seated while the pans were changed. But while kids might have sniggered and made up rude rhymes about the 'dunnymen', they were respected for the essential service they quietly performed with no show of resentment.
The coming of the sewage connection to Gembrook is a major indicator of progress, in case I needed reminding. We've lived here for 26 years and for the first 20 there was little change. A small supermarket was welcomed to join the pub and post office/newsagency as the prominent businesses, otherwise most of the new buildings were unseen houses tucked away outside the town on farmlets or on the edge of the bush. Puffing Billy came back some years ago and a new station was built in the middle of town. Since then things have picked up speed, accelerated by the national real estate boom. The new 'Gembrook Park Estate' in what was formerly Sam Falcone's spud paddock opposite the school, filled quickly with large modern houses, and 'The Gembrook View Estate' near us has recently gone ahead with some whoppers imposing on the view.
Also on my walk, along Quinn Rd., where we used to walk with the kids in pushers to feed grass to the Shetland ponies, there are now seven houses where there was three, and another frame standing to soon make it eight. At the top end, where I like to look each morning at the galahs, rosellas and cockatoos feeding in the paddock, and beyond into the Shephard's Creek west branch valley, a garden tap has been installed inside the fence signifying connection to the mains, and a sign on the fence bearing the owners name and the street number is prescient to trucks delivering building materials.
A 'For Sale' sign went up a couple of months ago in Bill Parker's six acre paddock on the east side of the school. Apparently it sold within a week, to a surveyor from Emerald, who no doubt has the knowledge to fully utilise this prime land zoned residential class 1. I have picked holly each Christmas for many years where this paddock joins the school boundary, so I wait, watch, and wonder if I will lose another resource.
Opposite this paddock on the south side of the main Rd. a sign on the fence advertises a planning permit application for stage 2 of the 'Gembrook Park Estate' and 28 more houses. In the local paper last week I read that VCAT approval has been given for 21 houses to be built on the five acres behind the supermarket. On the Pakenham Rd. A 'Sold' sign has gone up on board at Topp's old garden, where I've picked cammellia, beech and dogwood for many years. The current owners are friends, moving closer to Pakenham to be nearer their work and the secondary school. Before the 'For Sale' sign went up three new driveways were put in to the horse paddock at the side, indicating subdivision.
One thing is for sure, thirty years from now Gembrook will be a bigger town. When the vacant land is gone it's probable, as my friend Cherie suggested a while back, that the old houses will be knocked down, replaced by dual or triple occupancy residences. Following the increased population, more businesses will come. A chemist maybe, and a local doctor, and dentist.
If we're still here in 5-10 years when the sewage project Stage 3 reaches our street I'll be happy to be hooked up. Old septic systems are not good for the environment and ours will be nearly 35 years old, and sooner or later it will need attention. And judging by the stench of faulty systems in the town area on a bad day there are many already needing work, not to mention the dead trees in the area of Gembrook Bushland Park where sullage from the town enters.
So the sewage is a positive in a number of ways but it's always worried me where the water was going to come from for all the new houses and increased population in the future. Most of them have two or three flushing toilets, many have large spa baths, and swimming pools are increasingly popular. The Bracks state government has announced a desalination plant, one of the largest in the world, is to be built near Wonthaggi and connected to Melbourne's watersupply and northern Victoria by a new pipeline. After years of procrastination we have a postive initiative at last, despite my niggling doubt that it will actually happen.
Another cause for optimism is the interest in the environment and ecology as a result of climate change. For a couple of decades Landcare groups, made up of diverse people ranging from scientists, housewives and concerned farmers, have been planting trees in creeks and gullies, gradually repairing damaged terrain. I often see these improvements when I take a drive to places I haven't been for a while. We've had some good rain in rural areas so these and future works will prosper, thanks to those silent workers who plug away and set an example. And further, there's talk of mass planting of trees in rural areas in carbon emission trade offs, things unheard of a year or two ago.
I'm confident in thirty years time we'll be on the way to the reparation of the Australian landscape and towns and and cities will be cleaner and more efficient in their use of resources. I hope there will be similar improvement around the global village. There's also talk of bio-fuels and solar power and other sources of energy which may even reduce the economic value of oil. We may even therefore have less war. Imagine that.
Another thing for sure, I can't see houses having a dunny in the backyard, and a man changing the pan every week.

Polar Bears, Pigs

The 'Ranges Reveille', the newsletter of the Outer Eastern & Yarra Valley Sub-Branch of the National Servicemen's Association of Australia (Victorian Branch)INC. came in the mail last week. The 'Ranges Reveille' is published four times a year for members and usually consists of five black and white A4 pages printed both sides.
In this June newsletter, the front page had a reproduced photo of diggers in a trench with rifles at the ready. Above the photo were the words WESTERN FRONT 1917, and then, Ready to 'go over the top'. Underneath the photo were the words SERVICE TO THE NATION.
I suppose this didn't raise many members' eyebrows, but it did strike me as somewhat incongruous. Or am I nitpicking to suggest that the front page of the NSAA newsletter should actually have something to do with National Service 1952-1972? No big deal, though.
Page 2 listed member's birthdays for June, July and August with birthday wishes and a list of four new members with dates of service and some social notes. No problem there.
Page 3 had another photo on the top half of the page, this one, I assume, computer enhanced. The caption was 'The REAL Cause of Global Warming' and the photo was of three polar bears lolling on the ice with various bottles of refreshments. One was wearing head phones, another had what looked like a gameboy machine, while the third turned a spit holding a penguin over a fireplace. It was at this point I wondered just who it was putting this newsletter together.
Underneath the polar bears came the ANZAC DAY REPORT where I learned that at the main parade in the city "over 600 Nasho's, immaculately uniformed and marching in two companies were given a rousing and enthusiastic reception by the crowds lining Swanston St. and St. Kilda Road to the Shrine. After the march, our foot-sore and weary warriors were forced to take a break at the 'Clocks' Tavern for 'refreshments' before catching the train home."
At the foot of the same page, the final article headed NATIONAL MEMORIAL FUND says, Members donations have now reached $107,000. There is also the Government grant of up to $150,000. This means we have raised almost 2/3 of the total cost.
On the last page of the newsletter there is, as always, a photograph of Jason Wood M.P. Federal Member of La Trobe, and Tony Smith, M.P. Federal Member- Casey with an acknowledgement thanking these men for their support of the Sub-Branch and their staff for their kind assistance in printing the newsletter.

And there was my membership subscription renewal, a request for payment of $22.
I'm not renewing. I'll send $22 instead to Oxfam, Wateraid, or World Vision to help some poor bugger who doesn't have freshwater. I'll write to NSAA, and my local member Jason Wood, to explain my non renewal. I'll suggest that the hundreds of thousands of dollars earmarked for a national monument be instead used to help the disadvantaged in Australia, and/or elsewhere in the world. Maybe those adversely affected by global warming would be a good starting point. If NSAA were to do this I'd be happy to rejoin.
Pigs might fly.

Breakfast With Cherie

A pine tree stood dark and large, a sillhouette against the winter white, bright morning sky. Fog hung in the valley, mist rose, clouds billowed above the distant mountains, the sun glowed brilliantly. We sat in Cherie's kitchen, warmed by the woodstove, and the sun, which streamed through the full length window set in the rammed earth walls. A magic morning.
A week earlier I'd met my friend Cherie walking her dog 'Mocca' while I was searching for mushrooms. She told me she was going to north Queensland that day to spend some time with her parents and sister, and suggested that I pay her a visit when she got back to see the progress on her house. We arranged that I'd call in for coffee around 8.00am the next Sunday on my walk. As it turned out we bumped into each other near the shops and walked to her house together, with 'Mocca' and 'Snowie' setting the pace.
Before breakfast, Cherie took me on a tour of the house, a culmination of her life's passion of two decades or more. Cherie has a consultancy business helping owner builders get started, and to incorporate features like rammed eath, mud brick, solar heating, double glazing, hydronics, and heat exchange. The theme is good design, energy efficiency, and healthy homes.
Her house accordingly, nearly but not quite finished, is a showpiece. Cherie bought the block of land some years ago, primarily for the view, for $150,000. The old cottage provided temporary lodgings while stage one of the building went ahead before it's asbestos sheeting was professionally removed and the building demolished. A massive old pine tree also went, and some scrappy messmates, leaving the way clear for a rock landscape on the lower half of the long narrow block.
Cherie admits frankly the house is over the top. She's spent all of the $600,000 she got for her farm, and then some, including $80,000 on the garden on rocks and steps and plants. The second level has a lap pool, solar or heatbank heated. It's really three appartments in one, with it's own sewage treatment plant for recycling into the garden.
The top appartment has the best view and a balcony, where we stood looking down the street at the other houses. Cherie said, matter of factly, "Gembrook's changing quickly. These houses will all be gone in 10 or 15 years. People will want the view and the current owners will take the dollars. New owners will knock the old houses down, like I did, and build on the high ground to maximize the view. People will see the opportunities for dual occupancy."
I had to admit, although I'm more a cabin with an open fire man, that Cherie's right. Things are changing rapidly.