A Busy Few Days

On Saturday I donned my journo hat and attended a luncheon at the Gembrook Cockatoo Football Club which was a reunion of the 1965 Gembrook Premiership team. Cockatoo was incorporated ito the name in recent times. I was invited by the lady who is the unofficial historian with a view to me writing an article on the event for my Signpost Gembrook column. Gord was playing in the reserves but I didn't get to see his game much as I was talking to the old timers and listening to the speeches by Federal MP Jason Wood and the captain and vice captain of the team and taking notes. Towards the end the old fellows got together and let rip with the club song.

As this function finished and prior to the start of the senior match the players of both Gembrook and Emerald, the reserves who had just played and seniors still fresh and clean, lined up in guard of honour as close friends and relatives of the three teenagers killed in a car accident last week formed a circle and a minutes silence was observed. The lost three had close connection to both clubs. It was very moving, on what was a cold wintry day, when I got home mid afternoon to light the fire it was 4C on our deck.

On Sunday 5 July on what was the 100th anniversary of Doug Twaits' birth I met his widow Lynne at Camelot where Doug and Lynne lived during their married life of about 20 years. I had not been back there since Doug died in 2002. The property of 12 acres is a large garden of mainly exotic species of trees that Doug planted in the 1950's when he lived there with his first wife. The picture below is of Lynne after she had just tied a feather in a tree above where Doug's ashes were spread. The feather is a symbol of old warriors in Nth American Indian spirituality which Lynne was into in a big way, and in which Doug, who had never been spiritual or religious, became strongly interested in his later years.

The next photo is looking down from the house into the gully. At the top of the dam a spring rises from mother earth. In the early days of there was a eucalyptus oil still on this site. The deciduous trees either side of the dam were planted by Doug and are mainly pinoaks on one side and beech on the other as you go down. There are also many conifers and two large sequoias, as well as camellias and rhodies and all manner of shrubbery. It's a magnificent place of tranquility and sanctuary for wildlife hidden away right in the heart of Emerald, and in Lynne's words it is a sacred place. She and her friends held ritual ceremonies there. I rang the owner last week and got permission for Lynne and I to visit. He bought the property from Doug just before Doug died in the car accident, only a matter of days afterwards.

I had busy day picking on Monday and today I had a monthly museum meeting at 4pm followed by the Biennial General Meeting. I had reports to write up for that as outgoing president and I'm bushed now and shouldn't be doing this but something drove me to record the above before I can now retire to blissful rest.