Great Place to Work

Valley north of Gembrook town

This is part my workplace, a picture taken on Friday. There's a row of green beech trees, left of pic, which I have picked foliage from for many years, A nurseryman grew them, he used to own the property, and didn't sell them as young trees so they were left in a row, much to my good luck. The nurseryman sold the property some years ago but the current owners have kindly let me continue to harvest each year. I share my return with them. The creek running along the valley is the Shepherds Creek West branch. It rises a little to the right of pic from springs on the west side of the main road Gembrook to Launching Place. Springs on the east side of that main rd form the Shepherds creek east branch and they run round the other side of the hill you can see. The two branches join some kilometres down stream to form Shepherds Creek which runs into Woori Yallock Creek which eventually runs into the Yarra river.

Our house is in the belt of trees along the hill you can see, our road running just the other side of the spur.

It has been a great blessing to live and work in such a beautiful place for 35 years. This vista is unspoilt by development and I love it.

Looking a little more eastward

Interlude

I would love to continue with the Crete thing but I'm so tired tonight. I couldn't possibly face getting out the memory card and looking for photos. I am so busy at work, picking all the beech I can every day, I'm exhausted. There's the truth.

Let me just ramble before retiring so that I can feel better. I like to write this blog, as poor as it may be at times. I had three meetings to do with Nobelius Park and Emerald Museum last Tuesday. Then on Thursday there was another; a meeting with Puffing Billy reps, Jason Wood Federal member for our seat of LaTrobe, and Eastern Dandenong Ranges Ass.

We heard how PB is applying for Federal funding for megabucks to build an Information/heritage centre in Emerald Lake Park. We were told to decide if we want to be part of this or not. To me it was a 'their way or the highway' sort of thing.

Our committee has not yet had the opportunity to discuss this. I write just to get it off my chest. The CEO of Puffing Billy talked how they were growing their business on the back of huge international tourism increase from China.

For the record, it is my view that tourism is not sustainable, unless it is eco tourism utilizing natural environment that is preserved by doing so. PB does not cut it, is my opinion. It is a drain on the public purse, always looking for government hand out. It is a ridiculous, noisy, dirty, polluting fire hazard, a non profitable total frost.

I have recently returned from a trip to Europe. In countries I visited tourism is the biggest industry. They are broke or close to it.

There's an easy political motive to promote tourism. Just before each election the party behind in the polls announces big grants to PB if elected. Reality (there's the word pollies love) is, that instead of waiting for money to come in from tourists, we should be out there producing something that people and the world needs and wants.

Like I do every working day.

A Week on Crete (3)

We had breakfast again in the dining area, the same sumptuous spread as the day before. This time I asked Georgina (2) how much it was costing us and she didn't know so she asked Emanuelle. He replied 8 Euros each, about $12 Australian so we decided as lovely as it was we would do our own breakfast for the rest of our stay. After all, that was our purpose in seeking self contained accom, so we could do our own meals which we like to do.

We headed off to Retimos again, this time on the National Highway. We wanted to get there quickly, the intention being to find the War Memorial and go on to Chania to see the ancient town which Rickyralph told us was beautiful and captivating. I was still nervous driving especially as the locals went so fast and overtook daringly going over double lines onto the other side of the highway without hesitation. The highway was divided in places and not others but 2 lanes each way for the most part. I paid close attention to the rearview mirror, I liked to see them coming and move over as far as i could to let them pass. Another thunderstorm hit with heavy rain. As we went down a long decline on a section that had no middle divide other than double lines, two lanes each way, I looked in the mirror to see the car behind me sliding sideways and slowly spin. As he did a section of his car went into the line of traffic going the other way and there was a loud thud and bits of car flew off in all directions. I had to get my eyes back forward and we kept going. There were no cars behind us then for a long time. A cop car lights flashing passed us. We pulled up for a stretch of legs, I'll look for a photo. I haven't had time to start going through the photos to put some on these posts but I will do so from here on.

Retimo is quite a city and we had no idea where the war memorial was so when we saw a turn off to Souda Bay we took it as I knew there was a memorial there. We didn't come across it but saw a sign to Chania 6km so we kept going. As we got closer to Chania we found ourselves in a massive traffic jam with the road choked with cars and buses. That 6k took us 1.5 hours and by then we were in no mood to hang around looking for a park in that horrendous traffic. We inched our way out and and took a wrong turn and found ourselves in rural setting. We were hungry and looking for lunch and found a taverna but the restaurant was closed, only the bar open, we took directions and were getting too close to the traffic again. We eventually found a nice little restaurant for a great lunch and found our way back onto the highway. I have never found it so easy to get hopelessly lost with my sense of direction deserting me. The drive back was uneventful fortunately, except for seeing a badly crushed vehicle getting winched onto truck. It looked like it must have fallen from the high winding road that we traveled the previous day. On the way back we found the supermarket in Gazi and stocked up on wine and eggs and vegies and Lib bought fish for dinner.

Young bloke from Israel took this for us- looking back toward Heraklion

A Week on Crete (2)

We woke in our villa first morning to almost perfect peace and quiet. I opened the curtains to the superb view into the valley backed by mountains and made Lib a cup of tea. There was no activity outside and besides a few bird calls and the movement of a curious cat now and again it was like everything had stopped. We had booked breakfast but Georgina had said don't come up too early so it was about 9am when we sauntered to the reception/dining area.

A view from our villa 

Emmanuel told us to sit wherever we liked so we chose outside in the shade of a sail overlooking the swimming pool. Georgina told us different lady would get our breakfast, she was named Georgina also, but this one who was red haired and round and smiling, spoke almost no English; not that it mattered, she brought us an amazing feast that included everything you could think you might like for breakfast expertly presented. We were the only patrons and there was enough food on our table for ten people to be well fed.

We asked Georgina, with some difficulty to make her understand, if there was somewhere we could do our laundry as we had a bit of a build up. She took us down to the end of the row of villas to a laundry room and put all our washing in one front loader which required coins to operate. I didn't have enough the Euro coins needed, and neither did Georgina. She found a man working in the garden, his name was George, and I exchanged money with him to make the machine work. As it turned out the machine got stuck in its cycle, I think it was overloaded, but it wet them and splashed them around. When Lib went back she said it seemed to be stuck so she finished it off and rinsed them by hand and she found a clothes line in front of another villa as ours didn't have one.

We were itching to drive out into the island and explore and did so a bit before midday. We planned to go to Retimo which was one of the four major cities along the north coast of Crete, which is about 220km long east to west and 40-60km wide north to south. The south coast is steep and mountainous with steep cliffs for the most part so the main population centres and airport are along the north coast which has spectacular scenery too but also long stretches of beaches and flat plain and tourist development. The National Highway links the four cities and carries a surprisingly heavy load of traffic.

During WW2 Retimo was defended by the Australians, Maleme and nearby Chania by the New Zealanders, Heraklion by the Brits and Agios Nikolaus by members of the Greek National army. There were about 40,000 soldiers combined in the defence force under the command of NZ General Freyberg who had won a VC in WW1.

I was keen to have a look at Retimo and Georgiopoulos where my late mate Doug Twaits would have been with the 2/7th AIF battalion. Leaving Estate Kares and heading back to the Highway we came across an intersection which we had passed through the previous evening selecting the Tyllisos road, this time the sign said Rethymnos to the left. I think Rethymnos is the Greek and Retimos is English. We took this turn not realizing it was the high road that went through the mountains. It was twisty and narrow, steep with huge cliffs here and there, and for the most part going through villages and scenery that I don't think would have changed in decades.

We had not gone far up into the mountains along the narrowing road when a storm hit. Strong wind and heavy rain did not make the driving easy. Even the goats were sheltering along the road in depressions in the rock wall. I thought these were wild goats but as the week went by and we saw many goats all over the foothills and mountains I believed them to be domestic goat herds that wandered wherever. There was often one or two in the group that had a bell around its neck, indicating that someone went looking for them now and again.On this drive there was storm damage- tree litter and refuse spread about the villages.

Goats sheltering the storm

Our two objectives for the day besides familiarizing ourselves with our topography were to find somewhere to  buy supplies for our evening meals and somewhere nice to have lunch.This was not easy on the route we had chosen as there was nothing much but a few villages where the streets were narrow and there didn't seem to be anywhere to park the car. We passed a few tavernas where a good meal would probably have been available but we were past them before we knew it with no obvious place to pull over.Later as I gained more confidence with the driving this was less a problem. We kept following the road and took the odd fork we hoped was right. We got a bit bushed but knew that if we kept going we'd eventually come back to the Highway as it had to be to the north. We reached the highway a little short of Retimo and found a supermarket, more a small tourist market, but we did buy bread wine tomatoes cucumber tinned sardines and such.

We took a turn off toward the beach and found a fairly isolated area. There were demolished buildings that had not been cleaned up and much litter, which was the case all over the place in the populated areas, and a lot of unfinished or half built houses and empty old ones in disrepair. We thought this must be the result of the GFC and the ongoing Greek economic crisis which had been so well publicized. Crete was generally not a tidy place we had discovered, probably the rugged terrain and the political turmoil and the laid back nature of the people all combined to make this so. Most people smoked cigarettes, motor bike riders didn't bother with helmets and sped past you on the highway. They parked cars anywhere, crossed double lines as if they weren't there, and rarely used indicators. They'd pass you at great speed and at close quarters to you. There was a gungho fatalistic approach that took a bit of getting used to. The first day out on the road was not that relaxed for me.

We manged to find a supermarket that sold meat, Lib was after fishthat wasn't there and bought pork chops instead. We traveled back to our Estate on the national highway and found our turn off more easily now that we half had a handle on our whereabouts. It was about 6pm when we got back. We told Georgina 1 that we didn't require dinner- she seemed disappointed- but we asked her to tell Georgina (2) that we'd like breakfast again. Georgie asked about our day and we told her we had trouble finding shops eg butcher and market place. She told us that in Gazi 15 minutes away a little out of Heraklion where she lived there was a big supermarket that has everything and was easy. We sat enjoying cold beer and playing with facebook on our phones on the patio /viewing platform that was outside our villa. I loved the quiet, and watching the hawks and eagles. I rang Gord. He told us all was well at home. My beer was non alcoholic and I skipped the wine that night (and the next). Our meal was good and we crashed early.  

A Week on Crete (1)

We arrived on Crete on a Sunday afternoon (20 Sep) by way of an Aegean airlines flight from Athens. That same day we had flown from Milan to Athens on an Emirates flight. The previous day we traveled by train from Venezia station in Venice, about a two hour trip through picturesque countryside. It surprised me how rural it was along the train line with small farms and vineyards and villages then larger towns with some factories and industrial facilities then straight back to farms. It was an express train that sped through most towns and stopped at a few of the larger ones. I find train travel interesting

We had a two hour wait at Venezia for our train. It was warm and I had a good conversation with a young Chinese couple. They had been friends since their early school days and they were both now studying in Europe, he in Munich and she in France, and they met up on their holidays for a trip to Italy. They each spoke German and French and their English was good. They said they were assured of a good well paid job when they returned to China with their qualifications.

Their were a few beggars on the platform, in particular a small haggard middle aged man in grubby clothes with a pronounced limp made impact on me, and I gave him some coins. A young lady approached me also soon after and I did not give her anything, she looked quite fit and well fed and seemed to be working with the man, I assumed them to be father and daughter. A train came in and most of the crowd on the platform got on, Lib and I being very observant of the numbering on the carriages as to where they were along the platform so we knew where to be with our luggage when our train came as we had a first class ticket with a carriage number. Shortly after the train left I saw the beggar I gave to walking briskly down the platform and wave to his daughter on the next platform. He had no limp and was puffing away on a fag. He no longer needed the pretense of the limp as he has thought all the people he'd approached had left on the train. Live and learn hey, the bugger conned me.

The terrain in the distance became more mountainous as we came closer to Milan. At the stop before Milan a middle aged couple boarded, the man wearing a Melbourne Football Club T shirt. He said he used to live in Brighton but they lived in Sydney now and he was a Swannies supporter mainly. They'd been staying for a week at one of the lakes not far from Milan which were popular tourist resorts.

We were knocked over by the size and magnificence of the Milan railway station. It was ornate and quite a work of art and I have been intending following up to learn of it's history but have not yet done this. Our hotel was not far from the station about a 20 minute walk but it took us an hour as we we walked around looking for it and ended up asking locals directions three times before we found it.

We went out walking in the evening and had dinner at a restaurant some ten minutes from our hotel. We enjoyed Sicilian wine with the excellent meal. It was one of those where you select your meat from a display and the chef prepares it and cooks where you can watch it happen.We talked to a man on an adjacent table, Henry from San Francisco, a most polite man who worked for Roche Pharmaceutical. He's a biologist/chemist and was in Milan from I think Switzerland where he's based to meet a colleague on a business trip. She had not yet arrived. He said he one day wanted to come to Australia to see the Tennis Open. When we told him our son Rob had an honours degree in Biotechnology but had been unable to get employment in that field, he said he could probably get work in San Francisco and the pay is excellent but living costs eg rent are through the roof. He has since emailed us and I have told him if he ever comes to Melbourne for the tennis I'll pick him up at the airport and we'll put him up but he'd have to bus and train into the tennis each day.

Our transfer from the hotel to airport was 7am, it was low traffic it being Sunday morning. The van driver was doing 145kph on the freeway to the airport as we came closer closer to the snow capped mountains of the Alps. I noticed nobody used indicators and just changed lanes as if they did not exist. It was a spectacular fly out. We had a wait of a couple hours in Athens and it was exciting to be in the air again flying out over the Mediterranean and some other islands on our way to Crete. After 35 mins in the air we landed about 4pm at Heraklion.

The airport was busy and crowded and after we eventually got our luggage from the carousel we went out to the Hertz car rental booth to get our hire car. The lady at the desk was all business, hardly showing the slightest smile through her heavy make up. She had long hair and was quite a picture of glamour. She tried to sell us insurance to cover the excess on the policy we had taken, as Mary our travel agent had warned me she would. Mary said our travel insurance covered that. Declining the extra insurance and hoping for the best that we would not have an accident, I did not endear myself to the Hertz lady who had an air of "Ive seen it all but people don't listen."  She said to pick up the car you cross the road and look for the Hertz signs. We went out into the dusty and busy road outside the terminal and crossed into a mass of buses, walked further, the wrong way I add, dragging our suitcases, and eventually back tracked and crossed another road where there were yellow Hertz flags. We found the guy and he gave us the keys to the car, asking "Have you been to Crete before?"  When I said no he laughed long and hearty, then added reassuringly, "You'll be OK." I told him the town we needed to get to for our accom and he gave us rough directions. We took off in our manual Ford Focus with me trying to concentrate to stay on the right side of the road and change gears with my right hand. I have to tell you honestly I was very toey. We got on the major National road as directed but had missed the turn the man told us and went ten k's the wrong way until the turn off was obviously not there. We backtracked after some difficulty getting off the freeway and back on to go the other way. This time again measuring on the odometer and going back past the airport the other way we found the turn off and exited. It was about 6pm and I really did not want to be driving around looking for our villa in the dark.

We followed the sign that said Tyllisos and came to the village after about 10 minutes. I was mindful that it was Sunday again and AF days were to follow so I was very keen to find somewhere I could buy a bottle of wine. There was a taverna in Tyllisos village where several men were drinking out front so we stopped and one of them spoke enough English to understand that I was wanting to buy a bottle of red wine. He talked to a lady who was in charge of the bar and they reached up very high and brought down a bottle. It cost 5 Euros. The man who spoke English gave us directions how to get to Estate Kares and we found the turn off down a little gravel road. It wound its way through olive groves for about a kilometre, in places it was very rough and concentration was needed to stop the car bottoming out with dreadful noise. Are we really in the right place we kept asking each other? We arrived at the villas and walked to the reception. The place looked deserted. The views were spectacular into a deep valley of olive trees with mountains behind and Heraklion in the distance and the sea to the north east. During our week there we never ceased to be enthralled by the vista.

A man, the owner Emanuelle, was watching television and eating his evening meal. He did not speak good English but shortly a lady came who did, Georgina her name as she introduced herself. This reception area was also the bar and dining area and she responded to my request for a cold beer with two icy glasses from the freezer and two cans of Mythos beer which she said were on the house. She said she had been expecting us and asked would we like her to cook us dinner, a traditional Cretan meal she was sure we would enjoy. We accepted and she showed us to our villa which was spacious and comfortable. She left and we showered and were preparing to go back to the dining room when she knocked on the door an asked would we like her to bring the meal to our villa as we must be tired. Yes please we said. The meal was a couple of chops each, Lib thought they were goat, and generous amount of fried potato chips. No salad which we would have enjoyed, but we wolfed it down with the wine I had bought which was excellent. There were numerous cats hanging around and I made the mistake of feeding them the scraps and bones which of course led to them coming back nightly.We slept very well. We had said we would have the breakfast in the dining area the next morning.

Our Cretan adventure was underway.