Healesville - A Santuary

Healesville is a small country town about 52km north-east from Melbourne's central business district. It is a major tourist destination, located in the famous Yarra Valley grape growing region. The town itself is surrounded by mountains, forests and rolling hills dotted with wineries, fruit and berry farms.

Healesville is also well known for its Healesville Sanctuary, just four kilometres south of the town centre. Healesville Sanctuary first opened in 1934, a nature park with hundreds of native Australian animals displayed in a semi-open natural setting.

The town is a santurary from the hussle and bussle of the city and is one of our favorite places to get away to in spring or autumn when the days are cooler. During spring, many Rainbow Lorikeet appear in this season to feed on the nectar of the flowers from the trees along the shady tree-lined boulevard of Nicholson Street. They can be quite 'noisy' but they are part of the attraction of the town.

Nicholson Street features a large selection of speciality shops, hotels, cafes, and a modern shopping complex built around a major supermarket. A stroll along the footpath, is a leisure way of spending the day, relaxing and you just might snap up some bargains in one of the speciality shops or second-hand shops.

One other favorite attraction of the town is the Healesville Hotel, an old world charm with new world style cooking. It has an award winning restaurant, Quince Dining and if you do not fancy a restaurant type lunch or dinner, there is the cafe-pub corner called the Hotel Bar and Garden which serve very good pub food which always go well with good cold beer from the tap.

Everytime we come into town, we have our lunch at the hotel. The following are photos of the food served at the Quince Dining restaurant.

These are photos of pub food served at the Hotel Bar and Garden.

The Beechworth Bakery is also worth a stop over: for some coffee and cakes. The original Beechworth Bakery, is located in the town of Beechworth, north-east of Victoria near the border of NSW. The bakery in Healesville is the latest edition to the Beechworth Bakery chain and is the first one to be purpose built from the ground up.

Healesville - Badger Creek

Badger Weir Park, located at the end of Badger Weir Road, off Don Road in Healesville/Badger Creek, 7km from Healesville township and is located 3km east of the Healesville Sanctuary. It has a weir constructed in 1909 and is a water catchment area for Melbourne.

The park is a popular picnic area and as it is a short drive from Healesville, a couple of friends and us decided to do a little bush walking to the weir. Just a goal we set for ourselves to go out into the bush, to enjoy the fresh mountain air and forest walks that passes through ancient fern gullies and across clear mountain streams.

There are a couple of trails we could have taken to the weir and we know that it was a short 1 to 1.5 km walk. However, we did not come prepared with a map of the trails but we were determine to do the morning walk before going back to Healesville for lunch.

So once we parked our cars at the car park, we just took the most obvious or visible trail. As the trail is wide enough to take a four wheel drive, we were quite confident that we will not get lost in the park. So of we went.

The trees are tall and ancient. They looked majestic. The hollows in the old trees along the trail to the weir provide homes and nesting sites for many of the native mammals and birds, not that we will see any with the amount of chatter we make. As anticipated, the air was cool and fresh.

Soon the trail took us deeper into the park and away from the fast flowing streams that runs along some parts of the trail. There was a time we wonder if the weir was much further than we thought. We felt like we must have surely walked more than 1km by now. Are we lost? We thought not likely for it is a well built trail. Having then decided we walk for another ten minutes more before turning back, we were rewarded with the sound of fast flowing water again.

We thought this must be it. We venture on further down the trail following the sound of running water. We came to a fork, the right goes up, the left goes down. We opted for the left and sure enough we found the weir. It was a rather small weir. So after spending ten minutes or so, reading the information board about the weir, taking in the view and some more photos, we start our walk back to the car park and to lunch.

Jesus Born On This Day

Luke 2:10-12 (NLT)
¹⁰ but the angel reassured them.
"Don't be afraid!" he said.
"I bring you good news of great joy for everyone!
¹¹ The Savior--yes, the Messiah,
the Lord--has been born tonight in Bethlehem,
the city of David!
¹² And this is how you will recognize him:
You will find a baby lying in a manger,
wrapped snugly in strips of cloth!"

My Christmas video for this year

Merry Christmas! 2013

Merry Christmas!

May God's love
be perfected in us all

(1 John 4:17-18)

We wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

2013 has indeed been a year of many trails and challenges but in it all, they bring its own rewards and growth, more so when we placed our faith in Christ Jesus as our advocate and counsellor. Has 2013 been a challenging year for you too?

Here then is our prayer for you. May the joys of the season fill your hearts with goodwill and good cheers and may you also be blessed with many beautiful memories of this season.

May the New Year find your home filled with joy, your heart filled with love, and your life filled with laughter. May 2014 also be a year of many possibilities and good things waiting to happen.

Let your faith founded in Christ Jesus lead you to a place of peace, a place of rest, for in Him is the source of all your blessings (Matt 6:30).


Blessings
Margaret + Simon

State Library of Victoria - More Than A Library

A library is not one of the places you would go when you are in the city of Melbourne. However I found the State Library of Victoria to be an exception when I want a quiet place to be on my own while waiting for friends or in-between meetings. The building itself is an icon of heritage architecture and that in itself is worth a look.

The State Library of Victoria is open seven days a week, excluding some public holidays. It is located at:
328 Swanston St,
Melbourne, Victoria
3000 Australia
Tel +61 3 8664 7000

Even before you enter the library building, the grassy lawn in front of the library's grand entrance on Swanston Street is a popular lunch-spot for the city's workers and students at the adjacent RMIT University. There are old and new statues along the side steps to the front entry of library that may interest you; Saint George and the Dragon, Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) and two sculptures from the Dromkeen Scholastic Collection of Children’s Book Art, installed 2012.

In the library you see students with their heads down, working with their laptops/tablets or within groups whisphering among themselves, working on their respective projects, reading or taking notes. The reading rooms are well lighted and surprisingly quiet and you can feel the spaciousness of the place.

While the library is frequent by students, there is always something happening at the library that would draw in a crowd. For example, free guided tours conducted by staff and volunteer guides, fun things to do that are suitable for the whole family – most of them are free and even a place to eat and drink. You can enjoy a light snack, delicious lunch or coffee and cake at the cafe, Mr Tulk. There is even a bookshop, located between Mr Tulk and the library foyer if you fancy a little shopping for a book or any of its exclusive range of stationery.

Libraries are generally about books, books and more books. But apart from the books, which there are said to be over a million, you will find that the history of the Library is evident in almost every room you go to – there are Victorian oddities, grand marble staircases, panes of stained glass and great bluestone walls. As you walk into the heritage reading rooms, like the dome shaped La Trobe Reading Room, you could not help but notice the grandness about the place.

The La Trobe Reading Room is surrounded by three floors where the Library houses their permanent exhibitions The Mirror of the World: Books and Ideas and The Changing Face of Victoria as well as a display from the Pictures Collection in the Cowen Gallery.

As a result of recent redevelopment work done, the State Library of Victoria can now be considered as one of the largest exhibiting libraries in the world.

This Library has a lot more going on than shelves of books. You can play chess, use game consoles, workshop projects with your friends, check out what's hanging in the galleries, watch films, listen to music, and browse newspapers and magazines.

Chess Area

Children Play Area

Arts Galleries

Permanent Exhibitions