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25th Nov 2005
Drysdale and gummy
Friday 25th November, 2005
We kept ourselves out of the way a bit this morning as the British 4WD Imports machinery clicked and whirred into suspension for a long weekend away. We had a bit of Christmas shopping to attend to and Bev knew exactly the shops we needed to get to. It still took us an hour or so of not getting very far … complicated by losing each other in traffic, ending up on different floors of a car park and other time consuming little glitches which needed to be sorted.
Finally we’re en route to Geelong which is at the mouth of the Melbourne bay and we have a lunchtime rendezvous with Craig, another photographer friend of Ant and Bev’s. They do seem to collect photographers.
After a sit down bite to eat we had a quick tour of Craig’s set up from where he publishes a very specialised magazine for mini car owners. We suddenly noticed the time and had to excuse ourselves in a hurry as we were keen to get a look at the Bellarine Museum and the village of Drysdale, named after an earlier Anne Drysdale, who settled the area and established a farm at a nearby homestead called Coriyule.
We arrived in Drysdale at about 3 and after one or two false starts located the museum building, the church which Anne Drysdale helped to found and got directions to the museum.
The museum was closed and looked as if it wasn’t going to re-open for a considerable time. Luckily we had collected some tourist bumf which had a phone number and the present Anne Drysdale swung into action. Unfortunately the person who answered it was in Darwin and no she wouldn’t be opening the museum in the foreseeable future … we got a useful steer from someone in the craft centre who suggested that we try the community centre and this turned out to be our lucky break as in there just happened to be someone called Anne Brackley a descendant of another pioneer family who greeted Anne like a long lost relative and couldn’t have been more helpful. After a bit of fussing and some photographs on the steps and comments like “I do wish you’d called before, we could have had a civic reception”, Anne showed us a little book entitled “The Lady Squatters” which refers to the 18th Century Anne Drysdale and her partner Caroline Newcomb, who evidently just took over the land and set up a farm business. There was a minor problem with photocopying the booklet and so 'I nipped around the counter and applied healing hands to the photocopier and stood there copying the book while the Annes chatted.
A few phone calls later and Noel Lindsay, who is also closely involved in the museum had been mobilised and had been inveigled into coming down to meet us and show us the exhibition.
Noel and his wife Shirley’s initial greeting was along the lines of “Oh yes, we know other relatives of Anne Drysdale”. “Oh”, says Anne “who?” It turned out to be a fairly distant relative of Anne’s back in Scotland who the Lindsays had visited on other genealogical searches. We spent a bit of time afterwards trying to work out how they were related, but gave up fairly quickly.
The museum is sadly amateur and although the society has a membership of about 70 or 80, only 20 or so turn up to meetings and only 8 of those are classed as ‘active’. It’s a shame as it has a very rich social history on a number of counts; the Drysdale involvement (apart from giving the town its name) is relatively minor. We saw a pic of the Anne Drysdale buggy, which is still privately owned nearby and heard the tale of the apparently missing diary, which Anne may pursue at some point.
At about twenty past five someone mentioned that the last ferry across the bay was at six … we’d initially been under the impression it was eight and so that brought about a bit of five star panic and we hastily swapped contact details and headed for the Queenscliff ferry terminal. Spoke to Ant on the phone – he and Bev had meantime gone and checked into their self catering let and were getting themselves ready for a weekend of frivolity at the Queenscliff Music Festival. Said blustery goodbyes from the ferry queue and went our separate ways.
It’s a 40 minute crossing through the shipping lanes and afforded views of a few seals and some seabirds – gannets to be precise not sure what sort but they looked exactly like the ones at home; presumably a Pacific or southern hemisphere species.
We stopped for chips at a place called Rosebud heading up the road towards Frankston.
“Hello, two fish suppers please”
“You want what?”
“Err, sorry, two fish and chips ….”
“What fish would you like?”
“Just the normal one”
“We have two normal ones; Flake or Blue Grenadine”
“Oh, well then, errrr, what’s Flake?”
“Its local gummy” (Blank look) “Shark”
“Ok I’ll have flake … Thanks”
“And you want chips with it …”
“Yes, two fish and chips … errr, two fish and two chips …”
“So you want two fish and then enough chips for two people”
Yes it was about as tortuous as it reads .. but eventually I got a couple of chunks of fish on a huge bed of chips in a box and all for the princely sum of $10 … or just under a fiver; well worth the inquisition.
We drove on to a dump of a place called Drouin, which had a dodgy motel, but we were both fairly knackered and couldn’t drive any further so we got the first room available. The room was fitted with an air conditioning system and even though it was cooler down here than it had been up country … or even in Canberra, we thought we’d give it a go. Couldn’t work out why the room felt worse after a quarter of an hour only to drag over a chair and discover that it had been set up to blow warm air round the room !
Bit of a re-tune required and then we fell into bed and asleep despite the erratic cranking of the aircon fan.
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