Heartland Christmas 2013

My heartland is Central Victoria where my parents met and married and where I lived in Colbinabbin in central Victoria in the early 60's -my dad was the headmaster of the local primary school.

The Fields of Colbinabbin are not the fable green fields of Athenry that my grandfather came from. They are however golden with the summer harvest of wheat that is stored in the towns whose only feature is  the large concrete silos stretching above the railway line. In the last 5 decades since I lived there as a small child most of the surrounding countryside has gone from the fat lambs and wheat of the Victorian school’s geography book to wine growing on the surrounding Mt camel range


I remembered a scene from my childhood where a crop-duster -a biplane has landed on the road in the mainstreet and the pilot has gone into the pub. I imagined that they had opened up the top floor and served a big Rutherglen red glass of claret in his honour amongst the dusty table clothes ...could this be a film one day ?

After we moved to the city I spent many very happy holidays in nearby Nagambie with my grandmother and extended family and later as an adolescent got to know the areas with my school mates as a member of the Vale Meadows Adventure Club.. skinny dipping in Lerderderg or camping like swaggies on the banks of the Campaspe or the Loddon rivers..

these images are a taste of what I hope to make a major series of paintings and mixed or multimedia work on this return to my heartland ( see http://michaelzer0.deviantart.com/gallery/25283035 for more details 

This year I have spent a lot of time in Castlemaine Maldon Daylesford Malmsbury and Kyneton 

Sue and Gavin  are kindly  hosting pre Christmas at Scotch Pie House in  Maldon again this year and then Anglesea for Christmas dinner with my brother Richard and his family 

I have prepared some cards for close friends and family based on some images of fretwork and country roses i took in Kyneton in the last few weeks

Hope you enjoy them. In the  coming year I will

be exploring ways of living and working in my Heartland 

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here is the countryside on the way to maldon

This is the garden at scotch pie house  

Desley Mike and myself our hostess Sue and hard working Gavin in the kitchen !

Baptist Church at dusk Maldon 

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This Uber friendly cat is up for adoption 

Sunday morning sketch with Coffee main street Maldon

signs of life in this old bluestone homestead on the way to maryborough

post office at Gordon town where Dad grew up

Time to go home 

Is this William Lee in the Old Gordon cemetery an ancestor ? If so I might have a Eureka ancestor !