Billy Cart Project

Peter was involved with a small group of men in a "Dad's Toolbox" program, an initiative that aimed to support a dad's relationship with their children. At the end of the first three sessions the men picked up where they left off with their billy cart cutting and assembly. The fourth session was fully devoted to painting their billy cart with their children helping. The venue was Bunnings Mill Park. Bunnings offered the use of a meeting room, tea room and a workshop area. The material costs were mostly covered by a local government grant (Whittlesea City Council). The whole experience was 'spot-on' and we have enough to do it all again with another group. What happened then was the "icing on the cake". Most of the families involved met in nearby Epping, on a 'just right' sloped dead-end street, Sunday last, to test out their billy carts. We provide a link to a video of the event, showing the fun the kids had - including a few adults.

Growing Signets

We have visited twice more since our first time and our second time. We want to see how the signets are developing and when they will start to turn black like their parents. It's a nice excursion along the board walk and we have been blessed with some pretty close views of them. This post reports on two visits this month, one close to the start and the other a few days ago. The change in days between both visits will be identified below.

Our most recent visit are the remaining pictures.

Transamerica Pyramid Project

This turned out to be an assembly project that allowed the kids to make something tall for a change. The kits were simple to prepare, a whole lot of squares in reducing sizes and plenty of 'docked' pine lengths into what might look like Lego pieces. Though there was a similar project like this last year, this time the kids were shown a picture of an existing building in the pyramid shape that they were making: the Transamerica Pyramid Building of San Francisco. It helped to give the whole project greater credibility.

Audrey Taylor 1996

Peter spied a painting of an Australian country brook and thought it was worthy for its painter to be acknowledged for her skill. The composition, depth, colour choice and brush stroke all combine to make this painting, which may have been sold in a very humble setting, a masterpiece, at least in the eyes of Peter who took the snaps to share.

Camperdown Visit

We had the pleasure of staying with one of Life's best violinists when we last went to Camperdown. Our car took us there on dodgy bearings and back. The visit gave us an opportunity to share precious past memories with friends of the old days when we were a young family, when we were all young.

On that Sunday in Camperdown we went to St Luke's Anglican church and experienced a very old fashioned service complete with its functioning pipe organ.

Simple Planes

Bulsar wood sheets and pine made for quick and easy wooden planes. Sure they can't fly but there was plenty of happy hammering going on. Not all became a plane. There is always a lot of 'freebuild'.