Lordy, lordy, it’s the last day of January and I haven’t shown off half the people and places I thought I would. I feel like Willy Wonka at the chocolate factory gates, urging the golden ticket winners on: “Hurry, please! We have so much time and so little to see. Wait a minute — strike that! Reverse it! Thank you.”

Today’s planned outing was to Mulberry Hill, the Baxter (or Langwarrin South as some cheeky landgrabbers believe) home of famed artist, Sir Daryl Lindsay, and Lady Joan Lindsay, also an artist but best known for her writing, including Picnic at Hanging Rock. However, Mulberry Hill is open only for a few hours on Sunday afternoons and it’s 37 degrees with a nasty hot wind outside, so I’m bunkering down inside with my internet connection instead.

Source: www.visitsorrento.com.au

Source: www.visitsorrento.com.au

Many historic properties pepper the area including Sage’s Cottage in Baxter, McCrae Homestead and Coolart Mansion, but I also wanted to show you the property of one of Langwarrin’s most treasured residents, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch. Dame Elisabeth opens Cruden Farm several times a year and my timing was out by a week to sneak in during a jazz festival.

Source: www.aaa.org.au

There’s a whole region along the southern flanks of the Mornington Peninsula I haven’t covered, mainly because of the difficulties travelling around the area during summer and my weekends have been evaporating so quickly of late. One place I adore is the Point Nepean National Park at the tip of Portsea, firstly because it has among the prettiest ocean views you’ll ever see and, secondly, because I used to have custody of the master keys to more than 200 hectares of fenced-off land and we’d go four-wheel driving during work hours through the tracks and sand dunes (I swear it was all in the name of checking boundary fences). A battle raged for years whether to sell the former Commonwealth-owned land for conversion into luxury private developments or donate to the Victorian State Government and the land is now in the State’s hands.

Source: www.parkweb.vic.gov.au

I also wanted to go to some of the burgeoning markets, but my favourite day is the Mornington market on Wednesday, and I now work on Wednesdays. I missed the weekend markets this month as I have been so tired by Friday night that I’m less than functional by lunchtime on Saturday, when most markets are winding down. Here, have a box of fresh local produce instead. The asparagus spears are already in my tummy.

I suppose it’s back to being cranky. I’ll work on that soon. Right now my washing machine has taken my doona captive and I can’t find the bloody instruction book to unlock the door and get it out — what is a water outlet fault anyway? It sounds costly.

Crank-o-meter: but wait, there’s more!

Art comes in many guises. One of those guises is the Baxter dog kennel maker’s giant wooden dog. I don’t know, it doesn’t seem high art or accessible public art, but, um, seems representative of the large art movement. We don’t have a giant prawn or big banana or oversized sheep in our locality, so the large wooden dog it is.

I’m not apologising for the poor photo quality as I almost got the car stuck in a culvert on a busy road and I don’t know how many locals/friends/relatives saw me hanging out of the car while trying to photograph the large wooden dog. I’ll suffer for my work but I refuse to incur ongoing humiliation.

Crank-o-meter: woof?

Adjacent to Crib Point is the small town of Somers. I’d have taken photos of its pretty surrounds for you, but I have a hideous habit of getting lost when driving to Somers and ending up in completely disparate places without realising. The nice people at my last job ended up banning me from driving to lunches at the Somers Store as I’d end up in Balnarring or on the main road to somewhere else even though I’d photocopied the Melway page and had the route down to no more than two turns.

But Somers is a hidden gem on the peninsula, so perhaps other people get as disoriented as I do. The houses are mainly single-storey or timber split-level on generous blocks with simple but complementary native gardens and many street trees. The population seems to be comprised mainly retired folk who enjoy the relaxed lifestyle, self-employed people and tradies who like taking their boards to the nearest surf beaches and artistic types who appreciate the quiet beauty of the area.

One artistic type in Somers specialises in pastel animal portraits and she’s been working on capturing the meezers and sausage dogs over the last few months. Kathryn is rather forgiving of my inability to find her house and allows me to spoil her lovely Labra-poodley-spoodle dog rotten and drool over her kick-arse Apple Mac where she stores photos for commissions. She said no to me living in her sun-drenched and spacious studio though.

The four cat portraits are complete (I wish I had taken photos *before* having them framed so excuse the glare) and the dogs’ portraits will be finished last December. Trying to ask an artist about a deadline is like trying to herd cats, so things will be done when they’re ready. She has done an amazing job and the picture of the late Tabasco as a wee thing brings tears to my eyes.

Crank-o-meter: artist envy

Cape Barren is a long swim over Bass Strait from the peninsula town of Crib Point but the handsome and grumpy Cape Barren goose gets around. I’m not sure how because seeing them in a loud and clunky run-up and launch into the air is like filling a zeppelin with water and seeing how far it gets off the ground.

This pair was one of three that effectively owned the last place I worked. They tried to get into the building one day and I was going to open the door and herd them into my manager’s office to drop some goose-sized shit on his desk, however, geese are quite strong-willed and hard to bribe into undertaking practical jokes. When outside, they take evil delight in jumping on people’s cars and dropping giant turds on the roofs. It’s one of the funniest things seeing someone else’s car getting bombed with goose poo.

The school kids who visited work loved the pair of geese who called the heritage precinct their own, to the point of ignoring my warnings to keep away from them as they are protective, territorial birds and can chase far better than they can fly. The last kid who ignored my advice did a 100m dash in sub-11 seconds and I called the Australian Institute of Sport to get him in the track and field program for the next Olympics. If the starter’s gun is changed to a goose’s honk, he’ll get gold for us, for sure.

Crank-o-meter: honk honk

Further down the peninsula on the Port Phillip Bay side is God’s waiting room, otherwise known as the seaside village/town/growing metropolis of Rosebud. In meetings when I had a job that allowed contact with other humans, the council representatives said Rosebud has the highest percentage of pensioners of any municipality in the country.

And they’re grand pensioners, too. No Gold Coast bleached bouffants or half a tonne of oversized gold jewels adoring anyone’s wrists here in down-to-earth Rosebud. We need to travel to further along Nepean Highway to Sorrento and Portsea for the serious bling.

There’s even a few square inches of beach that isn’t overrun in summer by camping and caravaning tourists, though the sound of a dozen jet skis more powerful than the cars that tow them can drown out the gentle cawing of the seagulls.

Rosebud locals appreciate the revenue and support of the tourists because the town has been allowed to grow and have ready access to new shopping centres. Just don’t expect to park within bloody coo-ee of anything from the week before Christmas until the weekend after Australia Day. Even with my secret shortcuts, I’ve been caught for more than hour trying to do the 10-minute hop from the end of the freeway to Rye. A friend who lives less than five minutes from the town centre says he lives on tinned and powdered food during the tourist season; I’m not sure how serious he is.

The local chemist saved me once when I was stricken with a surprise migraine, the pizza shop serves a fresh and flavoursome Greek salad and even people with handfuls of plastic ducks are welcome in Rosebud. If I’m fortunate enough to reach retirement age, I’d be most pleased to spend time in this sunniest of waiting rooms.

Crank-o-meter: i’ll see you again in february when i can deal with the traffic

Tooradin is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hamlet known for, well, I’ve never really known, but everyone loves Tooradin, regardless.

If I wanted, and note that I said ‘if’, I could go to the Tooradin tractor pull.

I don’t know what happens at a tractor pull: do tractors pull heavy things, or do people pull tractors in flabbergasting feats of strength? I’m curious but not sure I want to go and find out — 12 hours of truckin’ and tractorin’ entertainment sounds a bit too strenuous for me.

Crank-o-meter: i might be busy that day

I’ve been enjoying playing with photos the last couple of posts, so I’m going to mix things up and devote January to a pictorial thread about the area in which I live.

I checked my web site statistics and there seem to be about five real people or spambots who live outside Australia, so to explain, I live on the Mornington Peninsula region in Victoria. I was born in Frankston Hospital and lived in the nearby town of Baxter until I turned 18 and got the hell out of the area — the quiet, horse-riding, underage Frankston pub corner-dwelling world wasn’t big enough for me and my Reebok trainers, baby! I lived further bayside in the Sandringham and Elwood areas before living in Sydney for three years and returning to the peninsula; years away had made the heart grow fonder (and housing hadn’t been made entirely unaffordable by the property boom like suburbs closer to the city).

My relationship with the end-of-the-train-line suburb of Frankston has always been one of conflicting love/hate. I loved spending Friday evenings after school with my girlfriends in the pedestrian strip in the car park between the old Myer building and a group of other shops. It was the place for teenagers to hang out in the mid-1980s to show off appalling blow-waved (or rat-tailed) hair, skin-tight jeans and white sneakers. We were hot. But we were always well-behaved and our parents picked us up at 9pm.

My ongoing disappointment with Frankston is that a dedicated council and locals try to improve amenities and make the area a friendlier place to work, shop and be entertained, but three of the streets bordering the business district are shitfights. This is an example of the old Dimmeys store on Nepean Highway, the main arterial. Why would you stop here unless you had to — it’s like wearing dirty clothes on a first date.

Numerous attempts have been made to clean up the street that fronts the railway station: classical music might have moved the druggies on but the rowdy feral folk hang around in clusters, and keeping rents cheap enough for numerous discount shops to proliferate still gives the gateway to Frankston a cheap and tatty first impression for people stepping off the train Then again, shops filled to the brim with cheap crap are popular, so perhaps the majority is just ruling in the way it chooses.

But I have to love a town that loves itself. Step onto the train station and hear the wind happily billowing the ‘I Love Frankston’ flags. Hey, if we read the message in them often enough we just might believe them!

The ‘I Love Frankston’ trend started years ago with cars sporting mysterious bumper stickers professing their love, and I never knew if they were attempts at post-modern irony or the real lovin’ deal. Looking at the web site devoted to selling Frankston merchandise, I think the love is real. Sometimes I feel it, too, but I’m not ready to go public.

Crank-o-meter: try parking there on a friday afternoon