2mo ago

Daily Discussion Thread: 🐣☕🫗 Friday, 3 January, 2025

Today's weather forecast (Melbourne CBD, 3000): min - 12°C, max - 30°C. 100% chance of no rain

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I have some pics from Castlemaine. Not touristy pics, just stuff I found interesting. 🙂
a gun captured from the Germans in wwi. There are so many war trophies and memorials from wwi it makes me think the war greatly effected this far from Europe town .

cute aussie planter at the entrance to the art gallery

awesome painting by Drysdale

my fave entrant in the Fox art competition. By Joel Arthur. Trees on a lake? I just love the colours and perspective.

A weird church. This town was full of distinctive architecture

old wwi ambulance parked on the main street

in case anyone needs to send a telegraph

a very weird flower in the botanical gardens . agave gigantea

the old train station . We heard kookaburras here. 🙂
- Nice pics!
  
  Thanks, beautiful Castlemaine makes it easy. 🙂
- If you compare the surnames on the war memorial of nearly every country town with the surnames on the land ownership records of the time, the lists are nearly identical. Yes, country towns contributed far more than their share of young men to WW1. There's a reason so many have an Avenue of Honor of oak trees or similar. Even though a lot of these are damaged by time they still survive.
  My grandfather was on the commission that set up the war memorials for Vic & NSW country towns and the papers in his estate are grim reading. So many young men that never came back. Including his 4 older brothers. He was the only boy in his family of 9 sibs that came back. My grandmother - of her 5 brothers only 2 came back, one so badly disabled that he could not work. Which in those days was saying something.
- Very cool. I love how well preserved the telegraph station is, also kinda cute how it's tucked in there
  
  telegrams were still a thing until 1993.
  
  Were there dinosaurs back then too?
  
  yes

195 comments