Hare Today!: Wednesday, 28th December, 1977

We awoke to a temperature of five degrees Celsius at five minutes past seven and at ten past the hour 3BA played Bobby Goldsboro’s “See The Funny Little Clown”, which had been a hit for him in 1964. Prior to ten past eight we’d heard Vicky Leandros’s classic of five years ago, “Come What May”. Breakfast had been consumed by then, however, it was to be twenty-five to nine before our departure from the motel was noted. The majority of our belongings remained in our room.

Tiki drove under the Arch of Victory only to then begin to head towards an oncoming car as she pointed to a mark on the inside of our car’s windscreen. I instinctively reached out and turned the steering wheel in my direction. My actions infuriated her and I was told to alight from the vehicle once she had brought it to a halt outside the B.P. service station. Someone from there had washed our car’s windscreen whilst it had been parked at the motel and left a card under the wiper to inform us of what they had done.

Having done as she’d commanded and made her aware of where she could locate me, I walked across and along Sturt Street in the six-degree sunshine. Upon my arrival at the Botanic Gardens, I visited the Olympic statue that signifies that the rowing and canoeing events were held on nearby Lake Wendouree, in 1956.

I made my way past the tame black swans on the edge of the lake and the gardens themselves. I had just begun to wonder if Tiki had really meant what she’d said when she’d insisted that she would not come looking for me, when I espied her driving about in search of me and followed her around until she parked the car.

We made up and I showed her through the gardens I first visited six years ago. The mammoth tree, Seqaoia Gigantea, that grows there, is a native of California. The Botanic Gardens also houses the locked cottage that belonged to the poet, Adam Lindsay (1833-’70), and I took the liberty of jotting down the quote that is on the pedestal of his bust:

Question not but live

And labour

Till yon goal be won

Helping every feeble

Neighbour

Seeking help from none.

Tiki informed me that the ‘Galant’ might have made contact with the attendant at the B.P. petrol station when, in her fury, she had attempted to start the vehicle in first gear.

She drove around the lake and stopped outside the Shell House in Lindisfarne Crescent. We opted to forgo entry and put the forty cents each towards our admission to Sovereign Hill, which we reached by ten minutes past ten. By doing this we childishly reasoned that our admission there had cost us two dollars and sixty cents each, as opposed to the three dollars. It costs an extra six dollars to have oneself photographed in period costume and/or ten dollars for a couple.

We were chilled to the bone as we waited for the tour of the underground quartz mine, which commenced at half past the hour. A bloke with finely plaited blonde hair divided those of us who were waiting into three smaller groups before we  entered the adit. Our guide, a more presentable dark-haired gentleman, informed us that the gold ore is obtained from the veins of quartz and of how young boys worked six days per week, ten hours per day for a payment of seven shillings and rarely lived beyond forty-five years.

They worked by candlelight, in knee-deep seepage. I enquired of the guide as to how they had overcome this seepage in this particular mine and he explained that firstly it was dug horizontally and secondly it was situated above the level of the beds of the creeks and rivers in its vicinity.

We really felt the bitterly cold wind after half an hour of being underground, however, this did not deter us from visiting all of the shops and buildings in what is the recreation of an early mining town. Tiki even took the opportunity to pat a grey draughthorse when it had offered her its head above the fence of its enclosure.

The fare offered in one of the restaurants was considered by us to be too expensive and the service too slow and so we left our seats and crossed the street to the new ‘Sovereign Hill Gold Museum’, only to learn that it was yet to open. As we were about to leave Sovereign Hill, we noticed that the car park contained vehicles from every state.

I drove out of Ballarat via Victoria Street and in the direction of Melbourne for a distance of about five miles. There Tiki paid two dollars and sixty cents for each of us to enter Kryal Castle, which had been opened by the Premier of Victoria, Dick Hamer, on the 29th of November, in 1974. The building overlooks the entire area, with the inclusion of Ballarat.

The countryside really is pretty!

Shops inside the castle sell copperware, glass-blown figurines, and the like. We saw an old-fashioned telephone on an accompanying table, priced at two hundred and twelve dollars. Tiki noticed that there were licences on sale which permit the holder to have sex; to bludge and to drink. We also came upon a tall half-completed Trojan horse. Some methods of medieval torture, which are depicted in wax, are so lifelike that they made me feel quite repulsed. Such models included that of a naked woman who was suspended by two large metal hooks that had been passed through each of her bosoms, and a man on a rack who is having his stomach eaten out by caged rats which have been driven into a frenzy by the heated coals that had been placed above them.

The castle’s maze didn’t present us with any problems largely due to the fact that we were taller than the actual maze itself and, therefore, always knew of our whereabouts. While we were truly impressed by most of what we had seen we decided not to wait to observe the whipping of the wenches at three o’clock — a joust is staged on Sundays only, at this same time — and departed by twenty past one to return to Ballarat via some of the back roads. In doing so we came upon the house whose rear had been gutted in the fire that we had witnessed from one of the castle’s turrets. Fire-engines and about twenty cars, which presumably, in the main, contained sightseers, were in attendance.

Having parked the car before a parking meter to the south of the confluence of Bridge and Sturt streets, we deposited ten cents into the machine. This was to allow our car to remain there for forty minutes but, as we were to notice later, it actually allotted to us forty-five!

We entered the Coles’ store at the commencement of Bridge Street and boarded an escalator to arrive at its Country Fare Restaurant only to be informed by a girl who worked there that there were no gents’ toilets. As I left the store to walk down an arcade and across a street in order to relieve myself, an elderly woman was still revving the insides out of a VW ‘Beetle’, as she continued in her quest to execute a three-point turn. I joined the long queue at the restaurant and laughed at the humorous reaction from the young man, who wore a cap almost identical to that worn by Alan Hale Jr. in “Casey Jones”, after I had informed him that there were no public toilets for males in the store and just where the nearest one was.

Two servings of assorted egg, ham, tomato and tuna sandwiches, a large slice of passionfruit pavlova and a slice of cheesecake only cost us three dollars and sixty cents. The cheesecake proved to be a little too rich for Tiki’s liking and so I got to finish that, as well!

I drove along a much busier Sturt Street, as the public holiday of four days reached its conclusion yesterday. Eventually, I located the entrance to the Ballarat Golf Club at the Arch of Victory only to find that the clubhouse, itself, was totally deserted. In sunshine, I carded forty-six for the nine holes of which we partook. This included an eight at the last hole after a hare was seen to run across a contiguous fairway of the inward nine and the reactions of the four chaps playing that particular hole, coupled with Tiki’s excitement, had destroyed my concentration.

At the eighth of two hundred and forty-six yards, one has to hit over a railway line.

Upon our return to our room at The Arch Motel, at ten minutes to five, we turned on the Baird colour television and tuned to A.B.C.-TV’s Channel Three to watch a programme of the “Gentle Ben” series, which features Dennis Weaver and Ron “The Andy Griffith Show”/”Happy Days” Howard’s brother, Clint. Channel Six screened the local, western Victorian news, however, it contained no mention of today’s house fire. Channel Seven’s news is on relay from Melbourne and, at seven o’clock, the A.B.C.’s “National News” also emanates from there.

This year’s Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race is proving to be held in the roughest conditions on record. The Melbourne-Hobart race, whose course takes the yachts via Tasmania’s west coast, is being held simultaneously.

At half past seven on Channel Three, the Australian singer, Johnny Farnham, was heard to narrate a documentary about the Sargasso Sea. The programme details the seaweed and living creatures that survive in this becalmed area of the Atlantic Ocean, which is located off Bermuda.

“Whodunnit?”, a British series, screened from eight o’clock and had as its guest stars Richard “Doctor At Large”/”Doctor In Charge”/”Man About The House” O’Sullivan, Honor Blackman and Norman “Softly, Softly” Bowler. Tonight’s host is Jon “Dr Who” Pertwee. Once that had concluded we turned to BTV Channel Six to watch Walter Matthau portray an old man in the movie, “Kotch”, which we’d viewed as recently as last year.

It is perishingly cold, again, and I’m about to leave the chair at which I’ve been writing my diary and join Tiki in bed. I shall be sleeping on the side by the window tonight, as the electric blanket apparently only works on one side and Tiki had complained of being cold when I awoke this morning.

Following “Kotch”, I watched the programme, ‘Brethren Island’, of the Australian series, “Riptide”. American actor, Ty “Bronco” Hardin, was the star of the defunct series in which he was cast as Moss Andrews, the owner of a cruiser for charter. Tonight’s edition, from 1968, has Helen Morse as its guest star.

Traffic lights in Victoria not only turn amber when they change from green to red, but vice versa. It is something I would like to see introduced in New South Wales.

The Nashville Teens

Despite its choice of title, The Nashville Teens was actually a British pop group, which formed in the English county of Surrey, in 1962. Originally, the band was comprised of vocalists, Arthur Sharp and Ray Phillips; pianist, John Hawken; bassist, Pete Shannon Harris; guitarist, Mick Dunford and drummer, Dave Maine.

It was not uncommon for British bands of that time to venture to the then West Germany to play in nightclubs and gain experience. Whilst in the northern city of Hamburg, The Nashville Teens was afforded the opportunity to back the early rocker, Jerry Lee Lewis, on his album, ‘Live At The Star Club’; a recording that was to receive much acclaim.

Upon its return to Britain, the band played on tour with Chuck Berry, and, in 1964, released its initial single, “Tobacco Road”, which had actually been penned by an American, John D. Laudermilk. “Tobacco Road” rose to No.6 in Britain, No.14 in the United States and No.4 in Australia.

The Nashville Teens followed this latest success with “Google Eye”, a song that had also been written by John D. Loudermilk. This single ascended to a height of No.10, in Britain, in October of 1964. Nevertheless, the group’s subsequent entries did not perform as they were presumably expected to, and, in early 1966, The Nashville Teens ceased to be an entity on the charts.

Television series such as ‘Heartbeat’, ‘The Royal’ and ‘Mad Men’ have served to introduce the recordings of the 1950s and 1960s to subsequent generations.