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Newsletter Aug/Sept 2011

Admin — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 02:37:28 +0000

Strathvea B&B Guest House Newsletter

Cosy Winter Special

Two nights in one of our Strathvea Queen Ensuite Rooms for just
$375 (normally $450).
03 5962 4109

Mention the Strathvea Newsletter when you call to book and you will receive a free bottle of Yarra Valley wine on arrival.

Imagine yourself relaxing in front of our roaring log fire, enjoying a glass of Yarra Valley wine.

In the morning, enjoy our three course country-cooked breakfast while the rosellas and parrots feast outside the dining room windows (all included in the price, of course).

What’s on in the Yarra Valley?

Father’s Day – 4 September
Events at Seville Hill Winery, Chateau Yering, Vines Restaurant, The Sebel Heritage, and
Tokar Estate

Concerts

Joe Camilleri & The Black Sorrows – 19 August & 19 November

Meat Loaf and The Choirboys – 15 October

Steely Dan and Steve Winwood – 29 October

Cold Chisel – 19 NovemberRecreational/Sporting Events

2011 Yarra Valley Grape Run – 3 September

Lake Mountain Cup – tobbogan races, snow sculpting competition – 3 September

Kinglake Bicycle Ride 2011 – 11 September

Melbourne Cup Day lunches at Seville Hill Winery and Vines Restaurant – 1 NovemberFestivals

Healesville Railway Heritage Festival – 24 & 25 September

Toolangi C. J. Dennis Poetry Festival – 12 & 13 NovemberVisual arts

Yarra Valley Open Studios weekends – 10-11 & 17-18 September

Rayners Stonefruit Orchard Blossom Photography Competition – 18 July – 14

For more details on these events, as well as many more events in the Yarra Valley
and Ranges, visit http://www.visityarravalley.com.au/events_monthly.asp and http://
www.toolangi.net/events.html.

What’s new at Strathvea?

Solar panels installed and connected…

The next phase in our grand plan to become more carbon neutral is now complete. Thirty solar panels have been attached to a land mount in one of our paddocks (there was more winter sun in the paddock than on any of the roofs). The land mount also means they are adjustable from season to season to maximise their exposure to the sun.

What’s old at Strathvea?

After all, Strathvea’s not really about new stuff, so I thought I’d include something from the glory days of the Guest House era in Healesville.

This is from 1946, and taken from a book by Healesville’s local historian Bryn Jones (Free From City Cares – The Story of Healesville’s Guest Houses, 2007). Note that electricity and plumbing were a selling point!

‘Own Farm Produce’ was something that a number of guest houses around Healesville advertised. Many guest houses employed someone to do all of the outdoor and manual work. The writer Frank Clune worked in a job like this in his youth, and he describes it in his book
Try Nothing Twice: The Story of Two Dozen Jobs. The guest house he worked at must have been closer to Healesville than Strathvea, but I couldn’t resist quoting an excerpt anyway. We do have some old milking bails like the one mentioned in the story.

The adjective ’select’, used here to refer to the guest house, boarders and even a cow, was in common usage when referring to guest houses and the people staying at them, to distinguish the ‘better class’ of establishments and clients (in a future newsletter, I will have to give you
an excerpt from the chapter in Blinky Bill in which Mrs. Koala sets up a ’select’ guest house in her gum tree).

…cows to milk, chooks to feed, wood to chop, cooks to please, water to carry, pigs to feed, chip heaters to fill, slops to empty, and so on, and on and on!…

Nothing went right… One day the select cow, dreaming around, tore her udder on a barbed-wire fence and came home for consolation, but got milked instead.

She was a placid old thing, and I usually milked her without a leg-rope, swanking for the select boarders enjoying the rustic sights as a change from the monotony of the city. So I knocked back Daisy’s leg with my knee and, squatting on the stool with the bucket between my legs, started to milk.

I was going great guns on the two front teats, and then, when the bucket was half full, I grabbed the two back ones – not knowing that they had been lacerated with the barbed wire, and went full speed ahead.

Suddenly lightning struck me, as Daisy jumped her hind leg into the bucket, whipped her tail around my neck and, with a mighty strangled bellow, fell on top of me. Her neck caught in the bail. She couldn’t get out, and I couldn’t get up. So I lay there covered in milk and cow, while the city guests ran for the boss….

He was a hot-headed man, without an ounce of tolerance… I was called a clumsy oaf. “Oaf, my foot!” I thought…. So I told him what I thought of him, his select residential, and his cow.

Words led to blows, and somebody struck somebody. We skirmished, closed and fell, with the boss underneath, and me trying to dent a hole in the ground with his head,
while he used my nose for a chopping block.

The select guests rushed out to see this rural scene, while the boss’s mother pleaded, “Don’t hit the hired man, Hilary! You know what these trade unions are! They’ll take you to court and get damages out of you!”

But we didn’t take it to court. We had done enough damage to one another in our bucolic joust. And, needless to say, I left.

Frank Clune, Try Nothing Twice : The Story of Two Dozen Jobs,

Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1946

The Rose Series Postcards No P 997 – “Strathvea”, Healesville, Vic.
Author/Creator: Rose Stereograph Co [c1920-1954]
Source: State Library of Victoria website

http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/primo_library/libweb/…

Cosy Winter Special

Two nights in one of our Strathvea Queen Ensuite Rooms for just
$375 (normally $450).
03 5962 4109

2010 March

Admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:51:03 +0000

Hi {!firstname}, look whats happening around the Yarra Valley and Strathvea in Autumn?

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In This Issue:

WINNER: Who won a complimentary
romantic package. Announced April 14th 2010

Yarra Valley Secrets:
The end of summer and we uncover a secret with a snowy cap.

Yarra Valley News: An organic weekend away in May.

Yarra Valley Events: Hot Cars, Hot Motorbikes, Racing Picnics and Hot Salsa Rhythms.

Package Deals: Look out for the next newsletter. We’ll be giving away another Romantic Package.

Come and visit Strathvea in Autumn

The Strathvea gardens in autumn really are spectacular. The Oaks, Copper Beeches, Golden Elms, Chestnuts, Tulip trees, Japanese Maples steal the show!

Our gorgeous 1920’s garden is awash with orange, red and gold.

Also alive with color will be the CJ Dennis Singing Gardens and Tearooms, just 5 minutes away!
Also 5 minutes away the Toolangi Tavern has made a name for itself across Melbourne for stunning views, stunning food and cheap prices.
At Strathvea we include an organic country breakfast in every booking, so you’ll eat well.
You’ll have company… Our resident flock of cockatoos, rosellas and king parrots provide a visual display of color and movement outside the dining room window
Our deluxe queen ensuite rooms are spacious and contemporary with lovely garden outlooks..

Check Out Our Gardens | Make A Booking

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This is the first issue of our Yarra Valley newsletter, delivered each year at the start of Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring.

As an active subscriber you will be eligible for our big Getaway Package Giveaways.

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Featured Winery

With the recent scandals surrounding fake ‘Pinot’ we are shining our spotlight on a Yarra Valley Winery that creates a range of 100% Pinot to a degree of excellent that far surpasses the entry level price tags.

Little Yering Pinot Noir ‘08 is one to look out for when your dining in Restaurants.While Yering Station is just out of Yarra Glen, and presents itself as a complete day trip experience.

Great wine to taste, friendly and knowledgeable staff, gardens, a cafe, a Yarra Valley produce store, a restaurant and private dining rooms.

Yarra Valley Flashback 1876

For a month I have been absent from my accustomed haunts. The sixpenny restaurant which I patronise, and the hotel in a back street where I swipe colonial beer, and play “forty fives,” “yankee-grab,” and such vagabond games, have languished for want of my support. The nymphs in the vestibules have been free from my scathing glances…

…having for a month been resident at the Kew and Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylums. Que diable allaisje faire dans cette galère ? Not that it is at all surprising that a vagabond should become a lunatic – gaols and asylums are his natural destinations. But not as a patient have I spent my time in these institutions. The evil of the present system of patronage and policatical influence in securing government appointments is forcibly illustrated by the fact that from the 15th of June till the 15th of July, I held the post of attendant at the Asylums, at a salary of £1 a week…

…Next to intemperance, religious mania appears to be the most fertile cause in filling our asylums. Many imagine and proudly proclaim they are Jesus.

…The ground… affords a magnificent view over Heidelberg and the Yarra Valley, far away to the Dandenong Ranges. In fair weather or in foul, this is a magnificent prospect, rich in trees and greenery brightened or subdued by varying lights and shades. It is a good land and a fertile which the Lord has given us to inherit, and the sight of which even a poor madman may enjoy.

Excerpts from an article in ‘The Argus’ newspaper

Saturday 22 July 1876

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Strathvea B&B Guest House – Yarra Valley

755 Myers Creek Road, Healesville, VIC 3777, Tel: 03-5962-4109

Strathvea.com.au