Sepia Saturday - Four Wheels and an engine

  My final post on this theme. Now for the motorized transport in the family album.

This first shot was taken on the old Batis family property, Daisy Dell, at Nackera which is north of Peterborough in the north of South Australia. The property belonged to my husbands maternal great grandparents. This was taken some time in the late 20s I would think. Have to say they are rather elegantly dressed for the outback. That Number 78 number plate would be worth a lot of money these days.

Here we have a travelling sales rep who was visiting from Peterborough. The gentleman in the white hat is possibly my husband's great uncle. Who knows. Nothing is recorded on the photo.

This photo, taken in the thirties is of my grandfather who was a nurseryman. The nursery still exists, run by his grandsons - my cousins. I love the phone number - ours have 8 numerals

In the forties, my husband's father ran a small mixed farm and also a transport business. He had six sons so I guess he needed several jobs to support them. We saw him in an earlier post driving a horse drawn cart and a sheep.

 I am cheating a bit on this one. This is not our actual car, but in 1955, my father purchased a 1951 Humber Super Snipe - our first family car. Dad was a proud 'pommie' (Englishman) and having come from a well to do family in England, he always wanted the best he could afford, so when he went off to buy a small family car, this is what he came back with - much to my mother's horror as she was going to have to pay it off.

We loved the car however and felt very grand riding around in it. It had real leather seats, a wooden dashboard and a roof window that opened. I wish I could find a photo of it, but I'm not sure I ever took one, to my regret.

When Don and I started dating, neither of us had a car and so we travelled by train, tram or bus or occasionally borrowed his mother's Humber hawk. Great excitement when Don's father, now a used car salesman found us a cheap car - a 1932 B Model Ford which had been converted into a van. We painted it, decorated it, named it Jezzabel and went everywhere in it, usually with a crowd of friends piled into the back which we had fitted out with a double mattress. We loved that car and were devastated when Don's brothers (to whom he had bequeathed it when we married and went to Darwin) sold the old girl to a junk yard a few years later.

Back from Darwin in 1970 we purchased an old Holden ute to use on the farm and this became a familiar sight around the area, carrying everything from hay, to firewood, to Christmas trees, to sheep and whatever else needed moving from one spot to another

We have had many cars since then, but I have to say that the most popular vehicle we have is this one - the grand kids just love it.

Now, I have to say that this last one is not strictly one of our vehicles, but we were in this old tourist bus on Kangaroo Island in 1951 when it broke down and I happened to have my Box Brownie handy. I do enjoy this shot.

Liz Needle  -  linking with "Sepia Saturday".

Wild Bird Wednesday

Lots of bird type activity here this past week. We have been involved in the Aussie Backyard Bird Count for the past week and were pleasantly surprised at the number of birds we counted in the 20 minutes each day.

Species included - Australian Magpie, Wood Duck, Pacific Black Duck, Galah, Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Crimson Rosella, Little Lorikeet, Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo, Little Wattlebird, Willy Wagtail, Red-browed Finch, New Holland Honeyeater, Superb Fairy-wren, Grey Fantail, Crested Pigeon, Little Raven, Eastern Spinebill, Common Blackbird, Sacred Kingfisher, White-faced Heron, Grey Shrike-thrush, White-browed Scrubwren and our pet Emu.

Activity also on the nesting scene- but not always happy.  This year we had a number of nests attacked and destroyed including the White-faced Herons, a pair of New Holland Honeyeaters and most recently a pair of Grey Fantails. Fortunately it looks as if the Fantails are nesting again as they have been very busy collecting cobwebs from under the veranda eaves and the furry stuff off the new tree fern fronds.

I was lucky enough to get one of the Fantails to stay still long enough to get a photo. He is rather unusual in that he lacks the white chin and eye patch that Fantails usually sport. One of my bird watching friends thinks he may be somewhere between juvenile and immature - but he is one I have not sighted before. Maybe someone out there can help me out here.

Below is a brown variation of the Grey Fantail who came to visit last year. You can see the reddish chest and the buff eyebrow rather than the usual white.

And finally a Grey Fantail and the brown variation displaying in the birdbath.

Liz Needle  -  linking with 'Wild Bird Wednesday"  and 'Outdoor Wednesday' and 'Wednesday Around the World'.

Sepia Saturday 2

October is running away from me, so I had better get on with my transport shots. More from the family album.








This time I am looking at human powered wheels of various kinds.

From Two Wheelers

These dapper young men belonged to a German youth club in Adelaide in the 1890s.

And my uncle (far right) and friends with their decorated Billy Cart taken around 1916

To Three Wheelers - taken about 1940.  His first trike.

And this elegant lady in her Invalid carriage, dating back to the 1870s, I think.

To Four Wheelers  -  my daughters and their baby carriages  around 1967

And one of the girls in a cart with her pet Dingo - Ginger. He was a beautiful dog, sadly stolen one night. Taken in Darwin in 1965.

And these delightful children's carriages are not from my collection, but I could not resist them.

Liz Needle  -  linking with Sepia Saturday.  

Sepia Saturday - Transport

I am a bit late getting started on this theme - my excuse being that *I have been really busy organising a family reunion for the descendants in Australia of my great grandfather Ernst Bernhard Heyne - known affectionately as EB. He was an interesting person and deserves a post of his own, so I will get on with this month's transport theme.

The family reunion has renewed my interest in the old family photos that I have, so as is my usual wont, I will stick with photos from my family collection.

Although this is not the earliest photo, the horse was certainly a very early form of transport and here we can see my lovely mother-in-law, Mavis astride her favourite pony, Molly

 Molly was also used to pull a buggy it seems along with her pal Trilly. Driving the buggy are my father-in-law, Ron with Mavis and her mother.

 And a here is another pair of horses used on the farm to transport hay on a much bigger cart - Ron driving.

And it would seem that if Ron could not find an available horse, he made do.

Liz Needle  -  linking with "Sepia Saturday".

Wild Bird Wednesday

Our herons may have upped and left, but we have a new visitor to the garden. We haven't seen a kingfisher here for years, but he has been seen 3 times over the last week and I was lucky enough to get some shots of him as he moved around the garden.

I think with all the really wet weather and flooding we have been having, the water-logged paddocks are yielding up all sorts of little frogs, worms and grubs.

This fellow is a Sacred Kingfisher and usually only comes this far south in summer to breed.They usually hunt on dry land but also use the margins of wetlands - which our place definitely is at the moment.

We are hoping with the coming of the breeding season, we may see him with a partner.


And a few shots of the water pouring from the neighbours dam and into our paddocks and garden during our record breaking spring rains.

This is the side paddock where usually we have cattle grazing.

Almost into the garden. This dam is usually almost dry.

Liz Needle  -  linking with "Wild Bird Wednesday" and "Our World Tuesday"

Monday Mural

I had a rare visit to the city last week to have my car serviced and with a couple of hours on my hand I went for a wander through the east end of Rundle Street. It is an area alive with cafes and boutiques and a favourite spot for the young and trendy.

I was very pleased to find this mural on a wall in a narrow alley. It was too long to get in one shot, so I did it in sections.

Liz Needle  -  linking with Monday Mural

Wild Bird Wednesday - Easy Come - Easy Go

Some of my readers expressed concern about my earlier post about the  White Faced Herons. Well, a few days after my post both herons appeared and built their nest in the same spot as in previous years.

Great excitement for Don and I and we spent some happy weeks watching their coming and going with one at a time sitting and then going off to feed.

Here you can see one of them sitting just above the nest while hi mate is on the nest just below him to the right.

For several weeks life seemed to go smoothly for the herons, then one day we saw both of them feeding in the front paddock for about an hour - and then they were gone!!

There had been no time to build, lay, hatch and rear young, so we suspect that some disaster had occurred. We have had some extreme weather with very high winds, heavy rain and flooding. The currawongs have been sighted nearby as have a pair of Wedge-tail Eagles. Or they may have been a young pair trying out an old nest.

Who knows?  But it looks as if we are going to have to wait and see if our lovely herons return next year to give it another try.




Liz Needle - linking with "Wild Bird Wednesday"