Hi again A.F.

West Breen was an area that was named after the Breen Family, they owned all of that land in the area that had not been gobbled up by the Pasoe and Fawkner families.
I am going back a long time now, but, Our business was in Pascoe St. between O'Hays Rd and the South Eastern corner of the Northern golf course.

The whole area was open paddocks, and my best mate lived on a farm about 150m away, they were very poor,
(bet the next generation is O.K.)

Next to our shop/ house (at the back), was an old time hall, every Saturday night they would hold square dances in the hall.

Dad employed about 5 full timers, and numerous part timers, and paperboys etc, My family built another 3 shops on the adjoining blocks, and sold out in about 1952.

As a youngster, we spent time in Cairns, the Whitsundays, and the Gold Coast, Dad always had something going, so we moved around a bit, Mum and I in the holidays, Dad as required.

This gave me itchy feet, and as a 20 year old I travelled, across the Nullabor, and up the Coast of W.A. looking for adventure. Something about Far North Queensland , had always made me feel at home, and, every winter I said this is the last, no more cold. And, one winter it was possible.

We moved to Far North Queensland in '82, lived in Townsville for a short while before moving on to Cairns.

After selling our business in Cairns, we moved to the Sunshine Coast (Caloundra) in '87, and stayed on.

They told me I would be a local after 10 years, at 10 they raised the bar to 15,at 15 they said 20, and now 20 is getting close, it's never.

Pete (A.F.you know more about me than the A.T.O.)

What a great life Pete.

I loved reading all that, very interesting.

Mine's nowhere near as interesting, but I had my first baby at 19 and my last at 39, so I have been busy raising children. And that's good enough for me

My eldest brother Graeme (51) has had a live of travelling etc, similar to yours.

Just for the record Pete, you will NEVER become a local, sheesh, I've been here near on 20 years, and I'm not a local. But, my son is..........I'm just known as, 'Brad's Mum' .

Of course it's interesting, and btw, I love your new avatar.

Pete

YAY Australian Open starts today

I know it's a long shot, but I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY want Mark Phillipoussis to win it. At the very least, I want him to do well.

GO THE POO


or as my daughter started calling him when she was 4 - Mark Winapoussis.......

Please keep on chatting

It was a very relaxing five minutes to read Pete's and Aussiefox's chatting.

@ Pete, do you write more somewhere seriously? If not, you should.

Such a nice fluency in telling.

Was like reading a book from my childhood where a Finnish family moved
to Australia. Guess it was my only book cause I read it like hundred times and
always fancied to move to Australia.

Unfortunately I never have had the possibility to come and visit that exciting place

So, carry on chatting and telling more about your childhood

Hi nunumphar

When I was young and in primary school, (about 10 yrs old) we had a Finnish family who had just migrated to Australia move into our area. Apart from one Italian family, I don't think we had any other nationalities except Australian in our area. Even though it was a suburb in Melbourne, we were a fairly tight knit community, everyone knew everyone.
This family had two young girls, one my age, Maria, and one a year younger. i cannot remember her name, though I know it was unusual. I think it started with F.
What fascinated me about these girls, was their fairness (as in colouring, not sense of justice....lol). They were almost white. Both extremely attractive, and such nice people.

Ever since I have had a fascination with Finland. I don't really have any inclination or desire to travel overseas, but if I did, I have always said Finland and Iceland is where I would like to go. Even though this is the aussie thread, I would love to hear about your country. Don't you have a lot of daylight hours at some times of the year? I imagine your country as sparkling and crisp, with a freshness, and no pollution. Maybe I am way off but that is the image I have. From the little I have read though, I don't know that I like some of your culinary tastes.......hehe.

If this family was anything to go by, you are delightful people.


And yes, you are right, Pete certainly is a very talented writer.
Maybe he is a journalist, or an author? Maybe he is an orator?

Hey Pete........enlighten us?

Well, what can I say about Finland. This is a country with many contradictions, mainly in seasons. We have very clear difference between summer, autumn, winter and spring.

In winters we usually have snow and frost, even though the climate has changed to milder nowadays, but in central Finland where I live we have white christmas every year.

Winters are dark because we have so few hours sunlight in December but accordingly in mid summer the sun doesn't set at all. Summers are nice. Sometimes it can be pretty hot for a few weeks but usually we have around 20 degrees Celsius. We have thousands of lakes with pure water (or at least it looks like ). Yes, and forests we have. And Nokia

Many people think that Scandinavian people are all fair but that's not really true. Maybe the fairness as you mentioned is so profound and so noticable that it has given the impression. Well, I'm fair and when I was a little girl my hair was white. Especially in summer when the sun had burnt it.

People are very modest, maybe a little too modest. We tend to think that we are no good. Honest we are. We usually don't know how to chit chat but we talk things as they are.

We live in families, usually 1,5 kids per family

More maybe another time.

Should head to bed, it's 1:18 am here

Talk to you later

Yes and sorry for disturbing your aussie thread

OK, we don't have polar bears as some tend to think. We have brown bears and wolfs though.

Aw Shucks,

Such nice comments, about an Aussie Yobbo.

Pete.

North Ballarat indeed.

My fathers family had a farm on the Western side of Ballarat near Haddon.
As a kid this rambling 700 acre property was a wonderland, holidays at " Nintingbool" were a treat.

We had dams and a creek to swim in, yabbies to catch, and elusive trout in the creek.

A.F. you would be familiar with "Yellow Glen" wines, that is on part of our old family property, named for the yellow gorse bushes that proliferated over the paddocks.

Following both Nenumphar"s and your nice comments, I am neither writer or Journalist, but an importer of Homewares from South East Asia. As this year progresses, I want to be able to play online full time, selling out our importing business.

Pete

There is no nicer, more genuine, likeable man than an 'aussie yobbo' .

Pete, I cannot believe it, I live 15 minutes from Haddon, maximum of 10 from Yellowglen wineries. Nintingbool these days is quite an expensive place to live. Haddon isn't all that cheap these days either.

There are tons of new homes going up in that area at the moment.

But you will be pleased to know that all the natural bushland is still there. Well, probably not all of it, but it is still the bush..........thank god.

Have you heard of Linton?

Oh, and Pete, I just love Asian homeware's and furniture. I was so cheesed off last week, went into a shop called Asian Bazaar in Ballarat, they had the most gorgeous kitchen table for $649.00 (on sale). I couldn't afford it on the day, and they wouldn't take a deposit and hold it for me. So, 3 days later, I went back to get it. The same table, in the same spot, now cost just under $1000.00.

Needless to say I didn't buy it........

A.F.
My old aunty and two cousins still live in Nintingbool, they now only live on about 5 acres, I visited her last March when in Vic for my son's wedding, he was married in Daylesford at the "Lakehouse".

My aunty Florrie from Nintingbool, is getting very frail, the house is very old, but totally spotless, both of my cousins are bachelors, the older of the two is semi-retired, but, drives the local school bus, the younger delivers bread.

On the old Western Highway, 2 miles before Smythsdale, there is a turn-off to Haddon on your right, they live about 200 metres from the corner, on the way to Haddon.

Of course I know Lynton, I have been through there too many times, a very pretty place.

The world is small isn't it? or as we say in Queensland Eh?

I have a number of these tales on the shrinking world we live in but here is one.

My wife and I were on holiday in Hanoi in the North of Vietnam, while "she who must be obeyed", was getting ready to go out for dinner, I decided not to waste the two or so hours.

So off I trotted to the bar, sitting about three metres away from me was a young blond headed guy, and, I could tell he was an Aussie. How could I tell? I hear you ask, well the Canadians say" nobody but a logger stirs his coffee with his thumb, well, nobody but an Aussie, drinks a pint of Tiger beer every 30 seconds, and if that was not enough, only an Aussie drinks with his money on the bar.

I said," G'day mate", as you do, and he replied with,"Oweryagoinorright? (translation, How are you going.?
are you all right?).

Well I asked him where he was from, and he told me he lived about 150 klms from me, and as he was a wine grower, visiting Vietnam on a promotional tour. I said to him "you live on Bjelke-Petersen Dam?"
He said yes, "next to the holiday park". I said my friend owns that park, and it so happened that this man,
that I had met half way around the world, bought his milk and papers from one of my closest friends.

Pete

What an incredible and nice story Pete. I have none similar, because I have never travelled other than going to Canada as a child.

My two 'small' children go to Scarsdale school, so they don't catch the bus, but i bet I know some of the kids your cousin drives to school. It's such a lovely area Nintingbool, we actually tossed around buying some land there a few years ago, but decided we'd rather stay just this bit further out. I know whereabouts your Aunty lives......like you said, such a small world.

And for no reason other than i want to shout it out.....hehe....after 8 years of marriage my husband has FINALLY built me a chook shed. What he doesn't know is that now I will start working on him for a pig pen.....hehe. Ah, I just love the simple things in life.

I am so looking forward to this year. 12 months ago I left work (nursing), and this year both of my littlies will be at school. For the first time since the age of 19, I will not be working, and will not have children at home. I am going to resurrect my vegie garden, breed my chooks, and work in my garden..........and hopefully make enough on the net to become debt free. Here's hoping!!

OMG you've got chooks?

You are so lucky.

Pete

Do you mind me asking what chooks are

No, Pete, no chooks yet, just a chook shed The chooks come later this week, when i figure out how to get them home

Nenumphar, chooks are chickens.

I was waiting for that. hehehe

Pete

Where are all the other Aussies Pete?

Woo Hoo - Mark Philippoussis plays tonight, wish him good luck, I think he's going to need it?


Oh, and by the way, got a letter today to say I have recieved a place at Uni.......YAY

Broken computer took me out of the game A.F. all good now.

Pete

A bush fringe kid, school, and the"Balts".

In 1952 at a small bush school on the edge of the city we were introduced to the "Balts"

These kids were generally older and more mature than us, few spoke more than a few words of English, and many still dressed according to their national model. Balts was a broad tern covering white russians, hungarians, poles, ukrainians. and many more races, all were bundled up from their homelands at the end of the second world war, thrown aboard liberty ships, never to see their homelands again.

The term Balts referred to refugees from the baltic states.even though this was loosely applied.
The kids were tough, a you would expect from mere children that had been fighting for their lives almost from birth

They joined in our games, modified them to suit their own games, and before too long truly international schoolyard games had been invented.

One thing that sticks in my mind was the free milk for school children, we Aussies generally didn't care too much for school milk, it was delivered early in the morning and allowed to sit in the hot summer sun until 10am when it was compulsory for us to drink it. Now the Balts could not get enough of this milk.Drank straight from the bottle., it was sour and left a creamy mustache on the drinker.

We soon learned that by swapping an empty bottle with a full one using a bit of sleight of hand, both groups could walk away happy.

Here in this school yard we had the model for integration figured out very well, before long my best friends became kids with names like. Anatoli Horrock, and Viktor Bashtanic, and although we started at opposite ends , we naturally met in the middle, eventually as fiercely defensive friends.

Under those seamless blue summer skies, at the age of six, we managed to make lifelong friends in a way that no amount of government ethnic control could master.

The secret, leave it up to the kids, they will do it every time.

Pete

Hiya Aussies!

How's it going? Need some inputs here...

I joined CDT couple of weeks ago and starting to promote it. I mentioned it to my Aunt and she said that to be careful since it looks like a pyramid scheme -- which is illegal in Australia. She told me that they know some people before who got involved in a pyramid scheme and the government went after them (they since flew out of the country).

Will the Australian government consider CDT as a pyramid scheme? What do you guys think?

Thanks! Appreciate your thoughts...

Hiya Wally,

that's out of my league, I wouldn't have a clue.

But I reckon when Pete pops in again, he would have a fairly good idea!!

Thanks!

Btw, found out this site when I Google "CDT pyramid scheme". Check these 2 documents inside:

Legal Aspects Vis-à-Vis The Direct Selling Association (DSA) Code of Ethics
Legal Aspects Vis-à-Vis The Competition Bureau of Canada Laws

Wally I am not sure that this fits the definition of a pyramid scheme, as there are goods involved.

Pyramids are illegal all over the world as far as I know, but I doubt the Oz government would as much as glance at CDT.

Pete

Thanks for the input Pete.

Btw, I added you into my YM list...hope you don't mind...

HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY

Hope all the Aussies on the MMG forum have a wonderful day today, and enjoy their day off from work.

Today we are expecting a HOT 39 degrees celsius, so we are not doing much, but tonight we are going up to Lake Wendouree (a big tourist attraction where i live) to watch the fireworks. That is assuming they are not banned because of the extreme heat.

If anyone from the bushfire area's are reading this, my thoughts are with you.


Cheryl

Hey aussies !
Who's gonna win the Australian open ? I hope it will be Marcos Baghdatis !

I hope he wins too

Such a nice young man, only 20 yrs old - good luck to him.

I am so tired, I have been sitting up watching the Tennis every night, there have been some fantastic matches.

Happy Australia Day ! to all the Aussies in this thread. The whole country grinds to a halt on this holiday with people crowding to the beaches, and parks.

Pete

I'm not an Aussie, but it's definitely a country I want to visit some day ! Especially when it's winter here in Europe... Well, if 12dp survives long enough, I might come over next winter !

What country are you from Pito?

I'm half french half german, but currently living in Barcelona (Spain)... And winters here are tougher than you would imagine, because most flats do not have central heating here... So you suffer a bit between December and February, but otherwise it's a great place to live !

No heating in winter????

I have two wood fires in my house for Winter, as well as a gas one. It is a terrible thing to have to go cold.

Mind you, with the heat we are having here lately, the cold doesn't seem so bad

Well, it's not like we have to bear a russian winter here... Rarely gets under 10·c... but that's uncomfortable enough if it lasts for a few weeks. But then you enjoy spring even more when it comes back !
Still, if I can afford it, I wouldn't mind spending a few months in the southern hemisphere when winter comes here next year !

Happy Australia day, from Sydney!

Heppy Astroylia Doy Pepool!

Bewdy moyte.

Airfewedarpeerorto,

Seriously I was glad to see an Australian from Scotland as Australian of the year, I think it is what this country is all about.

Pete

lol nice try, but your accent is way off! It's more like: "ows it goin' mate? ay, appy ustraya day yous lot! yous all ava good one"

Thairnkew,

Air Far nappied tay.

Pete

OK, here's my official inauguration to this thread :

G'day Pete mate, ows it goin'? Fair crack of the whip, this threads a beauty! You bloody rippa mate! and I'm not pissing in me pocket either! By crikey, I reckin the only thing wrong with it is it was kicked off by a bloody Queenslanda'! Strewth, those bloody cane toads needa learn owda play footy, that's for sure! Most of em ava few roos loose in the top paddock aswell mate; mad as cut snakes they is! Shell be apples though mate, I ain't gonna spit the dummy, fair dinkum!

Anyway mate, I gotta go point percy at the porcilin, then I'm off to the rsl for a few scooners of new and some tucka. Ill ava nother captain cook a bit later on. Onya maaate!

Ah spoken from experience I can tell, oh and go the Maroons,


Pete

Hey now Pete, I understand we are being silly and having some fun, but there's no need to get carried away and say something that may offend like "go the Maroons"! There's a line to be crossed!

By the way, how did 2005 state of origin turn out?

Born and bred in Brisbane....some Italians etc sound like that though.

I was just being irritating.

Well, he's made it to the final Pito!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did you watch the game? It was fantastic. And I especially liked seeing him beat David Nalbandian, because I really don't like him.

We won't go there just now, O.Kayyyy.

Pete




I know that.

We can forgive you as we are a forgiving race, JUST DONT DO IT AGAIN !! RIGHT.


Pete

You mean, "ROIGHT?"

Yairs.

Pete

My little Australia Day post,

I will borrow some words from an American, and, a great American, Martin Luther King.

"We all arrived in different ships, but, we're all in the same boat now".

Never were a few words so true as when applied to the people of Australia.

The greatest thing that can happen on Australia day is for an immigrant from another country to be named by our prime minister as Australian of the year. This year the title was bestowed on Ian Fraser, a Scots immigrant who through his diligence has developed a vaccine to fight and prevent cervical cancer, within a couple of years the lives of women around the world will be safe from this major killer of young and vital women, along with more mature women, due to the efforts of this great Australian and his team of medical scientists.

As a country we are not great in the scale of things, we are only 20 million, in a world where major countries number anywhere from hundreds of millions to Billions.

However we are in our own quiet little way, achievers, our major export is not our mineral wealth, but, education and technology, Travelling through Asia as I do regularly, I am constantly knocked over when I turn a corner and in front of me is a building with signs sayin "Box Hill Institute of Technology", Swinburne Tech Ho Chi MInh City Campus". et al.

We might be small in numbers, but, we make our mark, I hope indelibly.

Pete

Well since this is the Aussie thread, I feel I can say -

We live in the best country in the world

Cheryl

That's right

The only other country that has come close to Australia, that I have been to, is Brazil. I love Brazil! It is quite interesting though, you should see the countryside of Brazil, in most cases I couldn't tell it apart from the countryside of Australia. I frequently visit the Australian countryside, as family of mine live there, and I also spent some time growing up in it, so I have a good feel for what it really looks like. It was amazing to be on the othersider of the world and look out across a foreign landscape and feel like you are at home. I guess it is a result of similar climates.

Wow!! Australia and Brazil are similar.....who would've thought. I have never travelled o/s as an adult so I am ignorant on these things. I would love to go there one day though