Cars at the Rock

Every year, on the Valentine's Day weekend, the Macedon Ranges & District Motor Club hosts the 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' car show. It's a great event with thousands of interesting cars in a unique venue and really is a giant picnic. Here's a taster of just some of the cars seen last Sunday.

The variety is impressive, and cars are both sometimes grouped by club or theme, and mixed in around the trees.

It wasn't just cars, but there were 'bikes, a few tractors and commercial vehicles, and a display of static engines, including this mobile shearing kit.

'Inga' the 1952 Austin Lodestar was a highlight, fully fitted out inside with 1950s kit.

And there were plenty of other big beasts around the traps.

Because of the venue, sometimes it felt like a time-warp, back to a picnic in the 1930s.

The kangaroo herd that so successfully derailed the races at the rock recently were very much there, and very confused as to where to go. This is probably the busiest, noisiest and most crowded day at the rock, certainly from the wildlife's point of view!

This wedge took me straight back to my 1970s Matchbox Whizzwheels and the colour combinations rarely seen since.

Not the more famous (and popular) Minor, but a Morris Oxford.

And it wasn't the only Morris , there, this Bullnose was nice to see from one of our old hometowns.

A set of split-screen VW Combi vans in the Volkes Corner.

Where this 'feral' VW was also scaring small children.

Meanwhile, over at the cricket oval, was this neat little FIAT, worth buying for the number-plate alone. Pasta on your plate? Cool.

And a good day out was had by all, I'm sure.

James

It's the Shunting, Innit?

What is going on?

A persistent accompaniment of dark muttering and shouting, together with a brisk tearing of wood and metal reminiscent of early Walpurgis Night in a local cemetery, suggest to the more imaginative of the passengers that the engine is being dismantled and put together again.

See over on Anno - Libro to find out. Have a look around at the other posts while you are there.

James

PS to recent items...

Sometimes you are the zeitgeist. I think. Or something. Glittery stuff calls your attention even when you might want to move on.

Steampunking in the Museum
'Signage going up' - Credit: Museum of the History of Science Steampunk Blog.

Coincidentally to my post on the British Steam record car, I mentioned Steampunk, and a few days later my attention was drawn to an exhibition of Steampunk items at the Oxford Museum of the History of Science. (What place could be better for such a mix of conservative retro and cutting edge brass widgets?) The museum has its blog on the exhibition here, and the exhibition web page here. Make chuffing noises while manipulating your mouse, please.

I tried to ignore it, but via an article on bees (don't ask) I was redirected to a photo review in New Scientist (here) so I give up and mention the thing. It's (apparently) the first exhibition of its kind. How retro-futuristically-timely am I?

New Scientist also carry a review. Anyone who gets to see it - it's a bit far for us, please let us know what you think. Seems to me to be a mix of interesting ideas and someone awaiting the invention of the steam-battery.

Hey - look again at the lumps of gold!
Not the Staffordshire Hoard, just a boring old gold bar.

Meanwhile there was a very interesting article on the 'mis-reporting' of the Staffordshire Hoard in History Today. The author, Justin Pollard, takes one of the issues Bev and I lightly touched on (here) and went to town on it:

...this extraordinary collection was referred to as little more than a lump of bullion – ‘Hoard contains 5kg of gold and 2.5kg of silver’– both of which figures are, for the record, rather exaggerated.

Having studied and written about Anglo-Saxon England for many years, it is sad to see a subject I love reduced to a weight in metal. Certainly there were expert sound bites telling us that this was ‘like finding another Book of Kells’, although no attempt was made to explain what this might actually mean.

The full article is here, and well worth a read (you may have to register - for free - but nothing more than that). A couple of points for those in a hurry:

It is not 5kg of gold; it is a remarkable collection of very high status decorative pieces, nearly all of which seem to have been stripped from military equipment, mainly swords. This is, in itself, very odd.
...
These might be the war trophies of a successful warrior, stripped from the weapons of vanquished foes; they might be the gleanings from one bloody battlefield or perhaps a lifetime’s acquisitions. As yet we cannot say and, no doubt, arguments will rage for many years, but then that is how our knowledge of the past progresses.
...
When it was recovered it was no longer bullion, not gold or silver. It was history. A little piece of a long-gone world washed up on a very alien shore. That is what we should be celebrating as the story it may one day tell us will be so much rarer than gold.

Looking to historiography in journalism. It's a thought.

James

Closer... futher away!

Once apon a time, in a village (pretending to be a city) called Oxford, with Rosie and Ross, we saw...
A building reflected in a pane of glass.

That pane of glass was in a window.

And that picture of a window had been digitally manipulated to make it seem straight up.

While the whole window was much bigger indeed.

James

Only in Oxford

Where you can find men who shop. They're not all called Walter, though.

Heaven is a hilltop

Twinkly toes in sandals, well up on WhiteHorse Hill.

Oxford delights, but its green surroundings can be sublime. Jacqui, Thomas, James and I went rambling in the big pink camper van, to the ancient monument of White Horse Hill.


There was a baguette for lunch, almost as tall as Thomas himself!

But that's a young man with his eyes set on far horizons....


Luckily, there's nothing better than running through the grass in a big old field.



.... where not everything is as it seems!

There's a huge white horse cut into the hillside above us.


And chalky white lumps that turn out to be....


Curious sheep!

Thank you, Jacqui, for a fabulous day in the pink-and-green sunshine.

Bev

The eleven-hour lunch date

What a shock and a quiet delight to be back in Oxford, visiting some old haunts. We arrived late on Friday night, and over two and a half packed days, we saw many sites of significance.


Such as the cafe that hosted the famous eleven-hour lunch date. Which was when the penny dropped that this rather nice new friendship between Bev and James was likely to become something else, all those years ago (nine, to be precise). A month later, we were engaged.

So we sat at the same table again and smiled quietly. Thank you, James, for nine years of love and partnership, books, talking, friends, travel and interesting things.

Bev