Bart Bear's Blog

Gosh, it has been a month since the last post and what a month it has been. Here in Australia we are in self-isolation due to the virus which is causing disaster all over the world. So far our extended family is safe and staying home as much as possible. We are keeping "cabin fever" at bay thanks to our hobbies, DVD library and "wine cellar". Mum and I have been creating cards and learning new techniques. Backgrounds like the one for the butterfly have been spectacular and Dad has taken one that he classes as art and he won't let me add anything else to it. The book cover with all the added things on it is our first attempt at mixed-media journals. I think it is a great first attempt and so do Mum's craft club ladies who have seen it on FB. Meanwhile Dad has been busy with card and plastic kits making castles and ships. This is one of the castles he makes and gives to neighbour kids. The ships are what he calls "isolation jobs" completed since home isolation was imposed. The paint jobs are his first attempts at painting the camouflage patterns the ships wore at particular dates, rather than the various shades of grey they were at some stages of their service.
I hope that all of my readers are coping with this horrible time and have hobbies to help them cope with "cabin fever".

Labels: boats, Canberra, cards, castle, craft

June 11 to 13 was a 3-day weekend, celebrating the Queen's birthday. The weather was great, so Mum looked for somewhere new we could drive to. She found that Sunday was an Open Day at Iandra Castle, just over 2 hours drive away. Although Iandra is commonly called a castle it is not really one. It is more like a manor house with castle-type bits added. It is 26 km north of Young in central New South Wales. Originally it was the homestead of George Young's Mt Oriel Station. Built of reinforced concrete around 1909, the "castle" has 57 rooms. We spent a couple of hours there and didn't see every room. There is a chapel somewhere, but I couldn't find it because there were hordes of visitors and time ran out on us. There is also a separate building with stables, a blacksmith's shop, storage for buggies and big bullock drays, and living quarters for some staff upstairs. And of course there are acres of gardens and lawns.  I couldn't identify all of the fruit growing in the orchard; the Oldies wouldn't let me pick any for taste testing. The whole estate is on the NSW State Heritage Register. Definitely worth visiting if you are in the area on one of the open days.

Labels: castle, history, New South Wales

It is now two years since the Oldies were off over the other side of the world on their big trip, and there are still lots of pictures to show you from that trip. This one is the entry into Caernarfon (which the English call Carnarvon castle). The castle was built by the English King, Edward 1 around 1282. It was one of a series of castles built to keep the Welsh under control. Dad says that the Welsh are fiercely independent people and have never been under control. Anyhow, lots of you have seen Caernarfon on the TV, because it is here that the Princes of Wales are invested in their office. The last one was Prince Charles in 1969, too long ago for lots of you to have seen, but the castle is used as the site for lots of TV movies. The castle is sort of a semi-ruin. The walls are mostly OK but almost all of the wooden bits have gone, the only bits left are in rooms that have been restored. The stone stairs are still there and you can go up onto the battlements. You have to be careful up there as some of the walls have big gaps in them and, as you can see from the small photo, there are scary things moving around up there.

Labels: buildings, castle, Wales

Isn't it funny how Mums get all cranky when you get mud and dirt in your fur, but are quite happy to let you play in the sand at the beach? Not that I am complaining, mind you, I love mucking about in sand. Here are Milkshake and I busy making a sand fort on Whitehaven Beach. There was a little sand cliff left by the tide when it went out and it was just right for the back wall of the fort. All we had to do was pile up damp sand for the ringwall and we had an almost crab-proof enclosure. This is where Dad comes in handy. He can shovel sand much faster than Milky or me. And as for crabs, if one did breach our almost impregnable defenses, we had this large coconut ready to dong them with. We had a great game of castaways, spending some of the time sitting on our wall scanning the horizon for pirate ships. All we could see were yachts, power boats, cruisers, catamarans, helicopters and the occasional seaplane, but if pirates had shown up they would have got one heck of a fright.

Labels: beach, castle, crabs, Hamilton Is, Queensland

Here's another photo from the Oldies' trip to the UK. This time they say that they came close to photographing the Loch Ness Monster. Well, the ruined castle is certainly Urquhart castle and the water is Loch Ness but I don't believe them that the ripples in the water are the wake of Nessie. They try to tell me that Nessie was there but swam away fast when she saw the camera pointing at her. After all, lots of people say the same sort of thing happened to them when they tried to take photos of her. I suspect that the ripples have a lot to do with the motorboat that passed in front of the castle and shows up on some photos the Oldies took just before this one. Just as well I wasn't with them that day as Dad would probably have tried to see if small bears make good Nessie bait.

Labels: buildings, castle, Scotland

The oldies saw lots of castles while they were on their UK tour, but this one was the best of the lot. It is Caerphilly Castle in southern Wales. It is a huge castle, the second largest in the UK. It has a big moat around it with two dams to keep it full. The castle was built in the late 13th century by Gilbert de Clare, the English lord of Glamorgan, to keep the Welsh out of south Wales. It hasn't been altered much since then, so it is a great example of what medieval castles were like. I like the way that one tower has split and partly toppled. Dad says that it is because the castle is slowly sinking into the water-logged ground; he may be right, it happens sometimes. I also like the collection of siege engines inside one of the courtyards. One thing I would really love to do is to fire big rocks from a real trebuchet. Actually, if I sat in the bucket of a trebuchet and had my parachute with me it might be a fun ride.

Labels: buildings, castle, Wales