Chiltern Journal

Seasonal

Journal entries tagged "Seasonal".

All Behind the scenes Craft Food History Press Seasonal Travel

A person in blue gloves kneels over loose brown soil, pressing a young tomato seedling into the ground.

12 Oct 20263 min read

Tomatoes by Cup Day: Spring Planting Around Chiltern

Plenty of Victorian gardeners still wait for Melbourne Cup Day to plant their tomatoes. Around Chiltern the reason is frost, and the rule bends a little.

Seasonal Food

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A yellow donkey orchid flower with dark purple-brown markings and mottled red-brown blotches on its lower petals, photographed close against a dark green background, with unopened buds visible on the same stem.

28 Sept 20264 min read

Orchid Season in Chiltern's Ironbark Forest

For a few weeks each spring the forest floor outside town does something the rest of the year gives no warning of, and most of it is orchids.

Seasonal Travel

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Three shearers bent over sheep on the timber board of an Australian shearing shed, pale blue pen doors behind them and loose wool scattered across the floor.

14 Sept 20265 min read

Shearing season, and the shed Tom Roberts painted

Spring is when the wool comes off across the north-east. In 1888 a painter carried his canvas into a shed over the river and made the picture everybody knows.

Seasonal History

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A regent honeyeater perched on a thin branch, black head and back with pale scalloped markings down the breast, bright yellow edging on the wing and tail, and a small identification band on one leg.

31 Aug 20265 min read

Counting regent honeyeaters in the Chiltern ironbark

The forest at the edge of town looks like nothing much. It holds one of the rarest birds in the country, and twice a year people go out and count them.

Seasonal Travel

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Bare grapevines trained along wire trellises in a dormant vineyard, rows running back to a distant tree line under a clear blue sky, with yellow wildflowers growing between the vines.

17 Aug 20266 min read

Budburst season in Rutherglen's old vineyards

Out toward Rutherglen the old vines are waking up. What budburst looks like, why it happens in a set order, and the frost that still has to be watched for.

Seasonal Travel

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A grey juvenile Australian magpie standing on grass with its beak open, calling, while an adult magpie faces it holding a scrap of food in its bill.

10 Aug 20265 min read

Magpie season around Chiltern, and the six weeks it lasts

From about now the magpies are on nests around the district. What the birds are doing, which ones swoop, and how to get past them without much fuss.

Seasonal

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A dry hillside of Australian bush with dozens of wattle bushes in full yellow flower scattered through the grey-green scrub under a clear blue sky.

3 Aug 20265 min read

When the golden wattle comes out around Chiltern

Late in winter a yellow comes into the scrub along the roads out of town. The golden wattle, the forest it grows in, and the day in September named after it.

Seasonal History

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A country football oval during a junior Australian rules match, players in dark and light guernseys scattered across the green grass with trees and low hills behind.

20 July 20265 min read

A winter Saturday with the Chiltern Swans

Through the cold months the town empties out on a Saturday and gathers at one ground. Country football and netball, the Chiltern Swans, and the red and the white.

Seasonal History

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A pair of hands cupping several round, dark, knobbly black truffles above a table at an outdoor winter truffle market, more truffles behind.

13 July 20265 min read

The winter truffle, and the dogs that find it

Under the oak trees of the north-east, in the coldest weeks of the year, a rare crop is being lifted from the ground. The winter truffle, and the dogs that find it.

Food Seasonal

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