Last weekend I went for a lovely walk into the spring bush near Castlemaine. I know that it isn’t quite officially spring yet, but thankfully the local wild flowers didn’t know that and were blooming quite happily in the sun.
Castlemaine House In and watercolour pencil
So first here is a quick sketch of my little cottage in Castlemaine. It is a sweet little renovated miners cottage. They are from the gold rush era and were built piece by piece as the family could afford it. The first part was a two room cottage, then another couple of rooms were added onto the back. If the family did really well they might add a brick extension on the front to be all posh facing the street, but mine didn’t get that far.
There is a track called the Gold Fields Track that winds from Ballarat, all the way through to Bendigo (about 300 kms), and it runs through Castlemaine, so I decided to walk along that for awhile. I had actually got up early, something I think about often, but rarely manage to do. The sun was shining and I knew the chances of that lasting were slim, so away I went.
Goldfields Track
The whole idea of going for sketchy walks has been a revelation to me. I would love to go for long rambling walks for hours, but the hard fact is that with chronic fatigue I am not able to walk for more than an hour and even than I would be exhausted for the rest of the day. But sketchy walks mean that I can walk for 15-20 minutes then sit down and sketch for 20 minutes catch my breath, re-energise and walk some more, so in this way I can be out for a couple of hours and still be fine. Of course the dog does not feel that this is the proper way to walk and lets me know every time we stop.
Hannah ready to go.
The wattle was out and it is one of the first harbinger of spring. All of a sudden what were ragged, inconspicuous shrubs are covered with golden pom poms that are just glowing in the early morning light and there is a golden glow in the drab grey winter bush.
Wattle in the bush
Wattle flowers in the suns glow
Here is my little sketch of the wattle. The one in the sunshine is Golden wattle, while the little one I drew I think is Gold Dust Wattle.
Gold Dust Wattle
The next one I sketched was Gorse, not a native plant, but it certainly is very happy here and is often called egg and bacon plant. This endeavor needed some supervision from Hannah.
Very Prickly Gorse
Hannah overseeing the sketching and wanting me to get moving again.
My final sketch was the sarsparilla vine. Such a beauty in the bush. I like the contrast between the grey bark and rocks and the birght purple flowers and glossy green leaves.
Sarsparilla Vine
Well. after such fun sketching in the sun, the clouds had come and the wind was suddenly chill and I remembered that it was really winter and time to go home.
On the way home.
I hope you enjoyed your little walk in the sun with me.
Karen
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