The Adventures of Pearl !!! Host list post's #22 and #23

[Mr. Chips]

Fabulous pics of the elusive Lyrebird. Several ears ago we spent 3 months in Oz and I think we got a very fleeting glimpse of one of those, at a a place called Pebbly Beach in New South Wales. There we were mobbed by Crimson Rosellas the instant we brought out the biscuit tin, and were able to walk right up to, and pet some wild kangaroos.

 

[Cambertree]

Thank you for the story!

Another great read. Thank you.

Wow Chin, what a great series of posts! You have excelled yourself my friend, an enthralling Sunday read

Pearl is a lucky girl! Fascinating post Chin. Thank you.

That was wonderful! I look forward to "Shipwreck Coast"

Thank you kindly, JP, John, Jack, Dwight and Carl.

What a fantastic read, Chin. Thank you!
Wonderful photos of the flora and to cap it off with a few clear pictures of the lyrebird! It looks like that second bird had a yellow band on his leg?
Imagine going for a walk in the country and find you're hearing the sounds of video games, construction sites, cell phones, etc. Those lyrebirds put our humble Texas Mockingbird to shame.

Thanks Rachel, my friend.

Yes, well spotted - that second bird has a coloured leg band, for survey purposes. The Lyrebird numbers in this forest reached a critically low level around the year 2000 - around 26 male birds IIRC. The survey is conducted by about 80 volunteers annually. They position themselves at key points through the forest, and record the estimated position of all the Lyrebird calls they hear, at a set time. This technique obviously only works to estimate male bird numbers. After the implementation of a cat curfew at dusk in this shire, and widespread fox baiting, the numbers are now stable, at around 160 birds. About 20-30 chicks are banded each year by the Lyrebird Study Group. Some of the Lyrebirds are known by name. There is one called Pavarotti, another known as Josè, and another called The Pretender.

Sambar deer are also a threat, as they use the same secluded gully systems which female Lyrebirds nest in as ‘highways’ from their bedding areas to their feeding spots. Volunteer hunters from the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia, work in conjunction with the Parks Department to control the Sambar numbers.

Yes, it was definitely with mixed feelings that I recall hearing the first Lyrebird ‘text message sounds’ and car alarm renditions, in the forest, when I was a teenager!

Chin, thanks for providing some more excellent reading this morning!

The Lyrebird is absolutely fascinating! It's incredible that, as you suggested, I'd never heard of this animal before, despite having learned about all other sorts of unique Australian wildlife growing up. Thanks, too, for the video links (which prompted my wife to enter the living room this morning and ask, "What are you watching?!" )

LOL! Thanks Barrett!

Great story, Chin! I thoroughly enjoyed the trip with you and Pearl.
The Lyrebird is simply fascinating. I have always been a fan of our own Mockingbird here in the states but the Lyrebird takes it up a notch, to be sure.
Can't wait for the Shipwreck coast installment!

Thank you, Mark. Cheers to you and Rachel for the Mockingbird reference too - I enjoyed reading up on them.

Wow, great story Chin! Thanks for taking us along on your trips.

Another excellent post, Chin. It will be a hard act to follow!

Wondrous, Chin ! Your sensitivity to life makes me smile

Chin absolutely amazing post my friend.

Thanks for your kind comments Mark, Vince, Gev and Randy.

Fabulous pics of the elusive Lyrebird. Several ears ago we spent 3 months in Oz and I think we got a very fleeting glimpse of one of those, at a a place called Pebbly Beach in New South Wales. There we were mobbed by Crimson Rosellas the instant we brought out the biscuit tin, and were able to walk right up to, and pet some wild kangaroos.

That’s very interesting, Mr Chips. I think the Lyrebirds in that area, are the ones which reputedly may have passed down a flute song from the 1930s which was originally played by a musician to a Lyrebird which used to visit him at the time!

I’m glad you got to get close up to some of the fascinating wildlife here.

I went out and took a couple of Roo pics for you, just on dusk at a local spot I know, where they like to congregate on a west facing hill of an evening.

I managed to get close in amongst them, by using the techniques described in the previous post, then whistling to get them to look up, when I was ready to take a pic.

I have quite a bit of material still to get through, enough for at least three more longish posts. As mentioned, there will be an account of a roadtrip along the Shipwreck Coast, then another on the Laneways of Melbourne, and one last one on a yet to be disclosed subject.

Now I am mindful, that I’ve had Pearl for a month, and I don’t want to hog her excessively, although we’ve been having a great time.

I’ve shown her all the things I wanted to, so I’m thinking I’ll send her off to her next host tomorrow, and hopefully complete all my postings of the rest of our adventures, while she’s in transit for the next week or two.

I think Pearl is off to Yorkshire next Jack Black ?

 

[JohnDF]

Love the roo pics and I look forward to your further travels.

 

[r redden]

Chin I love those Roo pictures and really am looking forward to the rest of your post, you have truly done an excellent job with this thanks so much my friend.

 

[Cambertree]

Chin I love those Roo pictures and really am looking forward to the rest of your post, you have truly done an excellent job with this thanks so much my friend.

Thanks Randy - I appreciate that, my friend.

I’ve been thinking of some cool, out of the way places I could show Pearl and the rest of the Porch folk, since we started discussing getting this thread going, way back at the end of 2017!

I’m glad you’re enjoying it, brother - I’m certainly really enjoying being able to show Pearl and y’all around this part of the world.

Here’s another little snippet which ended up being cut from an earlier post. I’d mentioned how you sometimes come across the cleared site where one of those early pioneer ‘selectors’ houses stood.

This is one of those spots.

The house is long gone, but the gnarled old overgrown apple trees and ornamental Agapanthus plants still remain.

The old water cistern is still there, and still has water in it. Having a reliable water source like this would have been a matter of life and death in the harsh, dry summers here.

The concrete footings here, would probably have been a small coolroom with a floor lower than ground level, to keep the milk, butter and cream, which many of these small farms sold locally.

A Pinus Radiata Monterey Pine, which would have been planted as a quick growing shade tree, that once towered over the Eucalyptus regrowth here, had evidently just fallen down from the recent rains after a long dry spell.

My eyes lit up on seeing this as I approached the clearing, as a fallen Radiata Pine presents a prime source of fatwood tinder!

And it certainly was! Man, I hit the mother lode of fatwood here!

 

[SVTFreak]

Man, I love Australia. I’d love to make it back there. I’m great photos!

 

[r redden]

I’m great photos!

Glad to see you here "Great Photos' I'm Randy welcome to the Porch.
Sorry Joey I just couldn't resist.

 

[SVTFreak]

Glad to see you here "Great Photos' I'm Randy welcome to the Porch.
Sorry Joey I just couldn't resist.

Lol! Sok I deserve that! Plus I can’t even remember what I actually wanted to type there instead of just “great photos!”. Lord knows I’m not photogenic! Hhahahahah!

 

[Jack Black]

I think Pearl is off to Yorkshire next Jack Black ?

You're a tough act to follow mate, but I'll try my best

 

[Cambertree]

Thanks Joey and Jack.

LOL, you cracked me up, Randy!

Pearl’s currently winging her way over to Yorkshire, England, but while she’s in transit, I’ll continue to post the rest of the material I have from our Australian travels.

So having shown Pearl around some of my ‘backyard’, now we’ll be heading farther afield - out along the freeway, down into the ‘flatlands’, and through the city of Melbourne and onto the volcanic plains of Western Victoria.

The area we are travelling to is the third largest volcanic plain in the world, after the Deccan Plateau in India, and Snake River Plain in Idaho.

As we pass through the open fields and country towns, some of the volcanic features of the plain can be seen. Here is Mt Leura, an example of a ‘nested maar’ volcano - a 300 metre/1000’ high scoria cone which lies in the middle of a dry caldera, near the town of Camperdown.

Given the prominence of this feature over a relatively flat landscape - flat because it has been blasted that way by volcanic activity from here and further west, like a giant shotgun levelling the land - there are some interesting features to be seen in the caldera.

Climbing the central, conical scoria mound, and scanning the surrounding features with 10 power Kahles binoculars, my attention was taken by Black Shouldered Kites, hovering over the slopes below.

I could have stayed there all day, watching the beautiful raptors at work hovering and diving... but we had many more kilometres to travel, and so on we went.

This is the old Camperdown Courthouse:

Camperdown, being a largely Scots enclave, is the site of Victoria’s annual Robbie Burns festival, and the home of an early (1830) statue of the great poet.

The statue stood in the town’s Botanic Gardens for 125 years, before sadly being vandalised. It now can be seen behind glass, at the Shire Offices, next to the Old Courthouse.

I suspect Robbie himself would have been more phlegmatic about the vandalism than the good burghers of Camperdown. After all, he penned one the most beautiful, elegant, succinct poems in the English language:

To snow that falls upon a river:
A moment white, then gone forever.

Further down the road, we stopped for a rest and some refreshments at a crater lake.

As we’d passed the Avalon Airport out west of Melbourne, the reported temperature there on the radio, had reached 45 degrees C/113 F, so any opportunity to plunge into some cold water, came as a welcome respite.

One of the fascinating features of the old farming country out here are the drystone walls crafted from the volcanic rubble which had to be cleared from the fields before they could be ploughed, or sowed with improved pasture.

Each of these drystone walls is constructed in the signature style of the parochial area which the Master Stonewaller had been trained in, back in their home county of England, Scotland, Ireland or Wales.

One of the descendants of the Breen family from County Clare in Ireland, informed me that it was a matter of professional pride, that once the Master ‘Waller had taken a stone in his hand, from the pile of rocks which his apprentices and labourers had piled, it had to be placed in the wall.

Part of the ‘Breen style’ was an interlocked, overhanging kind of row of capstones, which had evolved as a design to try to prevent rabbits climbing over the wall.

One of the nouveau riche grazier families in the district, were responsible for releasing rabbits at the nearby Barwon Park Estate which eventually devastated much of Australia’s agriculture and rural industries, before the release of the Myxomatosis virus in 1950. Thomas Austin, the owner of the estate had ordered the rabbits to be released in 1859; and by 1867 it was recorded that the visiting Prince of Wales shot 486 rabbits in the estate grounds in two days of hunting.

Dusk falls swiftly in the Australian desert and open plains, and we pulled into the storied town of Koroit, tucked away off the main coastal highway, on the north slope of the Tower Hill volcanic caldera, as night was coming on.

Koroit has been described as a ‘bit of old Ireland which drifted away after one of those big Atlantic storms’, and came to rest on the west coast of Victoria.

We checked into some lodgings at one of the local hotels, stretched our legs with a quick walk around the small botanic gardens nearby, then had dinner and a nightcap, and retired for the night.

 

[Jolipapa]

Magic!

 

[Ramrodmb]

Fabulous, Chin!
I can imagine the volcanic plains of Western Victoria as I am quite familiar with the Snake River Plain in Idaho. I find the drystone wall and the Dragon's blood tree very interesting, as well. Thanks for taking us along, my friend!
Mark

 

[JohnDF]

Nicely done...again

 

[Fodderwing]

Thank you Chin. I’ve spent a lifetime reading the works of travel writers. Theroux, Least Heat Moon, Raban, Gimlette, Harry Frank, etc… None of them have anything on you my friend. Fascinating always. Masterful. To read your narrative is to be right there with you and Pearl. The time and effort you put into it is greatly appreciated.

 

[Old Engineer]

What Fodderwing just said my friend plus I was a little disappointed to come to the end of your posts .

Harry

 

[Prester John]

Thanks Joey and Jack.

Pearl’s currently winging her way over to Yorkshire, England, but while she’s in transit, I’ll continue to post the rest of the material I have from our Australian travels.

So having shown Pearl around some of my ‘backyard’, now we’ll be heading farther afield - out along the freeway, down into the ‘flatlands’, and through the city of Melbourne and onto the volcanic plains of Western Victoria.

The area we are travelling to is the third largest volcanic plain in the world, after the Deccan Plateau in India, and Snake River Plain in Idaho.

As we pass through the open fields and country towns, some of the volcanic features of the plain can be seen. Here is Mt Leura, an example of a ‘nested maar’ volcano - a 300 metre/1000’ high scoria cone which lies in the middle of a dry caldera, near the town of Camperdown.

Given the prominence of this feature over a relatively flat landscape - flat because it has been blasted that way by volcanic activity from here and further west, like a giant shotgun levelling the land - there are some interesting features to be seen in the caldera.

Climbing the central, conical scoria mound, and scanning the surrounding features with 10 power Kahles binoculars, my attention was taken by Black Shouldered Kites, hovering over the slopes below.

I could have stayed there all day, watching the beautiful raptors at work hovering and diving... but we had many more kilometres to travel, and so on we went.

This is the old Camperdown Courthouse:

Camperdown, being a largely Scots enclave, is the site of Victoria’s annual Robbie Burns festival, and the home of an early (1830) statue of the great poet.

The statue stood in the town’s Botanic Gardens for 125 years, before sadly being vandalised. It now can be seen behind glass, at the Shire Offices, next to the Old Courthouse.

I suspect Robbie himself would have been more phlegmatic about the vandalism than the good burghers of Camperdown. After all, he penned one the most beautiful, elegant, succinct poems in the English language:

To snow that falls upon a river:
A moment white, then gone forever.

Further down the road, we stopped for a rest and some refreshments at a crater lake.

As we’d passed the Avalon Airport out west of Melbourne, the reported temperature had reached 45 degrees C/113 F, so any opportunity to plunge into some cold water, came as a welcome respite.

One of the fascinating features of the old farming country out here are the drystone walls crafted from the volcanic rubble which had to be cleared from the fields before they could be ploughed, or sowed with improved pasture.

Each of these drystone walls is constucted in the signature style of the parochial area which the Master Stonewaller had been trained in, back in their home county of England, Scotland, Ireland or Wales.

One of the descendants of the Breen family from County Clare in Ireland, informed me that it was a matter of professional pride, that once the Master ‘Waller had taken a stone in his hand, from the pile of rocks which his apprentices and labourers had piled, it had to be placed in the wall.

Part of the ‘Breen style’ was an interlocked, overhanging kind of row of capstones, which had evolved as a design to try to prevent rabbits climbing over the wall.

One of the nouveau riche grazier families in the district, were responsible for releasing rabbits at the nearby Barwon Park Estate which eventually devastated much of Australia’s agriculture and rural industries, before the release of the Myxomatosis virus in 1950. Thomas Austin, the owner of the estate had ordered the rabbits to be released in 1859; and by 1867 it was recorded that the visiting Prince of Wales shot 486 rabbits in the estate grounds in two days of hunting.

Dusk falls swiftly in the Australian desert and and open plains, and we pulled into the storied town of Koroit, tucked away off the main coastal highway, on the north slope of the Tower Hill volcanic caldera, as night was coming on.

Koroit has been described as a ‘bit of Ireland which drifted away after one of those big Atlantic storms’, and came to rest on the west coast of Victoria.

We checked into some lodgings at one of the local hotels, stretched our legs with a quick walk around the small botanic gardens nearby, then had dinner and a nightcap, and retired for the night.

Thanks for the fascinating tour, Chin. You've been a good host.

 

[Cambertree]

Magic!

Thanks for the fascinating tour, Chin. You've been a good host.

Nicely done...again

Thank you kindly, JP, Vince and John.

Fabulous, Chin!
I can imagine the volcanic plains of Western Victoria as I am quite familiar with the Snake River Plain in Idaho. I find the drystone wall and the Dragon's blood tree very interesting, as well. Thanks for taking us along, my friend!
Mark

Thanks Mark, it’s my pleasure to be able to show Pearl and you all around this part of the world.
Yes, I wish I had taken some more photos of the distinctly different types of drystone walls, when I was out that way. The Snake River Plain of Idaho sounds like a fascinating area, my friend.

I agree: that Dragon’s Blood Tree is pretty cool. You prompted me to read up on it a bit. Apparently they’re native to the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, the Azores and parts of Morocco. The wiki article recounts how there was an ancient Dracaena draco in Tenerife which was 70 feet tall and 45 feet wide, which was venerated by the indigenous Guanches people.

I recall that @Mescladis had some Sangre de Drago, from Equador, which is reputedly a powerful wound healer, but I believe that that particular Dragon’s Blood comes from a different tree.

Thank you Chin. I’ve spent a lifetime reading the works of travel writers. Theroux, Least Heat Moon, Raban, Gimlette, Harry Frank, etc… None of them have anything on you my friend. Fascinating always. Masterful. To read your narrative is to be right there with you and Pearl. The time and effort you put into it is greatly appreciated.

Shucks, Dwight, you’ll be making me blush, my friend. I very much appreciate those kind comments, and I also am an avid reader of travel books.

I’ve read Theroux, but I’m not familiar with those other writers, so thanks for putting me onto them. I’m guessing you may know Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia, and the works of Colin Thubron? Great travel books.

What Fodderwing just said my friend plus I was a little disappointed to come to the end of your posts .

Harry

Thanks very much, Harry.

I estimate that Pearl will be in transit for at least another week, so I’ll aim to deliver the rest of Pearl’s adventures in Oz, by then.

The last time I sent a package to Jack Black , it actually took almost a month to reach him. Rest assured, if Pearl takes that long, I’ve got more than enough material to post in the meantime!

In fact, the more our narrative expands, the more I realise I’ll have to leave out! The forum software is keyed towards shorter posts (10k characters, 20 images max) so my original plan for about three more posts will probably have to be contained in a couple more than that.

 

[Jack Black]

Chin, I think that was one of the most enthralling posts I've ever read on BF Thank you my friend, I'll look forward to Pearl arriving

 

[Cambertree]

Chin, I think that was one of the most enthralling posts I've ever read on BF Thank you my friend, I'll look forward to Pearl arriving

Wow, thank you my friend, that’s extremely kind of you to say so.

When I first discovered the Porch through researching an old TL-29 which had been gifted to me, that led me to Carl @jackknife ’s posts and then your own fascinating guided tours around Sheffield and Yorkshire, it was a revelation to me. I loved the combination of knife lore and history and great writing, and I must have gone back and devoured almost every thread you lads wrote, before delving into the other great contributors here.

If there’s anything of interest in these posts of Pearl’s visit to Oz, it’s merely that they’re my own pale imitation of other fascinating Porch writers!

I think you’d like Koroit, Jack.

I’d better get cracking, writing up the next instalment, describing that wonderful area of The Shipwreck Coast!

 

[Cambertree]

Awaking in one of the old travelling salesmens’ rooms on the second storey of Koroit’s iconic Mickey Bourke’s Hotel, I dressed and pocketed Pearl, and headed down to breakfast and plan some destinations for the day.

Mickey Bourke’s Hotel is a fine old Art Deco country pub, with a long association with Irish culture and Australian writers. Built in 1853, by David McLaws, a Scots pioneer carpenter, the Art Deco facade was added later.

The eagle eyed among you may have already spotted the self deprecating ‘7 Course Irish Menu’ advertised on the blackboard next to the door - which is comprised of 6 pints and a potato!

Bruce Murley, the genial publican, who owns and runs the house with his personable wife Wendy can afford this kind of humour, because they run an excellent kitchen, turning out top notch pub fare.

The pub plays host to Irish folk music sessions during the annual Lake School of Celtic Music and the Koroit Irish festival.

The writer Etta Richardson who wrote under the pen name Henry Handel Richardson stayed here, and her mother was the local Postmistress, just over the road, for a while.

The author Frank Hardy was also born nearby, and drank here.

The purpose of this odd ‘shelter’ would be sure to be a curiosity to many kids today:

And maybe soon, this will too:

Walking up the main street, there are plaques commemorating some of the ‘folk history’ of the town:

This plaque relates some older history of the area:

We shall return to take a closer look at one of the remarkable members of the ‘Fighting Gunditjmara’, as they were known by the early European farmer-settlers here, later on.

Nicolas Baudin, the French naval officer, explorer, naturalist and cartographer was the first European to chart Tower Hill from his ship, the Geographe, in 1802.

Baudin, is a fascinating character in his own right - a ‘commoner’ who rose through the ranks to Captain. The Baudin New Holland Expedition described over 2500 species, new to science.

The first settlers in the area were essentially rogue whalers and farmers from Van Diemens Land (Tasmania) in the 1830s, looking to expand their operations.

Whalers and sealers from the ship The Fairy, based out of Launceston used a nearby bay, which later became a whaling station, then one of Australia’s largest whaling ports - known as Belfast from the mid to late nineteenth century, before reverting in 1887 to its original name of Port Fairy.

William Rutledge was one of the first generation of settlers who basically grabbed as much land as they could when the British government in Sydney retroactively recognised the settlements, and then parcelled it off to people on 14 year leases with the condition that they cleared and ploughed the land. Later, many of these characters would become the absentee landlords of the area.

Rutledge sent produce back to his home, Ireland, and brought back new tenant farmers from Cork, Clare and Tipperary on the return trip.

Once many of these farmers had worked through their 14 year leases, they looked to buy their own allotments, and in the 1850s began to purchase land and set up potato and onion farms on the rich soils of the north slope of the Tower Hill volcanic caldera.

Although the area was also farmed by people from northern England and Scotland - two of the nearby hamlets are called Kirkstall and Crossley: Yorkshire names, I believe - the character and the look of the faces in the area seems decidedly Irish.

And of course among the torrent of people fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, there were more than a few like Patrick Sheedy. Born in Tipperary in 1815, he was sentenced to Transportation for 15 years in 1845, for ‘attempting to ambush a party of police’.

Sheedy later escaped Van Diemen’s Land, and was next arrested at the Battle of the Eureka Stockade, the culmination of the period of civil disobedience on the Ballarat Goldfields in Victoria, now known as the Eureka Rebellion. He eventually worked for a farmer in Koroit then settled nearby, raising a prominent Victorian family.

Even today, many groups use the Eureka ‘Southern Cross’ flag as a alternative Australian flag.

It's certain that for many of the Irish women, who dyed and sewed the original flag from their own undergarments, the Southern Cross had Irish Republican connotations.

During World War I, a call went out for all ‘Britishers’ to do their duty.

Special Recruiting Trains with politicians and bands travelled to each country town on the rail-lines to recruit young Australians for the first Australian Imperial Forces (AIF).

In Koroit, an attitude of ‘Let Englishmen Fight English Wars’ very much prevailed.

When the recruiting train arrived, it was met with a hail of eggs ‘in every stage of decay’. Despite this, one hardy soul stepped forward to take the King’s Oath. It was recorded that the Premier of Victoria angrily cut short his planned speech and said he was ‘ashamed of the people of Koroit’.

Considering the townspeoples’ response to the later Conscription Referendum, the Premier, a Mr Peacock, may consider himself to have gotten off lightly.

The local Member for Parliament in the electorate was also the Chairman of the Conscription League, and when he went to present his case at a mass meeting in Koroit, the resulting fracas was reported in one of the Melbourne newspapers under the banner headline: ‘Mob Assails Chairman - Threats of Hanging’!

After fleeing the town on a ‘jinker’ cart, being ‘pelted with metal’ the recruiting Sergeant who was with the speakers for the Pro Conscription Case (the local MP still had a buggy trace hanging round his neck, fastened while someone had gone looking for a rope) commented that he’d rather be ‘in the trenches, they are safer than that’.

Later, when the same Member of Parliament tried to hold another pro Conscription rally at nearby Crossley, it ended with six local men being charged and later convicted of ‘having acted in an offensive manner’.

A Sergeant Matthews gave evidence that as soon as the meeting was about to commence, a number of men drowned out the MP with what he called ‘a Killarney yell - which makes a terrible noise.’

These meetings took place in the immediate aftermath of the failed Easter Rising in Dublin.

Here’s a couple of pics which record the event in West Belfast today.

One from the Falls Road:

And another from Beechmount Avenue, aka ‘RPG Avenue’:

Like the people of West Belfast, I suppose it would be true to say the citizens of Koroit have a fairly strong sense of community identity!

As we walked past the 20 acres of botanic gardens, there was a car and truck show going on in the football grounds where the Australian code is usually played, based on a combination of Gaelic football and a fast flowing Aboriginal game called Marngrook.

Here is a ‘29 Pontiac IIRC.

1934 Plymouth PE DeLuxe:

Some fine Bel-Airs:

The advent of motoring slowly opened up the ability to travel to Melbourne in a day, although it was still very rare for anyone to do so in the 1920s.

One of the first motorists to do so was asked on his return, how he dealt with the traffic lights in Melbourne. He scoffed ‘Lights? What lights? I drove through the city in the daytime, didn’t I!’

Another motorist politely stopped at every intersection in Melbourne to shake hands with the traffic policemen on point duty!

One of the local doctors who was known for both prescribing ‘a good stiff dram’ for most ailments, and getting into his own remedies quite keenly; provided the local motor Ambulance with its first patient, when he knocked James Johnson off his bicycle, while speeding down the main street in his motor car in 1915.

Near the show, there is the oldest surviving National School building in Victoria. These buildings were based on an Irish design: the building was shaped like an H, with a classroom on each side, and the Schoolmasters residence in the middle.

The local Historical Society now occupies the building. I had a fascinating, broad ranging conversation there with Andrea, one of the members.

JP Jolipapa - I thought you might like this old ad from one of the local newspapers:

It’s not a Norton, but it’s still pretty cool!

Next: Into the Mouth of the Volcano!