March 2013 – Cork’s Corner

Archive for March, 2013

Eastern Hill Fire Station

30 Mar

Posted in Melbourne, Nathan, Toby the preschooler | No Comments »

A couple of weeks ago Nathan had a day off school for a curriculum day and I took the kids to the Eastern Hill Fire Station. Every week on Friday at 10:30 am they have a display for kids, and it was a fabulous hour…highly recommended for anyone in Melbourne with small kids.

At the fire station the kids were given plastic firemen hats and we sat down on the ground to wait. The first thing the firemen did was put out two fires. On one they used a fire extinguisher and the other was put out with a fire blanket. They talked about house fires and what to do if you were in one. They got some kids up to practice ‘crawl down low and go go go’ and Nathan was a willing participant. Next they talked about if your clothes were on fire what to do. Another little saying was demonstrated and some other kids went up to practice ‘Stop Drop Cover Roll’. Toby wasn’t interested in volunteering.

Next they talked about the clothes that they wore, both the ones they wore around the station and those they wore to emergencies. We were told that once the bell in the station rang they had 90 seconds to get into their gear and to the truck. Then a few little volunteers got to race a fireman getting dressed. They beat the fireman who had a lot of interference while getting into his gear.

A heavy rescue truck from the Carlton fire station then arrived with lights and sirens going. The firemen in that truck got out the jaws of life (called spreaders and cutters) and opened and then cut off a car door that was ‘stuck’. After that truck left another fire truck arrived to put out a ‘fire’ and rescue someone from the top of a two-storey house. This job required a ladder to be taken out of the truck and put up against the house while other firemen got the hose and directed water onto the fire in a well-rehearsed and smooth operation.

When all the displays were over the kids got to turn on a fire hose and sit in the fire engine. Nathan and Toby had a fantastic time, and I got some reminders of things we needed to remember to talk to the kids about.

My little firemen

Fire engine just arrived to an emergency

Jaws of life opened and then cut off a car door

The only working firemans’s pole in Victoria

Grape harvest

16 Mar

Posted in Family, Nathan, Toby the preschooler, Two Dragons Vinyard | 2 Comments »

The kids and I made the trek to South Australia to visit my aunt and her partner for the first part of their grape harvest. I had never been there at harvest time before, and Andrew and I thought the boys would enjoy the experience. So Thursday night after school the three of us set off in the car and drove to Horsham, leaving a recovering Andrew (he has pneumonia) with a stocked fridge and enough food and milk for the next few days. Friday we traveled for 6 hours to reach the farm and today was the big day. Harvest day!

Actually, the grapes are being harvested in two lots. Today we did some hand picking for some boutique wine and later in the week the big harvester machine will be used to grab the rest of the grapes.

The day started with us letting the chickens out of the coop and checking on the sheep. They are lambing and there was another new lamb this morning. Then it was down to the vinyard for some instruction on what to pick and then it was a simple matter of filling the black buckets. Simple but tiring and exhausting too.

The boys had a ball for the first couple of hours. They spent ages on the back of the ute asking people to hand them the full buckets to tip into the crates, and Toby also took delight in using the snips to cut off bunches of grapes.

When the crates were full they were loaded onto another ute and trailer to be transported to the winery. The wine maker, Vanessa, was there and she took the first four crates that were filled to the winery, and then we moved from the Tempranillo to the Shiraz grapes and started filling two more crates. By this time the boys were getting a little tired and hungry and then it started to rain and all they wanted to do was go back to the house. So took them back and we had a very yummy roast lamb lunch while waiting for the others to arrive.

It took a lot longer for the pickers to finish than anticipated, and it was mid afternoon before they were back in the house for their lunch! Then Shirley took the Shiraz grapes to the winery while Silver came with us in the car. We got a little lost, but eventually made it to the winery where we saw the Shiraz grapes being separated from their stems and squashed. Vanessa showed Nathan what was going on, and then she put in the yeast and we went back to the farm. We had a great day!

Letting out the chickens…we didn’t get them all inside last night, oops!