President Sue's Message
Welcome to the homepage of Melbourne Bearbrass Probus.
 
It’s a great honour to have been appointed President for 2022 at our recent AGM. I look forward to working with you all to ensure our club remains vibrant and fulfills its charter of ‘Fun, friendship and fellowship.’
 
A big part of what we do is provide events which give members a chance to socialise with like-minded people. Now that things are opening up, we have plenty planned. Check out our calendar for the list of activities coming up in April and May. There’s plenty of interest there, including a trip away to Apollo Bay in early May which promises to be memorable.
 
If you are an interested non-member, feel free to use the ‘contact us’ tab. Someone will then contact you to let your know more about us and to link you in to our activities as a guest.
 
Hope to see you soon. 
 
Warm regards
Sue Hoile
Apollo Bay: triumphing over weather forecast
 
Fourteen of us checked the forecast for Apollo Bay before setting off last week for our three-night expedition. The forecast was appalling – storms, thunder, cloudbursts, wind, rain bombs – whatever’s bad, we were heading into it. Undaunted but wary, we set off, and hooray! the forecast was wildly wrong. There was one sharp downpour on Wednesday but we were all in cars and unaffected, and the sun smiled and clouds lifted for the rest of our stay.
Our split accommodations ranged from villa units to caravan park, and we happily sampled all the delights of the district, especially
# The magnificent Mait’s Rest boardwalk in primeval rainforest
# The lighthouse and wartime radar station (for those who came early)
# Stevenson and Hopetoun Falls and Redwood Forest
# Wildlife Wonders conservation park and
# The bayside town and fishery harbour and the bakery’s famous “Scallop Pies”. 
There was great scope for getting to know each other better over meals. They started at the highly-rated The Perch at Lavar’s Hill for lunch on Wednesday, and dinners were respectively at the Brewhouse, Casalingo Restaurant (originally a squash court but unrecognisable now), and Apollo Bay Hotel. Informals included marshmallow toasting at the caravan park and “home invasions” in quest of wine and appetisers.
Organiser Jan S. summed up: “Apart from one thing, it was a fantastic event with great atmosphere (and weather) from start to finish. The one glitch was that we’d barely arrived home before our Dear Leader Sue came down with Covid, rapidly followed by myself and three others. Three more (a family of non-members) brought the total to eight. In this contemporary world, one can only be philosophical about such things.” #
 
 
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Great use of a sunny Saturday :)
A happy group whiled away a beautiful Saturday afternoon lunching at Melbourne Cellar Door in the city, organised by Julie C. Good food, good company, good ambience as you can see from our pic below.
Happy times at April general meeting
 
Bearbrass had its first monthly meeting under the new management of President Sue on Tuesday April 12. Highlights were induction of new members Diane N (pic top left) and Geoff H. (top right), with a warm welcome to our club.
Jan S spruiked our next big outing for several days to Apollo Bay  in the first week of May, with around 16 members already signed in.
Vice-President Jill organised a valuable evaluation session of our club by members, who split into four groups to discuss how to make Bearbrass well attuned to member interests and more user-friendly in all aspects of administration. Plenty of good input occurred which will be reported on in our next May general meeting. 
After morning tea were enjoyed the talk by Bianca Friend, Development Executive at Australian Wildlife Conservancy. This foundation manages an astounding variety of national parks and conservancy zones, some involving hundreds of thousands of hectares. She spelt out the difficulties and costs (like fencing!) of halting the devastation of Australian native species that has already led to several dozen extinctions.
About half the attendees went on to enjoy lunch at Tap831 with its invariably tasty and prompt tucker.
Rescheduled to Friday June 3: Our cooking class: Easter with Duck!
Dear aspiring chefs,
 
Luv-a-Duck cooking classes are back in action and our new booking date is Friday, June 3rd.  We still have two vacancies -- contact Marg T. at margthomas6@gmail.com, 0438 045 904 to join us.
 
The class is from 10am to 1.30pm. Please arrive fifteen minutes prior to the start.  You will be cooking a range of dishes for a Christmas in July Feast.
 
Luv-a-Duck is  at 228 Ingles Street, Port Melbourne.  There’s parking at the front, or the No 235 bus from Southern Cross will drop you half a kilometre from the premises.
 
You’ll learn  how to create extraordinary duck dishes to perfection. 
Our trip is 3 and a half hours and the cost of $100 includes:
# Tea and coffee on arrival
# Printed copy of all recipes involved
# The class
# Lunch with a glass of wine
# 10% discount on all duck products
 
Wow! What a morning.   
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner hits the spot
 
Twenty-five Bearbrass people enjoyed our first “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” on April 8. All three hosts Mel and Pam, Susan and Jan abide in Clarendon Towers in Southbank so we didn’t need to park and unpark and travel, just take a lift up to our dinners.
Guests’ names were drawn from a hat during a convivial starter with champagne in a function room on the ground floor. We got massive value from our $60 fee – champers and Hor d'oeuvres to start, then upstairs to Beef Bourguignon (or mushroom ragout), mashed potatoes and two salads, followed by petit fours and cheeses. The mains caterer was Black Truffle Catering, based at Collingwood, whom we heartily recommend. Dinner drinks were BYO and quite a lot was consumed judging by the racket and merriment in each apartment. 
Mel says that it was a rare night where everything went well without a hitch. That includes the Consort of our President, i.e., our First Gentleman,  being pulled over to the booze truck en route home, where he passed with flying colors thanks to his drinks discipline during the whole night. 
Pics: Pre-Dinner lottery for guest allocation; Susan's scorecard on guest lists; various diners and dinners. Go to Read More to delight in further art photos
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Taxi-driver in trouble - at knife point. Another story by our Clive G.
Pic above: A typical press report of a Melbourne taxi holdup -- not the one described by Clive below.
 
It was 6:30 on a warm Friday night at Tulla airport in 1997. I stood in the taxi queue behind at least fifty other weary travellers. I was sales manager of a Melbourne based automotive component manufacturing company. After two days of tough talks in Adelaide with Mitsubishi, which was about to dump our company for a cheaper Korean supplier, I was exhausted. Taxis flowed from the holding area to the pickup rank, piling passengers and bags on board like a Dyson lifting crumbs from a carpet. As the queue shrank, I glumly wondered how long this country's automotive parts industry would survive. I longed to finish this last leg of the trip and be home with Susan, my two kids, and her pot roast simmering in the oven.
I wondered if I'd score a clean cab with a driver who knew where he was going. As a VT Commodore pulled up, I was in luck. The taxi shone in its Vic Taxi yellow livery.
The driver got out with a smile and offered to stow my carry-all shoulder bag in the boot. I shook my head and put it on the rear seat--conscious of the confidential company documents in my carry-all. I had left my kit in a taxi once before, and I was not about to do it again.
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 Active Retirees monthly - Bearbrass gets 3 stories 
Bearbrass did well on the publicity front this month in Active Retirees, the official magazine of the Probus movement.
The issue gave a full-page profile to our life member Tony Thomas (who also featured in the Victorian bi-monthly Probian last issue, ran an excellent poem by our author Glenys Y, and tucked in a half page story and pic about our committee member Jan S and her remarkable quilting talent (also run in the latest Probian). Our club has certainly raised our profile in Australia and let's hope this leads to new member applications.
Astounding adventures with a missing book

One of our members who is always losing things (advanced years) lost a library book last week that he was engrossed in. It is called Die Laughing and is a biography of The Australian’s late cartoonist Bill Leak, who was also a finalist a dozen times in the Archibald Portrait Prize.
Our member’s spouse (also a member) had gathered a pile of bags of clothes and odds and sods for the local Vinnies. The pair were bound for the local swimming/exercise pool and the male member tossed his library book into the boot alongside the female member’s pile of Vinnie’s donations.
A day or two later he began searching for his library book to no avail, with spouse also searching the house in a mystified way. Neither remembered the Vinnies’ drop-off. 
By the weekend he was turning the house upside down in search of the book. Finally she had the thought, “Perhaps it got itself mixed up with the donations to Vinnies?” 
“You mean you mixed it up!”
“No, you must have put it on top of one bag and the car’s vibrations slowly shook it down inside the bag.”
“Well I’d better re-visit Vinnies and hunt for it there.”
However, he needed his 2pm grandpa nap and lay down to enjoy it. But he got anxious about the book and after 20 minutes he sprang from under the doona, jumped in the car and soon after was at the rear door of Vinnies amid donations piled there ceiling high. It seemed a needle in haystack job. 
He went through the junk and rubble section to the shop to the used book section. A staffer was re-stocking it, and had a fistful of books priced with stickers and ready to insert in the shelves. Buyers were hovering around to pounce on anything worth buying.  Member looked at those books in the staffer’s hand and recognised among them his very target, “Die Laughing – Biography of Bill Leak”.  He stopped the staffer putting it on the shelf and pointed out the non-cancelled library sticker. 
“Hey that’s a book that got wrongly donated after falling by chance into a bag of old clothes,” the member explained diplomatically. The timing was so miraculous that member got the staffer to pose for a picture for Bearbrass. 
Puffing Billy day trip
The gods smiled upon the ten participants in the club’s recent outing to Puffing Billy.
It was a beautiful warm day, all our trains ran on time to Belgrave where we were greeted by the lush greens and bush scents of the Dandenong ranges.
Puffing Billy stood ready as did the army of friendly volunteers who made sure we were comfortable. Our engine took a little while to get steamed up but we were soon on our steady climb to our destination, Lakeside.
We passed stands of monumental trees which took our breath away, crossed historic trestle bridges (over which some us dangled our legs) and waved to many locals and sightseers. On arrival, the spectacular new visitor information centre and café did not disappoint our curious minds and rumbling tummies. A short walk around Emerald Lake followed lunch and soon we back in our seats for the return trip. A great day was had by all.
Wine Tasting with Whistling Eagles

Members of the wine tasting group enjoyed sampling a collection of very tasty wines from the Whistling Eagle vineyard on Friday night. A small enterprise, the Whistling Eagle property at Colbinabbin (30 minutes’ drive from Heathcote) has been owned and worked by the Rathjen family for four generations. Ian Rathjen has been making wine since 1995. He says it’s his passion, not a business. He had to be persuaded to sell what he produces. Even so, if he doesn’t like how a wine has turned out he tips it out rather than bottling it. Life’s too short to drink bad wine! And the Bearbrass wine tasters agree. Pics: our cheery group at Haig St. Standing, sommelier Jill dR
Wonderful Walk at Williamstown
Four happy walking group members joined Clive & Dawn at Williamstown Beach station for the Williamstown Foreshore Walk on 18 March. The walk took in the Botanical gardens , Point Gellibrand Coastal Heritage Park and the historic precinct of Nelson Place. Our final experience was the visit to the Williamstown Morgue, the original morgue, built from local blue stone hewn by convict labour and built in 1859. Convivial coffee was then enjoyed prior our departure from Williamstown station.
 
Pictures: Our group at the Williamstown time ball tower (left) and at Williamstown Botanic Gardens
Movie Group does "Cyrano"
MOVIE LOVERS, the WEDNESDAY NIGHTS’ GROUP
By Sue B.
And Let’s Go To The Movies we did.
 
I really pushed the friendship last week when I suggested the feature film, “ Cyrano”.
 
Cyrano de Bergerac tells the story of a man in love with a beautiful woman but, thinking himself unworthy of her love, guides another man to woo her with poetic love messages.
 
Cyrano has been told in film many times, perhaps the most famous starred Gerard Depardieu.
This latest version stars the vertically challenged Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennet, Kelvin Harrison Jr and the Australian Ben Mendelsohn.
Directed by Joe Wright ( Atonement) 
Screenplay by Erica Schmidt, adapted from her award winning play.
And music by - yes, it's a musical - Aaron and Bryce Dessner.
 
My challenge to the Bearbrass members was, “Who's game to join me”?
And 8 intrepid members did.
Personally, I was pleasantly surprised by this version of the story. It was truly tragic, and I may have shed a tear. Others shed a tear also, but for other reasons. There were too many songs and at times the lyrics were clunky. 
But the performances especially those of Dinklage, Bennet and our own Ben Mendelsohn as the evil Duke were very good.
Shot in Sicily for France, the production design was sumptuous, the costumes and make up beautiful. Even considering camera lenses and lighting, Haley Bennet as Roxane was luminescent. 
It was reasonably late when the film finished, but our own Wine Tasting Maestro, Jill, knew exactly where to go --  Johnny’s Green Room.
Excellent pizzas and wine were enjoyed even if the young woman who served us called us “My lovelies”. But we got our own back! We might have been the oldest group there, but we were the last to leave. That’ll show’em.
Picture Left: Mel and Pam, Neil and Jill demolishing a bottle of red
 
How Robyn 63,  gets up and down the Yarra
Melbourne Bearbrass Probus stalwart Robyn Blake at 63 thinks nothing of rowing five kilometres down the Yarra from her club in Hawthorn, before her races even start. Then Robyn (pink cap, front of boat) and her female Four – the eldest 66 – do the 3.5km race and afterwards they row home upstream for another 8km. She rows 12 hours a week, or about 30km. 
She’s been rowing 14 years and hopes to keep rowing for another 20. “Some people are still rowers at 90,” she says. “They might seem creaky in the rowing shed but once in the boat they’re fine.” 
She and her quad in their last two years were Masters’ gold medal winners at Rutherglen, Vic. in January, gold medallists at Barwon Heads mid-2021 and best of all, State gold medallists in the Melbourne Head Race last November. 
“Sometimes we find ourselves competing against 18-year-olds,” she laughs. “We’ve really improved through togetherness. We’re more controlled and less frantic when the race starts. Our coach has drummed into us, ‘OK, you’re here to row this particular race. It doesn’t matter how well the other crews row. All that matters is how well you row today.” 
She took up rowing when she was watching her daughter Florien on the river in Year 9 for MLC school. Florien went on to be Vice Captain of Boats. “ We mums envied our daughters’ fitness and decided we could emulate them,” Robyn says. “It’s a mind-body thing. It’s made me unimaginably healthier, starting with my legs, and I have to be mentally fit too –if your head is not in the right place your every stroke can be off. Good strokes come when you’re calm and in control. It’s a therapy really.” 
She and Andrew, her husband of 37 years, have two daughters and one son aged from 22 to 28 and all are working or studying in England or California. 
How does Andrew view it all? – “He’s driving me to the river in the car right now, he’s giving a thumbs up,” she says. “He did some rowing 
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lessons but prefers jogging around the Botanic Gardens.” 
Robyn, who is also an historical novelist, loves the knowledge-sharing and socialising in Bearbrass Probus. “We can all learn so much from each other,” she says. #
 
 
Kerrie finds river pics a challenge

Getting these splendid pics of Bearbrass’s veteran rower Robyn B was no light matter. We asked Bearbrass member Kerrie M to photograph the event. She’s culled the best few from more than 400 she took in a torrid early-morning shoot on the Yarra’s narrow stretch near Hawthorn.
To get the right angles and lighting, Kerrie managed to get a ride in the coaching tinnie with outboard, and shoot from mid-river.
 “Lucky those tiknnies are stable and I didn’t fall out,” she says. “I had to leave behind my 12kg bag of telephoto lenses, because they’d get wet in the bottom of the boat. Lucky I had my ‘Sherpa’ husband Pierre there to haul me up and out afterwards.”
She originally planned to shoot down on Robyn from a bridge but the angles were too extreme so she worked from the bank and mid-river. “With a portrait you can control where to place your subject, ‘Just stand here by the garden bed,’ you say. With rowers they’re moving all over the place, and there’s safety issues for everyone on the water.
“The  Yarra stretch was so busy with other boats that I heaps of people and athletes interrupting my sight-lines. I was shooting in bright sunlight but the river banks were in deep shadow and heavily tree’d. I needed to use a shutter speed of 1/1600th and 1/2000th of a second exposures because of the movement of the rowers and the movement of the tinnie. That made it difficult to balance the light and risked getting graininess in the shots.”
 Then there was the problem of making the four women in Robyn’s boat all presentable. “They’re exuding energy on the oars, not posing with nice smiles. I’d get a good shot but one of them might be grimacing and it is important to show your subjects at their best. I shot them in bursts of 10-15 pics to get just one that’s OK.”
 Kerrie’s been improving her skills ever since she got the photography bug doing folk culture pics in Korea when Pierre was stationed there a decade ago. She’s done lion and elephant studies on safari in her native South Africa – “But this experience with Robyn was one of my biggest challenges,” she says. 
About Our Club
Bearbrass Probus

We meet In Person
Tuesdays at 10:30 AM
Library at the Dock
Top Floor
107 Victoria Harbour Promenade
Docklands, VIC 3008
Australia
Phone:
0419 134 206
Email:
bearbrassprobus@gmail.com
The club meets on the second Tuesday of the month, 10am for 10.30am start. Speakers offer a presentation at each meeting on a variety of topics.
Venue Map
Apply for Membership
Upcoming Events
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Speakers
Upcoming Speakers
Ross Berner
Jun 14, 2022
Is Pluto a Planet?
Is Pluto a Planet?
Past Speakers
Father Bob Maguire
May 10, 2022
Who cares, wins
Bianca Friend
Apr 12, 2022
Offering new hope to Australia’s threatened wildlife
Peter Abbott
Feb 08, 2022
All things Puffing Billy
Mick Warner
Nov 09, 2021
The Boys' Club
Stephen Peterson
Oct 12, 2021
All things Japan - what you might not learn from your travel agent!
Mark Cochrane-Holley
Sep 14, 2021 11:30 AM
Melbourne’s Thriving Economy of the Future
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