The basic facts people usually want to know:-
Born in Yorkshire but parents from other parts of England so no, I don’t have (much) of a Yorkshire accent.
Have done lots of different jobs over the years but for now I am working as a Remedial Massage Therapist, running a business partly from my own home, but also in clinics in Bendigo and Moonee Ponds.
Always been a football fan (round ball variety), with passions in the past for Hull City and Southampton (clues there for my past and family links). I used to do social media and match reports for Richmond Town FC in Yorkshire, and transferred those skills over to Football South Coast in NSW, and now the Sebastopol Vikings in Victoria.
Spare time activities: singing (Essendon Choral Society); swimming; films; oh, and writing a blog…
Whenever I move to a new part of the world, I like to set up a project for myself to help get to know the area I’ve moved to, to learn a bit about the communities that live in those areas, and to delve into the history of the places.
In NSW, for three years, I set myself the goal of swimming in all the ocean pools from Ballina to Eden, and mapped them on a website. Even the ABC took an interest in that project, and called me The Pool Guy.
Before that, my wife and I emigrated to Australia from the UK, travelling overland (mostly) across 25 countries so that we would take the same amount of time as our possessions arriving by ship. We blogged as we travelled, but I also published an e-book telling some of the stories of that journey: Crossing Paths, Crossing Borders is still available online.
In North Yorkshire, where we used to live, I visited all the market towns (about 50 of them), looking for good stories and great coffee or tea. Fancy a Cuppa, North Yorkshire, was the result of that adventure. The book sold out during the Tour de France in 2014, but most of the entries can still be seen on my UK site.
When we lived in the USA for a year, we decided to visit two towns in every state east of the Mississippi. A bit random, maybe, but the small towns we went to in 26 states probably gave us much more of insight into mainstream America than any weekends in Chicago museums or Florida beaches. My account of that year is now out of print, sadly.
And so to Victoria.
We moved to Castlemaine right at the end of 2017, having both previously visited only on holidays in the past. That meant a whole new state to discover. But there aren’t enough ocean pools in Victoria to repeat my NSW venture.
So we sat back and thought about what sort of things we like to see and experience when we go on day trips, and Vintage Victoria is the result.
Some people have suggested other categories to include in Vintage Victoria. One man said he’d like to see painted silos, for example, but the idea of this website is first of all to describe my experience in these places today, and I haven’t set foot in a silo since I worked on a pig farm in Germany as a student.
Other suggestions have been for buildings that are no longer used for the purpose they were built for. But part of what I will enjoy on this journey is to compare the modern-day usage with older stories of when the buildings or places were first around. So Vintage Victoria is a site to talk about old places that still have a relevance today and are used (more or less) for the same activities as before.
We have a few other ideas to follow up, but I think the six categories here will keep us going for a while yet. I hope you enjoy the journey with us…