What makes your Nillumbik home town/area unique? Who are the characters who have made it so? What sites have significance and why?
During 2005 Nillumbik Shire Council and the Literary Reference Group invited members of the community to respond to these questions, to show us the history and flavour of your place – then and now – in a 500 word anecdote. The following article was written by Sheila Dixon who passed away in April 2008. Her daughter has kindly given permission to share her story, originally titled : Post Office in the shed
Just recently we lost our century old Kangaroo Ground Store. It’s demise was the result of a sale and it’s most urgent need was the Post Office. Not only the mail but all the extra services a Post Office in a small farming community needs. The answer came from an unexpected quarter in the form of Ken who owns the vineyard over the road by the church. He thought he would have a go and had one corner of the wine shed purpose built into a post office, the whole business, post boxes lining the walls, the big L shaped bench where mail is stamped and all those prepaid boxes, envelopes and nick nacks into which we can slip our parcels. There are a few extras like the old chocolate tin where the money goes for the Age and the Sun and a chair and table outside if you want a chat. This was one of the things that Ken wanted to retain, the meeting place for the neighbourhood, where we could find out who got their VCE , what the latest baby looked like and other vital news from around the traps. Really essential stuff. Of course in among the post boxes and the different mailing packets and all the accoutrements of a PO there are on the side, great vats of fermenting grapes. As you walk in the PO door you can smell the wines fermenting, Cab Sav, Pinot and Chardonnay and this combined with letters Parcels, stamps provides quite an exotic atmosphere. The Post Office overlooks the vineyard and overlooks the grapes ripening in the autumn sunshine. When the wedding veils come off soon, then the picking will start. The business end of the wine shed (which you reach through some lovely stained glass doors that Ken had made) will be busy with the accoutrements of winemaking. In the next two weeks that magical change will happen with the grapes. The sugar will be just the right level for the alcohol to form. And the grapes will have just that particular ripeness that their maker deems to be exactly what he has been looking for. That particular magic that has been enclosed in these vines for as long as history. Kangaroo Ground has done it again. A Post Office in a wine shed. I ask you, but where else?
©Sheila Dixon