Mango Happy Hour on the Hume
While driving back from Sydney and just past Campbelltown (The ghost of Fisher) turn off, we kept noticing colourful signs with “Happy Mango Hour”. After another five kilometres or so the signs kept on appearing, stating, “3km happy Mango Hour”, “2km happy Mango Hour” till we arrived at a large parking spot with many semi trailers parked, as well as cars near another large truck. “Happy Mango Hour Here now,” heralded yet another sign on the truck.
We had arrived at the “happy Mango Hour.” The area is a popular truck stop over, also has drinking water and public toilet. The toilet was unisex but ‘naturellement sans pissoir,’ and as we all know, male toilet habits are less precise as that of females so Helvi quickly darted out, decided she could hang in till we arrived back in Bowral.
For Vivienne.
The truck with mangos was at the tail-end of trade, packing up with just a few cases of mangos left. We hit the Jackpot and were sold 22 glorious mangoes at twenty dollars. Two golden syrups, tall skinny boys were running the show, black and eagle eyed with large sharp noses. “Sri-Lankans we are;” after I asked where they came from. Turned out they drive each week-end from somewhere up north and then get this spot on the Hume, rightly guessing that way south, there would be keener mango lovers, perhaps with people as yet to come out of hibernation? An early touch of the tropics down south, as it were.
Clever blokes, savvy like anything, cheerful like buggery, cottoning on ‘happy hour,’ quick flash and making a bit of dough. Good on them
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Pingback: Mango Happy Hour « Oosterman Treats Blog
By the way, the etching of the silverbeet is one of a few I did on vegetables many years ago. On the farm we had the silverbeet going berserk, even the chickens couldn’t keep up. It finally escaped from the quite considerable vegie garden and started self seeding, propping up everywhere.
When left alone, the silverbeet grow massive stalks, almost tree like.
Oh, the farm! It’s so nice now having reliable electricity and a good telephone.
LikeLike
Gerard, I hungrily wonder if you would be so kind as to describe something of the media you have used to create your art (you just are so generous to show us here) and as well are we viewing slides. What is the original done on and what with and size, please?
LikeLike
Sure Shoe.
I covered a copper plate with some acid resisting black bitumen. I then scribbled through the bitumen layer a kind of drawing which, after dipping the plate into the acid would bite into the created drawing and groove. I then washed the bitumen off with turpentine and rolled a black or coloured type of ink over the plate which I would promptly wash off. The black or coloured ink would remain in the drawn groove previously ‘etched’ out by the acid.
The next stage would then be to put paper on the copper plate and put through the etching press. The etching press consisted of heavy steel rollers which would then compress the paper into the copper plate when rolled through it. The black or coloured ink would be taken up onto the paper reflecting the drawing onto the paper but into reverse.
That’s the basics of doing etchings.
Hope this is clear and not too confusing. I used a converted mangle to do my etchings. I did many and those copper plates are somewhere left behind on the farm in a milk crate. Future archeologists might well ponder over them. Who knows?
I am showing you some originals with some of them done in limited editions. I even used to laminate them and use for plate mats. C’est la vie.
LikeLike
Thank you Gerard. That is very kind. Your finished product appears to be very fine. I like the idea of these images being place mats at a table for a feast.
LikeLike
I don’t know about Vivian but this Vivienne has a list of famous men’s loos which she has frequented. I usually find there are two proper toilets (for number 2s) which are clean and appear to be totally unused. I have also used uni-sex loos and can confirm that my ability to pee while almost standing up has been a blessing. I did come unstuck once in Greece when I pushed the foot pedal flusher only to have a torrent of water descend on me from above (the pipe no longer connected to the floor) – I emerged from the loo into the restaurant totally saturated but very refreshed. Talk about laugh……..
LikeLike
I used to know Vivienne but called her Vivian for short (but not for long). That’s truly remarkable Vivianne, but can confirm my reciprocate way of doing it sitting down when I do not wish to switch on the light and wake up people. Of course I have to tuck things well into the bowl, not always so easy early in the morning.
Still, where there is a way there is a will.
LikeLike
Good lord, Gerard! My hubby does that too! In the country everything is so much louder at night as it is so quiet.
LikeLike
I cannardly wait. I sent to the real estate agents for their application forms yesterday, finally. Every time yet another hoon revs their engine! I live on a suburban street just UP from the bottom of a hill that goes a long way further UP! I have begun to daydream of that quiet, Vivienne. 🙂
LikeLike
LOL… but when I have especially visitors at my address for their having a break from their own tiresome environments causing tiring episodes in their heads, I perch on an aside so the sound of my liquid is only an inadvertent trickle to not wake them in their proximity by otherwise splashing. I have had enough of living in a flat, let alone on the side of the road. 🙂
LikeLike
Sandshoe, perhaps you could petition your local council to make your street ‘one-way’, going DOWNHILL…? But of course, you will soon be moving to Bordertown, so it probably won’t make too much difference to you even it your petition is successful…
Oh well… back to sleep now…
😉
LikeLike
I understand the side-perch well. It is a good thing to do especially after an evening of cold ales or whatever.
Without the side-perch it can sound like a waterfall (which of course is pretty much just what it is – water falling).
LikeLike
I can see us refining our descriptions of this taken-for-granted or wishily-washily described function! Waterfall! So excellent, Viv!
LikeLike
@astyages: your address is quiet other than when you are lit in it playing music … my experience of that hospitality. Good enough you sleep having a nanny nap. 🙂
LikeLike
It is a good idea to get the traffic moving only downhill! I will put in an application to petition the council on behalf of others subjected to ‘the track’, astyages!
LikeLike
Twenty two mangoes for twenty bucks, that’s good buying. According to ‘Landline’ there’s a new, Australian bred mango coming onto the market called ‘Kylie’, but, don’t know if she’ll be available at a truck stop near you.
There’s a profusion of places to stop on the way to Canberra, all of those ‘VC such and such’ stops with picnic tables, water and composting toilets. We all discussed our favourite stops the other night at a dinner party (we’d exhausted NSW politics, as it’s all buggered). The men all declared that every stop was great. The women all declared that every dunny stank, and they all hung on until Goulbourn. We then lamented that the stainless steel dunnies at Goulbourn Park have been replaced with cheap porcelein.
Fascinating dinner parties round these parts!
Good story, by the way, Gez. Loved your Victa piece over at UL, pity not all of the posters ‘got it’.
LikeLike
Always liked the toilets at Goulburn Park. They provided paper towels and hot water. Only problem were the taps. They were springloaded and as soon as you let go, no water. I never developed enough speed for both my hands to get to the water before it shut off. One ended up washing one hand at a time though. Still, better than nothing.
Now they have taps that seem to sense when a hand gets near them and stop flowing when you take your hand away. They are intelligent taps. More than you can say about the vandals that seem to want to drill holes in the partitions between the cubicles. What are they expecting to see? Gee, some are desperate souls.
I’ll be mowing our little lawn soon. You are most kind BigM
LikeLike
Perhaps you should have used your elbow for the tap, Gerard? Have fun with your Victa, won’t you!
😉
LikeLike
Mangoes are one of Tutu’s favourites.
LikeLike
Mango for Tutu and then Tango for two too?
LikeLike
…are you the other one, Hung?
LikeLike
the One perhaps?
LikeLike
I have made a number of online friends in Sri Lanka, Gez. I adore my Lankan friends I speak with from time to time. I love my Lankan friends. The charm and ambitious drive – did I say yet good looks – o I had not, fearing saying that too often I might be thought inappropriate. 🙂
LikeLike
sandshoe, people with an eye for beauty, be it nature, animals, plants, houses. interiors, clothes, paintings, in people themselves, appreciate beauty in all its forms…
No, it’s never inappropriate, we need to celebrate beauty unashamed…
LikeLike
I loved Gaugin’s paintings when I saw them first as they took me away from the narrowly repressive society of dos and don’t, H…
Rodin’s ‘She Who Was the Helmet-Maker’s Beautiful Wife’ I viewed as a plate in a friend’s art book when I was 19. I felt the beauty of that sculpture keenly. There is something about being me now that is repressing me, H. Thank you kindly for your helpful words…
LikeLike
I’ll drink to that, Helvi! Cheers!
🙂
LikeLike
I’ve just been away from myself too long over recent months and maybe years. I got caught up in responsibilities as I saw them elsewhere.
LikeLike
Mangoes (or Mangos if it is chosen as a spelling) were my favourite food growing up in NQ where they lay on the ground in profusion in the backyard. We had two mango trees and the neighbours across a laneway had another as big, huge. 🙂
LikeLike