15 April 2012 Scrivener's Breakfast

Getting There

This event was organised by Mike L of the Surveying & Spacial Sciences Institute of the ACT:

Sunday 15 April 2012 - Scrivener's Breakfast. It is that time of year again! The traditional Scrivener’s Breakfast will be held again at Surveyors Park on 15 April. This laid-back, relaxing morning is held during Heritage Week each year here in the ACT. Located at the site of Charles Scrivener’s camp and plan hut which he used during the surveying of the ACT early last century, surveyors, other spatial scientists and members of the public have met to share a story and enjoy a bush breakfast of bacon and eggs, toast, billy tea and cereals around a campfire on a peaceful cool Autumn morning. We invite members of the general public to join our function for a gold coin donation, whilst it will be free for all surveyors, spatial scientists, their friends and families. We usually are given a formal theme from the Heritage Week organisers, but this year members and guests will be invited to share any good old fashioned yarn based on a topic of their choice.

Event

For the second time, Mike has been generous enough to invite me to this breakfast. A great breakfast, location within a couple of hundred metres of Parliament House, great people.

This year I was able to struggle up with:

Scrivener’s Breakfast ‘Pome’

When Mike extended the invitation to me to join you at breakfast

He asked, tongue in cheek, how much of the ACT border was un-Evans-ed.

 

I wander around it, don’t you know

Searching for border markers, it’s all the go

Of strange folk like me – so here’s my report

Do clap at the end – please, no retort.

 

Three hundred k-s is the length of the ACT border

Up till now, I’ve walked half of it – of that order.

Thanks to Alex of ACTPLA, I know where to go

But he omits to tell me about cliff lines and snow.

Last year I rhymed about adventures I’d had

Near nudist clubs and cops who thought I was mad.

This year, much to my chagrin and dismay

I found markers on the straight line. That’s not fair – hey?

It means I have to trudge more distance until

I locate them all, from Coree to One Tree Hill.

Another puzzle I face – I’ll solve it before I’m much older

Is Mouat’s “one inch gas pipe driven into cleft of boulder”

On that wonderful Brindabella Range hill, Mt Gingera –

Can anyone help me with the loan of a metal detect-era?

(oh boy, that was weak!)

Further south, in the Bimberi Wilderness, there are cans

I suspect they are Harry’s lunch tins of Spam

Emptied and filled with concrete to the brim

Laid on the granite slabs – a border corner of tin.

One hundred years ago they were placed with precision

Still marking the border – where is it? – an easy decision.

When Mouat and Johnson met – oh happy day

Past Sentry Box Mountain, down Boboyan Divide way.

They celebrated with a fine camp dinner in the cold

The menu included jelly in hollowed out oranges, I’m told.

So we breakfast today in the Heritage Festival and next year

Canberra’s centenary, thanks to you surveyors and others, hear hear!

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This page last updated 29Aug22