Having a niece time

I consider myself extremely fortunate that my visit coincides with several events on my Uncle Mick's social calendar. First up is Friday night Scottish Country Dancing in a local hall. It's a practise session and we learn a handful of new dances, none of which I've come across before, and I meet the regulars over fruit squash in the break. There's the Glaswegian in tartan troos whose accent is as broad as the day he left for Australia. There's a Mediterranean type called Achilles or something, who makes up in enthusiasm what he lacks in technique. There's a rather poe-faced woman who hisses at me when I take a wrong turn, but there's always one of those and I laugh it off. As a young (ish) Scot, I am quite the curiosity.

Another of Mick's favourite things to do is sing with the Melbourne Welsh Male Choir. He loves to organise, too, so as well as singing tenor he serves on the choir committee, which seems to deliver no end of behind-the-scenes drama, even the occasional hissy fit.

The choir has a performance while I'm here, in a community theatre in Kingston. We have stirring Welsh numbers and a poem, My Father Was A Miner, read to a background of voices that is exceptionally moving. Then the choir sings a medley from Les Mis and we have a captivating guest soloist, a soprano called Kate Amos. I'm told the chaps are not entirely happy with their performance but it all sounds just lovely to me. I can't quite believe I'm here, in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, watching a choir singing in Welsh.  

The day after the choir gig I join Mick on a foray with the Full Moon Hash. Today's Hash is in a suburban reserve with cracking views of Melbourne in the distance and we trot around a course set by a man known only as 'Non Stop'. Hashing involves following a trail of markers or arrows drawn with flour until you locate the Check, then you have to look for the next trail leading to the next Check. There's lots of shouting 'On on' and it's supposed to be non-competitive.

After a barbecue supper everyone stands in a circle and the ritual humiliations begin. I have to do a 'down down' as a Hash virgin – you are sung a bawdy song, then have to drink up in one go while everyone chants 'down down down down'. The strangely old-school customs originate from 1937 when the first Hash was founded in Kuala Lumpur by a group of ex-pat single men. Their British public-school backgrounds must have dictated the way the rules and regs developed, from cross-country paper chases with their 'hares' who set the courses, to the nicknames given to each member of the Hash. Mick is called 'Father' because he founded this particular Hash when he arrived in Melbourne. Margaret isn't Hashing at the moment but once upon a time she went by the moniker 'Mother Superior'. After the run, out comes Mick's coat-of-many-Hash-badges.

Finally, my uncle loves to go bushwalking, though this could be temporary training for the English Coast to Coast walk we'll be doing in August. Nevertheless, Mick is up and tramping around  most mornings by 7am. One walk I particularly enjoy is not in the bush but along the cliffs and beaches of the south coast, with Mick, cousin Bernard and Russ the Jack Russell. It's called the George Bass Coastal Walk, named after the man who explored much of the coastline some 200 years ago. I see it as a walkabout with family elders, albeit the fittest ones I know.
We are meant to start at sea level, hopping around the rocks linking one beach to another but here is Bernard realising that he forgot to check the tide. It's in.

Still, it's a glorious day and a spectacularly scenic hike along the coast of the Bass Strait, with waves roaring in and crashing onto the sand and rocks.

The final stretch is a rock-hop over, I assume, platforms formed by lava flow and a return to the car via an old tressle railway bridge, from a time when the line serviced coal mines in the area.