Ishka

After 8 months break, camping and relaxing I was starting to get frustrated. I hadn’t learnt how to relax and no matter how many beautiful beaches and campgrounds I was ready for a new challenge.

Then my cousin Mike Sklovsky, the owner and founder of Ishka stores phoned. He had an exciting proposition – buy in to half of the business and take over the day-to-day running starting….now! After a few weeks negotiation I took the leap and began the weekly commute to Melbourne, leaving Beechworth early Tuesday morning and returning Thursday evening.

Five months in and with a hectic Christmas trade behind us I am pondering the year ahead. It has been en enormous challenge stepping into a well established business with a culture, systems, product range and processes not of my making. In many ways it’s been harder than Anaconda and World Surplus – 2 businesses that I co-founded and grew from scratch.

The highlights have been the opening of the very successful new Southland store, new Karma Card, marketing program (some hits & misses), Christmas catalogue, increased wholesale sales, some improved systems and processes and significant cost savings.

I still have lots to learn about this unique business and there are many areas of improvement ahead. Retail trade is expected to be tough for the next year or so – not the best time to buy into a new business.

The weekly drive is wearing me down but I’m enjoying staying at Mum’s 2 days a week and re-connecting with her. An Ishka helicopter?

I now look back longingly on those lazy beach days with kids.

Regards,

The Worker

Christmas is for kids

The kids are now at the perfect age for Christmas - old enough to enjoy the excitement but young enough to believe. They counted down the sleeps to Christmas and agreed to clear the fireplace out for father Christmas but didn't buy into the "Santa only brings presents for good kids" story.

We packed up and went down to Flinders in mid-December and on the appointed day went to Granny Annie's for breakfast, Pa Pud's family for lunch and Grandma Jude and Pa Clyde's family for dinner.

Got home to Flinders at 11pm exhausted and bloated looking forward to a relaxed boxing day.

Came back to Beechworth on 28 January for a relaxed and fun New Year celebration. Jane and I even made it to 11pm!

Regards,

The Darvalls

Kinder Kids Koncert

The kids and parents are loving the Beechworth Montessori Kinder/School. The thoughtful and attentive teachers have really brought out the best in our 3 kids and we're all enjoying meeting new local families. Ironically most of them are Melbourne refugees like us.

All of the kids were involved in the recent annual Montessori concert themed around the mystical Peacock. A real and very spectacular peacock lives in the school grounds and is the school's official symbol and mascot.

Love from Jane, Toby, Ollie, Eloise and Henry

Floods

There was a huge amount of rain all through NE Victoria from September - December ending over 10 years of drought and delivering widespread floods. Beechworth is 580m above sea-level so all our water runs off quickly to lower lying creeks and rivers, ending up in the mighty Murray River. All the local creeks pour over the Woolshed Falls - a spectacular sight and sound when in full flow. The kids loved it.

Uncle Grant and Aunty Penny came to stay continuing the long line of quality visitors to Beechworth.

Love from the Waterlogged Darvalls

Kids Catch

It was a quiet Saturday a few weeks ago and Henry, Eloise and I wandered down to the lake with our freshly dug garden worms. Within 20 minutes pulled in 3 beautiful rainbow trout which were delicious. Boasted about it to all of Beechworth and have never been able to replicate the feat!

Love from Jeremy Fisher and Kids

Mt Buffalo Snow

Chris and her two girls, Charlie and Mia, joined us on the kids' first ever trip to the snow. What a great day! We now live only 40mins from Mt Buffalo so its a great day trip. The kids loved the tobogganing - particuarly Ollie and Charlie - and everyone came home exhausted and happy (all snoring in the car on the way home).

Love from the Snow Bunnies

Clippity Clop

Heard a clip-clop, clip-clop out the front today. Look who passed by....

Another day in the country!

Love from the Darvalls

Party Time!

Ollie turned 5 the other day. We celebrated his birthday over 4 days in Melbourne with friends and family and we even managed to make it to Cinnamon's 40th Birthday party.

Plenty of cake was consumed, too many presents and lots of excitement at seeing old friends.

Love from the Darvalls

Bike Gang in Beechworth

The kids have gone bike mad. They refuse to walk anywhere – they insist on riding. Despite constant prangs and tears, they have kept at it and their riding has improved a lot – it helps when we’re only 50 metres from a fabulous bike track.

Most of the bikes were free. You gotta love a chuck out pile. A bit of oil, some new tubes, training wheels and these little bikes are as good as new.

Love from the Hells Angels

Chilly Mornings

It’s been very cold lately. The other morning it got down to -4 degrees – that wasn’t in the Beechworth brochure! The ice was almost 2 inches thick on the pond and all the grass would crackle as you walked over it.

The kids love collecting shards of ice in the morning and either eating them or crashing them on the ground.

We’ve only been here 3 months and we’ve gone through almost 5 tonnes of fire wood in the new wood heater.

Jane and Kris have come up with some new Red Rascal t-shirt designs which are selling well.

Love from the Eskimos

First Day at Kinder

The kids trooped off to the local Montessori Kinder today – a great step forward for the Darvall family. They came home relaxed and excited and their parents were very happy to have some time on their own after 8 months of 24/7 kid time.

The kinder is on the grounds of the historic asylum which is now part of the Latrobe Uni campus which is on the hill overlooking Beechworth – 3 minutes from home.

We’re all settling in well to our new home and enjoying having the time to set it up properly. Some great progress in the garden and around the house.

We finally settled on the property today – what a relief after various hiccups.

Love from the Darvalls

Pa Pud and Grandma Linda come to visit

Pa Pud and Grandma Linda came to visit the other day. A great time was had by all – the kids were particularly excited. Living in the country (but still only 3 hours from Melbourne) has attracted a fine collection of overnight visitors which has been great. Whereas in Melbourne friends and family would drop around for an hour or two and maybe stay for dinner, we get a better quality of visitor up here.

After a boozy first night on the red wine, Dad, Ollie and I were up early to cut wood. Dad unsheathed “the beast” – his fabulous new Stihl “Forrest Mauler” chainsaw. A huge trailer load later and we were back neatly stacking in the wood pile. A very satisfying job – I might have to get one of those maulers.

That night we all settled in for an early night after all the strenuous activity. At 9.30pm mobile phones started ringing – cattle had escaped from Moorong (Dad’s farm on the Mornington Peninsula) and were rampaging through the cemetery. Dad and Linda quickly decamped and headed for Flinders – an almost 5 hour drive.

Love from the Lumberjacks

Ps. All’s well that ends well – Dad and Linda arrived at Flinders at 2.30am and at first light managed to get 2 cows and the large Angus Bull back onto the farm. No headstones were harmed in the making of this episode.

The Cafe Life

The latte lifestyle has certainly come to Beechworth – at last count there were over 10 places to buy a coffee. But the best one is definitely “The Larder” owned by our friend Georgie – an old school friend of Jane’s who moved here about 5 years ago. Make sure you visit when you’re up here.

Every weekend the streets are bustling with out-of-town baby boomers in search of the weekend paper and a good coffee. The beautifully preserved main street of Beechworth is full of gift and fashion shops which thrive off the weekend tourers. Apparently less than 15 years ago many of the shop fronts were boarded up and unoccupied.

Tom O’Toole’s famous Beechworth Bakery has led the retail resurgence while adding centimetres onto the waistlines of locals and tourists alike. It’s not the “done thing” to praise the Beechworth Bakery – many of the local commentators think it’s a bit passé – but they should think themselves lucky Mr O’Toole chose Beechworth to plonk his bakery.

Love from the Eclairs and Boston Buns