Melbourne

The Melbourne adventure started on Thursday 25 May when I flew in, and made my way by airport bus and local train service to Shaun and Lindsey, and Hazel, old friends from Grahamstown/Rhodes.

On Friday I took the tram into Melbourne (one of the tram lines ends very close to Shaun and Lindsey's home - very convenient), and spent some time exploring the city centre. I started off on the South bank of the Yarra river, with a walk through the Alexandra Gardens and the Royal Botanic Gardens, and found a geocache. Along the way I encountered the Shrone of Remembrance - an enormous monument to those lost in the World Wars. After some lunch on the Southbank Promenade I spent some time exploring the centre of town, which is a maze of alleys and shopping streets, with some lovely old buildings (and some interesting graffiti art!).

On Saturday, we started off at Hazel's horse-riding lesson, during which Shaun and I went for a walk along the Yarra river. We saw a stack of wild kangaroos, and a lot of bird life while strolling along the excellent paths along the river. We then headed up the Yarra river valley, a beautiful drive through stunning scenery with hills and forests, and stopped off at the small village of St Andrews, which was having a market day. That was reminiscent of the craft markets at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, with various traders selling all sorts of good (and including some excellent local produce). From there we headed on to Kinglake where we had some lunch at a cozy bakery, before going to a nearby viewpoint with incredible views back to the coast and the city. The next stop on our Saturday drive was Olinda, reached on a drive past farms and vineyards. In Olinda we explored the National Rhododendron Gardens: beautiful public gardens and then had some afternoon tea before heading home.

Sunday 28 May was rather cold, grey and drizzly, but we set our for a drive down coast along the Eastern side of Port Philip Bay (Melbourne is at the Northern end of this enormous, protected bay - you can just make out the city in the centre of the photo, on the horizon). We started off at Ricketts Point with a chilly walk on the beach, followed by essential warming fluids from a cafe! From there we drove down to Frankston and on to Mt Eliza where we found another excellent market in progress (and I was introduced to delicious dim sims - "a Chinese-inspired meat and vegetable dumpling-style snack food, popular in Australia" as defined by Wikipedia). Having frozen enough for the day, we headed home with a brief detour to the Monash University Campus where Lindsey works. That is a very attractive campus, with an amazing "rock garden", set up by the Geology Department for a million dollars or so (i.e. about ten million Rand!).

On the Monday I headed into town on the tram again, with a stop at Deakin University where Shaun works. He was able to show me around the campus for a while, including his new VR lab and a 3D VR "cube", which was amazing. When I got to town I headed up to the Queen Victoria Market, only to find that they are closed on a Monday!. I then took the circular tram (a free touristy ride around the centre of Melbourne with canned commentary on some of the sights, in an old wooden tram car (see photo below). I spent the afternoon wandering around the National Gallery of Victoria, which had some excellent displays of old Chinese and Japanese art as well as traditional and modern European artists (and Australian artists, of course). In the evening I met up with an old school friend, Rod Stumbles,and his partner for a delicious Indian meal. It was really good to catch with Rod again, as we hadn't seen each other since leaving school.

I spent quite some time on Tuesday morning organising the details of my trip to Tasmania, then had lunch with Geoff Rehmet (a past student, now working for Dimension Data in Australia). AFter lunch I headed up to the Queen Victoria Market, only to find that they were busy packing up as they close at 14:00 (clearly I wasn't meant to experience them!). The rest of the afternoon was spent at ACMI, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, which is a museum/display of all things related to film, TV, and now digital art forms.