More recent Travel

 Not a series of old rock songs but the road home. We packed up expeditiously and drove out of the hotel (with little drama fitting through the car park entrance this time) at 0750.  There was a little excitement on getting to the street as a brown bomber was giving out pickets just down the road: but he didn't pay any attention to us.  (Which probably means he got a high score in the "Self-preservation" section of the selection test.) No need to involve Sheila on the way out of town as it is very simple: Right turn onto Victoria St, drive 300m and right turn on to Exhibition St.  Going down the first 500m of Batman Ave, offer up a prayer that we are not running up that slope (on a parallel road) at the start of the Melbourne Marathon. On, on to the Wild East. The most surprising thing about this image is how little traffic was coming towards us. Normally that road is 3 lanes full doing 20kph.  Also note the gloomy looking sky.   The sky became a little more active very s

 This refers back to yesterdays comment about the Mexican weather: "Wait 5 minutes and it will change!"  So today we were out at the Western Treatment Plant (a massive sewage works at Werribee) doing birding.  It was colder than yesterday and a strong wind was blowing.  Little actual rain but Avalon recorded 9.4mm of rain yesterday so everywhere was muddy. A little earlier in the day we went to the Queen Vic markets as they will be closed tomorrow.  At 7am it is not crowded. My snag supplier. The main activity today was going to the Western Treatment Plant at Werribee for birding.  This was our fourth trip in that direction.  The first time we did without satnav and got horribly lost about three ways.  The next two times we used Google Maps and all was fine.  This time we used the satnav in the Mazda.  The main problem was that the system seemed to have a lot of trouble working out where we were starting from and then had trouble linking to reality.  In the image below: the r

 This is a traditional Melbourne question, usually accompanied by the answer "Wait 5 minutes and it'll change."  I think this is rather optimistic! It was fine when we went for an early walk, passing by Lincoln Park, with the best jungle gym I have come across.  Were I not an old person I would have been into that.  I am told that later in the day younger grand-daughter (SP2) was well into it, although nervous about the big enclosed slippery dip. Semi-modern architecture in the main MU campus. Much older architecture.  I suspect this has nothing to do with the firies these days! I also suspect that this building has nothing to do with brewing, despite the words on the street level.  It is probably a good compromise (and I like the colouring on the upper bit). In this image the new/old compromise is the high-rise contrasted with the old small buildings next to it.  I would imagine the owners of those buildings find their mail box contains proposals from developers on a dai

 We began the day with a walk suggested by the owners of the cottage.  The target was a small private beach. As we set off there was no sign of a beach anywhere nearby, but the walk along Jones Rd was very pleasant so we carried on.  Had I looked at a map I would have seen what was going on (and also not have been surprised by the large hill at the gully after about 800m). There was a nice water view from a lookout above the beach.  Gravity (threat thereof on the return) dissuaded us from actually getting down to the beach. There is a Musk Lorikeet in this photograph. Cottage and car.  Frances found the bed very uncomfortable so it is unlikely we will return - a pity as the area is very pleasant.  The initial part of the route to Melbourne was interesting in terms of the different choices made by Google Maps on my phone (Polly) and that by the in-car system.  The blue line is that suggested by Polly and the red arrows show where we actually went.  I had wondered why Polly avoided the c