Thursday, March 31, 2016

Last Days in Melbourne

Easter weekend is a 4 day weekend for most Australians and the start of spring break for school kids.  Good Friday and Easter Monday are official national holidays.  Most bakeries and cafes had hot cross buns available and chocolate stores featured chocolate eggs, chocolate bunnies, and chocolate bilbies (an Australian marsupial that looks a lot like a rat with a fuzzy tail and longer, pointier ears).  Although a lot of stores and restaurants were closed, plenty were still open.  We went to Victoria Market on Sunday to browse the food and merchandise offerings. 
Your typical bird feeder visitors in Melbourne?

Sunday early evening we got tickets for one of the comedy shows that was part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival.  There are hundreds of shows and so we went with one early in alphabet that had a description we all liked.  We saw Ann Eddmonds, an Australian comedian.  She talked about her relationships, Australian views of immigrants, and miscellaneous other topics of varying interest.  Some parts were really funny, others not as much.  This was a preview show, so I think in other shows she expands on a single topic.  Afterwards we walked down to one of the restaurants along the river where we had a reservation for dinner.  The food would best be described as nouveau Australian and was pretty good, but the waiter misidentified the leafy garnish on my main dish so I was less than impressed.  My appetizer was a crispy quinoa cracker with salmon roe and smoked eel aioli (or they may have called it “foam”, but it was not foamy).

Abbotsford, former convent
On Monday I took a long walk around part of Yarra Bend park.  I took the 78 tram up Chapel St. (which turns to Church St. on the north side of the river) to the end of the line just south of the park.  I walked past the huge Carlson Brewery building complex a few blocks to Abbotsford, a former convent turned into a school, artist’s studios, shops and cafes.  The Convent Bakery was open serving very good looking pastries and breads.  I got a toasted hot cross bun there in honor of the day.  The Collingwood Children’s Farm covers several bucolic acres outside the walls of the convent.  The farm has vegetable gardens as well as farm animals. 

A paved and gravel path runs along the Yarra River.  The paved path veers away from the river sometimes and is used as a bike route.  The gravel path is used mostly by walkers.  Eucalyptus trees and various shrubs and vines line the river, and every now and then the path opens out onto playing fields or a golf course.  I stopped to view the old flour mill dam now with a new cement passage for fish that wish to go up or downstream.  A narrow bridge takes you across the river to a big old boathouse further upstream where you can rent wooden row boats or kayaks or just have a bite to eat.  From there I looped back to Abbotsford and the tram.

Monday night Jake and I reserved a table at Bistro Thierry, a very French restaurant along Malvern Road in Toorak, one of the tonier suburbs.  The restaurant was very nice with excellent typical French bistro food.  I had a few oysters with mignotte sauce and a glass of Australian sparkling wine as an appetizer followed by stuffed rolls of rabbit in a red wine sauce.  Jake had scallops served over a bed of mixed corn and peas followed by lamb loin in a rich sauce.  We skipped dessert.  The service was good for a busy restaurant, but our server struck us as Parisian in his lack of understanding of Jake’s French!

Tuesday was our last day in Melbourne.  Jake went off to buy Actil sheets, an Australian brand of heavy cotton sheets he really liked.  I set off to explore the remaining section of the botanical garden that I hadn’t seen yet.  This part included Guilfoyle’s Volcano, a folly disguising a water tank.  It is planted now in succulents and cacti and floating islands of wetland plants clean nutrients out of the water in the tank.  The water is stormwater from the neighboring streets and sidewalks that collects in the Garden’s ponds.  It is pumped up to the tank to be cleaned and used in the irrigation system. 
floating islands clean the water in the botanical garden
Succulents around Guilfoyle's Volcano
Pinus patula, weeping Mexican pine
Jake and I met up for a light lunch in Fitzroy.  

Sculpture outside a flower shop in Fitzroy
Jake had scoped out a place called Alimentari on Brunswick St. since he got to the neighborhood before me.  It has good sandwiches and salads and the breakfast items at the table next to us looked good too.  Breakfasts menus here almost always have eggs and toast and eggs benedict as well as muesli with yogurt.  You also find smashed avocado on toast with bacon, various salads, and a range of fruit/vegetable juice blends.  The British influence shows up in tomatoes and cooked mushrooms on the breakfast plates. Somewhere in Australia they grow a lot of beets available in some form at nearly any meal.

I explored the shops around Fitzroy.  There are more independent stores here as well as a big warehouse like outlet for local brands.  I didn’t buy anything but I admired some clever or funny household items, a great card and paper store, and fashions I would wear if I weren’t so damn practical!

Tuesday evening we met up with Tom and Leah and their friends Helen and Della at Ricardo’s, a very good Italian restaurant near the north end of Albert Park.  We had eaten there once before and it is a favorite of Tom and Leah’s.  They serve half portions of pasta (always nice for a lighter meal!) and a range of main dishes.  The only disappointment was my dessert, tiramisu that lacked enough coffee and marsala flavor.  But the pasta amatriciana was excellent as was a thin beef steak and eggplant slices covered in tomato sauce and cheese I’d had at a previous meal there.


View from the airplane window approaching Canada
Wednesday, the long trek back to the US.  I’ve typed this entry at the Air New Zealand lounges in Melbourne and Auckland and finally on the 12 hour flight from Auckland to Vancouver.  Despite the first class accommodations I’ve gotten about an hour of sleep.  Everyone is stirring now about 2 hours out of Vancouver and beds are being converted back to chairs.  I’ve watched two decent movies, Brooklyn and Joy.  Guess it’s about time to put the computer away and prepare for breakfast.

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Coastal Melbourne

The St. Kilda beach is a 30 minute walk or 15 minute tram ride away from our apartment.  We've gone down a few times to walk, ride bikes, or watch wildlife.  After sunset, fairy penguins come back from feeding to shelter in the rocks of the breakwater.  The night we went to see them (a Tuesday) there were a lot of people and only 3 penguins.  There are numerous volunteers keeping people from getting too close to the penguins and from using flash photography.  They illuminate the penguins using torches covered with red translucent tape.  I still felt bad for the penguins though making their way through a crowd of people they presumably couldn't see.  On the other hand, if you can't interest people in the wildlife would they care about protecting it?  The much more numerous yet still protected water rats (now called rakali to improve their public image) were pretty much ignored.

A fairy penguin on the St. Kilda breakwater - no flash photography allowed
The moon rises over St. Kilda
Sunset from the St. Kilda Pier
Luna Park in St. Kilda, operational since 1912
Brighton Beach
Off leash dog park at low tide
The walking/biking path south of St. Kilda
Bathing boxes at Brighton Beach - only residents can own them and in 2014 one was auctioned for $215,000

Charging Rhinos

Victoria public transportation authorities liken trams in Melbourne to rhinos on skateboards in their safety notices.  Now whenever I see a tram I picture rhinos running down the middle of the street.

Surf's Up

Here in sports-mad Australia, Jake and I decided we’d go check out the surfing championships rather than the footy (Australian Rules Football, the North Melbourne Kangaroos edged out the Adelaide Crows last night).  Why go to a stadium when you can go to the beach?

Beach vegetation
boardwalk across a small inlet
Torquay surf beach
The Rip Curl Pro Bell’s Beach takes place south of Melbourne and is the world’s longest running surfing championship.  To get there we took the train to Southern Cross Station leaving at 9:30 am, then a bus replacing the Geelong Train to Marshall Station.  We missed the connecting bus to Torquay by one minute and waited a half hour for the next bus.  We got lunch in Torquay at Growlers, a local institution across from the beach.  Decent fish and chips. They had a tv on broadcasting the surfing.  There was supposed to be a free shuttle bus to Bell’s Beach that would stop right in front of Growler’s, but after waiting for 15 minutes or so with some young women, we all gave up on it.  Jake and I opted to walk the 7 km to Bell’s Beach along a nice graveled path along the cliffs.

Bell's Beach
We passed the Torquay surfing beach where a lot of surfers and paddle boarders were in the water.  Then across another headland to Jan Juc’s beach.  One more headland and we reached Bell’s Beach.  It’s not a very big beach and we got there at high tide when it really isn’t a very big beach.  But I don’t think surfer’s particularly care about the beach itself so much as the waves off the beach.  There seemed to be good steady swells and the waves broke starting at the south end with the break slowly moving northwards. 

We didn’t get to the beach until 3pm and the heats were ending at 4:30pm, so we were able to get good viewing sites along the beach.  We tried to figure out the scoring system based on the announcers’ banter.  There were usually 3 surfers in each heat and they had 20 minutes in the water to do several rides.  Sometimes they would start riding a wave, then ride over the top if it didn’t turn into a good wave.  If they got a whole ride in then a skidoo with a ramp on the back would pick them up and take them back out past the breakers. Some of the best women surfers in the world were competing.  Brazil, US and Australia seemed to have the top athletes for this sport.

The audience had people of all ages and from a lot of countries.  The surfers would come in after their rides and be interviewed and sign autographs on the beach.  A bunch of kids in wet suits played at the edge of the surf. There were some serious photographers there too based on the size and complexity of their cameras.
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The surfing was televised live on big screens up in the food/vending/grandstand area.  Rip Curl and a cell phone company had booths up there along with several food trucks.  We found the shuttle bus stop for the return trip, but after waiting about 20 minutes and someone saying they’d heard the last bus was at 4:30pm, we started walking to Jan Juc.  But just then the bus appeared!  It dropped us off at Rip Curl’s big store in Torquay and 50 m up the road we were able to catch a bus back to Geelong that came a mere 7 minutes after we got to the bus stop!  Then the bus from Geelong to Southern Cross came just after we arrived at Geelong!  And then our myki card failed us as we tried to catch a train back to our neighborhood.  Turned out the one time we’d used it on this trip (the bus from Marshall to Torquay) had been outside of the acceptable zones for our month long pass.  We payed the $3.20 we each owed for that bus trip and were able to catch the train in good time back to our place.  So a long day of travel, but well worth it for the waves!

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Fabulous Australian plants at Cranbourne

Today’s outing was to the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne, an Australian native plant garden and reserve in the suburb of Cranbourne.  Tom and Leah and I took 2 trains and a taxi to get there, 1 ½ hours total from our apartment but all pretty straightforward.
Cranbourne is just an incredible garden.  It’s got wow!, diversity, good signage, beauty, peacefulness, great gift shop and café, and lots of trails through the natural area.  The plants cover pretty much all of Australia that will grow outdoors in the Melbourne climate.  It was planted starting in 2006 and the last of garden sections were planted in 2012.  A lot of the trees are still young, but it still a stunning garden.
As you come in you see the red sands of Uluru (formerly known as Ayer’s Rock) and on the edges run a wet and dry creek bed.  We started around on the wet side.  The stream goes from a wetland widening across a shallow area with stepping stones to play on, then passing into a stylized river mouth planted with Melaleuca trees and their companions.
One section of the garden has plantings representing the diversity of Australia’s different regions, generally just one or two plants representing each region.  There are gardens showing how to use native plants in different landscaping styles from cityscapes to suburban back yards.  Kids play areas are scattered throughout the garden.  Other sections show native cultivars and research gardens.  Another area focuses on diversity of Australia’s flora and its ancient ties to Gondwana.  Signage talks about different aspects of native plants from genetics to scent to human usage.  The architecture of the garden uses rocks, metal and wood to great effect.
scribbly path
Wollemi pine, "world's oldest plant" dating back to the days of the dinosaurs
http://www.wollemipine.com/index.php
Bottle tree in the Weird and Wonderful garden
Path through the bush
Wallaby waits at the edge of the path
Another 600 ha or so is all native bushland, Stringybark eucalyptus trees (Eucalyptus have now been divided into 3 species, so technically maybe they were not Eucalyptus), shrubs including Banksia, and groundlayer plants.  A hill gives a great view over the surrounding landscape and we followed the Possum gulch trail down into a stream valley, dry this time of year.  We saw 2 wallabys and scanned the trees for koalas but didn’t see the few that are in the reserve.  We did not see any snakes despite numerous warning signs.

Jake went to Victoria market while we were gone and made us a delicious supper of kangaroo tenderloin pieces, whole rainbow trout and sauteed vegetables.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

A weekend in Sydney

On Thursday we took a train from Melbourne to Sydney, an 11 hour trip.  The aging train had about 7 cars.  We were in first class which allowed an extra 0.1 m (about 3 inches) of leg room for Jake’s long legs but not much else.  Not even a plug to recharge our ebooks.  And only instant coffee in the café car!  Good thing we brought some snacks with us.  The countryside we passed was a lot of rolling hills with sparse trees and brown grass, then as we got closer to Sydney rolling hills with green trees and grass.  Lots of sheep and cows.
View from the Melbourne - Sydney train

Our hotel was in the heart of the Central Business District near or within Chinatown.  “Chinatown” in both Melbourne and Sydney may be a little outdated given the ethnic diversity of shops and restaurants within the neighborhood.  Sydney has a great public transportation system consisting mostly of double decker trains.  My 20 year old map showed an aboveground tram system which apparently went away but is recently being reinstated. We got a late dinner near our hotel at a Japanese restaurant, curry for Jake and a very good ramen noodle soup for me. 

Jake thinks they look like Conquistador helmets from this angle.
An Irish bar and Chinese restaurant visible from our French cafe in Chinatown
A dead end street in The Rocks
Friday morning we got croissants and coffee at the nearest French café, then walked up to the Sydney Opera House and over the The Rocks neighborhood, an old area with stone buildings and narrow streets reminiscent of historic parts of Paris.  The “foodie” market was disappointing there though with mostly food to eat there as opposed to the selection of goodies I was hoping to pick up as a present for our dinner hostess that night.  So we took a train down to Central Station and walked over to Paddy’s Market, the big wholesale/retail food and goods market in the city.  There were a lack of gourmet stalls here too, but there was a wine shop, nut and dried fruit vendors, and plenty of exotic fruits to be found at the regular fruit and vegetable stalls.  I picked up a bottle of red wine, a bag of pistachios, and a dragonfruit.  So gourmet may only be a matter of perception.

In the afternoon we took the Illawara line out to the eastern suburbs, disembarking at Oatley.  Helen, a friend and former roommate from grad school, met us at the station.  She showed us around the town of Oatley and we picked up her kids at the local primary school.  School kids in Australia all wear uniforms and cute little sun hats. The younger kid went off to a playgroup but her 10 year old daughter Margot came with us.  We stopped for a coffee and snack in Oatley before heading to the Oatley Reserve, a very nice park along the water with paths through the bush.  Despite hearing about the sharks and jellyfish that inhabit the water, poisonous snakes and spiders and huge ants to watch for along the paths, we only saw some innocent little lizards and birds.  And a lot of cool plants!
We picked 7 year old Elise up from her playgroup and headed over to Helen’s house a few minutes drive away.  Helen fixed us a nice casual dinner and then we caught the train back to the city.  
Banksia tree
Gum tree (Eucalyptus)
Water View from Oatley

Eating a healthy snack on the ferry with Helen, Elise and Margot
A beach at Manly
Saturday they all met us at Circular Quay where the ferry boats depart.  We caught the ferry to Manly, about a 15 minute ride with great views of the city, opera house and islands.  Manly has a couple beaches and reminded me of a lot of beach towns in the US.  We walked along an esplanade over to Shelly Beach, a smaller, more sheltered beach but with reasonably deep water.   The water was cold, but I finally made it in and once in stayed in for awhile.  A lot of divers were practicing at the beach, so big groups would troop into the water with all their gear on.  Helen said the snorkeling is really nice there with views of groupers and other smaller fish.  Jake got us a selection of lunch items from the café nearby so we could continue to hang out in the sand.  In the late afternoon we were entertained by a wedding party that set up right in the middle of the beach!

A very public wedding on the beach - note the diving class walking by
After the wedding we headed back to the ferry dock and caught a fast private ferry to Watson’s Bay for dinner at the famous Doyle’s Restaurant. The kids loved the roller coaster ride of the first part of the ferry as it headed near the mouth of the harbor.  Helen and I not so much!  Doyle’s has a beautiful view across the bay to the city skyline.  The food was quite good, but priced for the view more than the quality I think.

From Watson’s Bay there is a fast public ferry back to the city center.  We stood up at the front and watched the city lights and the opera house come closer and closer. 

On Sunday we took the train to Bondi Junction and bus to Bondi Beach to meet a college friend.  He and his friend Renee had made reservations for us at Icebergs, a restaurant right on the beach overlooking the breakers and a huge swimming pool.  Icebergs has a celebrity chef and between the chef and the view the prices were higher than Doyles.  Eric insisted on treating us to lunch though. He had a gorgeous looking steak and I got a very nicely cooked piece of snapper.  Jake had a pasta dish with short rib pieces.  Eric became a radiologist and after the company he worked for sent him to Australia kicking and screaming for a few months he decided he really liked it here and stayed on.  Now he is opening a second radiology clinic south of Sydney.  His friend and colleague Renee helps run the businesses. 

The view outside of Icebergs
At the art museum in front of Eric's favorite painting
Eric’s main hobby is collecting modern art so after lunch since it was raining hard Renee drove us into the city to the New South Wales Art Gallery.  Eric clearly knew his way around their collections and showed us some of their famous pieces and the Australian artists collection.  I was interested to see how many women are represented among the Australian artists.  It seems as though it was more than usual.


In the evening it was still raining, so we went to see a movie and picked up some snacks at a convenience store for dinner.  Monday we caught a plane back to Melbourne.  The plane trip was much shorter than the train ride, but it still took a lot of time since the plane was delayed and you have to catch a bus and a couple trains to get back into the city.  Sydney has a very efficient train system out to the airport, so that didn’t take much time at all!