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.