February 2007

Well, today I could bear the wait no more and bought myself a new toy. A brand-new Mac Book Pro. Leopard is still not out but I can always upgrade just the Operating System later. So I spent all evening reinstalling all my application software. Have not yet finished hence the photo editing for today's blog is somewhat basic. Normal service will resume shortly.

Also, yet another absoultely fantastic sunset. I promise I didn't photoshop the colours. Partly because I haven't installed the program yet.

We watched our very first live AFL match today. It was a pre-season tournament. Today Melbourne was playing Hawthorn. Melbourne were the underdogs so naturally we supported them. Up to Q3 (AFL is played in four quarters of 25 mins each) they were well ahead. Then we decided to watch the last quarter in the pub. In the 10 mins it took us to get to the pub, Hawthorn surged ahead, finishing 100-something to 80 (I think. Yes I could look it up but you can always get the actual final score here).

As seems to be the norm here, during half-time (i.e. after the second quarter) groups of very small and cute school kids aged about five played a mini form of the game. I do believe we enjoyed the kids more than the adult game; they were entertaining as well as instructive to watch. We even managed to deduce some of the rules of the game.

It was yet another cold-ish summer day so we decided to give the Maribyrnong River cycle path another go (last week we abandoned it because of the heat -- the weather here is never 'just right'). It's quite a pleasant but fairly ordinary trail. This picture was taken from a bridge across it.

This group of cormorants was fishing together. Here is a video. In the background, Flemington Race Course.

A view of the city from the cycle path.

Tomorrow we shall watch an Aussie Rules match.

It was hazy this evening. The top of the Eureka Tower (immediately left of the Telstra Dome) is getting obscured.

A few minutes later the top had completely disappeared.

We noticed this beautiful rainbow segment a few nights ago.

Summer weather being sadly somewhat unreliable in Melbourne we decided to go to the Barossa Valley for a short break. The weather there is practically guaranteed to be hot and dry. And so it was. We stayed at the Novotel Resort, being the best-known (or possibly the one with the best advertising). It was excellent. Their restaurant serves top-quality food and wine which we did thorough justice to.

This is the view from our ground-floor apartment. All rooms overlook miles of vineyards. Jacob's Creek is just below the hotel.

Without any distracting city lights (the nearest city being Adelaide, 60km away) and clear skies we also had absolutely amazing views of the stars at night. We saw the Southern Cross clearly for the first time.

So, what does one do in the Barossa Valley? Wine tasting for a start. There was a daily session in the hotel, run by a different winery each day, and we also went out to visit some. Being the Designated Navigator I got to do the actual tasting, sobriety not being required to do map-reading (although it might have been desirable a couple of times). We paid a visit to our very favourite winery, Henschke, and naturally bought a few bottles.

Apart from the wine there are only two other tourist attractions in the Barossa Valley. This one is Mengler's Lookout. It affords a gorgeous view over the valley. There is a sculpture garden too, displaying sculptures like the one shown in the picture, only the others weren't as interesting. We passed on the actual trail because the average interest-value of the sculptures seen from above did not justify walking around in 37 degrees with no shade in sight.

The other tourist attraction is the Whispering Wall. It's actually a dam, holding in the Barossa Reservoir but its architectural properties are such that if you stand at one end and talk normally you can hear it at the other. Something to do with physics I believe and no doubt you can read all about the scientific bit at the geeky place. It was fun.

On the way back from the Whispering Wall we spotted some wild kangaroos! Not for the first time, but these stayed in place just long enough for me to shoot them.

This is the actual reservoir behind the Whispering Wall. Looking at it you wouldn't think that there is a major drought going on. But it's the only reasonable expanse of water we saw anywhere in the valley.

This creek actually had some water in it. A bit. South Australia is having a worse drought than Victoria.

A lot of the Barossa Valley is of German descent. It is noticeable in the architecture; there are lots of Lutheran churches. It's also noticeable in the names of many of the wineries, also, they plant riesling... always inadvisable, I feel.

All in all, a good holiday was had by all, and far too much good food and wine was consumed. Would do again.

A case of wine is in the post.

The weather today looked too uncertain to take the bikes anywhere so we took the car further around the bay to Point Cook Reserve. This is meant to be a Wetlands Reserve. The photograph shows the current state of Spectacle Lake. It has a bird hide and everything. What it does not have is the defining feature of a lake, i.e. water. The drought is so severe that it has dried up an entire lake. The nearby RAAF Lake also consists of a large dry area with a few hints of puddles.

The nearby Marine Sanctuary fared better in terms of water, if only because even the current drought cannot dry out the Southern Ocean (or Port Phillip Bay, at least). This seagull was enjoying the sea breeze.

Today the end of the current Tri-Nations Cricket Championships drew nearer with the first of the three finals being played in Melbourne. England against Australia. Given that plenty of tickets at very reasonable cost were still available we couldn't pass up such an opportunity. I had never seen a live cricket match, however, the live event confirmed my impressions gained from watching it on TV (or, more accurately, catching an involuntary glimpse of it while trying to change channels): A lot of cricket consists of hanging around. We joined the match when Australia had been batting for three hours, notching up a respectable score.

Here, Australia are still batting. They are just starting to take a run. Eventually England managed to bowl all of them out, with a few wickets still to spare. Target 253 to win.

England had a disastrous start, bottoming out at 3/15. Compare to Australia's 1/199. We got bored (or, in the case of The Patriot, frustrated), and left when the score reached 3/35, to drown our sorrows in the nearest pub. Miraculously the recovery was sustained, and by the time we decided it was time to go home it looked like England might actually pull off a victory. Though The Patriot didn't really believe it. When we reached home it was a nail-biting finish. England won. They're on a roll, with three wins on the trot. Now, if they could only start a game as they mean to finish...

Leaving the MCG at dusk, the CBD was illuminated by the setting sun shining through intermittent cloud cover.

Having had a particularly trying day at work, as one does from time to time, we decided to perambulate pubwards for some alcoholic consolation. This remedy worked rather well. On the way back we noticed an abundance of new sculptures having sprung up all over Docklands. Having carefully ascertained that this new sight had not been induced by the aforementioned remedy we recalled having heard something about an upcoming sculpture festival. Sculptures like this one would be the preparations then.

Giggle.

Today we took our bicycles to Williamstown via The Punt. This is basically a ferry service across the Yarra that takes bikes as well as pedestrians. It runs on demand and without a timetable, at $3 per trip. We thought it would be fun to try, since using the punt would let us cut out some tedious bit of the journey past the container port. We've done it now, and it was sort of fun, but the operator was one of the least social Australians I've ever met. He didn't say anything during the entire trip except "Six dollars please". I didn't feel welcome.

This is a view of Melbourne CBD from Williamstown. There was a furious head wind all the way there but on the way back the tail wind was fantastic. I reached 33.3 km/h on the level. Then there was a steep descent when my cycle computer recorded 33.6 km/h. The fastest I've ever gone.

We saw some more flying black swans. This picture was taken with my little camera, if anybody wants to compare.

It's the Docklands Boat Show this weekend. It's all about power boats; however, this is more my kind of boat. The only sailing boat we could find being exhibited today. Isn't it lovely? There will be a race of this class over the weekend. We are planning to watch.

Today's sunset was simply too gorgeous not to record here.

A few minutes later the setting sun was peeking out from under the cloud bank.