Sink or Swim

A great weekend with a nautical theme prompts this weeks title. The fun started on Friday night with the 'Hill's' Christmas do.

The venue was The Titanic at Williamstown. We had to board by 7.00pm and on arrival we discovered that we were to be sitting in 'Steerage'. Mmm would Leonardo be there? No such luck. In order to get to Steerage we were ordered into a small lift, by an officer who obviously did not think he should be dealing with this class of people. The lift proceeded to groan & shudder it's way down where we were ordered to get out. (Did we really go anywhere?) On arrival at our table we were amused by the old songsheets and were subsequently entertained by roving musicians who took requests from the sheets or as we found out, random songs as well. I guess this rebel group really did belong in Steerage. Between Main course & Sweets the ceiling above us opened revealling Fisrt Class and we were entertained by a 3 act musical telling the story of the night the Titanic sank, including the hitting of the iceberg.

Now I guess you have all figured out that The Titanic is really a themed Theatre Restaurant. First Class is upstairs and people dining there are required to dress for dinner just as they would have at that time. In steerage we could be ourselves. It was great fun with the staff in character all night.

Saturday had no nautical overtones unless you consider the election as just a big fishpond filled with fish all trying to eat one another. Still no matter what we think of them we had to vote and to finish off such an exciting day we watched the 'All Stars' basketball game on TV.

After our quiet Saturday we were ready for some more adventure on Sunday, so decided that this would be the day we would finally make it to the Melbourne Aquarium. (Thanks Lorraine & Hans). We had a great time checking out all the fish and many other sea creatures they have on display there. It was really cute watching the little kids looking at the coral reef sections. Not one of them said "look at that fish", they all said "look, there's Nemo". The Sharks & Stingrays looked pretty mean as they swam over the top of us as we wandered through the 'Great Fishbowl' in the middle.

A trip into the city to get some photo's completed our wanderings and we got our own back on the scary sharks by having fish & chips for dinner that night.

So our sculpture today had to be of a nautical nature as well so we go back in time to Festival 2006 when the Games were here. As I have mentioned before there was all sorts of things happening, Fish on the Yarra, A beach at the Art Centre and also a wreck on St Kilda Beach. It was a reconstruction of The Lady of St Kilda shipwreck which was meant to be taken down after the Festival but the people of St Kilda liked it so much it stayed longer than intended. St Kilda was actually named after this schooner which sailed in Port Phillip Bay in 1841. She was shipwrecked in 1842 in Taihiti.

What adventures await us this week, you like me will have to wait & see

so until next time.........