Looking skywards

was what everyone was doing a few weekends ago at Avalon. The International Airshow was in town again and we joined the hundreds of people to see what was on offer.
The weather had been bad on Saturday so Sunday was busier than we expected as the crowds swelled. We watched the displays of awesome power shown by the Military Jets and the dare devil flying of the smaller planes kept everyone on the edge of their seats with their loop the loops and upside down displays. On a sad note 2 of the pilots we had seen last time had been killed during the previous year as they trained to perfect their death defying routines. One just 6 weeks earlier. There was a memorial flypast in their honour.

The weather did play a part in the day. With very strong fronts passing through bringing strong winds, there were quite a few aircraft unable to fly on the day. The farewell performance of the F1 11's was one casualty of the day, unable to cope with the strong winds and wet runways,the highly anticipated Dump & Burn routine was cancelled at the 11th hour. We did get to see the F16 & F18's though. They are almost as spectacular and certainly just as loud. It was too windy for the helicopters as well and though the glider got up & away it was a real challenge to perform as he should have.


The weather improved again the next week, just in time for two surprise visitors to Melbourne. We had dinner with Sue on Tuesday night at Fed Square, yummy Chinese to be had at Bokchoy Tang. Wednesday night it was Marg's turn to surprise me and we had dinner at Bar Lourinha, a great little tapas place in Little Collins St. It was great to see them both and catch up with all their respective news from Perth. A 50th birthday party for our friend Toni was celebrated at the Cricketers Arms on Saturday night. This is a really old pub in Port Melbourne and we had a great night catching up with friends and meeting some new ones.

The next weekend we decided to stick with the flying theme, but the feathered type instead. Bill had found out about the wetlands at the Melbourne Water Treatment Plant near Werribee so we took off on the Sunday for a little look. Apart from one smelly experience, I guess you had to expect it, the rest of the wetlands were amazing. Absolutely alive with bird life of all sorts, large & small. We managed to entertain ourselves for hours and did not get home until almost 8pm. Not bad for just a quick look eh! And we still only covered about half the area. We will go back and check out the other areas.

This weekend saw the Grand Prix back in town and we listened to the exciting screech of racing for 4 days. Melbourne had turned Red for the week leading up to the big race. Ferrari always seems to the main attraction. The city was super busy with fans arriving to watch the opening race of the season at Albert Park. The first twilight race was a hit I believe, and even though we decided we would spend our day wandering around the Botanic Gardens instead we could still hear every turn.

Even with the lack of rain the gardens were lovely, though the ponds are almost dried up in some places. Hopefully we will get some real rain soon. I don't think that some of the trees will survive too many more years of no rain. The Ian Potter Children's Garden was just lovley but we couldn't go mad with the camera because of all the little one's in there. Very sad sign of the times. Still, I did manage to get our Magic Pudding Sculpture.

So that's all our wanderings for the last few weeks. A very mixed bag, from thundering air planes to tranquil duck ponds. We have Mum's birthday to look forward to on Saturday night with Maree, Jarrod & Aaron, so that should keep us out of mischief for this week.

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

A day in the garden

is always a nice way to spend a few hours & recharge the batteries. Of course that is only if you are not responsible for 'doing' the gardening. That is just what we did a couple of weekends ago. Well rested again after our visit from Gareth & Taegan, it was time for us to get out & about once more to see what was happening in our part of the world. The weather was still very warm and with bushfires still burning in some of the areas we decided that we would keep it local on Saturday. A quiet wander through the gardens came to mind and so we went off in search of somewhere to do just that.

The gardens at the University of Melbourne had been recommended to us as a place worth seeing so it was on the tram and away we went. Now that is one huge complex and after having lunch in a great little cafe in the grounds we had a wander and eventually found what we were looking for. The 'old' part of the Uni is lovely and the gardens, whilst suffering from the lack of rain are still a place of beauty & tranquility.

Staying with the garden theme the following day we headed off to the Mornington Peninsula to join the hundreds of people who had gathered at the Fraser's place at Merricks for a plant fair and the showing of Tammy's Rose garden in the Open Garden Scheme.
The roses were worth the trip and the whole garden was lovely. No issues with water down there (own supply) so very green & lush. We could not believe the number of people there and I'm sure not everyone was there for the gardening. Probably just like us because we could. We did see the lady herself chatting to people in the garden but no sign of our former PM. We had a sandwich on the lawn under the trees before taking ourselves off to visit some Wetlands we had seen on the way in.

The Coolart Homestead & Wetlands at Somers were somewhere that I never knew existed, and I grew up roaming the Peninsula as a teenager. The history is as follows, In 1895, Frederick Sheppard Grimwade bought the estate and built the homestead as the family's country retreat. Between 1907 and 1937 Coolart was owned at different times by Thomas Armstrong, James Balmain and John Sylvester Feehan. The late Tom Luxton purchased the property in 1937 and immediately had the property declared a sanctuary for native wildlife and embarked upon a program of habitat development. The 87 hectare nucleus of the Coolart area was purchased by the Victorian State Government in 1977 and it was proclaimed as a reserve for "Conservation and Education Purposes". With the lack of rain the wetlands aren't quite as wet as they should be but we still spent a couple of hours wandering through the many walking tracks and found an wide variety of birds and plants in a very different 'garden' than the others we had spent time in that weekend. A drive round Somers before we hit the road for home finished our weekend wanderings and very soon we were back home looking at our 'jungle' out the windows.

Since then we have turned to sport for the last two weeks and and have watched Essendon win one and we just won't mention the other one last Friday night, as the NAB Cup is in full swing. From Football on Friday to Basketball on Saturday as we watched the South Dragons beat Cairns to go into the Final with the Melbourne Tigers. We went and watched game one but will not be at the others but fingers, toes and everything else are crossed. And it all worked obviously as the South Dragons took the championship on Sunday night.

Tammy arrived on Wednesday for a quick visit, coming to see Chris Isaak in concert on Thrusday at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda. It was a great show and the old theatre pretty good too. It was good to see her again even though we had to say farewell again on Saturday night.

So there are our latest adventures . A bit more excitement planned for next week as the Airshow is back in town.

Until next time............