Warm up to Winter

Yes, Winter has arrived right on cue and after a very cold snap to start us off we followed up with two glorious weekends. Nothing says Melbourne more than crisp, clear fine sunny days in winter and it can be great fun wandering through the city and seeing some of the winter fashions hitting the streets. Coats, hats, scarfs, glove & boots abound and what a variety we see. Lots of high fashion but also lots of 'what the' items. But enough of that, what have we been up too now that winter has arrived.

We both succumbed to the dreaded lurgy and suffered colds for a little over a week each and so spent some time tucked up in front of the telly with the heater on. Once we recovered it was time to get out and about once more and we started off in fine fashion on Friday night with a trip to Berwick to have dinner with Matt & Amber in a new Restaurant they had found. We had a great night catching up and hearing all about their recent holiday to Perth. The next night we went to see Cirque du Soleil who were performing at Rod Laver Arena. We joined Susie & Bryce for a fun night out and after being wowed by the wonderful show, Saltimbanco, we headed off to Southgate for dinner at La Camera, a nice little Italian restaurant along the river. We had a great night and made up for missing our birthday dinner. The following day Bill had a day at the Western Treatment Plant at Werribee playing with the birdies and I entertained myself in the city with a little bit of RT. I found a great coat and some new jeans. All set now for the chilly months ahead. After the shopping I whiled away a little time taking a look at a cute exhibition at the State Library. Look! 'the art of Australian Picture books today'. Kids books today look a little different to what we remember but it seemed all the kids were loving them.

The following weekend started on Friday night with dinner at Tsindo's in the city with Ben & Jennifer. Bill had worked with Ben last year and we had been trying to catch up for a while. It finally came together and we had a great night sharing a yummy Greek banquet and a good bottle of Red. And I got to wear my new clothes! We were expecting to hibernate on Saturday due to an awful forecast but the beautiful blue skies changed our mind and we decided that we would spend the afternoon at Werribee again. After missing out the week before I joined Bill this time and we spent some time exploring and found lots of subjects for Bill's camera. We stayed there until sunset and were fascinated with all the pelicans returning to Lake Borrie for the evening. Each time we venture out we see new aspects of life there and Bill has some beautiful pictures to share with everyone. Once home we opted for dinner downstairs followed by a quiet night with a movie.

With the blue skies continuing on Sunday we walked up to Federation Square to have a look at a new Lego Exhibition. Imagine our surprise when we got there to find it all sold out. How rude! So instead we tried a little culture and visited the NGV's Ian Potter Centre to see the wonderful Eugene von Guerard exhibition titled Nature Revealed. The artist is an Austrian born painter who migrated to Australia in the 1830's and became one of the countries most important colonial landscape painters. I had never seen any of his works before and thoroughly enjoyed seeing them all for the first time. Seeing beautiful scenes from familiar areas in Vic, NSW, SA, Mt Gambier and the Blue Lakes as well as Lake Wakatipu & Milford Sound in New Zealand it makes you wonder at how difficult it must have been for him to access these places in that time. He went on to become the Gallery's first Master of the School of Painting and the first curator, also the 'de facto' Director of the NGV. We finished our adventures with lunch in the city and then came home to the more mundane tasks of washing and ironing.

The forecast rain finally arrived that night and the winter weather is setting in this week with snow forecast at Mt Dandenong. Just in time for the opening of the ski season next weekend. We won't be there but will be out and about discovering new corners of Victoria.

Find out where next time............