Home Sweet Home! Back in our little home on wheels after a couple of days away. The weather is still cool, and dreary, showers passing from time to time, and according to our weekend hosts, evidence of the end of summer. I do hope not! I am looking forward to months of summer sun yet.
After lunch yesterday, we drove up to Sunbury to spend time with Chris’s old friends, Bob and Janet. They came to stay with us in our home in New Zealand about four years ago, so it was wonderful to discover them in good health and seemingly not a day older. While they did not convey a reciprocal opinion, they did think that travel and retirement suited us well, so I guess that was a roundabout way of saying the same.
We sat over cups of coffee and later, a great feast helped down by the fruit of the vine, except for a small trip out along to a new housing estate to view the latest in architecture and interior design; interesting for sure and the base of much conversation on site, both critical and positive.
This morning we woke to the sound of the birds outside the window above their garden, strange to be in a house for the first time since visiting family last September. We were spoilt with a cooked breakfast, a tour of the garden complete with history of climatic effect thereon, which is a whole separate problem which we as travellers had not really considered apart from agricultural crops and the establishment of botanic gardens.
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| Bob, Janet & Chris in the climate challenged garden |
We were then taken on a wonderful tikki tour of Melbourne; checking out a retirement village near Taylor Lakes where Bob has been recently working, calling briefly with birthday wishes for Janet’s elderly mother in Niddrie, down toward the city centre passing by Moonee Ponds where the famous Dame Edna Everidge lived, through the 3.4 kilometre Burnley tunnel which runs under city suburbs and the Yarra River and wandering about the Chadstone Shopping Centre which makes all previously visited centres pale into insignificance. This one is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, the oldest in Victoria having opened in 1960 and has 530 shops. We caught a coffee and snack lunch, having secured a table in a Foodhall which in itself was quite an accomplishment. Finding our way back to the car park was another adventure, with each of us having an opinion as to which direction it was. Success at last and we were off again, heading toward St Kilda, however this proved impossible. Our hosts had forgotten that the St Kilda Festival was on this weekend, and the throngs of young people flocking toward our own destination, the closed off streets and the heavy police presence made sure we took a wide detour, around past Albert Park where the annual Formula One car race is to be run next month. Even today, it was evident that much of the preparation is under way.
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| Emu Bottom |
We then drove on north and west through the Port, across the West Gate Bridge, more recently in the news for the scene of infanticide, on to the Western Ring Road, and back to Sunbury via the Tullamarine Freeway past the Melbourne Airport.
On reaching Sunbury, we briefly visited Rupertswood, the home of the Ashes cricket trophy, and Emu Bottom, reputedly the oldest homestead still standing in Victoria. After coffee and cake, we gathered our bags, bade our hosts thanks and farewell until next weekend and drove back to our home here in Rockbank.
Not only had we had a wonderful time catching up with friends, we had also had a fantastic overview of Melbourne, further confirming to Chris that this is a very different city to that he knew twenty eight years ago. In fact, he wonders if he is even in the same place!
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