One of the things to admire about Australia is that it leads the world when it comes to the preparation and serving of a proper cup of tea. Always loose-leaf, always in a pot and thus with full ceremony: here, in ACMI (the Australian Centre for the Moving Image). I like the various circles on this shot. It’s also, technically, a self-portrait.
My last full day here in Melbourne — on this trip. I hope there will be more. A fine city.
Well, I guess they have a point. Thanks to Lee (depicted two days ago) being vegan I have basically been vegetarian this week but that seems not to cut it for these people. I try, though.
Almost the whole population of Australia lives within about an hour’s drive of the coast, making this one of the world’s great beach countries, if not the greatest. It was about time I got to see one on this trip. Not that South Melbourne beach is one of the more glamorous ones — but never mind, it was a beautiful day.
My Manchester colleague Lee skulks around the Uni of Melbourne’s underground car park waiting to be picked up. So to speak. Melbourne’s seventh shot in a row, and there’ll be a few more yet: a period of stability, place-wise, after a long run of moving around — the period 8th March to 4th April featured 21 different places.
I wanted this week to get at least one of our Melburnian colleagues onto the blog and seeing as Linda has already made it — albeit a few months ago, in Manchester — here is Camille. But it would have been wrong, today at least, to depict her without daughter Gabby, who as she is on her Easter break from school, was obliged to join us today: but very welcome she was, including to the post-work drink at the Charles Hotel.
I don’t really know how to caption this one…. so I don’t even think I will try. Especially as the skipping rope, looking closely at it, will light up in the evening and rotate around.
Another university campus makes it onto the blog. The week’s work that my colleague Lee and I have to do here is the reason I got the funding to come to Australia in the first place, so I’d better pay attention to my duties. It’s a pleasant — if somewhat cramped — campus; this is one of the newer buildings on it and is quite impressive inside and out. I was told that the shapes on the outer frame make patterns when seen on Google Maps but I’ve checked and nothing seems apparent to me: not as much as they remind me of the pattern on the cover of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, anyway.
Flinders Street station is the main central railway station of Melbourne and a common meeting place — you meet ‘under the clocks’, a line of timepieces out of shot above. And this is why I was there, to meet my friend Mariam for a great lunch and a nice afternoon out. All these other people seemed to be doing the same thing.
Just because I am on the other side of the world doesn’t preclude me taking in the occasional football match. Thanks to my hosts for today, Green Gully SC (Soccer Club) for a very entertaining day at their patch of land on the outskirts of Melbourne, and well done to them for a convincing 4-0 victory that I am sure was faithfully reported on by the clutch of people huddled around this little contraption on the banking. If an event doesn’t have a media presence — did it even happen? (And I am part of this, in my own little way.)
There are many fine things about Australia. The beer is not one of them. Pile it high and pump it out is the usual approach, and if you find something more delicately crafted, I bet it’s come from somewhere else (probably New Zealand). Ah well. You can’t have everything in a country.
Being 42 