Melbourne revisited...a final farewell.

We had the pool right outside our apartment...great, but it looked more like a small leafy water feature and it was freezing; can you believe the children still wanted to go in it? Central courtyard location with great pool access, said the website. Yeah right!



Maitland gaol again? No, this was Old Melbourne Gaol, where the infamous Ned Kelly was hung!


Jessica tried on the scaled down replica of Ned Kelly's armour...very fetching!


Ned Kelly's death mask, with a strange paranormal white orb, floating eerily above.......they say cell 17 is particularly haunted!



Our final farewell to Sharon, Greg, Kate, Josh & Emma. It was great to meet up with them all the way from Perth. You'll notice that trying to get this many children smiling at once is an impossible task



And on the way home......a giant Ned Kelly in Glenrowan where he was finally caught!! How many giant things have we managed now?



Another amusing thing that kept us entertained on our journey was spotting place names which are the same as in the UK; there are loads!! Of course we come from Newcastle, for a start! Our local suburbs include Jesmond , Wallsend and Gateshead
But the funny thing about the names is the way neighbouring towns are also related....so on Phillip island we stayed in Cowes. Below is one of the local pubs with obligatory ye olde Gothic font. The other main locations we could have stayed in were Ryde and Ventnor.

Now this place on the banks of a river called the Avon. We wonder how it got its name?????

"If we don't say upon in the middle nobody will notice."

Phillip Island. Land of motorbikes and Penguins

The PhillipIsland Circuit (venue for Superbikes and Moto GP) has been copied very meticulously as a go Kart track, one fifth of the size......conditions were wet...and got steadily worse as the race continued. (the children's hands turned blue!)



Alex celebrating his victory on the podium.



The real Grand Prix Circuit...we thought of you , Alan!



The calm, after the storm....well for a short time the rain stopped.



There is a strict, NO Photography rule at The Penguin Parade....so did I just ignore this rule?....of course not, I didn't want to upset the penguins, but I didn't mind being naughty in the shop; I took a photo of a photo they had for sale !!
What an amazing sight.....in their little groups...waddling up the beach, inches away from us......even the rain couldn't spoil it. This was one of our highlights!



Cuddling the next best thing....of course they wanted this!!

Melbourne at last....1195km later.

So we finally drive into Melbourne having survived the Southeast corner of Australia which was dull in the extreme and was sprinkled with isolated towns every 200km where you expected to see cross eyed banjo playing inbreds staring down at you from bridges. Bairnsdale had been a blessed relief from this. Within an hour of our arrival in Melbourne this is where we were with 50000 others. Name the sport?........... Top of the class if you identified Aussie Rules football. By the end of the second quarter we had sorted the rules out and Alex and Jessica wanted to go home. When asked which game they've enjoyed the best they both thought soccer because it was the shortest. For the record; the giant pom pom wavers are not cheerleaders but beer swilling fans trying to distract the opposition kickers and the game was won with Collingwood stuffing the Kangaroos.


Payback time was a 30 minute train ride and 10 minute walk to Scienceworks. Where the children had great fun sitting on giant letters.


and thinking they were as fast as Kathy Freeman. The argument over who won this race is still fiercely contested.

One of the draws of this holiday was a reunion with Sharon from teacher training days in Southampton. We managed to get together several times including an evening meal at the Hard Rock Cafe in Melbourne. After 16 years apart it was still easy to catch up on old times and have a chat. Even easier when you meet up during happy hour. Here we are looking quite happy. The children happily got on with each other too, so that was lucky!


And so that was Melbourne. Not such a tourist city as Sydney but one where you can see day to day city life looking like an easier thing to do. Skyscrapers and bisecting meandering rivers make it very photogenic and Alex will be able to impress with his "where did you first learn to ride your bike" stories with his ride along the Yarra river footpaths proving he had really cracked it. No photos unfortunately as they are all on his camera and this blog does not like it.


But if there were any doubts that this was a city for tourists then they are blown away by the obligatory observation tower. We have now done these in various cities. The significance of this shot? Our hotel pool. the sad thing was it really was that small!


OK. More sporting Trivia. Where in Melbourne would you least expect to see this sign? In true teacher style there may be lots of acceptable answers to this but you are only correct if you are thinking the same as us and say on the Melbourne Grand Prix circuit. It was three weeks after the race on what is one of only two road circuits they use and they were in the midst of reinstating sign posts and dismantling stands. For any F1 fans out there this sign is just prior to the first right hand bend after the grid. Scene of many a pile up. (When we got home Chris and Alex reinacted the race on the Game cube...which has this curcuit!)


Well here we are in the final straight. we did two laps of the circuit and it took us 20 minutes. Your average F1 car does it in about three and does not stop for a photo call in the home straight.

Are we nearly there?

Pebbly Beach.
Hopes were high to see some Kangaroos on the beach , as The Lonely Planet guide had promised,but after enduring a 15 minute, bumpy drive, down an unsealed road, we were disappointed.....not a roo was in sight.


......but Alex found and photographed evidence that they had been there! Why do boys find the talk of poo so funny and interesting?

Over the Easter period the radio seemed obsessed with 2 main themes; firstly, how many eggs had the children been given by The Easter Bunny, or Easter Bilby(as they are trying to change it to)and secondly, a type of league table as to how many deaths had occured on the roads in each state over Easter; I think Queensland were winning by 3 deaths more than NSW.

Bairnsdale.



This play park was brilliant....and we all enjoyed it so much that we got up early to go again!!


Wormtastic slide!

Using the children to play with!

We all tried this slide...it was great!

Can you tell what it is yet?
This was cut from the tree by Aborigines, to make a canoe. Infact this play park was placed especially on this site, along side various commemorative plaques and info. about the significance of the area.

The Great South Run

Blog title owes nothing to circuitious puffing and panting round Portsmouth but rather the ocean hugging 3 day drive from Newcastle to Melbourne. After stunning views over the illawarra coast for morning coffee etc, the first detour was to the Fokuangshan temple, I'll let you decide how to pronounce it.


The outside was festooned with the buddhist equivalent of the garden gnome with the little characters seemingly up to all sorts of activities, all in keeping with sound buddhist principles of course.



Having crawled all over these, possibly immensely sacred, figures the children continued their immersion into buddhist culture with the "Cor that stinks!" response to the smell of incense. I think this is the compulsory reflex vocal call of any under 10 year old when sniffing these.



Final disrespect was evident in the mock meditation poses for this picture. They may still have been tempted to follow the "noble eightfold path" but Mcdonalds don't do tofu nugget Happy Meals.



Following minor temple desecration it was lunch break in Kiama. Famous for its.....



blowhole. No we didn't know this either but the lonely planet guide stated that it was "a major attraction that has drawn visitors for over a century." So we thought it worth a detour.



You had to be there really. Somewhere we will have to be again is Jervis bay at 5 1/2 hours drive it is just in the weekend getaway radius. Unfortunately we arrived as the sun was plummeting; nevertheless the view across the bay from Huskisson was still impressive. If you see any more Tina landscape shots from now on you will notice the trademark "bit of tree in the foreground" technique.



Despite the slight aroma of raw sewage from a nearby stagnant creek Hyams beach and its white sand were even more impressive. Here are Tina and Jessica trying not too look too cold on an early evening in Autumn.



Family consultations about interesting rocks found on the beach is an ongoing pastime. Tina loves her rocks, not sure how we'll contain her when we get to Uluru!

In the Blue ridged Mountains of NSW.

This was our second busy weekend with my mum and dad. We stayed in log cabins, on a camp site, very close to one of the main attractions, Scenic World. This is the entrance which shows an aboriginal witch doctor with his large brass member(shall we call it a wand....but not like anything you will see in Harry Potter), turning the 3 sisters to stone(there were 2 other bronze status to left of this shot). Apparently, the Witch doctor was going to turn them back but he was killed in a battle.....so



that is how the three sisters were formed. Not quite the Geologists point of view but there you go, it's a nice story. For those who want to see the 87 other views of this iconic rock formation please go to www. icantbelieveyouaretakinganotheroneofthosebloodythings.co.uk . Think this one was taken from the foot of the scenic railway in case you're bothered.



Any tourist attraction of note has to follow certain rules:
1. Force visitors to leave via the gift shop.
2. Provide a cafe selling chocolate muffins at hugely inflated prices.
3. Fill the room with sullen, unhelpful guides (the best one we saw was ignoring half a dozen perplexed Japanese tourists whilst she was playing patience on her computer)
4. Provide audio guides
I'm sure there are many rules that we have forgotten. To find out other ways to pee off the public click here. Anyway back to the audio guides. We could only afford three. Two to stop the children moaning too much about the prospect of a 30 minute rainforest boardwalk and the third to give us an educational insight into the local flora and fauna. Luckily there were not too many people around as I was very conspicuous in the way I loudly narrated the words from the audio guide ad verbatim. This particular look of concentration was when I was trying to say the "significant environmental impact on the indigenous aboriginal culture" for the fifth time.



There is a downside to the lovely spell of warm weather we have had. The impressive torrents of water "cascading down the sandstone escarpments into the valley (Cue Generation X) a thousand feet below." are actually a bit rubbish.



and there is the valley a thousand feet below, below our 8 feet. This was all part of Scenic world.
"The ultimate blue mountains adventure" and after riding the world's steepest (this was a rare use of the ultimate superlative adjective because they usually have to quantify themselves by using phrases like ....in the Southern Hemisphere or .... in Australia or ....in NSW) incline railway and strolling through the beautiful Jurassic rainforest and travelling by cable car to the moutain top we finished our morning by "experiencing the thrill of walking on air"...... um sometimes you know that the reality won't live up to the hype. Cynicism aside it was a great morning. It was particularly fun to hear Hanne's loud squeals as we plummeted into the valley on the aforementioned railway.



Jamison's valley from the Gordons fall lookout. Nice composition thinks Tina.




Having done a reconnaissance mission . Chris informed us that the lookout was 123 steps down. This was Alf and Hanne taking the 122nd and 123rd step back up having given their respective knees and hips a jolly good workout. Needless to say we did not go far that evening except to see
the obligatory IMAX "6 storeys high" screen view of the blue mountains.



That'll be the three sisters again. Beatifully framed by Jessica looking a cool cat in her hat (AKA Akubra which was kindly given to us by a Mum at Glendore school) and me looking like something that rhymes with cat in my hat.



would that be the three sisters again?



right that's enough, although this unsuccessful family shot has more metal fence than three sisters in it.



Not quite having the "thrill of walking on air" was not our biggest disappointment. Something told us that sensation was not going to happen. We did however expect a lot more from the Norman Lindsay gallery. This was Sunday afternoon and things were not going well anyway as Hanne and Alf followed us on what they thought was going to be a 2km diversion from their planned route and it ended up being 50km. They had been frantically flashing us and waving at us before finally deciding to overtake us and pull us over Starsky and Hutch style to ask in true Aussie advertising campaign style "Where the bloody hell are you.... going" I think she wanted to say a lot more to but realising we were going to be saying goodbye for 9 months after this excursion she decided to bite her lip. Anyway following recommendations from school staff and plentiful eulogising from all the guide books about its beauty, importance, iconic status and wonderful collection of Art work we thought it would be all worth it. How wrong can you be. Now apologies to any young children reading this and any Australians who hold Norman Lindsay in high regard but I don't think that a $26 family ticket to see three rooms full of painted tits represents good value for money.
The most interesting thing about the whole afternoon was the town name. Faulconbridge... it contains half the letters of the alphabet, all the vowels and no repeats.
Despite the relative disappointment of this we certainly had a gorgeous weekend, lovely to be able to share it with Hanne and Alf and as we said our goodbyes we wished them well as they headed off back to Sydney before heading off to New Zealand and Thailand so no doubt they'll havemany more adventures to share when they get home.

The Morning After the Wine Before!

The Hunter Valley Gardens.


The sculpture in the background is titled,'Grandmother,' but Nanny liked the sentiment.
This garden was a mass of colour, shape, flora and fauna (well ones cut out of bits of privet anyway)



I have to confess I got a bit carried away with photos of the waterfall and the gardens generally. I think it's because everytime my Dad took a photo, I thought I'd better take one too incase I missed out. Alex soon got caught up in this photo battle too, as he got his camera out; although he seemed more obsessed with taking photos of people's bottoms! (no doubt the phrase, does my bum look big in this?... springs to mind!)



We joined the Mad Hatter for tea, although I could only manage half a cup! We often quote lines from this scene, sad I know , but we can't help it...."mustard?.....let's not be thilly!"says the Mad Hatter, when he is trying to mend the White Rabbit's watch. We love that bit!!
Chris wanted me to say something rude about the Mad Hatter's spout...and Chris's bottle in Alice's mouth!!!



This was the despondent scene part way around the gardens...it says it all..."we've seen enough!
We have had a whole weekend of being dragged around vineyards and gardens and we're blooming tired (excuse the really crap pun) . Can we go home now?????"