More Melbourne & the Great Ocean Road

Sleep is sweet! We sleep for 12 hours Thursday night and I'm starting to feel normal again. Friday morning John and I go for run to the Southgate riverfront area. Restaurants, outdoor cafes, great architecture and beautiful view of the huge golden Flinders Train Station. Reminds me a bit of Chicago. We walk across the Sandridge pedestrian bridge over the Yarra River that has fantastic steel sculptures called The Travellers (Nadim Karam) depicting the waves of immigrant history. ( photo from the web)

Zach and I return here in the evening for dinner while John is watching the men's semi-finals of the Aussie Open. Lots of street performers and people strolling the streets. My favorite was seeing a chalk artist creating a beautiful painting right on the sidewalk. If I wasn't such an airhead I would have realized the photo I took was set on video! Duho....


More art for the day...with visits to amazing alleyways covered with graffitti and then a mostly contemporary Aboriginal art exhibit at the Ian Potter Center.
I LOVE this type of art. Not sure what it is about these I love so much, the color? the little dots which remind me of mosaics? I'm completely captivated. Their art is often mapping things, creating paintings of their world as if you are looking down from a birds-eye view of their lands. They talk about the "dreamings"...I realize how much I don't know about their culture and I'm eager to learn more and see more! (regretfully do not have the name of this artist or piece)

Saturday morning we walk up to Victoria Market which is teaming with fresh produce, and delectable food vendors...after breakfast we pick up our rental car and John bravely begins his left side of the road driving for our big day trip south down the Great Ocean Road. We stop at Torquay Beach for lunch and then continue on the B100 along this gorgeous coastal road overlooking the Pacific and miles and miles of beach, some cliff side, interspersed with farmlands reminding me of golden California and forests.

An hour or so later our one lane road comes to a a complete stop and cars are parked going up a long hill. I get a knot in my stomache, an accident probably...We find out yes an accident, a motorcyclist is down on the ground and fortunately is not seriously injured. However unfortunately for us, we have to sit for 45 minutes until the ambulance arrives.

We continually gasp at the beauty along the road and stop several times at different scenic outlooks. Finally our major destination The Twelve Apostles appears. We park at the visitor center and walk along walkways atop the cliffs overlooking the ocean. It's simply breathtaking, one of the most beautiful sites I've ever seen. Huge limestone? rock formations jut out along the beach with the surf breaking on them. Easily 200 feet or higher. Beautiful. The wind is whipping into our faces, the sun is starting to set and there we are in the presence of something.

We've been on the road for almost 8 hours including all of our stops and the delay...we're beat. We check into the Comfort Inn in Warrambool, a small coastal town. Have dinner at Mr. Bojangles in the little town at 9:00..pretty good food, outrageously overpriced as is typical in this area and fairly dumpy surroundings.. We're getting pretty slap happy at this point and the jokes about Mr. Jim Bojangles being John's banker and nonsense like that.....Can't wait to hit the pillow. (We're having photo posting problems at the moment- will post later...some are on my facebook page..)

Perfect Day at the Aussie Open

Twelve hours of sleep feels great.  Finally getting through the muddy feeling from all that travel and the jet lag is done.  We check out a couple of other Melbourne neighborhoods that are in walking distance.  A "Greek" section is just a block of Greek restaurants--I'm sure the 1 million Greeks who live here are elsewhere.  Chinatown has the requisite China Gates at each end of its several blocks.  At a glance, which is what we are doing on this walk, it feels like Chinatowns in San Francisco, New York, Phila, etc.

Here I am at the lead-in to an alley of "sketch art" aka graffitti.  But taken to another level.....truly street art the images are amazing.  I've scoped out two streets for this and cameras clicking, we take photos from every angle.  There are some "sketchy: characters hanging out on a stoop, but well-outnumbered by us and more tourists who have come to check out this scene.

My big event here is getting to the Australian Open! I'm in tennis heaven as we head in, surroundings similar to the US Open (did they hire them as consultants or just copy-cat things like the lead-in of signs featuring mens and womens past champions, the food courts, the giant screen TVs?). Here I am showing off my new "tatoo", kicking back in a sling chair, sipping a beer, all of us soaking up the sun from a cloudless blue sky.  Ah perfect!

Inside Rod Laver areana it is packed, roof open.  Court gets prepped--they vacuum our courts at Cheltenham, don't they?! ;-)  And then it isi time for the intros for Roger Federer and Jo Tsonga.  The match has some great points at the start, and then Federer just starts hitting so cleanly you can hear every shot ripping down the lines, cross-court, and then a delicate drop shot....pouring in winner after winner.  The match is so one-sided that in the 3rd set someone yells, "C'mon Roger, give him a chance!"  All over in less than 2 hours, one great display from the GOAT in tennis.

I take a bazillon photos, and finally realize as someone asks me if I have a quiet setting on my camera--oops! I've been the rude American and feel a bit bummed at forgetting to work out how to silence the shutter sounds.

Melbourne at night is beautiful as I walk back to the hotel.

Yes it really is Summer in Melbourne

First day in Melbourne it is so beautiful, maybe we will follow the sun and summer every year.  We eat lunch outdoors at Federation Square.  A super public space, tourists and locals gathered to watch the Aussie Open on a giant screen, cafes around an expanse of paved brick that reminds me of the Piazza del Campo in Sienna, Italy, and several cool museums.  Zach slips into the ACMI--Australian Centre for Moving Images and gets himself in a mini-video that makes a leaping kick look like the Matrix--pretty cool!

The weather is spectacular, so we spend most of the afternoon outdoors, sightseeing near the Yarra River that runs next to the square.  We check out the National Gallary of Victoria (NGV).  Zach acts like one of the sheep sculptures outdoors, and Caroline stalks some great shots of the architecture.  Actually, we All have our cameras out,clicking away, the Stritzinger family photo shoot on location.

One exhibit in the NGV is a video of blond models in bikinis sawing through surfboards.  Visually an eye-grabber, and intellectually engages in word plays with the phrase "dead board" as in a surf board gone bad and un-rideable, and "dead bored" as in, um, tall blonds in bikinis with nothing to do.

Great views of the city centre remind me of Chicago. More so when we go jogging in the morning along the river--a world-class waterfront and view of skyscrapers that inspires.

The Time Traveler, his Wife and their Son

Day 1-Jan 26 It’s 8pm LA time and we’re sitting here at LAX waiting for our 10pm flight to Melbourne. I’m completely fried and bleary eyed, up late last night packing and we haven’t even gotten to the real fryer flyer - our 14-hour Melbourne leg. Ooooboy… Well hopefully being pre-cooked will induce quick sleep. I’ve not been one who sleeps too well on these red-eye things. Got the Melatonin w me to help just in case. I’m trying to grok the time change thing. Somehow we are going to lose January 27th (Sorry Hal, no birthday for you this year) and arrive on Thursday the 28th.

I’m reading a great historical fiction novel about Australia called The Secret River by Kate Grenville about a London criminal sent to Sydney Australia in 1806 to work off his debt for stealing. He lucked out, and instead of being hung for stealing lumber from his boss, he got some strings pulled and he and his family are shipped off to a rough penal colony of sorts in Sydney. I know so little about Australia that I love being able to read this book which really takes you back to its origins as dumping grounds for English criminals.

Day 3 - Jan 28 Ok we're here. YEA! That was one humungo LONG flight! It's Thursday 12:45 in Melbourne. Very disorienting...we just skipped right over Wednesday. I noticed as I'm sitting here with this rocking sensation as if I've been out on a boat all day....same thing from the flight. We've checked into the Novotel hotel and are about to head off in search of food. We are starving!

Travel Afternoon into Twilight…Zone

Natasha’s a natural for Feline Stowaway of the Year--figures out that if she sleeps quietly in the suitcase, she’s coming with us…..not.

Septa offers up Florida but Caroline just laughs and says, Who needs Miami when we’ve got Melbourne?

“Hands” down, Phila airport has the best public art of any airport in the country.  This one stretches for a quarter-mile, or seems to, as I slide down the moving-walkway to mail Nathaniel a check for this semester’s books.  Even on a travel day there’s Dad work to be done….

No, that’s not a vodka on ice but a Scintilating Sydney Seltzer for the first leg to LA on our day-long journey to Oz down-undah.

Zach has the most beat looking pair of headphones—held together (barely!) with aging duct tape.  They may be working, or may just be for show—looks like he’s digging some sounds, but could just be dozing as he stayed up all night prep’ing for the trip.

Caroline and Zach are in mid Trek Transporter mode—beam them up, Scottie, all the way to Melbourne, Australia!  Unfortunately, the transporter sputters and sparks and voila! Back to LAX terminal.

Natasha asks where we are going...again.

When you prepare for a trip with your cat and dog keeping tabs on things, you notice the differences between them, cats-and-dogs.

 Bridget, our dog, is "highly food motivated" according to her DNA testing profile which I had done for Caroline's birthday a couple of years ago. If there is even a crumb that trickles to the floor, she gets mighty interested. As you may suspect, this character feature/flaw has her oblivious to the actual nature of the day's events: getting ready for two weeks traveling abroad.

Our cat Natasha on the other hand seems tuned in to the whole thing. And she's seen it all before, or so it seems as she leaps to the desk to rub against the laptop screen and generally make a nuisance while I attend to websurfing and such (the need to get everything ready is quite an automatic pattern of neurons firing, my "IT" off on its automatic way, downloading gobs of data on Australia).

I've been excited by a new purchase, picking up an iPod Touch (not an iTouch as Zach intones, "that's just not a cool way to say it").  But the iPod is Way Cool!  As I'm sure all you iPhone users know so well.  So part of the day has been loading it up with apps and docs so there's lots to read on the flight and make use of down-undah.

By the time near-midnight rolls around, Natasha pretty well knows what's up and has that aloof look in her eye that conveys her complete disinterest in where we are going and her slight worry about how her water bowl on our second floor will be refilled.

In the know, and no doubt feeling superior to we weary humans, she agrees to pose by some of our pre-trip paraphernalia: books to browse, the new iPod Touch, and a couple of Australia plugs with the plug-ends turned out 45-degrees.  Gotta have the plugs or all our electronic gadgets--phones, cameras, videocameras, laptop--will glide slowly into quiet stillness.  The iPod however needs no Aussie plug!  Kind of the "dog" on the trip, it depends utterly on the laptop for its electricity.

Cats and dogs, dogs and cats.  They are looking at the same thing, but dog just gets it, or doesn't, thinks "nice...is there something to eat?" and keeps going on.  Cat knows everything about it, is clearly superior to you and me, and likes to have the last word one way or another..... If you have cats-and-dogs in your house, or a significant other, you'll get what I'm talking about.

Warming up for the Warm Weather down-undah

Caroline and I embark (quite the old-fashioned term, more like enplane!) on January 26th for a 2-week trip to Australia.  It's hard to get that it's happening and so soon!  Day to day has been pretty much Our Daily Times until this weekend.  Time to get ready!


So a little shopping yesterday: new backpack, extra memory card for the camera, and a little sunscreen cuz it's going to be hot there in Australia!  Temps will be in the 80's, lots of sun--not to wish anyone a cold day, but it would be a super contrast to leave in 20 degree weather on our way to Melbourne.


We're starting our trip with son Zach who is returning to a second semester at the University of Wollongong--that's a small city along Australia's east coast about 50 miles from Sydney.  Zach's been blogging about his first semester...

I'm pumped about seeing the Australian Tennis Open in Melbourne!  We have tix for the Friday matches--women's doubles final (could be Venus and Serena!?) and mens singles semi-final.....

Caroline and I will be taking a lot of photos.....I'll have to keep up with her as she's got a great eye and "mad photo stalking skills" as my son might say....here's her in action during our anniversary this past November....  both us hiking a trail, approaching maple trees in full, spectacular fall splendor, ready for our duo-dueling photo shoot....that was a fun hike!

Hope most of our photos are a little better than this one--silhouettes by the water.....I'm the one on the right.