Still Melbourne

Monday (11 December), we went to the National Gallery of Victoria to an exhibition ‘watercolour country, a 100 works from Hermannsburg’. An inspiring collection of paintings by Albert Namatjira, his family and those of his Art school.

Tuesday, walked through the Alexander Gardens and the Kings Domain to the Shrine of Remembrance, which includes a very well done exhibition on wars, obviously from a Australian point of view, a sombre and respectful commemoration of the victims of war.

We moved on to the Royal Botanical Gardens, it’s a large site, so we only managed to stroll around half of it before we’d had enough and headed back home.

Wednesday, we managed to get ‘rush’ cheap tickets for the matinee performance of Miss Saigon by Australia Opera. A really good performance, but Miss Saigon is not cheery!

Thursday, walk locally to the supermarket, very boring detail, but we don’t spend all our time enjoying ourselves, having said that Nic does like a supermarket.

Friday, another local walk, this time to the local wine retailer ‘Dan Murphy’s’ a much more interesting shopping experience, luckily we walked there so couldn’t carry that much back. The bargain buy was a bottle of white wine for $5, about £2.60, Update – we opened this wine on Saturday night and it was very drinkable.

In the evening we got the tram in to central Melbourne to soak up some Christmas spirit, there was a choir in federal square, which turned out to be a traditional Serbian choir signing a programme of Serbian folk music, who were then joined by the choir from the Serbian Orthodox Church. An interesting hour! They had clearly worked hard on their performance, so it was interesting to see a larger crowd being attracted to the dancing inflatable Christmas characters, just round the corner.

We then walked around the city to the town hall which was lit with a moving light show for Christmas, and then walked along the Yarra River to see some more festive lights.

It was all very busy with families and/or works Christmas do’s. The people watching was plentiful!

Thankfully we must have left early as the tram home was not too busy.

Saturday, back to the Botanical Gardens to cover the other half. It was great to see so many family groups meeting up with a picnic.

Sunday, a lazy day at the flat, Nic went to the local health food shop, Rog went for a very short run!