Australia 2023: Last Days

It’s December 31, 2023. Goodbye 2023, you bastard! Hopefully your brethren will be better. Sachie flies out tomorrow and I go on the second.

Yep, this must be the place.

“No, there’s no eye-contact and you just buy the oysters and take them home. I’m sorry, but we are too busy to indulge your predilection.” This was a rotten lie, I saw at least one man scoffing a dozen outside the market entrance. You’ll see him and other fresh-oyster fanciers spotted around the neighbourhood.

Being civilized folk we went to some weird rock’n’roll bar over the road. Both those plates of oysters are for Mrs Sachie, by the way. I confess that I’m not so keen on them.

If we bought you this hat as a gift from Australia, I’m truly sorry.

None of these needle-like apartment, and otherwise, buildings were about when I left in 2000.

In fact, it was more this scale. This is the shot-tower in Melbourne Central.

It’s under a huge glass cone. It’s honestly impressive. They used to heat up lead at the top (of the brick tower, not the glass cone) and pour it down to make droplets for lead shot. That’s fine but Melbourne has at least one more of these antiques. Heck, I think there was one in my home town, only 100km away. How much shotgun shot were they getting through?

Here’s Saint George again. This one’s not bad but not as good as the one we saw in Georgia: take this you scaly fucker!

Here we are under the dome of the state library. Our walk took us from one end of Melbourne city to the other and this was on the way. I last came here as a child. It’s actually super-cool and impressive. I really wish we had an hour to explore and a few months to browse the titles.

Like this one. I haven’t read it myself but I know of it. It’s about Antarctica. One that I have read is Home of the Blizzard by Mawson. Sounds like Antarctica gets a bad rap.

There is a little art gallery and here’s a painting of Melbourne town hall back in the days before it was a comedy venue.

That’s the Shrine of Remembrance. Another place I hadn’t been to since high school.

I thought this horse trough was very nice, but it’s empty. A bit of a letdown for any visiting, mounted, veterans. Lest we forget indeed.

It’s the next day. We have dropped off Sachie at the airport and now it’s time to dispose of the children.

On this visit they keep doing this.

These shots and gifs are at the gardens in Geelong. The gardens are not very big but they are in very good nick.

And since it is New Year’s Day it’s time for a fancy dinner with the kids.

The twice-crowned boy. This was a late Christmas so there was an exchange of gifts.

He got a handsome lava lamp. I am jealous as I don’t know what happened to my lava lamp. Probably the same thing that will happen to his, eventually.

Now it’s time to go home on our mighty 777. Shortly after shooting this a storm rolled in with much lightning that sent me scurrying back to the lounge.

Rad lighting system. Reminds me of the Disco Train.

And that’s the bookend to this trip. One chappy happy to be on his way home.