Wednesday to Friday

Wednesday, 2 March

I forgot to mention in yesterday's blog that late in the evening we hooked up with Clare and Ben for a skype.  It was after 10pm here and 11am there so unfortunately little Ben was a bit tired and ready for his morning nap!

Today we went into the City on our own and finally got to visit the Ian Potter Gallery and enjoyed looking at the Australian art.  It was a surprise to us that there are so many good artists from Australia and we haven't heard of any of them in the UK! 

Before leaving the city we had a walk around the war memorial shrine and then the Botanical Gardens.  The gardens were lovely with some stunning flower beds, some of which have recently been redesigned to take account of the drier weather and droughts that they have had in Victoria in recent years (ha, ha!).

We took the tram home.  Rod and Suzanne live within minutes of the No 3 tramline and less than 10 minutes from a railway station, both with direct and frequent services to and from the city.

In the evening Rod and Suzanne invited their friends, Jennifer and Brian, round and we had a really nice evening and a particularly good meal ending with a glass of Rod's kumquat brandy! 

Thursday, 3 March

Rod and Suzanne drove us out to the Yarra Valley today to go to the Healesville sanctuary, a nature reserve for native Australian wildlife.  It was wonderful to be able to walk around and get really close to animals we have never seen before and where they are, as much as possible, in their natural environment.  Amongst other things, we saw emus, koalas, kangaroos and platypus and also a male Lyre bird in full mating display.  Rod had never seen a lyre bird display and Suzanne had only seen it once, so we felt we were particularly lucky.  The koalas were absolutely gorgeous, so cute and because we were so close to them we took some really good photos.  There was another animal similar to a hedgehog, called a echidna.  One of the nature wardens told us their names and one of them was called Steve!!  Very prickly little things!!

Friday, 4 March

Today we went back to the Yarra Valley but this time to the TarraWarra winery for a tasting and lunch.  The food was very nice and beautifully presented.  In the bush fire a couple of years ago the vineyard had lost it's red grapes and so they had to source their red grapes from TumbaRumba in the Snowy Mountains, NSW and it had made rather a nice Pinot Noir.

There was also an art gallery and the present exhibition is of a very well known Australian artist called Brett Whiteley, 1939-1992.  Although he is very well known in Australia for his modern abstract art we hadn't heard of him before although we discovered that he had lived in London for several years and the Tate has bought at least one of his paintings.   Suzanne's favourite painting was a self portrait entitled “The Artist after Three Bottles of Wine” - sadly he died young, say no more!!