Bird people, cat lady, duck lady, kookaburra!

This morning we waved a final fond farewell to Tracy, Andy and Molly as they drove off in a taxi to the airport. Their next adventure will be settling into life in Singapore just in time for the arrival of Molly (after much discussion on names last night it was decided that to keep things simple the new baby should be called Molly too)

Talking of Molly, Rebecca and I took Molly 1 out for a walk and a swing at a little park down the road this morning while A&T packed up the last few things. She was as good as gold, no tantrums...a good thirty minutes in the swing and then she went to watch the birds being fed by some slightly crazy-looking hairy bird people! You can see her in the picture with Auntie Becca...I thought it wise not to point a camera at the hairy bird people who had just torn up almost two whole loaves of bread for about four pigeons!

Then we saw a cat in someone's front garden and stopped to look at it from outside the gate...then unfortunately "someone" turned out to be in, and also slightly batty and waved us away -grr...cat ladies!
So we walked on and found another park with a slide and eventually Molly got tired so I carried her home for some lunch. I think we are both (and particularly Auntie Becca) missing the gorgeous cuddly bundle of fun that is not running up and down the living room. Hoping that she is enjoying her business class seat on the plane-they have got one each, so plenty of room compared to cattle-class! The flights came with A's new job-v.good news.

This afternoon we pottered down the road to the botanical gardens, which given it is winter weren't too bad-not exactly colourful but there were some bird of paradise plants in bloom which are pretty and also some palm trees, cacti and enormous aloe vera plants (which always excite me...not sure why, think it might be something to do with the aloe vera farm on my kitchen window sill at home.)

We had a cuppa by a lake- chai tea seems quite popular here-i had some and it's really good-tastes like African tea. We also watched another crazy duck lady feeding the ducks and an enormous black swan, right next to a sign that said "Do not feed the birds!" I hereby conclude that the Australians like their animals just like us but of the representative portion I saw today there are more finicky fruit-loop fanatics here.

Just as we were about to leave, a kookaburra flew past and landed on a tree surprisingly close! On this occasion the Australians carried on their work around the park while the crazy English tourists stood and photographed the tree for hours! We walked around to the other side of the tree and it stayed there the whole time and let us get really close! Very exciting...it even winked at me...the only thing it didn't do was laugh...but then I suppose I didn't do anything funny.

Toothbrushes and tantrums!

I feel like I've just got back from London! We've just walked around the center of Melbourne, visiting the apparently famous Federation Square...all I can say is it wasn't very square. It had some interestingly shaped buildings around it, and quite a lot of fake grass, and I narrowly escaped being dragged into another museum, but there's not much more to say...didn't even see any pigeons!

Then we went to find a post office (don't get your hopes up, there will be no postcards from me!), and an internet cafe to print off our flight tickets, then walked down the river and got a metro home. So like I say, London-esque!

This morning on the other hand was brilliant! We went on a boat to Williamstown and saw some great views of Melbourne from the river. We had a humorous pilot (oh the brits do love their humour-i bet we're the only country to have had a humorous Olympic opening ceremony) and the sun also came out so we could sit outside on deck especially on the way home.

We had lunch after a long wander accompanied by a long tantrum (in the end I told Becky that if she didn't want to go in her pushchair she was going to have to walk by herself!) Because the ferry was on a winter timetable our only option was to come back at 1.30pm or get several trains so we headed home. Molly cleaned most of the boat on the way home (with a baby wipe and my toothbrush which had been brought with us this morning to prevent tantrum number 1 of the day!) and was happy as could be! Luckily I saved the free toothbrush they gave us on the last flight...

"Oh there's Princess Philip!"

Becky has been helping her brother drink up his port stash as he cannot take it to Singapore. I'm going to ask her to do today's yoga quota in a minute...!

More cake!

So this afternoon's foray into the world of cake cost almost more than our entire lunchtime meal yesterday...but was it worth it?-judge for yourself! We went to St Kilda where they have what can only be described as Cake Row ..cake shop next door to cake shop, next door to cake shop, next door to a tree full of raucously squawking birds...who I assume had been turned away from one of the cake shops. Sadly by the time we had finished guzzling the sun had gone down so my swimming costume and snorkel had to remain in my backpack...oh well I'll have to poke a blue-ring octopus another day.

More museums...

If Melbourne is not famous for its museums, it should be! We've done another one this morning and had lunch there-it was a very good museum actually and I learnt that there was a prehistoric mammoth-type creature in Australia related to the wombat. It looked like an enormous wombat...and a lot cuddlier than the mammoth. I'd quite like to bring one home...except it might eat Lottie. I forgot to check if it was a herbivore or not.

I also found some museum bugs which eat away skin and flesh from a dead animal so that you are left with a perfectly clean skeleton. It's much more effective than a human cleaning it so they use them in the museum to clean carcasses-genius!

Just had afternoon power nap-museums are tiring! Mollie is also asleep, and from the snoring coming from upstairs I reckon someone else is too (it's too loud to be Molly).  Either that or we were followed home by a prehistoric wombat...

Immigration museum

I forgot to say that we went to the immigration museum in Melbourne today. It was a really interesting place actually, contrary to how it sounds in title! One floor was all about identity and what gives you your sense of identity and the other was about travelling to Australia in various conditions through the ages and being allowed or not allowed into the country. I was astonished to discovery that Australians seem to be getting more racist over time, while the rest of the western world is trying to eradicate racism. Apparently there is still a faction that wear t-shirts that say "F off we're full." Then I thought about it some more and realized that a lot of people in dear old blighty still believe that we are over-run by immigrants stealing all our jobs...unaware of the statistic that it is in fact less than 1% of our population who are immigrants (well it was last time I checked!) The people who believe we are overrun may as well wear the same t-shirts really!

This has all got a bit heavy for a Saturday night (it's 9.40pm here) so I shall just finish by saying that if anyone has got hold of a video of me holding four semi-blown balloons in my mouth whilst entertaining Molly who just kept saying "more"...If you even think about putting it on YouTube I shall track you down and use my newly-learned wombat combat techniques on you!!

Mary Poppins vs Voldemort!

Surreal! We're watching the opening ceremony for the Olympics several hours after it has happened from the opposite side of the planet! And wondering whether the money spent on it could have wiped out 3rd world debt...but at the same time laughing at Rowan Atkinson...and wondering how the Queen looked like not a hair was out place after parachuting into the arena!
Oh and eating these...