The Hotel

On my recent trip to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, I caught myself going to a hotel or two.

Well okay just the one.

Various views and an interior follow.

The ACCA

On my recent trip to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, I caught myself going to a gallery or two.

It would have been funny if they'd called it the OCCA.

It also would have been quite nice if they weren't between shows and we could have had a look around the galleries.

But the ACCA is a pretty stunning building. At least the outside is anyway.

All stark minimalism and stuff.

The Cooker

On my recent trip to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, I caught myself going to a park or two.

In one of those parks is Cook's Cottage.

We took photos.

We didn't go in.

The Plantation

On my recent trip to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, I caught myself going for a walk or two.

One of those walks took us to Federation Square.

Some smart bugger had dumped a heap of damned pine trees around the place.

Merry Christmas.

The Monash

On my recent trip to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, I caught myself going to a gallery or two.

Monash Art Gallery is a bit of a mission to get to - train to Glen Waverley, then bus to the outskirts of Monash somewhere - but it's well worth the visit.

As they state on their website - "MGA is unique among Australian cultural organisations. Indeed, it is the only cultural institution in the country – regional, state or national – whose collection is focussed solely on Australian photographs." That's why we went.

It was a shame the Brummels exhibition didn't have a catalogue with it, but you can't have everything.

It also had some of the best coffee and food we found in Melbourne.

These photos were taken near the gallery. Because I could.

The Buyer

On my recent trip to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, I caught myself on occasion buying a book or two.

These books ...

Mainly photography. Some other arts. Some science. Some history.

Some old. Some secondhand. Some new. Some Australian. Some English. Some Irish. Some American. Some New Zealand.

18 of them in total. 16.27kg in total, the heaviest accounting for 20% of that weight.

The Flyer

On my recent trip to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, I caught myself on occasion singing (to myself) various Paul Kelly songs - particularly From St Kilda to Kings Cross and, when being driven around the Yarra Valley, Everything's Turning To White made an appearance, as much due to this film as to Paul Kelly himself.

Naturally when in the air Sydney From A 727 popped into my head, even though I was fully aware that 1) I was flying over Melbourne, and 2) we were in an A300.

However, after our departure I decided to take photos. These photos ...

The Purchase

So a few weeks back I found myself in the small Wairarapa town of Martinborough.

Just off the square, completely filling a suburban house (as much as anything is suburban in Martinborough), is a secondhand shop fill of all sorts of good stuff.

Amongst some of the good stuff there I found this.

And this.

And I bought them both.

For no real reason.

But one doesn't always need a reason to buy stuff.

The Departed

I'm in Melbourne this weekend.

Rather than find anything new or clever or intelligent to post I'm just posting a post I posted in 2007.

But with the words changed.

It doesn't really have anything to do with Melbourne but hey i haven't got my crap 1980 110 film scanned yet, ok?

The Spectacle

Yeah. So I recently got me some new glasses.

The process was quite involved ...