29/01/2022 Dairy Days: Melbourne

We drove down the highway at 110kph and what do you know, in no time at all we were in Melbourne!  I guess that's how highways work.

The weather system which had spent the past week causing all sorts of havoc throughout South Australia was due to arrive in Melbourne at the same time as us.  Thankfully, the weather system was late and we made it to our Air BnB without meeting a drop of rain.

We stayed in an old dairy.

Our little building was built in 1925 to cool and store the milk in the Oakleigh Dairy. The brine cooler shook when in operation and thus needed to be on a concrete floor and in a brick building, thereby providing us with somewhere to stay 100+ years later. The sloping floor was a reminder of the time when the dairy needed to be hosed out to keep it clean, and made for an interesting adjustment when sitting at the table or on the couch. Adjacent to the dairy were the old stables where the horses lived when they weren't delivering the milk and where we could have stored our bikes but we didn't want to milk our hosts' kindness too much, so we left them (the bikes, not the hosts) on the car.

Our dairy.  No horses here since 1920-something.  It's very cosy now, and I confess we buttered up our hosts a little by complimenting them on their garden.

We moved into our dairy in time for the predicted storms to arrive with suitable claps of thunder and rattles of hail before settling into plain old rain while the more exciting weather moved to other parts of Melbourne.

The next day we sallied forth to get the operating instructions for the two little dogs for whom we will be responsible after 10am Sunday morning; spent some quality daughter time over wontons at Box Hill, and went for a long walk around Carnegie.  Having enjoyed my walks through the Camperdown cemetery in Sydney, I was delighted to find the Oakleigh Memorial Pioneer Park which contains the remnants of the Oakleigh Cemetery.

  

This cemetery shares a common story with Camperdown: originally on the outskirts of town; so popular that people were dying to get there (sorry, couldn't resist!); and eventually being redone as parkland or, in Oakleigh's case, other community uses such as sporting fields, Post Office, Council chambers, recreation reserve, road widening... it's a wonder there's any cemetery left at all!  As I wandered gravely through the grounds the park was busy with walkers and picnickers, and the game of cricket on the adjacent sports oval (also reclaimed from the cemetery) provided a robust sound track.

 Satisfied with the day, we added Carnegie to the Must be Explored Further list with a special note to conduct quality assessment experiments at the Greek bakery just down the road.

Home for two nights: once-was dairy.