While Not Working

With great excitement, Roger discovered that on 26th November Steamrail Victoria would run the final ever parallel run from North Melbourne to Moorabbin before signalling works at Caulfield in January made the parallel run no longer possible. A steam hauled Vintage Train and an electric Tait Train would run along the line all the way to Frankston and back and train aficionados could, for a price, come along for the ride. We didn't go along for the ride because we'd already booked a ticket on another train adventure later in the week. Instead we scoped out the best vantage point for trains - where due to works on the level crossings there were no fences and we could stand dangerously close to the lines. Then we went through the agony of deciding which side to stand on: did we want the best view of the steam train or the electric, because we couldn't have both. All set up and waiting for the train.   We chose the steam side of the tracks and whiled away the wait watching as t...

At the 1891 opening of the Outer Circle Railway the Daily Telegraph noted with equal pessimism and eloquence: "As a goods line it is out of the question: as a passenger it accommodates only the inmates of the Kew Asylum and they travel very little... it might do for a tourist line, but people are not yet educated up to prowling about the outskirts of obscure suburbs."  It's probably not surprising then that within two years the line had closed due to lack of patronage. The good thing about the demise of the Outer Circle Railway was that eventually it was developed into the Outer Circle Anniversary Trail which ran very conveniently right past our current front door.  Roger had a birthday, being of course not a day over 21 and certainly not on the downhill run to 60. Being the birthday boy, he got to choose what he did for the day.  After some consultation with the BoM and being of a mind to prowl about the outskirts of obscure suburbs (I'm not sure that the res...

Five-ish years ago I wore out the saddle on my bike and had to find a new one. The trouble with buying bicycle saddles was (and still is) that I couldn't really go and try them out for 100km or so; I had to just give it my best guess and let my bottom be the judge as time passed and the kilometers accumulated.   Accumulating kilometers between Roma and Surat. Accumulating more kilometers on the BVRT last year. My new saddle performed admirably.  Over time the fancy gel topping accommodated the specific shape of my bottom, reducing the need for padded pants and allowing me to jump on my bicycle in my everyday duds and zoom (or in my case chug) off for a quick (slow) 40km or so.  A couple of thousand kilometers went by and, lulled into the security of a comfortable bum, I didn't give my saddle a second thought until, with nary a pop, the bubble burst. More accurately the welded seams of my saddle burst and over the course of a month or two all that high-tec gel escaped, fal...

Now that we've moved to a new sit, we've got a whole new bit of Melbourne to explore. Even better, BD is recovered enough to go back to work so our parental duties have reduced somewhat and we have time to go exploring. The three of us went to Chadstone, which is the second largest shopping centre in the Southern Hemisphere (behind Centro Comercial Aricanduva in Brazil) and has a somewhat trippy roof to boot.   Peace out.   We didn't stay long at Chadstone due to all three of us being very allergic to shopping. Thirty minutes in the largest blah blah blah in the Southern Hemisphere was enough for all of us to roll our eyes and go home to recover with a nice cup of tea.   And a small fluffy dog to cuddle.   Boring big shopping centres aside, one of the great things about Melbourne is all the suburban parks just waiting to be discovered and our new suburb was no exception.  Just up the road was Wattle Park with lots of walking tracks on which to tire out small flu...

After two days of warm(ish) weather Roger grandly declared the arrival of summer as he changed into shorts and t-shirt, packed away his puffer jacket and fluffy slippers, and started making plans involving al fresco dining and lazy summer evenings.    Right on cue, in rolled a cold front bringing rain and thunderstorms, flooding the already soggy parts of NSW and Victoria and dropping the temperature substantially.   Flowers in the rain.     "This can't be right!" wailed Roger, wandering barefoot and forlorn through the house in his shorts and t-shirt, his lack of climate-appropriate clothing getting little sympathy from me. "I'm getting frost bite! Where's summer?"   Not here, obviously.   The two dogs (henceforth to be known as Silly 1&2 until they provide evidence for a change of name) followed him in eternal hope of a walk which was not going to happen due to the aforementioned weather.  The rainwater tank overflowed and ran a rivulet thro...

BD's friend came down from  Queensland to visit her, so she promptly ditched us to use her new-found stamina to good effect gallivanting around the city.  We all arranged to meet at Mordialloc for fish and chips beside the sea.  This gave me a perfect excuse to ride my bike from our new house sit to Mordialloc. I meandered through pockets of bushland along Gardiner Creek, through warmth and humidity that was having a decent shot at feeling a little bit like summer.  I wasn't the only one feeling a bit warm: I came upon two beautiful black cockatoos so intent on their bath that they let me hang around and take photos. Leaving Gardiner Creek behind, I made the most of the Anniversary Trail with it's gentle railway gradient. Noice. And took my life in my hands by cycling through a golf course.  Thankfully a big fence had been built to protect bicyclists from errant (and possibly well-aimed?) golf balls. I feel safe now. Before long I was back on my old friend ...

I still haven't quite let die my ambition of averaging 200km/month on my bicycle so, leaving Roger to coddle his back with lots of walking, off I went on my bicycle. For the sake of exploration I went somewhere new, and discovered oases of vegetation and very pleasant cycling right beside some very busy roads. If the cycling has to be beside a very busy road, this is how it should be done.   Birds sang in the bushes, frogs croaked in puddles, rabbits lolloped out of my way, and butterflies fluttered around in the sunshine.  A little bit of country even popped up, complete with tractor.   There was so much water around that some parts of the bicycle path had grown a good crop of slime and moss, which made the cycling slightly soggy with a higher than average chance of slippage.   I did not slip.  Out in walking land, Roger drove the car to Brighton and walked beside the beach to St Kilda. The beach at St Kilda was full of little Nippers all training madly for bea...