Long walk Saturday

Hi everyone,

As you probably saw at a glance, this entry is photo heavy.  Hopefully I have enough text to do it justice.  And hopefully you all like the pictures.

So today began with an email from Joni about the box-o-love.  She's had to try to move house and manage our munchkins AND suddenly found she had to deal with a Fedex/Customs issue.  It's completely stupid we have to manage all this bullshit.  Our kids are bright, but I don't ACTUALLY believe they're importing parts for a nuclear reactor yet.  The wonders of stupid bureaucracy.  Hopefully it's sorted now.  Happily I did hear from her again later in the day: she's now into the new place but Rachel was throwing a fit and didn't want to sleep.  Rach doesn't always handle change well.  Poor Joni - I hope she got to sleep last night.

My own day was a very long walk: I've been enjoying walking a lot lately, so I decided to get my exercise for the week in and walk from here to the Yarra River and then walk up the Yarra as far as my boots would carry me.  I first went through the gardens beside Parliament House and took a photo of the fountains here.  I like fountains - in a place as dry as this, they just say "prosperity" to me.  I also took a couple of pictures of Princess Theatre and in the Gordon Gardens.  So, herewith a picture of Adam Lindsay Gordon - he was my grandfather's favourite poet.  I wish he (my Grandfather) could have lived a bit longer.  He was one of those rare people who loved completely unconditionally.  He'd have thought the world of Joni, and she would have liked him too.  And our little munchkins... We'd never have prised them back out of his hands.  Ah well.

But I'll meet him later on in the place where he has gone: Rudyard Kipling, Gunga Din.

As well, in the Gordon gardens there was another fountain that was carved in prison in the 1870s - very clearly Victorian-era, but also quite pretty.  There were a lot of weddings that I went past in the Old Treasury Building and in the Treasury Gardens (among other places).  I hope it works out for them.  They surely had a beautiful (if rather hot) day for their weddings.

I crossed the Yarra a bit down from Birrarung Marr and then walked up the Yarra, past Melbourne High School and past Power House Boat Shed, and kept going.  This took me into the most leafy green and wealthy bit of Melbourne, in Toorak.  Every house looks like a mansion, and (shall we say) non-European cars were a distinct minority.  I eventually would up at Toorak Road and (fortunately) decided to turn right.  This was fortunate because my internal compass was telling me to go left, thinking that would take me north and to a road which would intersect both Toorak Road and Nicholson Street.  I turned left only because I could see a couple of big churches and it seemed to me there'd be shops and somewhere to get lunch.  So, I went right and soon found I was headed back towards South Yarra which basically fitted my plan.  I even was lucky enough to find a supermarket on Toorak Road (which surprised me a lot; Toorak Road is a very high-end road - Kind of like St Charles Avenue in New Orleans, but with less classy architecture and more high-fashion outlets).  So, finding a supermarket meant I could get lunch with my small change (2 bread rolls, an avocado and 3 mandarins - total spend $4.70).  I have to say I enjoyed it a LOT when I found a little park with a bench where I could make up lunch!

I kept walking down Toorak Road to Claremont Street in South Yarra and turned down it back to the River and walked along it to the Royal Botanical Gardens, so I went in there to explore a bit.  I discovered the Californian Garden.  I think it's new, but it has a swathe of specifically Calfornian plants like barrel cacti and tall cacti, and trees and the "petticoat palm".  Really awesome!!!  I went on from there to the Arid Garden and Guilfoyle's Volcano (in essence, more cacti).  I do love plants especially for how they can take you to someone else's environment, someone else's world.  It's almost like being transported to another world.

I went around the gardens a bit more before I headed back to the River.  By this time two things were happening: (1) the sun was beginning to burn my neck and left forearm and (2) my feet were beginning to hurt.  I decided to press on and walked back to Swanston Street, then up Collins Street to Spring Street and back to here.  The last two miles surely had me hobbling as blisters began to REALLY sting.  Google Maps tells me the total distance travelled was about 17 miles!  I'm kind of pleased I managed it, but don't plan to do it again for a while.  I had a shower and cooked up some rice to have with defrosted gumbo from last week (or was it the week before?  It's frozen so it wasn't a problem either way).  There's a new housemate, so about 5 of us sat up and talked until about 9:30.  She seems a nice person - she's a paramedic and surely had a bunch of stories to tell!  At 9:30 I decided to bale and head up here and have some chill out time.  And now, blogging.

Tomorrow I'll attend to a few things that came in the mail this week (bills, fun stuff like that) and then got to the office to set things up for tomorrow.  Oh, and I must tee up a skype time with Joni. Hopefully things are getting more peaceful there for her and Rachel eventually got to sleep last night.

Hope all is well with you all.  See you tomorrow!