Solar City to Motor City

Today saw me off on an excursion to Geelong for a job interview.  Geelong is sometimes called Motor City (it’s biggest employer used to be a car manufacturing plant), and the nearest city to me – Shepparton – calls itself Solar City; thus the title of this post.

Geelong is about 160 miles from here, and I’d decided to travel by train rather than drive.  It was going to be an early start either way and so I was on my feet just on 0600.  I can tell you it was cold!  I drove down to Seymour and parked there and caught the train to Southern Cross Station.  I spent the trip down reviewing the position description for the job and considering answers to questions.  From Southern Cross I caught the train down to Geelong and then walked the half a kilometre or so to the interview.

 

 
The interview itself went reasonably well.  Afterwards I went for a walk along the beachfront to gather my own thoughts and consider how well that workplace might suit me if an offer were to be made.  Geelong is a small city on its own section of Port Philip Bay.  It was a lovely clear day (if chilly) and it’d be stunning in summertime.

I’d only been able to grab a banana and a slurp of coffee for breakfast, so I got lunch at the Geelong Boathouse.  The venue appears to be an old barge which has had a house of some sort somehow bolted on top of it.  I had a pre-made Greek salad, which was a little disappointing (heavy on lettuce and light on fetta and olives). The coffee was excellent however and perked me up well.

I wasn’t in a hurry to return to the Goulburn Valley and I decided to head back to Melbourne and spend a few hours wandering the National Gallery since I haven’t been in ages.  The older I get, the more I’m finding art matters to me, whether it takes the form of music or painting or sculpture or literature or dance.

Today I was interested to find my own tastes seem to be changing.  Usually I’d gravitate straight to the antiquities, and to the mediaeval and Renaissance sections.  Today, though, I was craving more modern work, that seemed to be trying to say something, or at least something I hadn’t heard before.  I made a few notes about pieces that really struck me, and I’ll write a few posts about them in the next few days.

I caught the train back to Seymour late afternoon and was back at the farm by 1945.  I passed Michael who was on his way out – I have the impression he was avoiding Little Sister and that they’ve been bickering again.  Why in Gods’ name people can’t grow up and act like adults is beyond me.  Neither of them drink much, although I can’t think of two people who need to more.

 

No more for now.  Hope all of your weekends look promising!