{"id":3934,"date":"2022-11-24T11:24:10","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T11:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=3934"},"modified":"2025-12-24T22:27:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T22:27:47","slug":"5-sunshine-to-melbourne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=3934","title":{"rendered":"5. SUNSHINE TO MELBOURNE."},"content":{"rendered":"

My sister, Elizabeth (aka Liz or Bij by me) had a few days in Queensland with an ex-neighbour of hers from her early days in Australia at Mornington.\u00a0 They had booked a place on Bribie Island so we took the opportunity of meeting her there.\u00a0 Much easier than battling our way to Bermagui in South Australia!\u00a0 (80 km instead of 1400 km!)<\/p>\n

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We walked on the beach to Buckley’s Hole – almost the very southerly tip of the island.<\/p>\n

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Back at Kiels Mountain there was a bit of grandchildren delivery and collection.\u00a0 Plus some general clearing of the pool and surrounds.\u00a0 This area was affected by the house building operation and still awaits full restoration.<\/p>\n

Gardening is hard work between 10 am and 4 pm.\u00a0 It’s just too hot.\u00a0 The school runs end about 8.30 am and, even if there’s no after-school chess, swimming, tennis or frisby, it’s dark soon after 6 pm.\u00a0 So there isn’t much time available for work!\u00a0 However, the bonfire heap is slowly getting bigger and the paving round the pool now has far fewer weeds.\u00a0 The concrete plinth outside their huge shed had a number of flat planks of wood scattered around.\u00a0 These were lifted gingerly one by one with a stick.\u00a0 Just as well as a couple of cane toads hopped out from one pile and a snake was sheltering under another.<\/p>\n

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“Benji, this is what I mean.\u00a0 You have to be very careful!”\u00a0 He took one look and said “It’s a keelback, Grandpa!\u00a0 Non-venomous!”\u00a0 “Well, I’m sure you might be right, but just in case, we are leaving.”\u00a0 “Now!”\u00a0 “Immediately!”\u00a0 To be fair, Phroggy’s identification was confirmed once this photo had been sent to expert snakeologists.<\/p>\n

To celebrate our miraculous escape, Linda (with a little help from Glenda) constructed a spectacular dish for supper.\u00a0 An un-named Lebanese concoction involving greek yoghurt and garlic sauce, chickpeas, tahini and mint with grilled cauliflower and asparagus on top and harissa-marinated lamb and chicken in the middle …<\/p>\n

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Actually, i think this was made for dinner the previous evening,\u00a0 but why let the truth spoil a good story?!\u00a0 It was really to celebrate Jack’s successful band performance.\u00a0 Their rendition of the Star Wars theme tune was truly brilliant!<\/p>\n

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The next stage of this trip is a week in Melbourne with Jeff and Laurel, friends we met on our Kimberley trip in 2016.\u00a0 This time we are staying in their lovely new house.\u00a0 Last time we were in Melbourne it was almost ready for Jeff and Laurel to move in – just being finished off.<\/p>\n

Linda delivered us to Maroochydore Airport in plenty of time for the 8.05 pm flight – which was already showing a delayed departure.\u00a0 \u00a0The bad news is that the flight is about two and a half hours long plus there’s an hour time difference, so our 11.30 pm arrival could slide into tomorrow!\u00a0 Sorry Jeff and Laurel!\u00a0 In the event we collected our luggage at 11.59 pm!<\/p>\n

We picked up our old Myki cards and all hopped on the bus to the city.\u00a0 We thought we could top the cards up on the bus, but we couldn’t.\u00a0 So swiping the cards put us into debt.\u00a0 We’ll worry about that later!\u00a0 We are on the way to the “Monet and Friends” sound and light display at the Melbourne Convention Centre.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The show is in an enormous, cavernous space with dozens and dozens of individual screens onto which are projected images of impressionist artists works of art.\u00a0 Over 800 of them are combined in a magical extravaganza.<\/p>\n

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They are woven together with sets of images of clouds, trees and “bioluminescence”, all overlaid with dramatic music.\u00a0 Stunning!<\/p>\n

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Some of the famous artworks have been animated with dragon flies scooting about and boats rocking and rolling on imaginary swell.\u00a0 What Monet, Manet, C\u00e9zanne, Degas and their mates make of this show, I shudder to think!\u00a0 Luckily there are no lasting copyright issues!\u00a0 … Or are there?\u00a0 Matisse lived until the end of 1954.\u00a0 Artistic copyright runs for 70 years from an artist’s death.\u00a0 I think his stuff is covered till November 2024.\u00a0 Who should I tell?<\/p>\n

Anyway – the show was fabulous.\u00a0 If it pitches up near you, you really NEED to go and see it.\u00a0 (BTW, I get 10% on all new business!)<\/p>\n

We visited Bob and Mary (met recently on our Norwegian adventure in fjordland) in their superb house in Glen Iris.<\/p>\n

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Lovely BBQ, excellent desserts and silky wines!\u00a0 Thank you again guys!<\/p>\n

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Our stay in Melbourne continued,\u00a0 but I’m so far behind, I’m going to leave tales of our further adventures for later!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My sister, Elizabeth (aka Liz or Bij by me) had a few days in Queensland with an ex-neighbour of hers from her early days in Australia at Mornington.\u00a0 They had booked a place on Bribie Island so we took the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3934"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3961,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934\/revisions\/3961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}