The challenge at the moment is to keep mango juice off my laptop. Melbourne, its food art, buskers, trams alleyways and fabulous bicycle paths has been the urban highlight of my time in Australia and the Queen Victoria Market a top spot in Melbourne the best city market I have ever seen. I ate my way through it, pesto, Tasmanian Brie, polish sausage,burek, morsels of spiced kangaroo, fresh pasta, nectarines, and sangiovese from the Bortoli estate And then there was the Immigration Museum, shades of Pier 21 in Halifax, the Art Gallery, the art and music on the streets and the Melbourne Thessaloniki sister cities festival happening all around me. A little outside the downtown or CBD as its known in Australia there is the Ceres project an urban farm and alternative energy and design centre and the Abbortsford Convent (no longer) now a community market, with performance spaces, artists studios and a raft of alternative practitioners, I met a friend there and we had lunch at Lentil Anyway, a pay as you feel restaurant run by Bangladeshis Then we strolled to the Childrens Farm nearby and walked through the grounds of the Steiner school. I cycled back downtown along the Yarra River and saw the the final stags of a huge boat race coxed 8s in all classes including masters from Aus, NZ and China. The Melbourne Botanical Garden is the finest I have seen in Australia and I was priveliged courtesy of my friend Hugh to be shown some plates from one of the original editions of Banks’ Florigeum, housed in the rare books section of the State Library.
This is a city to visit, and if you are on the upward side of the age curve then live here for a bit and enjoy more deeply what I only touched.
Katherine in Melbourne 27/11/09
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