All work and no play ...

Last Friday evening Jay, visiting us from South Africa, took us to dinner at a Japanese Teppanyaki restaurant in Chapel Street in South Yarra.
As usual there was more than just good food, Pearl felt quite proud for catching a bowl thrown at her by the chef. It was great fun. We walked home along the river past the Birrarung Mar's angel statue, just before stopping off at the federation vaults for a couple of nightcaps.

Moomba parade

The second weekend in March is Moomba Water Festival time in Melbourne. The festival incorporates activities such as ski-jumping championships on the Yarra River, Chinese boat racing at Docklands and is concluded by means of the Moomba parade down Swanston Street on the Monday, which is Labour Day holiday in Victoria.

We chose our vantage point at the corner of Flinders Street, and watched the procession of floats and marchers each representing one of the many cosmopolitan groupings that live in Melbourne.

Excentric deliveries

The foyer of our apartment block often witnesses the arrival of the strangest of deliveries. Pearl could not resist a recent arrival (at least to have a picture taken with it) - a 10 kilogram slab of chocolate!

Women in Wine at the MCC

One of the things Pearl and I did on arriving in Melbourne, was to put our names down for membership of the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) - we did not waste any time, as the waiting list is 15 years plus! In February though we got a preview of the hallowed "Long Room" located at the MCG, and the occasion was a "Women in Wine" seminar under the auspices of the women members of the MCC - who are very active members indeed! (This seminar was a follow up in a series, which included "Women in Cricket" and "Women in Australian Rules Football"!) Well the "Long Room" is perhaps not as hallowed as it once was - the members' pavilion was entirely rebuilt as part of the preparations for the Commonwealth Games of 2006, and the current long room is a brand new reproduction of its former self. However all the cricket memorabilia has found its way back to recreate the atmosphere - loaded with years and years of tradition.

The inaugural "Cocktail Party" was addressed by Anna Aldridge, 2003 Victorian Rural Woman of the Year and Winemaking/Marketing consultant of the Yarra Valley Network. Six wines were presented, all exquisitely accompanied by various canapes and finger platters:
- Yarrabank Sparkling* (accompanied tartare of yellowfin tuna on toast with lemon mayonnaise, baby capers, chives; and chicken mushroom and spinach pie with fruit relish and baby cress)
- Boato Craigo Sauvignon Blanc 2006* (with pancetta wrapped tiger prawn skewer with lime mayonnaise and pea, haloumi and mint fritter with whipped herbed fetta)
- Allinda Riesling 2006 (with mini pizza with three toppings and wine leaf wrapped barbecued lamb fillet on baby lavosh with tzatziki)
- Millers Dixons Creek Pinot Noir 2005 (with an antipasto platter)
- Seville Estate Shiraz 2003 or Hirsh Hill Cabernet Sauvignon 2004* (with a selection of cheese).
This very successful event was a further introduction for us to the Wines of Victoria. Those marked (*) above were especially appealing to us, and we have since ordered our own supply and would not hesitate to recommend these lesser known local wines to trained palates.

Summer nights

Having now been in Melbourne for over a year, I have a slightly better persepctive of the seasons, and the latter part of summer is tops. The evenings are still long (due to daylight saving, it does not get dark till just before 9pm), the temperatures are moderate and even the constant breeze tends to die down. Last weekend we went out for a walk with Piero, Jill and Luca, who are going back to South Africa for a visit soon. Walking from Southbank towards the Docklands presented us with some stunning views of the city.

We also starting to look out for potential properties in earnest as my current lease ends in May, and we may need to find another place to stay. It is good to have a better perspective of the city, being able to find ones way around, and also to have a better idea where one would like to stay, and potential invest in property. We are not restricting oursleves to looking in the city, but are also looking at surrounding suburbs. I must say though that after staying for a year within walking distance of work, clients and not to mention major attractions it is quite difficult to think of perhaps giving it up in favour of some sort of commute. There are many considerations though, and we will have to work through all of them to come to a satisfactory outcome (hopefully)!

Open season

January in Melbourne is dominated by tennis, and specifically the Australian Open Championships, which is hosted at Melbourne Park, just adjacent to the MCG! However prior to the Open commencing a number of run-up tournaments are hosted around Australia. In Melbourne the Kooyong Tennis Centre hosts the AAMI Classic to which eight of the top ten ranked men are invited. This year saw the who's who of mens' tennis at this tournament, and we went to see the final play-offs last Saturday. Andy Murray triumphed over Safin in the contest for third spot, and Roddick beat Federer for the top spot. The Kooyong provides the opportunity for seeing good contests the equivalents of which are typically sold out at the Aussie Open months in advance!

Summer holidays

Although we did not go away for the summer holidays, we did manage to take some time out during the non-working days. My brother came out from South Africa again, and on one occasion we cycled to Williamstown on the opposite side of Melbourne harbour. Pearl took the train and met us on Williamstown beach, before joining us on the cycle back to Melbourne. Melbourne is extremely accommodating to cyclists, and being able to take your bicycle with you on metropolitan and regional train services is just one example of this. This allows one to go out to more remote spots and cycle back into the city or vice versa. There are numerous cycle tracks throughout the city and the suburbs. Some are exclusively for cyclists' use, others are shared with skaters or pedestrians. Many roads have specialist cycling lanes which ordinarily motorised traffic is not permitted to infringe, and even where there are no demarcated cycling lanes, traffic is generally extremely considerate of the cyclists. This means that there are very few excuses left for not going out on a bike, and I have quite taken to this new pastime quite well. I have been out on a Saturday morning run on a few occasions: this involves cycling along the coast from Melbourne down to Rickert's Point and back, a distance of about 50km. Melbourne's ubiquitous coffee culture, with its innumerable coffee shops comes to ones aide somewhere along the road, allowing a good aerobic workout to also serve as a social! Chatting to Robert, who invited me on the run, the cycling culture has taken off in Melbourne over the last number of years, and he estimates that the number of cyclists on the roads on Saturday mornings has at least doubled. Undoubtedly more and more people as finding out about this form of recreation and taking it up more seriously!

Smoke!

Victoria has experienced some horrendous bush fires over the last two weeks. Although these fires are located in the Snowy Mountains well over one hundred kilometers away, periodically when the winds blow from the east Melbourne is covered by a milky white haze.
On Sunday, Pearl and I went for an early morning cycle along the beachfront, on the way back the vista of the city was totally hidden.

'Tis the season to be jolly ...

Pearl and I would like to wish all our friends, blog readers and associates a very Merry Christmas!

If you do not celebrate Christmas we wish you fantastic holidays, a good break and a well-deserved rest after a hectic 2006.

May all your dreams come true in 2007! Have a great year!

The Weather Makers

After seeing "An Inconvenient Truth", I picked up Tim Flannery's book at the airport on my way to South Africa, which discusses the global warming problem in more detail. It appears to be grounded in the same set of facts that Al Gore uses in his film, but documents some incontrovertible evidence of the effects that the phenomenon has already had on our environment, as well as some of the potential scenarios as time progresses. Tim writes very well, and I like his style of writing, even though some may classify the content as alarmist. I am convinced that man is having substantial impact on our planet and that unless we start acting collectively to moderate some of these impacts we will certainly leave the earth in a worse shape than it was previously. That is certainly not the legacy that I would like to leave - remember, "Leave a legacy worth leaving"!

Being an Australian, Tim cites examples in Australia, but also uses the example of the Karoo flowers (Namaqualand) and fynbos, both of which he sees as potential casualties of global warming. He is no fan of the Australian authorities, which up to now have made light of the phenomenon, and have refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol (along with the US), and furthermore bullied the surrounding island nations to drop many of their supportive positions. However it is starting to appear to me that the government may find the environment increasingly becoming a political issue here, and may well have to change their exclusively pro-business (mining / energy) stance as an act of self-preservation in the run-up to the elections late next year. This ridicule is only second to that which Tim reserves for the current Bush administration, whose actions (warmongering excluded) border on the criminal! However much more encouraging are the actions of companies such as BP who have or are a fair way on the road to re-inventing themselves as business transforming from being perpetrators to defenders of the cause.

As with Al Gore, Tim concludes his book with a number of fairly simple actions we can take individually to decrease our contribution to the release of greenhouse gasses by up to 70%, and I certainly intend doing something about those, while continuing to monitor the developments in research.

Fever

Since my last post, the cricket buzz in Aus has hit fever pitch. As those of you that follow the game would know, England's performance in the opening test in Brisbane can only be described as dismal. In the run up, the mantra amongst the Aus cricket team and followers was "it has been 4nn days since we lost the Ashes and are now pursuing our quest to return them" (to their rightful place). And at the first test's conclusion there were few doubts that the quest would be successful However I found that the Aus cricketers' confidence and arrogance to be distasteful and indeed dangerous! McGrath fro one made light of suggestions that he is too old to be participating at the this level of competition after his six wicket haul, only to pull up with an injury (bruised heel) that put him in doubt for the next test in Adelaide.

Well two days into the Adelaide test, the scenario has changed somewhat, with Australia beginning to realise that the result of their quest may not be quite as certain as it seemed only a few days ago. The similarity with the progress of the previous series in England is not lost on them: where after a good start they lost McGrath and then proceeded to loose the next three test matches and the series. I have no doubt that this will make the Aussies even more resolute to ensure that such history will not be repeated, and with England (with the help of their South African originating players, as is also often pointed out here) not being quite the pushover as once thought, I am looking forward to a competitive series, and hopefully a balanced one, by the time the squads arrive in Melbourne for their Boxing Day clash!

I have also found it encouraging to read that Monty Panesar, the English cricketer of Indian descent, has reportedly not experienced or seen any of the racial prejudice that is now regularly attributed to the Australian crowds, I just hope that he will get his chance to play! He may well just do that if Harmison does not prove his worth this morning!

Hustle and bustle

It is difficult to believe that it is already a week since I arrived back from South Africa and my most recent visit there. Melbourne however continues to offer up its own brand of interests. For a second year in a row I have managed to miss the Melbourne Cup, an annual horse racing event that brings Melbourne to a stop, literally for almost the whole week I am led to believe. It is scheduled for the first Tuesday in November, and that day is a public holiday throughout the state of Victoria. However it appears that the remaining days in the week are "almost" holidays as well, as the local inhabitants get swept along by the atmosphere.

Since my return, the Melbourne weather lived up to its name, by offering true winter conditions during Wednesday and Thursday, including snow in Ballarat (100 km west of Melbourne) and on the mountain peaks to the east. Today, Friday it is pleasantly warm again, and the temperatures are expected to rise to the high twenties by Sunday.

I am told reliably that this weekend Melbourne is hosting 25 major events, including the G20 summit of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors. The "Make Poverty History" concert which was specifically planned to coincide with the G20 has kicked off tonight, with a guest appearance by Bono, whose U2 band takes over the Telstra Dome tomorrow night and so it continues ...

Mussels Provencale

One of the benefits of living at the coast is the access one has to a variety of seafood! This together with Melbourne's markets makes seafood a regular menu item. This last Saturday we bought 1kg of fresh Australian mussels at South Melbourne market; the mussels are delivered to the market daily. Once you have access to the raw materials, a delicious meal is very simple to prepare. For example:

1 onion
1 clove of garlic
2 tomatoes
a bunch of flat leaf parsley
1 chili
5-6 calamata olives
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon / Chardonnay wine

Clean the mussels in generous amounts of cool water, discarding any that are not closed. Put the cleaned mussels in a large saucepan, adding about 1 1/2 cups of water. Place covered saucepan on high heat for about 6 minutes, cooking until all mussels are open - be careful not to overcook! Drain the mussels in a colander, preserving the broth.

Melt the oil and butter in a saucepan, adding the finely chopped onion and garlic. Cook until translucent. Add the chopped tomatoes and about 1 cup of the broth, and cook for a further 5 to 10 minutes until the tomatoes are soft. Add the remaining finely chopped ingredients, and the wine, cooking very briefly (< 2 mins). Add the mussels back into the saucepan and heat through. Serve piping hot mussels, in generous helpings of the sauce, with flat Turkish bread (Melbourne markets make this easy again). The Sauvignon or Chardonnay is a perfect to complement the dish.

Delicious!

Go see the truth!

This weekend, we made the most of a cold spell, and visited Chappel Street and saw the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore. He presents the data collected over various time periods; the evidence is irrefutable. Unless we collectively do something, the earth as we know it is history! Go see it when you have the opportunity and make up your own mind! Please also visit the Climate in Crisis web site (link is on the right!)

Spring in Melbourne

Despite the drought and notwithstnading some burnt patches in the lawns, Melbourne is looking good in spring. We visited the botanic gardens on Saturday, with the Azaleas, Camelias in full bloom. Alongside Pearl is studying the gardens plan at the Rose Pavillion.

However our ambitious picnic plans for Sunday at Albert Park came to rather a wet ending! A very rare shower arrived at just after 11am, and only really cleared up after we headed back home.

Playing with fire!

A man in Sydney almost lost his life yesterday after picking up what he thought was a lizard, but what in fact turned out to be a death adder which went on to bite him five times. The death adder is apparently one of the top ten most venomous snakes in the world. He was rushed to hospital, and his life was saved, but it was a close call. Despite being home to some of the most venomous snakes, death from snake bite in Australia is said to be rare.

With our venturing into the country, a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to study our host's book of Australian snakes. The local varieties include brown snakes, tiger snakes, taipans and the adder mentioned above. What I found most fascinating was the fact that some (in fact most) of the local snakes' venom is orders of magnitude more active than for instance that of the cobra - up to 50 times! Furthermore the local snakes are quite difficult to identify and distinguish, so the rarity of death by snake bite is thanks to the effective anti-venom that is specific to each state and effectively neutralises the venom of all snake species found in the specific state. So the critical factor is to get the victim to hospital as soon as possible.

During our drive to the Grampians I saw a large snake on the road, but they apparently steer clear of inhabited areas. Our guest house hosts said they had not seen more than three of four on their property in the seven years that they have lived there.

Record Drought Conditions

The mild winter in Victoria has not given way to a mild summer. Actually it is officially still spring! Instead a record drought has been announced. Today mercury in Melbourne reached 36 degrees, and these conditions are expected to continue for at least a couple more days. There is also not much prospect of rain. And if Melbourne has it tough, some of the inland areas are copping it much worse, and some farmers are seriously considering selling up and leaving the land.

Comparatively, us city dwellers have only the slight inconvenience of sweating it out during a short walk between city offices, but the major impact will come in increased prices for fresh produce which will now have to be freighted in.

Being just a couple of weeks before state elections, the local pollys are out and about trying to outdo each other in announcing various relief schemes for these type of conditions, but as soon as the campaigning is over the implications are expected to bite hard.

Colour and texture

Jamie Oliver

One of the recent visitors to Melbourne, Jamie entertained an audience of gastronomes at one of the local theaters one evening; this according to a couple who attended his show, and came visiting us a week later for a dinner party - quite daunting! However a simple menu with its firm South African foundations proved quite a hit: Fish and Lentil Bobotie (called it a Malay Fish Pie) served with a tomato chutney and an Aussie Semillon Cabernet Sauvignon; Chicken Green Curry ended off with a Fruit Salad of Cantelope (Spanspek) and Kiwi Fruit with Ice Cream.

Jamie also launched his sponsorship of a number of budding chefs in Melbourne, a local programme along the lines of a similar initiative in the UK.

2006 Samsung Melbourne Marathon

Just a short walk from our apartment saw us arrive at the finish of the 2006 Samsung Melbourne Marathon in St Kilda Road. The athletes started off at 8am in Frankston endudring rather blustery conditions en-route which saw temperatures hovering around 17, instead of yesterday's balmy 28 degrees. Less ambitious competitors could complete a half marathon or 7.5kms. Perhaps a personal objective for next year will the the half marathon.

Today's race was won by a Japanese athlete (Suzuki, whose first name I will not attempt to spell), the first non-Australian to win the race since 1998, when Dan Radebe from South Africa finished in top spot.

After watching an endless stream of half marathon competitors come over the finishing line, we saw the first three finishers in the marathon arrive home; we stayed in for the prize giving, enjoying the bright sunshine, which moderated the cold of the southeryly wind.