I took this shot from my bedroom balcony this afternoon.

The image is a composite of 4 photographs that have been stitched together. Half an hour after this photo was taken we had very heavy rains.

On my recent trip to Melbourne I passed Luna Park (an old amusement park opened in 1912) in St. Kilda on the way to Acland Street and I thought it might be good to get a photo of the entrance.

As I walked through the car park along the side of Luna Park I noticed the wooden roller coaster and how unsafe it looked (to my untrained eyes at least). Quite a few of the upright timbers of the supporting structure looked as though they were beginning to split. The ends of the many of the cross members were rotting and the bolts fastening them to the uprights appeared to be fairly rusty. I took a few pictures and I can assure you that most of the timber work where I stood looked like what  you see in the three photos below.

I didn’t have to hunt around to get these shots, they were in plain view as there were so many choices of ratty looking timberwork to choose from.

When I was a kid I thought that those old style roller coasters were dangerous and I didn’t like going on them because I feared that they’d fall apart when I was on them. After looking at the roller coaster at Luna Park, I wouldn’t get on one even if a gun was held at my head.

The giant gold covered reclining Buddha at Wat Pho is an incredible 46 meters (about 150 feet) long and 15 meters (nearly 50 feet) high.  Wat Pho is not only a temple that houses a truly amazing statue, it is also a tour de force on a grand scale of Thai decorative arts and gilding and I’d highly recommend that if you’re in Bangkok that you visit it.

As with most of the well known temples in Bangkok, beware of seemingly helpful people either outside or near by who tell you that the temple is closed for whatever reason.  They are con artists and will try to get you into a tuk-tuk (a three wheeled motorcycle taxi) to take you to another temple they recommend but in fact you will eventually be taken to various merchants (like tailors or gem sellers) who they get a kick back from.

Be warned that if you go with the tuk-tuk driver offered, things can get quite nasty very quickly if you don’t buy something at the place they take you.

If I were to compare Sydney and Melbourne to people, I’d say that Sydney is one of those naturally beautiful but vacuous people who just sits there expecting everyone to adore them just for how they look and Melbourne is one of those plain looking people, who has been forced to develop an interesting personality to attract people.
 
I not only live in Sydney, I love Sydney, but I also have to say that during my recent visit to Melbourne, I was left with the feeling that Sydney is somewhat lacking.  Sydney just seems to be relying on its natural beauty, which comes from being located on a spectacular harbour.  Although Sydney has the world-famous Opera house, and the clunky Sydney Harbour Bridge, it’s not a particularly nice city, to walk around.  Once one gets away from the harbour, most of Sydney is merely functional rather than beautiful. 
 
There have been articles in the Sydney Morning Herald describing a recent visit by a Danish urban planner, Jan Gehl and his comments about Sydney. Gehl was quoted as saying that Sydney “is a doughnut, because it has nothing in the centre.” I couldn’t agree more.
 
Melbourne on the other hand has instituted changes suggested by Prof  Gehl after studies his team conducted in 1994 and 2004, that have completely transformed that city into a much more liveable place. 
 
Melbourne has many kilometres of cycleways that encourage people to get exercise, and reduce the amount of cars on the road.  There is also much more public art in Melbourne.  I really enjoyed seeing Duncan Stemler’s “Blowhole”,

a 15 metre (50ft) high wind powered sculpture set in a children’s playground, and John Kelly’s joyously quirky  “Cow up a tree”, not only put a smile on my face, it brightened up the rest of my day.

As a matter of fact, many public structures in Melbourne exhibit beauty in their design, more than mere functionality.

When I told my friend that I was going to Melbourne, she recommended that my wife and I take our bicycles.  Luckily, I took that advice and spent a few days cycling around Melbourne’s beautiful art filled streets.  We’ll be going back to Melbourne again, we loved the place.

As for Sydney… get your act together, Melbourne’s kicking our collective butts!

Considering that Holbrook N.S.W. is over 200 km inland, it is surprising to see signs along the highway connecting the town with the submarine H.M.A.S. Otway. 

 It is even stranger to see a full-size submarine surfacing through the grass in a small town.

When I first saw the submarine from the car, my immediate thought was how the local Chamber of Commerce had just grasped at a straw of an idea to get passing traffic to stop in their town.  It is a truly surreal sight, and it’s not until you actually take a closer look and read the attached signs that one is made aware of what the connection is between submarines and the town of Holbrook.
 
The town of Holbrook first started off with the name of Ten Mile Creek but by the mid-1800s there were so many Germans living in the area that it’s name was changed to Germanton.  By the time the First World War rolled around, it was considered an unpatriotic name and was renamed Holbrook after a British submariner named Norman Douglas Holbrook.
 
 Lt Holbrook was awarded the first Victoria Cross given to a submariner by navigating his obsolete B11 submarine (built in 1905) 

 through the five lines of mines in the Dardanelles to torpedo the Turkish battleship Mesudiye.

Further attempts by the French and British at a similar feat ended in failure and submarines being sank.  When a British and French fleet decided to take on the guns guarding the Dardanelles three more ships were sunk with a loss of life not seen in the British navy since Trafalgar. That naval disaster consequently led to the idea of taking the guns guarding the Dardanelles by land, which in turn became the great military disaster that we all know as Gallipoli.

So there you have it, Holbrook was named after a British WWI submariner and as a consequence, has a 1960s Australian sumbmarine in a park by the highway.

In this day and age of bland franchises and shrinking diversity it is a pleasant surprise to visit St. Kilda’s, Acland Street just to see some old fashioned bakeries. Much to the credit of the people who own the cake shops that caught my eye, their stores look like something from a bygone age. No cutesy plastic signage and “designed” interiors, just old style European cakes in the windows with scant regard to current merchandising trends. Real honest to goodness cakes that are the antithesis of what one sees in so many cake shops here in Australia and many other countries outside of Europe that I’ve visited.

Amongst these old fashioned shops is the Monarch Cake Shop which isn’t as big and flashy as the rest but has an old world charm that pulled me in to try their chocolate kugelhopf.

The kugelhopf served at the Monarch is more like the kind one might find in Austria rather than Alsace and has a chocolate filling. The texture and flavour of the kugelhopf provoked a cascade of thoughts as I was eating, about when chocolate was new to Europe and what sort of things the they would have made with it. It’s not often that a cake with coffee stirs so much thought in me. It was worth every cent I paid just for the daydreams it caused.

On a recent trip to Melbourne we (my wife Engogirl and I) visited our friends Liz and Karl for dinner in their back yard.

Karl made three delicious dishes for the main meal, Boeuf Bourguignonne, Goat Rendang curry and avocado salad which was followed up with orange cake and mango for dessert.  I know the purists out there are rolling their eyes but it all went together very well.

As we were tucking into our dessert a Brushtail Possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) dropped in to see if it could mooch some food. 

Australians reading this blog will know that Brushtail Possums are very common but I’m sure any foreigner visiting here would be charmed to see one so close. Many people feed the possums and they can be quite bold and for that reason one should be very careful around them as they can do a lot of damage with their sharp teeth and claws if they decide they are under some kind of threat.

One of the best places for flavour and value to eat in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia is Jalan Alor. Jalan Alor (Alor Street) is a street lined with food vendors (they are known locally as hawkers) who cook their food in semi-permanent stalls that are backed onto shop fronts.

Night is the best time to go as it is much more comfortable after the sun has gone down and Jalan Alor really comes alive as the locals and tourist come to feed. Good food, fast and cheap.

Mike Stasse is one of my oldest friends (here in Australia) and he is the owner of the “Running on empty Oz“, peak oil discussion group. “Peak oil” refers to the imminent decline of oil production.

Mike and his wife Glenda have moved to beautiful Cooran in Queensland and are getting ready for what they see as the inevitable chaos that will result from the shortage of oil by becoming self-sufficient. Two years ago, my wife and I visited Mike and Glenda on their land as Mike was still building the outside of their self-designed and built home.

 We stayed with them for about three days. During our time together we were shown their permaculture garden,

solar electricity system (they sell electricity to the power company when they have excess) and various other ecologically sustainable systems that have installed, such as:

• A simple off the shelf greywater system that uses no power
• A kitchen greasetrap that works with compost and worms, no odours, no maintenance to speak of 
• A zero flush toilet that saves thousands of litres water a year

It is a lovely house in a beautiful setting. The picture below was taken from the back window at sunrise, looking out towards Mt. Cooran.

It takes courage and commitment to do what Mike and Glenda are doing. The sort of courage and commitment that I sometimes wish I had, but I will be instituting some of their ideas into our next house we buy later on this year.
 

My wife (Engogirl) took the shot below as we were coming into Bangkok to land.

As you look at how thick the cloud is, it will come as no surprise that in the whole five weeks we spent in South East Asia last year we only saw a few days with blue skies. Nearly every shot I took on our last trip has white overcast skies.