Random Melbourne Pics

There's no particular story to most of these places, just that they were part of my everyday world when I lived in Carlton and worked in town, and they're the sights I needed to see when I spent a day in town playing tourist...

Federation Square

Flinders Street Station...

the MCG across the Yarra... Southbank ...
the Block ...

and Chinatown.

One thing worse than losing to England

There’s one thing worse than going to the MCG, with my dad, to see my one game of cricket for the summer, only to lose to England - in the last over.

Knowing that next week I have to face all my English mates...

The Wave is banned...

The Mexican wave has been part of 'halfway through the second innings of a day/night match when the crowd gets bored' ever since I can remember. After years of training (and the infiltration of subversive types of my own age) even the staid and proper Members' stand goes up as the wave rolls around the ground.

Not any more.

Thanks to a bunch of idiots who throw heavy things up in teh air, not just their arms - including 'cans of piss' - and no, they don't mean beer, the wave is banned.

Didn't stop us sending it around for another 3 laps after this notice came up though....

Williamstown

What to say... a shop in Willi lays claim to the biggest range of ice cream flavours of any shop in Melbourne. Not sure they win hands down, but it was a lovely detour on our way back from Geelong, it was a hot day, and I'd never seen Melbournetown across the water looking quite this cool and groovy... but man, when global warming does things to sea levels, now I understand that Melbourne is stuffed!

I've also never seen me looking so lilywhite in the middle of summer - this was AFTER 2 weeks home!

Shopping with hippies

A child of Warrandyte and a motorcycle maid (such as I have been) really shouldn't see 33 summers before making it out to St Andrews Market. St Andrews lies on Melby's north-east fringe and is reached by some of the best surfaced, most delightfully winding roads that I've ever had the pleasure of putting two wheels over (although on this particular day, we took my cousin Sam's car, a burnt orange Corolla nearly as old as I am).

The town (village? hamlet? these words don't work outside England!) in its entirety comprises a pub (recently rebuilt after a fire), a bakery, about 10 houses and community hall beside a big open space that features the weekly Saturday morning market. If only it could be reached by public transport, it would indeed be indie hippy heaven.

My cousins (including the adorable Oliver, below), my husband (!!) and I spent several lazy hours wandering through stalls full of silk skirts, second hand clothes, home baked cakes, curries and lentils, funky gemstone jewellry, drought resistant native plants, second hand tools and even didgeridoos! Buskers played beautiful music and artists propped on rocks or fallen trees to sketch their surrounds. Apart from the frantic half hour where I lost the only surviving key to my cousin's car - it was found and turned in to a stallholder- it was a perfect way to spend a day.

A little bit about coming home...

I've been back a couple of weeks now, and England feels a long way distant - much further than home feels when I'm away in Blighty. We've spent our days catching up with many of the people we love best - friends and family alike - at endless bbqs on terraces and patios, with fish and chips on the beach (actually, it was cold and threatening rain, so we didn't make it to the beach, but the fish and chips were fantastic), and scoffing home-made garlic sausages washed down with single malts with re-enacty friends in Geelong.

In between lazy afternoons drinking wine in my mum's spa, I've also been trooping into town to stock up on foods I've missed and pressies for folk at home. It's funny to see Melbourne through the eyes of a tourist, knowing I'm here for such a short time, when so much of it is already so familiar.

It's set me to thinking about the things I've missed most while I was away. A surprising amount of it has been food-related, but the list in its entirety looks something like this:
- fat t-bone steaks and massive king prawns, both to be had for less than a fiver (sterling) per kilo;

- really truly fresh fruit and veg - watermelon, pineapple, canteloupe, tomatoes, avocadoes, basil... I could rave forever;
- ricepaper rolls from any of the hundred or so Vietnamese cafes on Victoria St - the best bit is that I don't have to make them myself;

- and Asian restaurants that assume you will use chopsticks (where they would never dream of asking 'would you like chips instead of rice with that', as Chinese takeaways must do in England!)
- Australian wine, at Australian prices;
- antipodean snacky goodness - cheezels, twisties, cherry ripes, timtams, witchety grub lollies and boiled sweets and rock from the lolly gurus at Suga (below);

- the taste of truly clean water that has sat in a reservoir being filtered by nature for two years, instead of passing through seven other people on its way down the Thames;
- public seating, public toilets, and rubbish bins in the streets - we clearly don't have the same fear of tramps or terrorists here!

- open spaces; our roads are wider, and they come with sweeping verges instead of narrow hedgerows (which are quaint, but slightly claustrophobia inducing); our pubs have higher ceilings and feel light and airy after England's dark and smoky haunts; and even the streets have fewer people in them;
- riding in the front seat of a taxi, talking (about cricket) with the driver and paying with my credit card. You can’t do any of that in English cabs.
- and, of course, trams.


All good for a laugh, but last of course, there's the big stuff. I left Melbourne knowing it was time for a break - so much had happened here in such a short space of time and I needed to head off, see the world and heal some old scars. I've come back to the happy realisation that, although I'd like to keep exploring elsewhere just now, Melbourne will always be my home town and there's much here to be proud of. It's a beautiful mix of old things and new, gloriously multicultural, with a little bit of something for anyone who cares to go looking.

I grew up here. I built a couple of different careers here. I loved and lost and found new love (those last 3 all in the one pub!). It's where my family and most of my oldest friends live, and now that I'm back, I'm not sure how I managed without them. It's good to be home, and I'm gonna miss you when I leave, in a way that I didn't miss you last year.

Cafe culture moves up two floors...

One of the biggest differences between Europe and Australia is that old European buildings are still lived in and used in everyday life, while Melbourne's oldest buildings often seem to have been reserved for museums, or condemned to crumble into obscurity.

In the year or two before I left last year, that started to change, as Melbourne started to preserve its significant heritage buildings and rediscover its gorgeous past by putting old spaces to new uses. Witness the exotically restored Forum theatre (IMHO the best place in the world to see that most eclectic yet together of Melbourne bands, The Cat Empire), and the redevelopments of the old police station D-24 and the Herald Sun building.

Some of the best new cafes and bars in Melbourne have been installed in formerly derelict offices above central city shops. Places like Cookie, Madame Brussels and upstairs at The Lounge all do a fine and slightly quirky line in food, drink and fun, balconies opening onto leafy green vistas that make the street-level chaos below seem a long way off.

Yes, they can be damn hard to find, but that just adds to their allure - there's nothing like sitting smug with your mates in a suite of battered antique couches, knowing that two more friends are lost in the laneway below, trying to find the door.

I dunno who dreamed up this revitalisation of Melbourne's 'balcony' culture, although I wouldn't mind betting it was someone who lived in a big ol two storey terrace house, sharing a battered couch and some old milk crates with 3 or 4 housemates...

O Beautiful Day...

Planned for many months, yet when it came, circumstances bent it into shapes we hadn't at first imagined. Nevertheless, the day Anthony and I wed was just beautiful as any we could have dreamed up.

We exchanged our vows in one of Melbourne’s oldest buildings before just two witnesses – thankyou Glennee and Kate! - promising to hold the other ‘beloved’ until the end of days. Then we joined those family and close friends who could be with us on stoopidly short notice and feasted on prawns, salads and sunlight. Our lovely pal Josh took some excellent pix, and so did my cousin KT, on my camera.



As day became night we went back to where it all began, rejoining the merry band of musicians at the Sunday ‘session’ at the Dan, very nearly two years to the day after we first met there. I have never shared music with another as I do with this one: its power has held us strong through long and sometimes difficult months over this past year, and it flowed around us both that night as we celebrated with old songs and new.

At last, exhausted, we retired to a gorgeous hideaway – the generous gift of my darling cousins and ‘Ant Dee’ – to celebrate on our own, and break our fast in the morning of the first day of 'ever after'.

If I have learned anything these last 3 years, it is that the marriage of true minds succeeds not because the two are perfect, but because they are perfectly matched. Together they give all to see the beauty that life holds even on dark days, and lend one another grace and strength when it is needed, to make each stronger than either was before. We have travelled far to arrive at this beginning, but it has been a good beginning.

Nothing like leaving things to the last minute...

Beneath all our recent travels has run an undercurrent that I dared not describe until we knew the outcome. But today I can. Anthony was just two days away from returning to Australia alone, when the happy news came that the Work Permit my employer has been seeking to enable me to stay on had at last come through!

We’re still not sure whether we are on our heads or our a*ses, but our bags are packed and we are bound for the 2am bus from Oxford to Heathrow, and thence to Melbourne. Marriage and more paperwork await, but we hope that in 3 short weeks we will both be back in the UK, having caught up with the people we love. Needless to say, dear readers of the Antipodes, there will be a bed for you all whenever you desire it!

Croeso y Cymru (that's Welsh for 'Welcome to Wales'... I think!)

Ants and I decided to start the new year as we intend to continue it, with a weekend exploring somewhere new. The Welsh border is just 2 hours from Oxford, so on Friday night we packed a hire car and trundled down the M4, past Bristol and over the massive Severn Bridge which, at 3 miles long (5.1km) puts Melbourne's humble Westgate to shame, and serves as a metaphorical, as well as literal, gateway to Wales.

I've learned a great deal about the English side of my heritage since I've been here, and been panned by some of my English chums for always siding with the Scots and the Irish. So please don't take this as yet another anti-English rant.

But there is no better word to describe southeastern Wales than 'denuded'. Mined heavily for coal and metals, barren misshapen hills rise above the motorway, bare of trees or even buildings, the soil exhausted, spent, infertile. Massive processing plants dot the coastline between (or even right beside) brightly lit towns: Cardiff, Swansea, Port Talbot.

We stayed in Cardiff (Caerdyff), which, since the re-convening of the Welsh Assembly, bills itself as "Europe's newest Capital". It certainly feels like a city in a hurry to go somewhere - extensive construction zones litter the inner city. There's a juxtaposition of old-beside-new that reminds me of a lot of Australian cities - although while we have grandstands to rival Millennium Stadium, which rises beside the river Taff, we've nothing to match their gorgeous castle.

Found some lovely foodie spots and some cosy Victorian-ish pubs that were just lovely, but our real adventures took place out of town....

My Lord Earl of Pembroke

When we finally arrived, Pembroke was well worth the drive.

It's not cool to love the Normans too much in this part of the world, but my favourite Norman - William Marshall - was Earl of Pembroke, and built much of the castle that still stands on a massive promontory overlooking the town. His father-in-law was Earl before him - an infamous fellow named Richard de Clare, better known as Richard Strongbow - the fella who claimed Ireland on behalf of the English, lies buried in Dublin and gave his name to an international brand of cider.

Loads has been written about William Marshall, who served King Stephen, Henry II, Richard the Lionheart and King John in succession and after more than 50 years in the saddle, was never unseated in a joust. He's often thought of as one of the first men to embody the ideals of courtly behaviour, and his marriage to Isabel de Clare, daughter of Strongbow and a Princess of Leinster (whose father invited Strongbow to invade), is thought to have been a happy one, even though they were cursed and their bloodline had all but died out within a generation. You can read more about them here, here and here, so I won't bore you with further details.

As for the castle... wow.

Two things strike me about the castles of Wales I've seen. First, Wales was weeks of travel away from the Norman strongholds in places such as London, so they tended to be fortresses in their own right - the two we saw this weekend (more about Caerphilly later!) both had massive moats - made from flooded rivers and dozens of metres wide - even bigger than in the movies! Second, their very remoteness (and the tendency for English lords to hold several titles and therefore have multiple residences) meant that many of the Welsh castle/fortresses weren't much used after the 13th century - so apart from maybe being blown up by Cromwell and put back together again in the 1800s (as this one was), they haven't changed much. Anyway, William Marshal built the most fantastic fat round tower, four tall storeys high, right next to the great hall and living quarters completed a generation before by Richard Strongbow. Much of it still stands - rising above the massive cavern that once served as a water entrance and before that was home to neolithic people for some 12,000 years.

We thundered back to the present with pints at 'The Cromwell' before winding our way back to dingy Cardiff, certain that we would have to see more of the 'real' Wales on Sunday.

Sunday - St Fagans and Caerphilly

After a quick brekkie and checking out from our hotel, Ants hit upon the fantastic notion of checking out the outdoor Museum of Early Wales at St Fagans, about 4 miles from the centre of Cardiff. The weather was looking doubtful, but we decided that this open-air museum was worth a shot. We were right. The museum comprises several dozen buildings, ranging in age from 1500 to 2001 that have been painstakingly moved from their original locations and rebuilt in the grounds of St Fagan's castle (below)- which is more of a manor house really, built in the grounds of an yet another Normal keep, and surrounded by the old fort's original 12th century walls.

The old houses range from a reconstructed Celtic village, tiny16thC farmhouses on 'real life size' plots of land (made from clom - a mix of clay, straw and pebbles, and complete with pigsty, box beds and smoky chimney) to an entire shop and a row of workers cottages. Replica furnishings and implements adorn each, along with solemn Welsh guides all too happy to impart their knowledge of each building, how its tools were used - and even a few words in the local tongue.

Ants was a little disappointed by St Fagans Castle though ( little more than a 16th century manor house now, although the 11thC outer walls from the original Norman fortress still encircle the grounds.

So off we went in search of more, 'proper' olde worlde grandeur. Enroute, we managed to lose ourselves on several of the massive roundabouts that feed into/off the motorway (these babies are HUGE, hundreds of metres across), cutting a full lap round some of them before we found our way, arriving at last at Caerphilly CastleWow. This monster was built by Gilbert de Clare, who I think was a brother of the legendary Strongbow. He planned on making his castle impregnable, so built these massive water defences (see above) around it. These proved great at keeping out the local natives, but not so flash when proper seige warfare took hold, and the castle stood for barely a century before being captured and sacked. It never really recovered, and, to add insult to injury, was well nigh blown to pieces by Cromwell in the Civil War (he did that to a lot of places - the rotter!). Even today, parts of towers stand at precarious angles. Never truly restored as many others are, it's still a cracking example of an unadulterated Norman castle, and if the age blackened stones and open roofs don't make it appealing as a residence, they do add a great deal to its old world romantic appeal.

Well satisfied, we headed home to Oxford, with even Anthony confessing that he's all castled out for a bit...



Please note, all pix on this entry reproduced from the official websites mentioned above

Sorry, Brit cricket fans, I can't help it

Many of my English friends have lately and gratefully ended nights at the pub with ‘oh, and thanks for not mentioning the cricket’. It’s actually hard to be smug about flogging the poms at cricket when your mates follow the losing side. However, I couldn’t let the greatest sporting whitewash in 85 years go by without mentioning it just once. Oooh ahhh, Glenn McGrath. Hurrah for Michael Clarke’s stunning debut, and that heroic last bastion of fair play and wicked wicketkeeping named Adam Gilchrist. Three cheers for that understated British newsreader who said ‘Shane Warne... oh how we’ll miss him’. The look on the faces of my workmates Will and Pete … priceless. ‘Nuff said.

New Year's Eve, and 'Christmas... the Sequel!'

New Years Eve always carries expectations (nay, compulsions) that everyone MUST have a cracking good night and do something amazing. We figured the best way to guarantee it was to wander in to the regular Sunday session at the Half Moon with our friend Lynne, (who also joined us for orphans Christmas.)

Quite a late one, as nights at that pub often are, but a happy time, lots of singing and general laughter. Cider, whisky, Baileys, and a cab home at 4am. Bliss.

New year's day was one of my happiest ever, I think... went over to a friend's place for brunch - arrived to find Barnes absolutely ratted and giggling on the couch, while Sal and Alan ('nother music mate) stood in the kitchen with guitar and melodion in hand, writing a song about how it must feel to be Barney when he's hammered.

As always at their place, the food was abundant, and gorgeous - smoked salmon with lemon juice and fresh crusty bread, scrambled eggs, oven roasted tomatoes, wild boar sausages, and bubbly. Yum.

It was hard to tear ourselves away from there, but we had to then get away for "Christmas - The Sequel", an annual dinner that my workmate Z and her partner Marc hold at their place, involving baked ham and turkey with all the trimmings, cheesecake, some very blokey blokes from the local rugby club, drinking games and some Little Britain. So glad to have had the day off today...

Meanwhile, back in Aus, they were celebrating a white Christmas...

Yes, really!

After weeks of fighting bushfires, which burned out a million hectares (that's 10,000 square kilometres, or an area almost the size of Northern Ireland), the valiant lads and lasses of the CFA finally caught a lucky break. Despite weeks without rain, come Christmas day the temperature plummetted, the clouds rolled in, thunderstorms dumped small floods on the fire fronts. And at Mt Buller, it SNOWED!

Orphans Christmas

Bugger the turkey - for our first Christmas in the UK, Ants and I went in search of traditional English fare... roast venison and pheasant. We found both at Oxford's covered market, a curious blend of overpriced tourist shops and fresh meat, seafood, deli goods and organic veg.

I've decided that the English really don't know how to cook any more. The market was almost empty two days before Christmas - but the readymade meals section at Sainsbury's was teeming with shoppers, as were the gourmet 'just heat and serve' aisles at Marks and Sparks. Sad really, but it made our shopping easier.

Christmas morning dawned in a haze, brought on by a late night at the Killingworth Castle Hotel, where friends of ours had a gig the night before, followed by carolling at the Half Moon, our local, where happy punters were falling over themselves to keep us plied with pints and scampi fries.

Eventually we gathered our other 'orphan' mates (people also spending Christmas away from family who live in farflung reaches of the world) Lynne and Lizzy, and fired up our roast. Preceeded by Ants' homemade parsnip and chestnut soup plus to-die-for smoked Scottish salmon (with juniper) and adorned with all the trimmings that a roast SHOULD have, lunch was followed by a nap and several lazy hours before we could even contemplate our christmas pudding.

Black and white movies and some impromptu music (Lizzy's melodion and fiddle, Ants on drum and me faffing about with tin whistle) made it one of the most laid back Christmases ever... yay.

On the eve of solstice...

As we approach the shortest day, I have a whole new appreciation of why ancient folk so marked the turning of the seasons. After the long days of summer, Britain’s long nights must have surely seemed like the end of the world. With still two days until the solstice, it’s not fully light in the mornings until I reach Oxford’s main street to change buses (around 8am), and if the day is cloudy, it can be fully dark again by 3.30pm.

The upside is that I get to see some fabulous sunrises as my morning bus makes its way past bare fields on the way into town. Yesterday was just such a one – all rosy pink light, with orange tinted clouds streaking a mauve sky. The sun, when it finally rose, was a glowing golden ball and even standing outside, watching it rise over the horizon made me feel warmer. Of course, it didn’t last. It’s now 2pm and the mist that came down at 3 o’clock yesterday still shrouds the carpark outside work. It’s ghostly to drive through, especially now that the trees have lost all their leaves, and their spindly limbs poke through the grey. It’ll be dark in an hour, I reckon. Oh, and the mercury has just peaked for the day… at -3 degrees C.

Melbourne, sweltering in 40oC plus and cloaked in bushfire smoke from fires raging along a 250 kilometre front, seem a long way off indeed….

Party Frocks

The office christmas party turned out to be a black tie do. Fine food, abundant wine and a B&B upstairs. Needless to say, we didn't look quite this glam by 3am...

...And live at 'the X'

Our third gig in a week was a benefit for Amnesty, held at the recently refurbed Exeter Hall in Cowley, organised by a friend of ours. We humbly shared the bill with some of Oxford's most legendary musical talent, including JJ Soul and Mick Henry.

We managed to get through without any major stuffups - actually, we thought we kinda nailed a few things, and one friend, not normally given to sentiment, says we almost made her cry! (Thanks Sal - I think!)




I could get used to this gigging caper...

Joie de Vivre in gay Paree

After our adventures at the General Elliott, I'm sure it'll be no surprise that we slept on the bus to London, and on the train from Waterloo to Paris. The Eurostar takes less than 3 hours door to door, and drops one right in the middle of Paris, at Gare du Nord.

On arrival, I forgot to tell Ants about the gypsies - folk who swarm around the entrance to the station, pestering unsuspecting smokers with mulit-lingual requests for money. I walked straight into them on my first trip here, 11 years ago and, dying for a smoke after 3 hrs on the train, so did Anthony.

Having evaded them without giving away any of our change, we made our way by Metro (the Paris underground) to Montparnasse, a hip cafe district south of the Seine, where we'd found a very cosy little hotel at a stunning price, then headed to the Right Bank to explore.

Paris is stunning, and I fell in love twice this weekend - first with this beautiful city that never seems to sleep, and second with Ants (all over again), as we traipsed through parks and along boulevardes, in and out of cafes and alongside the Seine. Paris truly is a city that never closes - the Champs Elysees was still in full swing at 7pm on a Sunday night - shops open, with throngs of shoppers - adults and kiddies alike - and we scaled the Eiffel Tower (actually, you take a lift) at 10pm. The cafe that we found for supper didn't even begin to get busy until well after 11pm, and the fellow serving us our plates of bread, cheese and saucisson seemed to really appreciate that, although he gave in and helped us order in English, we persisted in trying to ask for things in French.

By far the best value holiday trick we've uncovered on our travels so far is that, on the first Sunday of every month, most of Paris is FREE. The Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, and countless other places that normally charge up to 7 euros (about $A12) each. And in December, even the crowds at the Louvre are manageable. Ants was delighted to find the Mona Lisa (she smiled at him!) although he was peeved that Venus de Milo refused to give him a hug... After all that, paying 11 euro to climb the Eiffel Tower didn't feel to bad - it was our only admission fee for the day! And Paris by night (we went up around 10pm) was a sight to behold...

Monday morning saw us sleep late, wandering down to the famous Les Deux Magots cafe, near St Germain de Pres, renowned for its patronage by Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway and a host of others. The service was impeccable, the food simple but oh so stylish and tasty... Ants platter of rare beef and my hot chocolate were clear highlights!

Another highlight of our day was the awesome Musee du Moyen Age, situated in the remains of the 12th century Cluny Abbey, which is itself built on top of ruined Roman Baths. Oh the swords, the chain mail, the tapestries.... We then had just enough time to wander over to the Ile de la Cite and Notre Dame, (to light a candle for Mikko and send a message of peace to the world on behalf of Anthony's new nephew, Lachlan), visit a patisserie and collect souvenirs (a tshirt from our fave cafe for Ants, and a jaunty hat for me) before it was time to board the train home.

I'm so proud of my fella - he coped amazingly with his first taste of a non-English speaking country, which can be exhausting. We've come back hungry for more... time to start saving the pennies.

Live at the 'General'...

The worldwide debut of 'antipodean folk duo... Eclipse!' came sooner than we thought.

Here we are at the General Elliott hotel in South Hinksey, on December 1. Our mate JT is a legend for asking us to join him and our friends Alan and Julie (from a stylish 5 piece outfit called Opaque) at this folk night as part of the pub's beer festival. We played for about 45 minutes, and apart for a lyrical screwup invovling smoking a horse (yes, it was Star of the County Down!), and some bollocks in the Foggy Dew, we were pleased. We were utterly stoked that so many of our Oxford music mates came down and John the publican - or 'landlord' as they're known here - seemed to take a shine to us, asking us to please come back for a gig sometime. Certainly Ants took a shine to the 15 or so festival ales they had on tap...

The following night it was our turn to lend moral support, and a guest vocal or two, when Strange Vintage took the stage... although I wished we'd indulged in a little less Dutch Courage when the time came to haul ourselves out of bed to get a bus to London and a train to Paris... more on THAT adventure soon!

Rugby double header

Spent the morning helping my new workchum, Lynne, move house. follwoed by a massive double header - Australia vs Scotland and NZ vs Wales - at rugby.

Lynne, who grew up in Inverness and informs me that she is usually teetotal, knocked back a patriotic pair of single malts, but it did nothing to help her team's fortunes. The Kiwis steamrollered the Welsh - the Allblacks are well nigh unstoppable at the moment, and folk in the pub are starting to say that we might as well all hand over the World Cup now and go to the Bahamas...

Throw in the Aussie's win in the first Ashes test and it's been not a bad weekend for antipodaean sport, really.

Stonehenge to Southampton

W've just come back from a weekend of touring some really old bits of southern England - I took Anthony to see Stonehenge, the Roman baths at Bath, and the 3000 yr old white 'chalk horse' on a hillside at Uffington, on the edge of Oxfordshire.

He was suitably impressed, as well he might be... but what really floated his boat (sorry!!) was our random detour to the historical ships at the Naval dockyards down in Portsmouth.

We started with the HMS Victory - Nelson's ship during the battle of Trafalgar - which is still a commissioned and staffed military vessel! (Although she is in dry dock...) She seems huge - til you think of her three decks stacked with 800 crew, all sweating and stewing together from months at a time. No wonder men had to be press-ganged to serve...

No pix allowed on board this naval veteran, but our guide gives a riveting account of Victory's most famous battle, from the moment Horatio signalled his fleet: "England expects every man to do his duty", to the twin catastrophes marked by tiny brass plaques.

Here Nelson Fell.

Here Nelson Died.

What we wanted to see most of all though, was a lady only lately raised from her watery grave. The Mary Rose - Henry VIIIs flagship, named for his younger sister, which sank in 1500-something, is held in near darkness, her timbers sprayed for weeks on end with a waxy substance that will preserve them and enable folk to enjoy her in years to come. Eery.

Better yet, in salvaging her, she's been made to disgorge her treasures, now on display just yards from the a museum that displays the stuff found on board - everything from boots, games and clothing to 160lb longbows - some of which can still fire arrows! Not bad after centuries underwater.

It was only after we'd left that Anthony realised that he hadn't actually taken any photos of the bows... or the arrows.

Guess we'll have to go back then...

Jailbirds, submariners, exempt from smoking ban...

One of the most confronting things about living in England is that smoking is still permitted pretty much everywhere - in restaurants, shopping centres and, of course, in Ye Olde Poorlye Ventilated pubs.

Coming from Melbourne, where smoking was banned in restaurants and cafes years ago, seeing an ashtray on a restaurant table in Brixton was actually quite a shock.

In Ireland and Scotland, they've banned smoking in all public places, and England is set to follow suit next year, with bans for all pubs restaurants, train stations and workplaces... unless you happen to work in certain key industries where smoking is, apparently, still okay...adult care homes, hospices, prisons ... and submarines. Go figure.

Introducing... Eclipse!

Ever since the lovely Anthony arrived here 4 weeks ago, we've been busily throwing ourselves into Oxford's vibrant live music scene.

Anthony's talent with the bodhrain (irish drum) has drawn huge praise - he'd only been in town a week when, on joining him for a pint at Joe Ryan's Most Excellent Half Moon, I found him deep in conversation with three of Oxford most seasoned folk and blues veterans, whom I'd at best met in passing.

So we're singing at sessions a couple of times a week and have even been asked to do our first gig together! So we will be playing a slot at a benefit event for Amnesty in December. Allow me to introduce Oxford's newest acapella folk duo - Eclipse.

I've also scored another gig, working up a couple of numbers with my friends Guy, Sal and Barney, who together make up Strange Vintage. Guy would be the selfsame Guy Pearce with whom I made my gigging debut back in August, at the Marlborough House. He is also responsible for a moderate hangover today... not ideal for a Tuesday.

The world according to Tolkein

I watched the first Lord of the Rings movie (again!) on the idiot box on Sunday. I don't do much TV, so this was significant.

My life experience of Tolkien's series now looks like this:
-Swordfighting with my chums outside cinemas all over Melbourne in return for free tickets to the movies on their opening days.
- Touring through southern NZ with the lovely Anthony past the 'plains of Rohan', Milford Sound and several of the rivers used in the film. My nearly-brother-in-law Scott was actually in the films as an extra - he has pix of himself dressed as an Orc, an Elf and a rider of Rohan.
- Copious ciders in the Eagle and Child, the pub where Tolkien, CS Lewis and other literary legends used to skive off work on Tuesday to work on their childrens stories.
- Still haven't finished reading the book. D'oh.

A Warwick, a Warwick...

Warwick castle is reputed to be one of the best pieces of castle entertainment outside London. It's also just an hour from Oxford (as so many things are - lucky us!), so Ants and I hopped a train this morning and took ourselves up to see it.

It's VERY touristy, and cost a bomb, but I have to say it was worth every penny... The grounds are massive, even though they're right in the centre of town, and still walled in as they would have been in days of old. Walking in via the pedestrian entrance, we made our way along a steep winding path that might once have been a coach road in... certainly the moment when you round a bend and see the castle in all its grandeur is designed to impress, and could have come straight from a Philippa Gregory novel.

Said to have been first built by Alfred the Great, Warwick has seldom been a royal palace (except when it was confiscated after the fall of the Plantagenets and the demise of Dudleys in Elizabethan times). As it's been used almost continuously as a residence, there it's been continuously meddled-with and remeddled-with, but you can still follow the evolution of the place through the centuries. The towers are still lofty, the dungeon and torture exhibits chillingly creepy and the trebuchet (apparently the world's largest), really impressive, even at a distance. If the 'Kingmaker' history feels a little contrived, the waxworks by Madame Tussauds (who run the palace now), do a wicked job of bringing workchambers and stables to life.

The Kingmaker, by the way, is a big deal up here. The 16th Earl of Warwick - who won his title by marrying a chick who wasn't allowed to hold it in her own right - was a descendent of the house of York and is said to have been influential in swinging the crown from the red rose of the Lancastrians to the white rose of York. Later, he changed his mind and, such was his influence (he was the wealthiest man in britain, outside the immediate royal family, at the time) that he succeeded in bringing down Edward IV (over a woman, what else!, and having first beheaded the King's father in law) and restored Henry VI to the throne in 1470. The whole gory story isn't terribly well explained at the castle - I've borrowed once again from Wikipedia for this entry! - or maybe I just have a lot still to learn about this period of history...

We watched a pale wintry sun set from the top of the battlements and I defy anyone to find such a moment lacking in romance or beauty (except for the fact that it was only 4.30pm at the time!). We're contemplating making a return journey for one of their Kingmaker feasts... apparently friends of our from the Half Moon occasionally feature in the cast...

Harold vs William: the big game

Top of our ‘must-do’ list on this trip has been the battle of Hastings re-enactment. Held on the 940th anniversary of the big day, this was an amazing weekend - by far the biggest even I’ve ever been part of – or probably will ever be. 3000 or so re-enactors, about a third of them in the historically accurate ‘authenti-camp’, dozens of market stalls, a capacity crowd of 12,000 on both Saturday and Sunday to see the show. Highlights? Watching (and hearing!) 110 Norman cavalry in full armour thunder up the rise toward the Saxon line, standing with 150 archers firing volley after volley in unison at the Saxon centre towards the end of the battle, the organic cider in the beer tent, the hearty meals in pubs in Battle (yes, of course we went in period dress!), the all night singalong with the lads and lasses from Valhalla …

As always, it’s the people that make an event like this – it was amazing to see so many familiar faces when we’re so far from home (expecially after 8 months away!) – clan Dunn, Eggy and all the rest of the lads from Melbourne, Sydney and even Perth! Perhaps the most special memories though, are of the many and varied new faces… our archery commanders Dave (“I don’t do rousing battlefield speeches – blah blah blah!”) and Goose (‘British by birth, Welsh by the grace of the gods!”); the mad Frenchman from Normandie who insisted on sharing his home distilled calvados (which tasted so like paint stripper that even he told us to put it under the tongue, so as not to taste it); Sophie and the other Bretons on the Norman left, who were in our archery contingent and who taught me to speak ‘battle french’; the mad Icelandic guy who was really confused when I answered his finnish questions… in finnish!; Chinky from York; and most especially, Ian the farmer who owned the field we were camped in, and who turned some of his pigs into a mountain of sausages and spent most of the weekend cooking egg,bacon and sausage sarnies for hungry re-enactors…

Best of all, Ants was here!

Naturally, there are loads of online weblogs with pix. I still haven’t managed to get mine out of the camera, but will post another link once I get them into flickr.

http://www.angelfire.com/mb2/battle_hastings_1066/hastings2006.html

http://www.alexmcneill.myzen.co.uk/hastings/

http://s100.photobucket.com/albums/m40/elizia25000bc/
http://s114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/jarlsoe/Hastings%202006/?start=0

http://good-times.webshots.com/album/554873891eaIUbh

http://www.bbc.co.uk/southerncounties/content/image_galleries/hastings_battle_gallery.shtml

The big game (2)