We're currently in Melbourne again. That's the third time this trip. And the last time (this trip). We leave tomorrow at the crack of dawn. We're getting a bus to Albury, just over the border into New South Wales.
We're still suffering from our colds (but gradually getting better) so haven't been overly active here. We've done a fair bit though. We've booked our Christmas and New Year accommodation in New Zealand (that'll be peak season, so we were warned to pre-book). In order to do that we've been reading guide books and trawling the net.
(If anyone has any NZ advice for us we'd welcome it. We're spending five weeks on the south island and four on the north.)
We went to a market in Camberwell today (a suburb of Melbourne). We were told this was an "Arts and Craft" market, but it turned out to be closer to a car boot sale. Ho hum. Still, we looked around at the tat and the people trying to get 20c knocked off the prices. We did a car boot sale in London before we left, so that my mum didn't have to store quite so much junk at her house. The people who frequent those places are animals who will buy any old crap, so long as you'll bring the price down!
I bought a book there for a dollar. It's the first volume of Clive James's autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs. I used to have a copy, and read it once. I remember it was very good. I started reading it for a second time a few years ago, but lost it at King Cross Station in London. I left it at the ticket office, but they didn't have it when I rang up. (I bet the ticket-selling lady nicked it. I'd had a row with her about the crap service she was giving so she probably wasn't feeling charitable to me. Cow.)
(Anne says there' a lesson there for me.)
(Don't trust ticket office staff.)
Anyway, it's good to have the book again. After my recent experience with Nicholas Parsons I'm wondering whether the copy I bought for a dollar today is the exact same copy I lost a few years ago. Could be.
This afternoon we checked out Federation Square in central Melbourne. This is a newly-opened monstrosity that will look out of date within a year. Many of the locals don't like it. I think Melbourne wanted something modern and beautiful to compete with the glorious Sydney Opera House. They didn't get it.
We didn't want to judge the contents by the architecture, so we had a look in the buildings. The Australian Centre of the Moving image is big and spacious and modern. There's not a lot in it though. It looked like there some interesting lectures and screenings coming up, but the displays in the basement and foyer were rubbish. They were so up their own arses (that's a art-critics' term). The ACMI seems to think that a moving image just needs to be moving to be interesting. I rather think that a moving image needs more than that. People ceased to be interested by mere movement in their images years ago. (Now 3D - THAT's interesting.)
(Mind you, Anne and I just caught ten minutes of a Martin Lawrence "comedy" in the hostel TV room. That made the ACMI works of art look fabulous.)
We then looked round an Australian art gallery. Some of the art was pretty good, but most of it was modern rubbish. You may label me a Philistine when I say that most modern art is rubbish, but I'm pretty much on the money.
After criticising most of the art we saw, Anne and I realised that we were still feeling pretty ill, and probably not in the right frame of mind for an art gallery. We returned to the safe cocoon of the hostel. Anne's now preparing a Thai green curry for my tea.