Rowkin Rovings Blog

So remember all, we are now ahead of you but behind you time wise – let’s clarify that for you in more detail. We are the day ahead but behind in hours depending on your location….hope that helps??

Below is a photo of the front of Henty House which is an Art Deco building where Fraser’s parents have their apartment. The building was built in 1916 for the original purpose of small business but was converted to apartments in 1998.

After dinner with Fraser’s parents, we borrowed Barbara’s little Kermit green Mazda3 and headed out to the suburb of Heidelberg where we are staying with our good friend Belinda for the two nights we are in Melbourne.

Belinda was most understanding of our need to hit the sack, so we had a brief catch up chat and then went straight into a horizontal position. Fraser managed to get 3-4 hours sleep on the flight but Di wasn’t able to get anything which meant she was awake for 36 hours straight. We both experienced a floating sensation now and then before we went to bed which was caused by the constant movement of the plane. Otherwise, we haven’t felt that much jet lag – yet.

We slept pretty much straight through until 9.00am so that was a good 11 hours sleep. Hopefully we are not are going to jinx ourselves by saying that usually the second night is the worst.

Belinda had gone to work by the time we raised ourselves so we headed back into the city to spend time with Fraser’s parents as tomorrow we head out of Melbourne again. On our quick trip down to the city yesterday we took a few photos of the mall area with the ubiquitous Melbourne trams. These are trams that run right down the middle of the mall and like all electric trams are deathly quiet – add in cell phone texting and……..well we, all know where that ends up.

Trams have operated continuously in Melbourne since 1885 and originally was a cable system. It converted to electric in 1906. Since then they have become a distinctive part of Melbourne’s character and feature in tourism and travel advertising. Melbourne’s tram system expanded to one of the largest in the world, with 250 kilometres of tracks. At one stage they thought of removing them but common sense prevailed.

A bit of interest for our Canadian followers. The trams are Bombardier from Quebec but manufactured in a Melbourne. As you can see, Spring has Sprung in Melbourne. In fact, we are not seeing too many spring flowers so we are in early summer.

A quick bit of Melbourne’s history for you. Melbourne was the initial capital following the 1901 Federation of Australia. In 1927, the seat of national government was moved to the newly created city of Canberra, which continues to serve as the national capital.

The little red granite and stainless steel purse in the photo below called The Public Purse is an art piece as well as a seat located on the corner of the Melbourne mall. It was installed in 1994 and has become a great focal point in the mall.

Today it is going to be a cool 27c – we are going to enjoy this coolness as where we are heading north tomorrow, temperatures are up at the 40c mark. This is a good time to mention that we fly from Melbourne to Kununurra at the ungodly hour of 8.45am tomorrow.

As you can see, it is a long way – 4000k. From there we will make our way out to Punalulu an Aboriginal Reservation which is a two hour car drive to the west. Are you getting our drift here – it is isolated and Wi-Fi will be very sketchy, so there might not be any blog for a good week. 👎

So back to finishing the blog of today. Barb greeted us with a great snack of mango and passion fruit.

Most of you Canucks know about our pavs with the passionfruit pulp we slather on top of them that our Oz/Kiwi friends import to Canada for us. Well, for those of you who do not know what a passionfruit actually looks like, these are the purply things located north on the plate with the mango. Oh, that mango was beautifully sweet.

So will bid you an adieu for maybe a week but hopefully not.