House Guests

It is not just fish that we are now sharing our house with, our friends Gemma and Dan, whose wedding we went to in May, have arrived in Australia and will be staying with us whilst they are based in Melbourne.  We got up early on Tuesday morning to pick them up from the airport and went for Brunch at a new restaurant in Thornbury called little Henry.  As both Barnadi and I were working that night we left them to explore Northcote by themselves and they seem to have enjoyed their time, finding a few bars along the way.

The next day we took a drive down the Mornington peninsula with the initial intention to stop at Sorrento for fish and chips, but as we were taking the slightly longer and more scenic route following the coastline we were only at Mornington by the time we were ready for some lunch.  It is currently the school holidays and the streets of Mornington were packed with locals and visitors making the most of the good weather.  We wondered up and down Main Street searching for a fish and chip shop, and headed down to the beach to enjoy our purchase, a mixed selection of battered flake, prawns, crabsticks and calamari. 



Mornington Beach

After our big lunch we re-adjusted our goal, to get to Sorrento for coffee and ice cream, so we got back in the car and continued down the road.  On the way Barnadi decided to change the goalposts again, saying he wanted to get the ferry to Queenscliff and so when we got to Sorrento we got a one way ticket on the ferry.  Coffee and ice cream could wait until we arrived in Queenscliff.  The ferry ride was smooth, but it was too windy to spend any length of time outside on the deck.  We arrived in Quenscliff just before 5pm and were disappointed to find all the cafes either closed or closing for the day, so our plans for coffee were scuppered.  We did however find several ice cream shops open for business, so we got something for our trouble.

Ice cream finished it was then my job to make the long drive home via Geelong, with Gemma and Dan taking it in turns to fall asleep in the back, I think their jet lag had not yet worn off.  This is Gemma and Dan's first ever trip to Australia and we have managed to get them to completely circumnavigate port Philip bay before they have even set foot in Melbourne itself.  They are planning to stay in Australia for at least 6 months, but will be moving around a bit in that time so exactly how long they will be staying with us is not yet decided.  They are of course welcome to stay as long as they like.

Tragedy

Barnadi has always lived with pet fish, in the UK we had a cold water aquarium in which a variety of goldfish had lived.  The longest lived of them all was Goldie, at 10 years old she was still doing well when we left if not a little grey.

It was time therefore Barnadi decided that we start a new fish tank here on our balcony, we had the container ready, a sprinkling of multicoloured gravel along the bottom, all we were missing were the fish.  Yesterday we went up to the petshop on St Georges Road and chose our fish - two 'colourless' goldfish.  While carrying them to the till Barnadi noticed one had a white spot and was worried it might be sick so we swapped them for two fresh ones.  Although they are described as colourless they are actually a brownish colour.  One had a longer tail and a reddish shine to it, so we called him Coppertail, the other had a more yellowy tinge and so we called him Bronzefin.

To begin with both fish took a while to get used to the new surroundings, and hid underneath the plants at the bottom, occasionally coming out to chase their reflections around the edge of the tub.  This morning however they both looked more relaxed, and even came to the surface to feed when I gave them their breakfast.  But it was a short lived improvement, at least for Bronzefin, as when I got home from work today Barnadi informed me that one of the fish looked sick.  Indeed Bronzefin seemed completly paralysed, lying on the bottom of the tank, only his mouth moving.  Within a few hours he stopped breathing altogether and poor Bronzefin was no more.

Coppertail still seems quite active and we can only hope that Bronzefin did not die of anything contageous, for it would be a real tragedy to loose both our fish so soon.

Poor Bronzefin, may he rest in peace.

Old Friends

Barnadi now gets his day off work on a Wednesday the same as me, so yesterday we took the opportunity to go for a drive down the Mornington peninsula to visit Barnadi's friend Chris.  We packed some homemade iced lemon traybake and a bottle of wine and we were ready to go.  Two and a half hours later and we arrived in Fingal a small village near Sorrento.  After being given a tour of Chris's new house with 5 acres of land and making friends with her dog Neo, we headed to Sorrento for lunch.  We had lunch at the Sorrento hotel, I was driving so Barnadi and Chris could enjoy a glass of wine, or two or three....It was probably not the best idea then  that Chris suggested we played a game she had learnt about during a recent holiday in Switzerland involving a big block of wood, 3 nails and an axe.  Luckily no-one got hurt!

Chris and Barnadi playing the Swiss nail game.

We then had the long arduous drive back up the Nepean highway and through the city during rush hour traffic.  We didn't have time to stop anywhere along the way, as we had invited some friends over for dinner.  Luckily the friends were late, as we got lost trying to find a route with less traffic only to get stuck in an even worse jam.  The friends coming for dinner, Sam and his girlfriend Athina, are our first visitors from the UK.  I met Sam when I was still at University when he used to come over for dinner all the time, and we would enjoy a bottle or two of wine and some long debate over various scientific theories that would bore most other people at the table.  After graduating he moved up to Scotland where he met Athina, and we hardly saw each other after that.  They have now just arrived in Melbourne after a month travelling through Indonesia, and they are planning to stay here for at least 3 months if not longer.  The dinner was a success thanks to Barnadi's amazing (as usual) cooking efforts  and conversations flowed as if the last 7 years of absence had never happened.

Neo

Fine Food Australia

Barnadi's boss, Sam, got tickets to the Fine Foods Australia Convention, a food festival for people in the hospitality and catering industry. Rather than go himself however he sent Barnadi and myself instead.  The event was held in the exhibition centre in the CBD and was a large hall containing stalls displaying everything from industrial kitchen equipment to food stalls. There was also many cooking demonstrations and competitions ongoing throughout the day.  Most of the food stalls were giving away free samples and we managed to get very full very quickly trying everything.  Even after complaining how stuffed he was Barnadi couldn't help trying something from every stall we passed.

My Favorite Stall: UK food importer

As well as free food samples a lot of stalls had tote bags full of information and free pens, notepads and other miscellaneous bits and pieces.  Once we had our fill of free samples our next quest was to collect as many of the tote bags as possible, as they make good reusable shopping bags.

Gold medalist in the cake decorating competition

We ended up spending a good 3 hours at the exhibition centre before heading home.  Later that night at the restaurant we were chatting with Sam about the exhibition, and somehow we got onto the subject of how Wednesday was always my day off and now he has changed Barnadi's hours so that he can get Wednesdays off too.  This means we will now always have one day a week off together.

Chairman of the Board

Aside from a spot of amature photography, one of my favourite activities is playing board games.  Not simply your run of the mill party games, although they can be fun too, but proper strategy games that involve a much higher skill to luck ratio.  Since moving to Australia this is something I have missed out on as Barnadi has no interest in games of any sort, let alone ones where he has to think.

Despite Barnadi's assertions that people in Australia don't play board games, my hopes were raised a little when I saw a board game shop on Swanston street called MindGames which seemed to specialise in all my favourite games we used to play back in the UK.  Another clue to the secret board game fans of Australia came to me when walking home from the station one day and I spotted a lost 'Ticket to Ride' card by the side of the road.  Still I had yet to met anyone who would openly admit to their love of board games.

One of my friends in the UK, and possibly the biggest board game fan I know, then sent me a link to a website called BoardGameGeek, which had an Australian forum page, but the posts were all quite old and the only groups I found mentioned were university clubs.  It was only last week when another UK friend and board game fan found a site which advertised a board game night held at the Royal Standard pub every fortnight on a Wednesday night.  I am not very good when it comes to meeting new people and there was no way I could convince Barnadi to come with me.  I eventually plucked up enough courage to click the attend button on the website only to find the event already full and that I would be put on a waiting list.  At this point I decided fate was against me ever playing another board game again, but I was wrong.  On Wednesday morning I received an e-mail saying my place had been confirmed,  so now I had to build up that courage all over again to actually attend.



Goldenbrau

I arrived at the Royal Standard, a pub just outside the CBD near Flagstaff and the Victoria Market, at around 6:30pm and the place was already full and many games were underway, I was quickly and warmly welcomed by the organiser of the night, a guy named Corey and after a bit of deliberation I ended up in a group of four with a board game none of us had ever played before.  In my group were a couple of guys, Chee and Anton and a girl Sonika, the game which Sonika had chosen was called Goldenbrau.  It took as a while to read through all the rules and get an idea of what we had to do, but once we got into it, it was a relatively quick and simple game to play.  The point of the game is to invest in beer gardens and breweries with the aim of making the most money after 3 weeks of trading, each round being one day.  It was a good game, Sonika won by an absolute mile, Chee came second, I was third and Anton was last, but like they say, it's not the winning that counts but the taking part.  Chee then picked the next game, one called '10 days in Africa' a very quick and easy game to learn which basically involves collecting cards in the correct order to make a 10 day trip through Africa.  We had a couple of rounds of this before I decided it was probably time to think about heading home.



10 Days in Africa

It has only taken me 9 months and much assistance from my friends back in the UK but I have finally found somewhere I can go and play board games.  The number of people in attendance (over 70 people), just goes to show that Barnadi was very wrong and Melbourne has actually got a large number of people who enjoy a good board game, and I am now unashamedly one of them.

A Tramcar Named Desire

We received a gift voucher for dinner on the Melbourne Colonial Tramcar Restaurant as a leaving present from the staff at the Green Park Brasserie in Bath, last night, we used that voucher to celebrate our 5 year anniversary.  The Tramcar Restaurant was founded in 1983 and is supposedly the first of its kind in the world.

Barnadi at Southbank

We headed into the city early, by Tram of course, and spent an hour or so walking down the south bank taking photos of the city at night.  Melbourne truly is a beautiful city, especially at night, and the south bank is a good place to see it.  As well as the casino there are many lively bars and restaurants, which are busy even on a Monday night.  However we continued walking further along past the exhibition centre and along the much quieter South Wharf.  This area has seen a lot of recent redevelopment, but is like a ghost town after the hustle and bustle along the south bank.  It is quite sad for us to walk along there now as nothing exists of the venue where we help the Australian leg of our wedding 5 years ago.

After this little trip down memory lane, we headed back up to the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant pick up stop, which lies just between the Crown casino and the Exhibition centre.  Again it was busier than we were expecting for a Monday night and as we stood there watching other couples and small groups arrive I couldn't help get the feeling that we were entering an Agatha Christie novel, 'Murder on the Colonial'.  It made me wonder about the back story of all these seemingly unconnected people and what decisions and events made them all come together tonight. This feeling was strengthened when the Tram arrived and we boarded.  The interior of the tram was decadently attired with plush red curtains and tasseled lampshades, the lights under which flickered with the power fluctuations as the tram pulled away.  The perfect setting for a 1920's murder mystery.



Me inside the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant

Putting all thoughts of murder aside we quickly settled in with a glass of sparkling wine and some tasty capsicum dip and liver pate.  We were served by a very lively Australian waitress whose informality seemed both completely at odds with the elegant surroundings but somehow also completely in tune with it.  She certainly made everyone feel at ease and was quick to top up an empty wine glass.  It didn't take long to get used to the jerky movements of the tram, and compared to trying to eat on a plane when it hits turbulence it felt as smooth as anything.  For an entree I had the kangaroo fillet whilst Barnadi had the grilled barramundi.  For our mains I went for the chicken and Barnadi had the steak.  Considering the fact that all the food had to be pre-prepared and was simply being heated up and presented on the plate in the trams tiny little kitchen the food was surprisingly good, and we were having a very good night.  When the mains were finished we were presented with a small cheese board containing a Victorian cheddar and a Tasmanian blue brie, but I think we were the only table to eat all their cheese!

Colonial Tramcar Restaurant

The route the tram took was not quite what I expected, it travelled up Swanston street then across Victoria parade as if it were going to Richmond before stopping and travelling back past St Vincents plaza and along Collins street, at the end of Collins it turned left into Spencer street then headed straight down to St Kilda.  We stopped for a short while in Albert park where we could get out, stretch our legs and take a few photos outside the tram if we so desired.  On re-entering the tram we were served dessert as the tram made another loop of the city.  It was after this stop that we learnt the nature of a few of the other guests motives for coming on the restaurant that night, (luckily nothing as sinister as murder), a couple of birthdays were being celebrated and the man sitting at the table next to ours had used the short interlude to propose to his girlfriend.



Barnadi's Panna Cotta

For dessert Barnadi had the panna cotta and I had the sticky date pudding, a quick coffee and a cognac later however and the tram had reached its final stop and it was time to disembark.  Unfortunately the Restaurant does not do requests, so we had to get a standard tram back home feeling a little bit tipsy, very full and bloated and incredibly sleepy.