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A short(ish) walk to the Habitat Filter

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The title is a sort of nod to Eric Newby's book "A short walk in the Hindu Kush" although this was not as long nor as hilly, and no-one called me a fairy at the end of it! The start of the expedition was dropping the Mazda off to get a service performed, which was to take 2 hours.  I decided I could fill that with a stroll to the Habitat Filter, which we see every time we come back to 505 over the West Gate Bridge.  It is on Sturt Street, not far from some of the concert venues we go to.  The weather was not flash to begin with. Here is the route as shown on Google Maps when in 505.  I intended to return along the most Northerly option but my phone refused to offer that so I came back by a weird combination of Clarendon St and York Street  This is a height warning device on Montague Street just before the Montague Street tram crossing.   It still appears that the bridge - known as Monty to its many fans in the panel beating industry - gets a steady die...
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May Music

 Our first foray was to a Melba Monday Concert.  WE took our usual route with tram to ANZAC and then tunnel train to Parkville.  The conveyances were quite crowded: I wonder if public transport usage will plummet when fares come back at the end of the month? This featured Woodwinds, so it was a bit surprising to see a Cello listed for the first item.  However a musician (Each Zhang) walked out carrying a bassoon, explaining that the work, by Schubert was usually performed on a cello "but today you have me".  He - and the other musicians - was accompanied by a pianist.  A very good presentation. The second work featured a clarinettist (Bailey Hume) who gave a promo to Peter Sculthorpe, explaining the work was about a location in Far North Queensland and the people who lived there.  Again very enjoyable.  Given the modernity of the piece it was very melodic. The final work was by Carl Reineke of whom I had never heard.  The musician was Elissa ...
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May you live in interesting places

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There are many jokes about an alleged Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times."  Today I wondered if someone had slightly adapted that for us as per the Title of this post. We hit St Kilda Rd about 0645am this morning heading for Mallacoota so turned into Commercial Rd, expecting to have the usual uneventful drive to Burke Rd and thence the M1 Eastbound.  Here is the planned route. Note the arrow from the label 'Point A', just past Punt Rd.  As we got here we got a notification from Google Maps that "Police reported ahead" and indeed we could see flashing blue and red lights a bit further down the road.  As we got closer we could see several sets of flashing lights and indeed Commercial Rd was closed off by Plods at Porter St.   We took ourselves on a diversion down Porter St and Grosvenor St to Chapel St, where there were more Plods and more flashing blue lights visible at the junction with Commercial Rd.  Deary, dearie me what has been going...
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By the dawn's early light ....

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 Many years ago when we lived in Brighton SA I wandered down to the Memorial Arch by the jetty just on daybreak on ANZAC Day.   A squad of blokes, some of an age to have served in WWII, were marching, silently and in good order, up Jetty Rd having just finished the Dawn Service.  It was one of the more moving events I have attended. Some years later when we were living in Bruce in Canberra I rode my bike down to the Dawn Service at the Australian War Memorial (AWM) on Limestone Avenue.  My guess was that there was no parking available on Limestone Av for 2km from the AWM.  I think about 5,000 were in attendance on that day.  Again it was very moving, in the form of a church service, similar to those held on the ships before the troops started landing.  I recall a Currawong bursting into song just as daylight arrived. Last year we weren't in Melbourne on ANZAC Day but this year we were so I decided to attend.  Proceedings started at 0530 so I...
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Laverton Creek

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I had wondered about going to the WTP today, but decided that I would be worrying about wasting diesel the whole time so it would not be much fun.  Instead we went to the mouth of Laverton Creek (aka Apex Park, Altona Beach).   Traffic was generally light on the drive over and Google Maps took the twisty route using Grieve Parade delivering to the end of the Esplanade.  As soon as we emerged from the Mazda we had an interesting bird in the form of an Egret which appeared to have a shortish neck and plumes.  Sorry, nice try, no cigar: the dark bill shouts Great Egret. While common, Crested Pigeons are very pretty birds. There were a few Stilts around, but I couldn't find any bands or all-white heads. A Singing Honeyeater was nice to see.  I always think of them as inland birds but they are easy to find in coastal Adelaide as well as the shrubby areas in Western Melbourne. One of my favourite birding books is "The complete birder" by Jack Connor.   Altho...
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In the footsteps of Captain Wales

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There are a few obscure references in that title!   The first is to "The Footsteps of Mr Kurtz" an excellent book by Michaela Wong about President Mobutu of the DRC.  (That title is itself a reference to the main character in "The Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad.) The second is to Prince Harry's preferred name when he was in the British Army.  He visited Footscray on Wednesday this week as we did on Friday. We visited different parts of the area to Harry, and I doubt I'd have got on to the turf of Whitten Oval.  Our reason for visiting was to explore the Heavenly Queen Temple, which we had seen from the train as we went to Williamstown a few weeks ago.  A helpful staffer from the City of Maribyrnong had provided us with a map of the area. Our route was starting at the station and more or less following the orange line, diverting to the yellow line, then the blue line and back on the green line.  These nice little cottages were in the area around th...
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