Shopping in Melbourne

On a scale of 1 to 10, I think I’d get myself a 5 for shopping. I enjoy this activity somewhat, but most of the time I shop out of necessity. Don’t blame me for being boring or old fashioned, but I found out what shopping was when I was 24 years old, during my first visit outside Romania, in Paris. In Romania we had small stores with limited, very limited choices of any item, and one large general store, which seemed to be a bazaar with items from all the small stores gathered in one building. People shopped out of necessity, not for pleasure. My trip to Paris was short, yet, there I met the mall and the haute couture. My mouth never quite closed on that trip and I came home equally impressed with what I saw in the Louvre and the Printemps. The problem was that I left Romania with $20 for the entire month I spent in France with my friend Nicole, so I didn’t really do more than window shopping and gratefully accepted the gifts Nicole gave me. A year later I moved to the US. The shopping scene bent me over. I still remember the first trip to the mall in New Jersey and the first walk down Madison Avenue in New York. So in all these many, many years in the US I learnt to shop, I shopped sales and then new-season items. But the Romanian girl remained frugal while enjoying the dizzying number of choices, the fun of trying on “stuff” and browsing even late at night. The perfume, the music and the people, i.e., the atmosphere of shopping… mmm…. Well, so this is the hiatus. I arrive here in Melbourne and discover these things: very few sales (when was last time you saw a 5 or 10% sale in the US?), a lot fewer choices, and 9-5 opening time! Ok, except Thursday and Friday, when the stores close at 9PM. Except the liquor stores (called Bottle Shops here), which are open late every day… My manageable shopping pleasure and desire are now suffering in Melbourne, and I haven’t even discussed prices yet! So I am ending my post today with a nostalgic comment: overall, what I miss the most about the US and I cannot find here is “the” choices. Wait! Except for these tulips. When it comes to tulip color, you can see that choices are endless!

Yarra Valley

I haven’t written about this beautiful area North-East of Melbourne as I haven’t visited it in about a year and I wanted to share “fresh” pictures. Yarra is the main river in this area that also passes winding through Melbourne itself. The hills around the river outside the city create a perfect wine territory. In spring it looks less lush, but the energy of the budding vines equals the feeling of pleasure, at least in my case, which one normally gets in the summer, when thick green, parallel lines comb the hills from your feet to the horizon. We had yesterday our wedding anniversary lunch in a small café at the Yarrawood Winery. So many years after tying the knot on the 56th Floor of a Manhattan hotel, we got to sip wine in a candid, relaxed environment, much closer to the sea level, but happily remembering the small wedding at the “top of the world.” The hills of Yarra Valley are a busy backdrop for many weddings in Melbourne and the area, just like everywhere else from Toscana to Sonoma Valley. What is different here is the warm-blooded component. Galahs and cockatoos fly constantly over the vines, ducks and geese bathe in the ponds that actually serve to calm the thirst of many horses, cows and sheep. Rabbits zigzag around bushes and not far away kangaroos sometimes hop into sight, too. As usual, it's nature that impresses me the most in this far-away country...

Tulips! Spring!

I felt very nostalgic yesterday. Every time I visit a park, garden or farm overflowing with flowers of countless colors I remember the Descanso Gardens in the spring with the Camellia Forest an explosion of all shades from light pink to dark red. Yesterday I missed posting because we spend half a day at the Tesselaar Tulip Festival at the same name tulip farm in the Dandenong Ranges, just 30 km East of Melbourne. The Tesselaar Farm breeds, grows and sells flowers, shrubs and trees throughout the year, but the highlight of their activity to any Melbournian is this tulip festival. It was a typical Melbourne spring day yesterday, with bright sunny moments, clouds, rain and hail. For who didn’t know this was again the best exemplification of “four seasons in one day.” But such unpredictable weather did not prevent us and many other people from walking among thousands of elegant flowers growing in straight lanes or well-groomed mini-gardens. I was happy it was not sunny all morning because the colors seemed more vivid on the grey of the sky. Dutch treats, wine tasting and coffee make the day at the festival even better. We had a really good time, although we missed the Grand Final of the Australian Football League. Chloe and my friend Debra rooted for the Sydney Swans (see the post from last week) and they won! Hurray!

Curlew

I wrote about this Australian bird a few days ago, but I am dedicating an entire post to it today because it is a unique bird and I have a good picture of it to share. The first time we met the curlew was in Port Douglas, Queensland, in the North of Australia. We were in a nice hotel by the beach with sprawling gardens. The first night in the hotel, a screeching call woke us up and only when it kept repeating we realized it was a night creature and not a nightmarish dream. We asked the hotel personnel the next morning what was the loud sound that woke us up and laughing, they told us that we had just been introduced to the stone-curlew, a bird that lives in the hotel garden and the nearby golf course. The curlews are active (screamingly so!) at night. When the hotel person described the bird to us we realized we had seen it the night before in the hotel parking. It had a striking look, which we absolutely loved. Tall legs and big eyes (to see better at night), walking like a stork… Hmmm, so curlews are indeed adorable looking (please look at the picture and agree with me!) but terrible sounding. Since this bird woke us up pretty much every night we stayed in Port Douglas and it is endangered in Victoria, but quite common in the Northern states, we always joke that before reserving any hotel we should call and ask about their curlew population…

Canola

One surprising crop that adds to the yellow wattle landscape of Australia is the canola (rapeseed). Although the third most common crop here, and by any means, of unequaled culture beauty, canola has been cultivated only in the past 30-35 years in parts of South Australia (where I took the picture) and Western Australia. The canola (Canadian Oil, Low Acid) oil is one of the healthiest ones, even if the benefits may be cancelled by the rest of the Aussie diet, predominantly consisting in meat products. Of course, canola belongs to the controversial category of gene-modified plants, so it is not very welcome in Australia. This third most common crop serves more to improve the quality of the soil by rotating cultures rather than to fill up the oil jugs.

Antique or Obsolete?

Obsolete. And now I will explain. There are so many things that look old in Australia, that I constantly wonder whether they are antiques or just obsolete. After counting so many of such things, from house windows to TV sets, cars, conference room seats and café furniture, I am convinced they are obsolete. I think that unlike the US where old is replaced by new at a fast pace, in Oz this doesn’t happen. I still see the very old computer monitors being used in my institute, bathrooms with hot and cold water coming from two different faucets, heat and cool air coming from two separate units, hot water bottles being used for warming beds, etc, etc, etc. One shocking thing was this phone, which has a dialing wheel. Even if I grew up with it, I cannot believe it still exists in old elevators (called lifts here). It’s only for emergencies, but I am always tempted to pick up the heavy banana-shaped receiver, put my finger in the tight round hole and dial a number, just for the sake of re-living that strong feeling of making a phone call that left me when this type of phones were taken out of use. Twenty years ago in the US I had my first phone with buttons and I thought it was so modern, the first time I went to visit my parents in Romania, I brought them one, too! Nowadays dialing a number feels so light! It takes a light touch on a smooth screen…

Overwhelmed by Wildlife

We saw this green tree frog in the park of the hotel where we stayed in Port Douglas two years ago. Port Douglas is on the North East coast of Australia, in Queensland. Most Aussies dream about living in that beautiful tropical area, but what we enjoyed the most, again, was the wildlife. Both on land and in the sea, as just North there is the Daintree National Park and 10-20 km East from Port Douglas is the Great Barrier Reef. We posted many pictures from the reef on our website www.tirophotos.smugmug.com, as well as pictures from the tropical forest and the beaches. What I want to tell you today is how even the hotel grounds, park and buildings, were a wildlife treasure. Countless numbers of moths sat at night on the walls surrounding light bulbs, and it was hard to find two alike. These moths were the smart ones that already avoided being eaten by the geckos. They showed their jelly bodies and large round eyes from every corner outside the building, in the vicinity of the lights. I am sure they also feasted on the tiny but nasty mosquitoes and lots of kinds of spiders! Some cane toads hid in the leaves and grass, curlews screamed from the golf courts and … frogs put up subtle concerts. The green tree frog in the picture came for a date with us two nights in a row. We took her in our hands and her wet skin felt like luxurious silk. I could not believe we were in a hotel, in a city, and not in the middle of the forest! It is possible that the lights around the hotel and the grounds attracted all the activity, I don't know. But I expected to see something flying, hanging or jumping wherever I turned my head, day and night. And I was never disappointed!