I like the way they do these lines of flags around the place to advertise things.
Here is the view from Waterfront City looking back at the CBD over the Telstra Dome.
In the children's playpark there s this fascinating Mobile. The wind gets caught in the little cups and it rotates in all sorts of different ways.
Over the other side of the Telstra Dome there are these three giant Heinz cans.
I wonder how many servings you cold get out of them?
The Missus is a dab hand at the pumpkin carving.
Here is Big Miss and her pals last year.
I made some bat sandwiches, which we had for our tea, and were quite tasty, but every trick-or-treater who came to the door turned them down in favour of sweets. You would have thought at least one of them would have been health-conscious enough to give them a try.
Yes, they are just bacon sandwiches, but in some bread I made with a dollop of black food colouring added.
On Sundays you can get a Metlink Sunday Saver ticket for $2.50 (about £1) that allows you unlimited travel on Melbourne's buses, trains and trams. Pretty good value, when you consider what it covers! I set out to go to Stony Point, at the far southern end of the network, about 65 km from the centre of Melbourne, but the train service ended at Cheltenham and was replaced by a (slower) bus. I had set out a bit late to attempt that anyway, but, as the saying goes, "Better to travel hopefully...". 
All these English names around the place are quite amusing, especially when you find juxtapositions like Blackburn being only about a mile from Canterbury and Sandringham bordering on Brighton. These beach huts reminded me of the Suffolk coast.
Little Miss wanted to know if the beaches I went to along the Great Ocean Road had lots of shells and was disappointed when I said that ones I went to didn't. But here are some on the shore of Port Phillip Bay.
At Mordialloc I came to this yacht club, but there didn't seem to be many boats out.
I didn't actually make it all the way to Sandringham (although it's not nearly as far from Chelsea as it is in England), but I did enjoy my bayside walk.
"Always something new to sea"... Ho ho! Australians seem to be as fond of punning phrases as the Brits.
Finding Nemo is a favourite film of ours, so I had to take a picture of the clownfish.
These baby turtles are only a few months old.
Towards the end of the tour you get to the "Ocean Down Under" where you get to see the Deep Water trench with the sharks and stingray. Here is where they give talks at the end of the tank.
And then they have this simulator - the "Ice Run Ride". Entertaining, yes, but what the heck is it doing in an Aquarium?
I've noticed that Saturday mornings are a time for organised sports. Here I saw 6 teams of girls battling it out at beach volleyball - quite tricky with that strong crosswind. 
Port Phillip Bay is mostly quite shallow, but the water was rather less flat than when I went to St Kilda, just along the bay.
I walked west along the beach towards Port Melbourne. There is plenty of redevelopment and regeneration going on in Melbourne - the new Dockside development is a prime example (I've just realised I'd forgotten to a blog posting about that). Here is a small example of the old making way for the new.
Port Melbourne is where the ferry to Tasmania docks. It looks rather smart. I bet the kids would want to go on it.
I took the No. 109 tram back to town centre, suitably invigorated.
There are great colonies of mushrooms to be found there.
And interesting individual specimens.
Here is our booty from a typical expedition.
I wonder what the wild mushrooms are like in Autumn here in Australia? And I wonder if we will all be here to find out? Decision time on that is going to be coming soon!
And here's the story on how it comes to be there. It prompted me to look through my photo archives (yes I brought them with me to remind me of home and family) to find this...
Back in North Yorkshire, in Stewart Park, Middlesbrough
From here, the road winds along Black Spur through dense eucalypt forest to Marysville, my destination for the day. What a lovely little town, nestling below the sub-alpine Mystic Mountains. The spring blooms in people's gardens were magnificent. Here is one just of the main street.
I went into the tourist information centre to ask about local walks and was given some helpful leaflets. I decided not to venture too much further so I can spend longer walking, and started at Steavenson Falls - at 84m, the highest in Victoria.
Naturally, I climbed the path to the top of the falls. Here I found lots of the lovely wild Mountain Thyme flowers in bloom. In places, it was as thick as bluebells in a bluebell wood at home (like Bradfield Woods, for example).
It was a wonderful walk through the trees and tree ferns, hearing all sorts of bird calls. And, even though I was walking the trail in the opposite direction to that described in the Marysville Forest Walks Guide, I encountered only one couple and another group of 4 walkers in the 10km walk. I felt I had really got away from the big city.
A little further on I came to the small town of Peterborough. Here I changed into my swimming trunks and went for a walk along the beach with some wading through the edge of the water. Those waves looked so inviting, but the currents looked strong and the beach was practically deserted so I didn't dare go for a swim.
I worked my way along the Shipwreck Coast stopping at most of the features in the Port Campbell National Park, including the Twelve Apostles. Famous though they are, I found the Bay of Islands more impressive. Anyway, instead of the usual picture, here's the view from the lookout looking east.
After Princetown, the road leaves the Shipwreck Coast and crosses the lovely Otway National Park, returning to the Surf Coast at Apollo Bay.
Here I tarried for a while and thought of staying the night, but the motel rooms were a bit more expensive than I was willing to pay, so I pressed on.
By the time I got to Lorne it was getting quite dark, but I was still able to see the lighthouse at Airey's Inlet. After that it was back 'home' to Melbourne arriving about 9:20 pm - 13 hours after I set out. But it was a damn fine drive!
This wasn't the first time. Hot air ballooning in the mornings seems to be quite popular around here.A Fairfield resident got the surprise of his life during an early morning toilet call when a hot air balloon carrying 10 people drifted over for a bird's-eye view.So that's how they keep their lawns watered during the water restrictions. Anyway, here's the picture from their website.
Paul Pettitt contacted theage.com.au with pictures of his close encounter this morning.
"I was on the back lawn having a leak and I looked up and I was pretty shocked," he said.
"I heard the fire and I looked up and thought, 'hell, they're going to hit the train lines' and then there was the house on the corner and there was a bit of a frantic action of pumping up the fire again."
It turns out the story was a load of hot air. They were nowhere near crashing into anything. Richmond hot air balloon company, Balloon Flights Over Melbourne, said Mr Pettitt had nothing to be worried about, claiming "everything went to plan".Still, I do wonder about where these balloons I see floating over the city are going to land.
Chris Shorten, the chief pilot with the company, said it is a misrepresentation of what happened this morning.
"Regarding the photo of the balloon flying over Fairfield, it is a bit hard to tell from the photo that we flew at least 100 meters away from where the photo was taken, over a large park, as planned.
"We were nowhere near the train line and power lines, nor did we nearly land on someone's house. In fact, we had many local residents in Fairfield this morning come out and wave good morning at the balloon as it passed overhead," Mr Shorten said.
You can see fairies, dwarfs, gnomes and native animals in the carving. I like all the animals on this bit.
There's a family sheltering in a cave here.
I wonder what is going on here?
Just click on the pictures to see them bigger in a window of their own.
You can see more of my pictures of the gardens here on Flickr.
Manure to us, they tell it like it is in Australia. And if you click on the picture to make it bigger, you can see the small print says it is "100% pure"!
Shame about the graffiti. It was everywhere. Some of it is rather artistic, but I don't think it belongs on the side of buildings like this.
I did rather like this flower shop, though.
Some of the side streets are rather pretty. There seemed to be a lot of 19th century architecture. Here is a typical set of railings.
The Black Cat cafe is a bit of a Fitzroy institution. The tables outside are pleasantly surrounded by greenery.
I wonder what it will look like in 3 months time. It is spring here, yet it hasn't rained more than a few drops here since I got here nearly a month ago.
