Was not so spectacular. After dragging myself out of bed at 6am in the morning to watch the hot air ballooning down at Old Parliament House, it was announced that the ballooning event had been cancelled for the day.

It was a huge disappointment as I had been looking forward to the event all week, and the weather was perfect with completely clear sky’s and very little wind. I did manage to get a nice picture of Old Parliament House pre-dawn though so it wasn’t a complete washout.

Mmmm…. sphagnum bog water

Unfortunately, due to our move from Melbourne to Canberra, we had to leave our beloved Woolly Bush Christmas tree behind. After hunting around Canberra for a replacement, we eventually gave up and purchased the “Spiky Christmas Tree” below.
It has been named the “Spiky Christmas Tree” (not its botanical name as far as I can tell), due to the extremely spiky leaves it has which are quite painful to the touch. One benefit of this, is that the cats stayed well away from it, unlike last year where we found many the gnawed branch in the new year

The Perth Royal Show has always been a favourite destination for Holly and I, where we get to act like kids again and run rampant around the show eating lollies, and patting the farm animals. So when the Royal Melbourne Show arrived (20-30th September), we couldn’t resist and had to attend.

So I took the Friday off as annual leave (under the assumption that the show would be quiet as the school holidays hadn’t started yet), and hopped onto the train heading over to the show grounds.

The highlight of the show would have to be the pig racing. Pig racing you say? Don’t worry, I have never heard of it before but I have been told that it’s a common event at the show. We headed over to the pig stadium to check things out and the result? The most hilarious thing I have seen in my life! Check out the action shots below:

Next onto the farm animal shed. First stop was the ewe birthing station. We waiting around for about 30 minutes for the birth, however the lamb was a no show. I wasn’t too fussed about this because I’m sure the birthing of a lamb wouldn’t be the most attractive thing, so we decided to move on to the baby animal playpen. We followed some kids in pretending we were their parents, but once in, we ditched the charade and ran havoc. How can anyone resist patting a goat or a lamb? After checking out all the baby animals, we scraped the manure off the bottom of our shoes, and went to look at the dog display.

Now Holly and I aren’t doggy people, but we fell in love with the Short Hair German Pointers. We stood at the sideline and got to pat them all as they left the arena. Below is a picture of the Schnauzers.

Other than that, the day was spent filling up on samples of chips, cheese, chocolate, ice cream, jam, fudge, candy and nuts. So which is better, the Perth or the Melbourne Royal Show? Well I personally like Perth better. It’s just more chaotic and less refined than the Melbourne show, and to top it off, Perth has the Hot Fresh Crispy Donuts ™ which were surprisingly absent from Melbourne! Overall, a most enjoyable day out.

ANZAC day public holiday was seen as the perfect opportunity to take an extra few days annual leave, and make a road trip out to the famous Great Ocean Road. After perusing the available accommodation in the area, we finally decided somewhere that was central to the main attractions we wanted to see, and ended up in a isolated cabin, with a great view over a valley and then over the sea. And no we didn’t smuggle our cats along, the place was pet friendly!

Our first stop was the Otway Treetop Walk, which according to the brochure was the longest and highest treetop walk in the world. Well for 20 bucks each, it’s gonna have to something pretty special. In the end it was great fun, except the swaying at the top of the tower gave me an overwhelming feeling of wanting to yak, so we didn’t stay up there very long (just enough to get a quick panoramic).

Our next stop was just down the road at the famous triplet falls. We were hesitant to make the walk to the falls (about 1 hour round trip), because of the lack of rainfall in the area meaning everything was quite dry, but we thought it was worth a chance. So after negotiating ourselves down about 300 slippery moss covered steps, we arrived at the bottom of the valley to see the following:

Next onto the 12 (8?) apostles. The pile of rubble in the foreground is the latest casualty where the apostle collapsed in 2005. The day was a little smoky so all the photos were washed out in colour, although nothing photoshop can’t fix! Along the way, we checked out all the standard attractions including the Grotto, London Bridge and the Arch all of which are more of the same really.

So that’s it, another famous Australian tourist destination checked off the list. Now we have to full fill Holly’s childhood dream, and go skiing in the mountains

This weekend past marked our first weekend away with a visit to Phillip Island, 90 minutes south of Melbourne. Philip island is well known for the Little Penguins that live there which are located on the western point of the island.

On Friday we made the journey over to see the “March of the Penguins”. Started just after sunset, a series of lights are turned on, and we started to see a few penguins gathering down at the shore. When they form sufficiently large groups (more than 5), they begin their journey up the beach turning and running back to the water if they are spooked.

Turns out that this time of year is the perfect time to visit as the chicks have just left their nest, and you can see fluffy penguins wandering around calling out for their parents.

Other than penguins, the rest of the weekend was just spent relaxing. We did find this sign post (below) which really made me wonder exactly who creates the little cartoons as this guy must have been smoking something! I was tempted to venture close to the cliff edge to see exactly how accurate the depiction was, however the thought of having the to be airlifted to hospital didn’t quite appeal to me.

Check out more photos of our holiday here.

Today was the day when we decided to see more of Victoria. So being the raspberry fans we are, the Raspberry Fair up near Pheasant Creek seemed a good choice of destinations. Pheasant Creek is roughly 60 mins north of Melbourne up in the Kinglake region.

The main attraction of the day is the “pick your own raspberries” event. Unfortunately due to drought, the berries had ripened earlier than usual resulting in the “slim pickings” sign. We managed to scavenge a few remaining from the vines, however the main entertainment was watching some kid have a temper tantrum because he couldn’t find any and his mother threatening to leave him behind. At this point, we gave up, ate the raspberries we had found (oops, I think we were suppose to pay for them!) and had a raspberry icecream which was delicious.

Overall the day was a lot of fun. Air-conditioning in the car would have made it more fun, but that’s the price you have to pay for owning a Barina :S

Today we bought our new Christmas tree. It’s a Woolly Bush, an Australian native from the Albany region of Western Australia! We really had to hunt around for this but after visiting about 5 nurseries we finally found it.

Now we just need everyone to send us presents . . .

Every time I look for a new house to live in, I forget how awful the whole experience is. However we have our house, we have our jobs, we will soon have our belongings (which seem to take several weeks to transport a mere 3500km’s).

I have completed my first week at Open Networks. The office is in the CBD, so this involved me getting out of bed, walking across the road, getting on the train, waiting for 25 minutes, getting off the train, walking across the road and sitting at my desk. Overall quite painless although I did feel like I was in a cattle run as I funnelled out of Flinders Street train station along with 10,000 other people.

Now all I need to do is decorate my cubicle a bit. Dang I wish I had kept the parachuting green bear!

After months of packing, moving, moving again, cleaning, job hunting, house hunting, organising temporary accommodation, flights, car hire, moving trucks, selling off stuff, buying insurance and just familiarising ourselves with the city, we have finally arrived in Melbourne! The past month has been hectic, and very stressful, but now we are here at least we can relax a bit and just focus on finding a house before our stuff arrives.

Currently we are staying in a funky apartment in East Melbourne (Birches Serviced Apartment). Great location with a quick tram into the city centre, plus it has free parking, reasonably priced ADSL (having tried torrents yet) and it takes pets!

It feels very strange being in a different city. I feel like I’m on holiday, and have to resist the temptation to just sleep half the day, and spend the other half walking around looking at museums and churches. After the mad panic we went through before getting here, a holiday would go down really well right about now.

And yes Matt, we are trucking over the Barina :D.

In case you haven’t heard, I have resigned from my position at Nautronix and are relocating from Perth to Melbourne. My time at Nautronix (almost 8 years!) has given me a broad range of experiences from writing assembly on 8 bit microprocessors and winding inductors, through to hanging out on drill rigs in Brazil, and finally developing C++ applications to measure submarine noise. I can’t say I have enjoyed everything, but it sure has been interesting!

So to everyone at Nautronix (that read this blog anyway), thanks for putting up with me. I sure am going to miss things (not everything mind you), and I’ll be back to visit whenever I’m in town.

On that note, if anyone is looking to hire a software engineer in Melbourne, I’m available!