Darwin to Melbourne

Stage One of the journey has formally begun. It began with a last day at work, a final flight in my ultralight plane before I packed it away and a final house lockup before heading to the airport and catching the redeye to Melbourne.

Last Day at Work

Let’s start with the wrap-up of a great last day at work. No fanfare, just business as usual visiting 3 schools in a day with one school holding a great STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Maths) expo at Wanguri Primary School.

I recorded this on my way to present a second “SMOOTHIE” participation certificate to Delise… I presented one to Ben earlier that morning.

SMOOTHIES are online professional development events held every Friday for ICT, an acronym becoming less meaningful, so I won’t expand on it BUT – the role of an ICT has never been more important in schools. Unfortunately, the role is either taken for granted or not developed in our schools. Ben, Delise, Adam, Ingrid and Briony participate and contribute to SMOOTHIES (Short Multimodal Online Opportunities To Help Information Experts Succeed). They possess great “ICT” skills. While ICT might be an adverb or noun, it is the skill of digital literacy, digital fluency and the ability to communicate and share knowledge from that skill set which is something I really value and see in these fine people.

At the expo I ran into a large number of like-minded souls who are generally busy with their own schools, teachers and students. To be able to catch up with them on my last day “in the office” was in fact much more excellent than having a 15-minute farewell morning tea.

A side note here about Wanguri Primary School’s mascot. A good friend and first time visitor to Darwin, Brett Salakas commented on the “Australian-ness” of Berry Springs Primary School’s logo which incorporates a kangaroo holding a book. Brett was impressed with students’ ability to correctly identify the shape of our iconic local fish, the barramundi when presented with a number of different fish outlines/shapes.

Wanguri’s school icon/mascot is in fact a barramundi and the school oval sports a large wonderful ceramic tiled artistic statue of a barramundi. Tim Morgan, the principal and his team at the school took the logical step and developed the following tagline for their school…

I’m sure Brett will agree that this too is reflective of the lifestyle in the Northern Territory.

A flight out to the mouth of the Adelaide River

on Saturday before I left for Melbourne. I had an opportunity to take my small ultralight aircraft out for a flight to the mouth of the Adelaide River. With the recent rain that we had on the floodplain surrounding the Adelaide River, the grass had greened up wonderfully. There were literally thousands of magpie geese crowded into the waterways alongside the Adelaide River and they were startled by me flying overhead.

Another type of bird I see large numbers are brolgas. Their grey plumage and red feather colouring around the head makes them very distinctive.

Finally, on the ground another water lover is the water buffalo and I’m beginning to see increasing numbers of those when I go for my flights over the wetlands.

There were a great deal of fishermen out on the water fishing the region around the mouth of the Adelaide River and an area called the Wiltshires.

With my final flight for quite some time in my little plane completed, I packed the plane away in the hangar and returned home to pack my small number of belongings ready for that evening’s trip to Melbourne in a slightly larger aircraft.

Arrival in Melbourne

When I arrived into Melbourne and made my way to the pickup point, which is near the large Melbourne sign, I noticed that it had been modified for the T20 cricket. There were a lot of people taking photographs in front of the reflective cricket ball or the Melbourne sign. I later heard that 90,000 people had gone to see the Sri Lanka vs India match at the MCG.

Just for a little fun I have been using the new subject selection options for masking within Lightroom. These new selection options make it quick and easy to select subjects, backgrounds, and the sky for modification as I done in the photograph above.I did the same thing in the photograph below where the surrounding background is a less than exciting railway crossing. However, by enhancing the reds and greens of the flower bed in front, it provides a contrasting shot.

Here’s one more photograph taken with the new iPhone 14. Spring flowers are everywhere.

we took a walk into town and went to a small Brazilian café located in equitable place in the heart of the city. Years ago I used to work in equitable place for a company called Colonial Mutual. I think the building is now a hotel. I thoroughly recommend trying out the food in the Brazilian Café.

while on the subject of food, we were alerted to a great restaurant in Sunshine – yes, ironically there is a suburb in Melbourne called Sunshine and there are a number of great Vietnamese restaurants serving up great food. Bun Bo Hue is the spicy noodle version of Pho – the famous thinly sliced beef noodle soup which originated in Vietnam. We went to try out the restaurant and here is our verdict…

Food/Travel Show Inspiration

There is a foodie travel show called “somebody feed Phil” which resonates with us. Even better is when he visits places we are heading to in South America or putting on our bucket list. Just the other night we watched the episode on Santiago, the first stop on our South American adventure. His quirky way of presenting appeals to us. We learnt that “Sanguche” is the Chilean word for sandwich, but equally “sandwich” works as well. The sandwiches look more like a burger with the lot. Having such a long coastline extending from the tropics to the freezing antarctic, seafood is a key part of the diet and I am looking forward to that. The variety of shellfish served up is impressive.

Melbourne and Victoria Floods

Finally, on one of our walks that we tend to take each day, we went down to the Maribyrnong River to see how the cleanup had been progressing after the recent floods had damaged so many houses further up the river near the Anglers Tavern. while there is still work ahead, the cleanup is progressing well. Sadly, many streets had piles and piles of water damaged personal belongings stacked up on the footpath awaiting collection for the tip.

In our next post, back to the practicalities of planning for the trip, booking internal flights, accommodation and checking our packing. Catch you next post…