Category Archives: Melbourne Australia

Photo Of The Day: The Forum Theatre in Melbourne, Australia

Isn’t that a simply stunning and ornate exterior! But it really does reflect the craftsmanship and high level of architectural detail that used to go into buildings such as these. The Forum Theatre in Melbourne, Australia has been around since the late 1920s and thank heavens it wasn’t torn down to make way for yet another slab of modern glass architecture. We do NEED a mix of styles instead of wall-to-wall modernity.

Opened in 1929, the Forum Theatre in Melbourne, Australia

Photo Of The Day: Surplus To Requirements in Melbourne, Australia

The economic downturn has been felt in Australia during our 2 and 1/2 years in Europe and we have seen more of these “Closing Down” signs in Melbourne than expected. This shop inside one of the lovely arcades is apparently surplus to requirements.

Sad signs of closing down in Melbourne, Australia

Australia Can Be the Back of Beyond Some Days

Really? Do internet and phone ‘service providers’ think that people have nothing else to do other that WAIT for days on end for answers to their email questions or sit with the phone, redialing again and again, as a message tells them that they are TOO BUSY to answer the phone?

I’ve had a truly dreadful 3-4 days with AMAYSIM, our mobile phone provider here in Australia and honest to god, I feel like I have moved to the ‘Back of Beyond’ where technology is concerned. There is no customer service ethic on display even if you DO finally make contact with someone. And I have read a rather lengthy list of complaints today online, so I’m not alone in this leaky boat.

Both of our iPhones (which are working for now) and my iPad (which is NOT working unless I use the household wifi) are with Amaysim — a division of Optus which is one of the ‘Big Two’ here downunder. I’ve finally gotten responses from them this afternoon by turning to — wait for it — social media!

Today after hearing an automated response (again!) saying we’re too busy to answer the phones, I went onto both Facebook and Twitter and began blasting Amaysim. I honestly received a response within minutes, but then that effort was simply washed away when the women who wrote a contact email said she didn’t understand why I thought their service was ABYSMAL. I wrote back that a quick glance at their OWN Facebook page would show that people are ready to go onto one of Australia’s dinner time consumer affairs shows, Today Tonight, and tell their own story about the lack of customer service or lack of connectivity — full stop. I have had absolutely no connection on my iPad for days, but the customer service person told me my iPad probably defaulted back to the original carrier. They ARE the original carrier because I have a 30 day old NEW iPad! And her suggestions for changing things in SETTINGS proved useless, too.

For me personally, the biggest issue is that there seems to be no accountability. They certainly are quick to debit the monthly payment from my credit card, but if I can’t get connected and no one answers emails or answers the phone, how is that behaving in an ethical manner? Simply writing to me via Facebook posts saying that they are in the process of hiring new staff is not the least bit helpful. If they didn’t have enough people to man the phones and computers and the staff wasn’t fully in place and FULLY trained, then Australia’s telco regulatory agencies should never have allowed them to open their doors!

A word to the wise to my readers worldwide who might think of using Amaysim for their travels Down Under simply because it can be set up as a Pay-As-You-Go with no contract — just read the above tale of woe and ask yourself if this is the kind of phone service you want to deal with when you need to contact family and friends back home in whatever country you come from. Or if you are a business traveller who depends on one of their sim cards for your computer’s Pocket Wifi or the micro-sim for your iPad — if you can’t get connected to the internet, it’s simply a useless piece of plastic now, isn’t it?

There are probably some lovely people at Amaysim — and I do mean that. But how would I know that since they only answer their phones with a voice message saying that they are too busy to answer their phones???

Blue On Blue in Melbourne, Australia

The thin blue light of a cold and wintery day matches the tonality of these blue Yarra Trams on Swanston Street right in the heart of the CBD (Central Business District) in Melbourne, Australia.

Blue trams in Melbourne, Australia on a cold winter day

Time For The Tour de France

It’s that time again — the 3 weeks of each year when my husband’s concentration is fixed on the Tour de France. Unfortunately we aren’t in France this year — we’re back in Melbourne, Australia.

Mark saw the Tour live in Normandy in 2011 when we were living there — and then he saw the Tour live again last year in the South of France when we lived in the Midi-Pyrenees. Ah well — television coverage will have to do for this year.

But you DO know that your sweetie is a ‘cycling tragic’ (fanatic) when he decorates his hard hat from work with Polka Dot Jersey red dots!

An homage to the Polka Dot Jersey in the Tour de France on Mark’s hardhat

Back soon!

Stacked Up On Swanston in Melbourne, Australia

Photo of the day…

Stacked up trams on Swanston Street in the heart of Melbourne, Australia. I had just gotten off of one of these and when I turned around I noticed how many different lines run down Swanston Street and then branch off to different locations. This is one of the coolest things about resettling here — being able to get around with NO car if I choose that option!

A row of trams in Melbourne, Australia waiting for passengers to jump on and off

Backlog Of Boxes and A Bit Of Backstory

Would you like to know WHY we moved into a new apartment in Melbourne 3 weeks ago and I am still unpacking? Here’s what I have been up against!

In addition to the delays in getting the internet turned on, we’ve discovered that just keeping this 1950 era house warm is a bit of a challenge. There is no central heating — not all that uncommon in Australia — and the entire first week was spent bundled in a lot of layers since the one and only heating unit had died. Many calls and emails to the agent later, we now have the same sort of flat panel Euro-style convection radiator in the main living area that we had in the last house that we built. Now if we just had double glazed windows and insulation!

We’re living in a very urban environment and it’s a lifestyle choice that we have consciously made. But it also means that we don’t have the luxury of just being able to nip out to the back garden to retrieve some stored item from the shed and we are having to rethink every single thing that we own.

When the movers arrived 3 weeks ago, I blithely told them to just put all of the boxes into the larger of the two bedrooms since that was going to be my office and studio. I planned to use that room as a ‘staging area’ to unpack. The garage was already full of Mark’s tools, so that was my one and only option. AND remember, we had shipped an entire shipping container over to Australia from France. Merde!

After the movers departed, I walked to the room that I had assigned as the ‘staging area’ and realised that I couldn’t even get into it. The boxes were stacked from wall to wall, they were stacked taller than I am in most places, and there was absolutely no place to begin. Here’s a picture that I took as they began filling it past any point of management! By the time they were done, I couldn’t even SEE those windows on the other side of the room.

A growing mountain of boxes on moving day when an entire shipping container arrived

I’ve managed to sort out the kitchen to the 80% organised stage and all of the furniture is in the livingroom and the master bedroom. We’ve even hung some pictures on the wall and I’ve filled the bookshelves. But I have also thinned down, down, down the amount of books we have and the local charities are getting a huge donation. Thank heavens we brought every single one of the Billy bookcases from France that we had purchased at IKEA in Toulouse. Who knew they’d come in so handy immediately to just wrangle the stacks of books into a manageable amount. You’ll note that even the smaller bookshelves were put to use as a kitchen overflow area to handle expresso cups from Rome, huge pottery bowls from Cley in Norfolk, UK, pictures of my two adult children, cookbooks, and our Wallace and Grommit clock looks down on us each day.

Bookcase chock full of books.

Even the small bookcases take the overflow.

Part of our issue with sorting things out was that we hadn’t even SEEN some of the things that were in those boxes for many, MANY years. Before they were shipped to France, they were stored in a storage unit in Ballarat, prior to that they were sprinkled between the house and several buildings out on our rural property in Central Victoria Australia, and before that they were packed up in Melbourne as we prepared to move to the country and build a house. I had to do a bit of mental backtracking, but I discovered that some of those items had been completely unseen for between eight to nine years. If all of those things were not incorporated into our day to day lives, they were invisible. Frankly, we’d BOTH forgotten how much we actually owned and in spite of all of those pre-Europe garage sales and donations, we now find that we still have a LOT of stuff.

Here is my current thinking on the subject…

Do I still place elaborate book plates inside my books nowadays where I write my name??? No.
Do I still place wax seals on the envelope flap when I write a letter??? No.
Do I still need multiple sets of flatware or silver trays for ‘entertaining’ when I don’t live like that any more and am more likely to entertain in a restaurant than our own residence??? No.
Do I still need to keep dozens and dozens of books on the topics of religious studies and spiritual studies and contemporary social issues since I purchased them 20 years ago when I was doing my graduate work, they are no longer current, and they use up a lot of bookshelves??? No.

I’m exhausted by the need to open every single box and touch every single item. But it’s also liberating even when it is fatiguing. I am paring down, down, down, but there are some sentimental items from my late mother that will go back into storage. And since I’ve been a photographer and journalist on and off for all of my adult life, can you even BEGIN to imagine how many folders and binders full of slides and negatives I have from the pre-digital days! Then there are the decades of hand-written journals. All of that needs to be checked and then archived.

Being truly honest, I had a mini-meltdown today when I couldn’t even turn around in that office in spite of unpacking for all of these weeks. I was awash in empty boxes, wrapping paper, and heavy duty shipping bubble wrap. I needed all of that to disappear and I need the shelves to go UP in that room and the cabinets to be brought upstairs so that the stacks and stacks of STUFF on every single surface can be placed in some kind of organisational flow. Aarrgghh!

Here’s where I am this morning. And LOOK! There IS a large and lovely window back there!

An office PARTLY cleared of boxes and previously stored items

It’s the ‘how do you eat an elephant’ theory I suppose. One small nibble at a time.

I haven’t disappeared (although it feels like it some days!), but I am very, very preoccupied with purging and nesting right now. (sigh!) I have so many stories and photos and adventures to share — but I’ll get to them when I get to them. I know you’ll understand that after all these years of semi-gypsy-and-never-really-settled lifestyle, this is a VERY necessary stage of sorting out.

Bye for now!

A Wanderful Life

The Neverending Journey