One of the most loved things about Melbourne is its picturesque parks, gardens and green spaces, which all have a colourful story to tell. Ranging from the manicured lawns and richly planted flower beds of formal gardens to reserves of natural bushland, parks and gardens are to be found throughout the City and suburbs.
Here is part of the Yarra Bend Park, which is the largest area of natural bushland near the heart of Melbourne. The park features steep river escarpments, open woodlands, playing fields and golf courses.
This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.
Yesterday, while driving to go to a fête, we came across this mural in Roberts St, Westgarth. It is in quite an obscure location, where not many people would find it. It is painted on a large roller door and the ribbed metal surface adds another dimension to the work.
The mural is by Sam King, an emerging British artist working within the mediums painting, murals, illustration and installation. His work fuses figuration with futurism and Eastern influence. Sam King's website can be found here.
This post is part of the Monday Mellow Yellows meme,
and also part of the Monday Murals meme,
and also part of the Blue Monday meme,
and also part of the Through my Lens meme,
and also part of the Seasons meme.
In 2013 there were estimated to be more than 25 million pets in Australia, with nearly 5 million of Australia's 7.6 million households home to pets. At 63%, Australia has one of the highest rates of pet ownership in the world.
Dogs are the most common pet, with 39% of households owning a dog. There are estimated to be 4.2 million pet dogs in Australia; 19 dogs for every 100 people. Cats are the second most common pet, with 29% of households owning a cat. There are estimated to be 3.3 million pet cats in Australia; 15 cats for every 100 people.
Fish are the most numerous pet type, with a total population of 10.7 million. The number of birds is estimated to be 4.8 million, with a further 2.2 million other pets including small mammals and reptiles.
Almost half (48%) of all Australians would like to either get a pet or get another pet. More than 1.1 million Australian households (14.9%) were planning to get a companion animals in 2013.
This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme,
and also part of the Camera Critters meme,
and also part of the My Sunday Photo meme.
The Darebin Parklands straddle Alphington and Ivanhoe, approximately 10 kilometres northeast of the City of Melbourne, and they are a district park covering an area of 33 hectares. Darebin Creek flows through the Parklands, to join the Yarra River, at Alphington. The Darebin Parklands are highly regarded for its social, recreation, education, conservation, water quality management, cultural and heritage values. The Parklands have a rich history as the homeland of the Wurundjeri Willam people and for cattle and sheep grazing, orchard and market garden use post European settlement. The olive trees seen here in silhouette are a remnant of the older use of this land.
This post is part of the Saturday Silhouettes meme,
and also part of the Scenic Weekends meme,
and also part of the Shadow Shot Sunday meme.
Rowing is a sport with origins back to Ancient Egyptian times. It is based on propelling a boat (racing shell) on water using oars. By pushing against the water with an oar, a force is generated to move the boat. The sport can be either recreational, where the focus is on learning the technique of rowing, or competitive, where athletes race against each other in boats. There are a number of different boat classes in which athletes compete, ranging from an individual shell (called a single scull) to an eight-person shell with coxswain (called a coxed eight).
The Yarra River has been a popular spot with rowers from the early years of the establishment of Melbourne on its banks. Numerous rowing clubs have clubhouses and boat sheds on the banks of the Yarra, and there is hardly a time when one cannot see a few rowing boats on the River.
This post is part of the Friday Greens meme,
and also part of the Weekend Reflections meme.
Acacia pycnantha, commonly known as the golden wattle, is a tree of the family Fabaceae native to southeastern Australia. It grows to a height of 8 m and has phyllodes (flattened leaf stalks) instead of true leaves. Sickle-shaped, these are between 9 and 15 cm long, and 1–3.5 cm wide.
The profuse fragrant, golden flowers appear in late winter and spring, followed by long seed pods. Plants are cross-pollinated by several species of honeyeater and thornbill, which visit nectaries on the phyllodes and brush against flowers, transferring pollen between them. An understorey plant in eucalyptus forest, it is found from southern New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, through Victoria and into southeastern South Australia.
Explorer Thomas Mitchell collected the type specimen, from which George Bentham wrote the species description in 1842. No subspecies are recognised. The bark of A. pycnantha produces more tannin than any other wattle species, resulting in its commercial cultivation for production of this compound. It has been widely grown as an ornamental garden plant and for cut flower production, but has become a weed in South Africa, Tanzania, Italy, Portugal, Sardinia, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, as well as Western Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales.
Acacia pycnantha was made the official floral emblem of Australia in 1988, and has been featured on the country's postal stamps.
This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme,
and also part of the Friday Greens meme.
The City of Bayside is a Local Government Area in Melbourne. It is located in the southern suburbs, with an area of 36 square kilometres and an estimated population of about 100,000 people. It comprises the City of Brighton, City of Sandringham, City of Moorabbin, City of Mordialloc and City of Bayside. As well as having quite exclusive and very expensive real estate by the seaside in Brighton, for example, it also has areas of industrial and business park usage, as in Moorabbin, for example.
This post is part of the Wednesday Waters meme,
and also part of the Outdoor Wednesday meme,
and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.
Brighton is an affluent beach-side suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 11 km south-east of Melbourne's central business district. Its local government area is the City of Bayside. At the 2011 Census, Brighton had a population of 21,257. Brighton is named after Brighton in England. Brighton houses some of the wealthiest citizens in Melbourne with grand homes, and the development of large residential blocks of land. As of June 2016, Brighton has a median house price of AU$ 2,287,500.
Brighton is also well known for its Dendy Street Beach with its 82 colourful beach boxes. Built well over a century ago in response to very Victorian ideas of morality and seaside bathing, the bathing boxes remain almost unchanged. All retain classic Victorian architectural features with timber framing, weatherboards and corrugated iron roofs, though they also bear the hallmarks of individual licencees' artistic and colourful embellishments.
Thanks to these distinctive decorations, the boxes turn the Brighton seaside into an immediately recognisable, iconic beachscape that can transform by the hour according to season, light and colour. Although these are nothing more than glorified change rooms, they are very much sought after and can fetch prices close to AU$ 300,000.
This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Ruby Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.
Melbourne has a reputation for changeable weather and extremes of meteorological conditions. This year, our Spring has been late in arriving, relatively cool and wet. Last week we had a couple of days of good weather as you can see from the first shot in the Darebin Parklands.
Last Sunday wild, windy weather belted Victoria and Melbourne, pulling thousands of trees from the ground and slamming them across roads and into homes and cars. A woman, believed to be in her 50s, was killed when the extreme wind storm cause a tree to rip out from the ground and come crashing into her property in Millgrove in Melbourne's east.
In all, the wind brought down 2000 trees and at least 400 power lines, damaged dozens of homes and turned a house fire in Aspendale Gardens into a dangerous blaze that threatened nearby properties. The fierce winds also caused traffic chaos in the air and on the ground and sucked the power from about 83,000 properties, mainly in Melbourne's outer east. AusNet Services had 75 staff working through the night and called in dozens of extra workers on the field on Monday morning but 42,400 homes are still without power.
A tree in our front yard lost a big limb as you can see in the second photo, and further up in our neighbourhood in Rossmoyne St in Thornbury a tree came down as you can see in the third photo (by Mathew Lynn). Rain followed the windy conditions and fortunately that stopped the wild weather...
This post is part of the Blue Monday meme,
and also part of the Through my Lens meme,
and also part of the Seasons meme.
