EVENING BY THE RIVER

On the banks of the Werribee River as evening falls on a wet and cold Spring day. The wattles still make a pretty good showing with their bright yellow flowers.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme,
and also part of the Friday Greens meme.

MELBOURNE STREET TREES 158 - CRABAPPLE

Malus is a genus of about 30–55 species of small deciduous apple trees or shrubs in the family Rosaceae, including the domesticated orchard apple (M. pumila). The other species are generally known as crabapples, crab apples, crabs, or wild apples. The genus is native to the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere.

Crabapples are popular as compact ornamental trees, providing blossom in Spring and colourful fruit in Autumn. The fruits often persist throughout Winter. Numerous hybrid cultivars have been selected, of which 'Evereste' and 'Red Sentinel' have gained The Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. Crabapples are small and sour tasting, and visually resemble a small apple, particularly some apples known as the "Lady Apple", which is also known as Pomme d'Api, Lady's Finger, Wax Apple and Christmas Apple.

The tree shown here is the hybrid Malus × scheideckeri 'Exzellenz Thiel'.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

LAKE AT THE PARKLANDS

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.

A number of interlinked water features, ponds and lakes have been created and are fed by water from the Darebin Creek. These lakes provide habitats for water fowl and enhance the beauty of the park.

This post is part of the the Wednesday Waters meme,
and also part of the Outdoor Wednesday meme,
and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme.

CITY PROMENADE

A walk in Melbourne's CBD on an early Spring day.

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.

30ML CAFÉ

The volume of coffee in a standard shot of espresso is 30 mL. And this is what this small coffee shop is named after. It is tucked away in a Melbourne CBD laneway, 2 Presgrave Pl, Melbourne VIC 3004, and the coffee here is excellent - the competition being tough in Australia's coffee capital!

The café owners Rob and Vince are great guys and very hospitable and proud of their craft. The shop is small, dark and cosy and the "Spirit" coffee machine an amazing piece of engineering! It's well worth hunting out this place and enjoying the coffee - and not only. The mural gracing the wall is very Melbourne street-art!

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.

ENCOUNTER

Encounter with a magpie lark in the City. The magpie-lark (Grallina cyanoleuca) is a conspicuous Australian bird of small to medium size, also known as the mudlark in Victoria and Western Australia, the Murray magpie in South Australia, and as the peewee in New South Wales and Queensland. It had been relegated to a subfamily of fantails in the family Dicruridae (drongos), but has been placed in a new family of Monarchidae (monarch flycatchers) since 2008.

It is a common and very widespread bird both in urban and rural areas, occupying all parts of Australia except for Tasmania and some of the inland desert in the far north-west of Western Australia, and appears to have adapted well to the presence of humans. It is also found in southern New Guinea.

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.

PHOTOGRAPHER - MODEL - CRITIC

Some more photos from Union Lane in the City where I was test driving a camera. 

This post is part of the Saturday Silhouettes meme,

and also part of the Our Beautiful World meme,

and also part of the My Sunday Photo meme,

and also part of the Photo Sunday meme,

and also part of the Weekend in Black and White meme.

IN UNION LANE

Located in the heart of Melbourne’s retail precinct, Union Lane is something of an anomaly. There aren’t any of the usual bars, boutiques or cafes to entice visitors but they come nonetheless. What they flock to see is one of the city’s best known street art sites. Just about every square centimetre of wall is covered by a giant graffiti mural, totalling some 550 square metres.

Born out of a mentoring program launched by the City of Melbourne, the work was created by 50 young artists in late 2007. Since then, many more coats of paint and ephemeral graffiti have covered and recovered the walls. Although street art remains controversial in many quarters, its immediacy, verve and accessibility are hard to deny.

This is image is taken with an Olympus Pen-F camera that I was test driving. It has several cool features including some special "art" filters one example of which is sen here.

This post is part of the Friday Greens meme.

MELBOURNE STREET TREES 157 - INDIAN HAWTHORN

Rhaphiolepis is a genus of about fifteen species of evergreen shrubs and small trees in the family Rosaceae, native to warm temperate and subtropical eastern and southeastern Asia, from southern Japan, southern Korea and southern China south to Thailand and Vietnam. In searching literature it is well to remember that the name commonly is misspelt "Raphiolepsis". The genus is closely related to Eriobotrya (loquats), so closely in fact, that members of the two genera have hybridised with each other; for example the "Coppertone loquat" is a hybrid of Eriobotrya deflexa X Rhaphiolepis indica.

The best known species is Rhaphiolepis indica (Indian hawthorn) from southern China, grown for its decorative pink flowers, and popular in bonsai culture. Rhaphiolepis umbellata (Yeddo hawthorn) from Japan and Korea has blunter leaves and white flowers. It is the hardiest species, tolerating temperatures down to about −15 °C. Its fruit is edible when cooked, and can be used to make jam.

Indian hawthorn is a mainstay horticultural specimen in temperate climates. It is often found in commercial as well as in private landscapes. Often it is trimmed into small compact hedges or balls for foundation plants. It has been successfully pruned into a standard form as well as small dwarf-like trees up to 3 metres in height. It is apt to develop leaf spot.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

KEW CENTRAL

Kew is a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, 6 km east from Melbourne's Central Business District. Its local government area is the City of Boroondara. At the 2011 Census, Kew had a population of 23,876. Formerly a city in its own right, the cities of Kew, Hawthorn and Camberwell were amalgamated in 1994 to form the City of Boroondara. The suburb borders the Yarra River to the west and north, with Hawthorn to its south and Balwyn to its east.

The commercial precinct known as Kew Junction began to take shape in the 1850s. The first store was opened by Mr. J. J. French in August 1853 and the first post office on 6 October 1856, however, it was not till towards the end of the decade that many shops appeared in High Street. The Kew Hotel opened in 1855, the Prospect Hill Hotel (now the Dan Murphy's liquor store) in 1857, the Council Hotel about 1860, the Clifton (now Hotel Kew) in 1869 and the Greyhound (now the Skinny Dog Hotel) in 1874. The block of civic buildings comprising the former post office, the former court house and the former police station were built in 1888 as was the National Bank, at the corner of Walpole and High Streets.

This post is part of the Outdoor Wednesday meme,
and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme,
and also part of the  Travel Tuesday meme.

GOVERNMENT HOUSE, MELBOURNE

Government House, Melbourne is the office and official residence of the Governor of Victoria. The current Governor of Victoria is Her Excellency The Honourable Linda Dessau AM. The House is set next to the Royal Botanic Gardens and surrounded by Kings Domain in Melbourne. It was the official residence of the Governor-General of Australia from 1901 to 1930. It is the largest Government House in the former British Empire and is almost double the size of the Viceregal Lodge, the former residence of the Lords-Lieutenant of Ireland.

Government House was designed by William Wardell, Inspector General of the Public Works Department, in the Victorian Period Italianate style, and is reminiscent of Queen Victoria's summer residence on the Isle of Wight, Osborne House. The building reflects the extravagant style of the period with a booming economy due to the Victorian gold rush. The main building consists of three parts: The south wing with its extravagant single storey State Ballroom, a grand staircase hall entrance to the three storey State rooms and two storey vice-regal apartments to the north. Rising from the building is a 145-foot belvedere tower.

The mews - a paved area surrounded on three sides by stables, coach houses and staff living quarters is nearby. The garden was designed by John Sayce in 1873 and is thought to be the "most intact 19th century mansion garden remaining in Melbourne" by the Victorian Heritage Register. William Guilfoyle, curator of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, further refined the original garden design with "many fine mature trees, including conifers, Australian rainforest species and deciduous trees, which are characteristic of the era and which also reflect Guilfoyle’s personal taste."

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.

ANOTHER MAKA MURAL

Mike Maka is a painter who works in a variety of media mainly on walls, canvas and illustration on paper. His web site is here and I have featured other Melbourne murals of his here, and here and here.

This latest mural featured in this post is found in Northcote, on the side wall of a two-story old Victorian terrace house. A rather incongruous image for such a grand old house, but perhaps this is part of the mural's appeal...

The mural depicts an R2-D2 type of robot, which seems to be a glorified music machine ("R2-DISCO"). The music theme is further hinted at by the electric leads and the tom-tom drums. On the other hand there is also suggestion of a space opera with a flying saucer hovering above and a crashed spaceship above the sumptuous red flower. The jungle-like setting with lush vegetation and floating blue fish completes the surreal image, a veritable "vernal equinox night's dream" quite aptly as we are approaching this astronomical occurrence...

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.