KEW COURT HOUSE

The Kew Court House at 188 High Street, Kew is a historic 1888 heritage building that operates as a cultural arts centre, live music venue, and temporary home for the Kew Library. The building features old lock-up cells and classic architectural details.

The building is refurbished and contains an intimate 80-seat acoustic theatre hosting live music, speakers, and seminars. It is also a temporary Library Hub, serving as the temporary location for Kew Library while it undergoes upgrades. It is also home to the Kew Historical Society and QArt studio/gallery.

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme

SOUTH YARRA POST OFFICE

This distinctive "castle" building is the former South Yarra Post Office, a historic heritage landmark located at 162 Toorak Road. Designed in 1890 by architect A.J. MacDonald for the Public Works Department and completed by 1893, it is of an eclectic style: The rear of the building features a unique blend of Scottish Baronial, American Romanesque, and Art Nouveau design elements, making it resemble a miniature medieval fortress hanging over the train tracks.

It is situated directly adjacent to the South Yarra railway station cutting, visible from passing suburban trains (from which train this photo was taken). While it no longer operates as a civic post office, the red-brick building is legally protected under the local heritage overlay.

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

The University of Melbourne’s Old Quad features iconic, sandstone-arched cloisters. Located at the heart of the Parkville campus, these 19th-century cloisters form the perimeter of the university's oldest courtyard. The picturesque, Tudor-style spaces are a central hub for student life, cultural exhibitions, and campus ceremonies.

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme

FOR THE BIRDS

Seen here is the City of Whittlesea Civic Centre and Plenty Ranges Arts and Convention Centre (PRACC). The complex is located at 25 Ferres Boulevard in South Morang, Victoria. The site was developed in the early 1990s and includes council offices, a convention centre, and landscaped grounds. Floating wetlands are utilized within the surrounding water-feature as a refuge for local bird life.

This post is part of the Roentare’s Water Meme

and also part of the Nature Notes meme

POSTCARD FROM MELBOURNE

A digital postcard I've made in Photoshop from my photos and which I send as an email to friends overseas.

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,
and also part of the Seasons meme,

and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme.

BRUNSWICK TOWN HALL

Brunswick was declared a municipality in 1857, after residents petitioned for municipal government. The first municipal chambers were erected in 1859 on Sydney Road at Lobb's Hill, between Stewart and Albion streets. The present Town Hall began with the construction of what is now the central section in 1877, designed in Renaissance Revival style by Evander McIvor, consisting of three bays, with arched windows, rustication at the ground level, and paired pilasters above.

In 1888 a competition was held for a new structure, won by architect Sydney H Wilson, with a very grand scheme with a central clocktower, similar in style and elaboration to the just completed Collingwood Town Hall. The project however did not proceed, and instead an addition to the north in matching style was built in 1908, the same year Brunswick became a City.

In 1926 it was decided to finally complete the building, and include a smaller and larger hall, as well as offices for the Council. Sydney H Wilson was again the architect, along with Charles R Heath. The design incorporated the 1908 wing, with new sections to the south matching in detail, as part of an imposing building in Victorian Second Empire style, with a taller central section, mansard roofs, and a porte-cochere. The completed building, without the planned finials and cresting, opened in August 1927 with a 'brilliant spectacle'.

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme

MELBOURNE MUSEUM

The Melbourne Museum is a natural and cultural history museum located in the Carlton Gardens in Melbourne, Australia. Located adjacent to the Royal Exhibition Building, the museum was opened in 2000 as a project of the Government of Victoria, on behalf of Museums Victoria which administers the venue. The museum won Best Tourist Attraction at the Australian Tourism Awards in 2011.

The last few days of Winter here in Melbourne have been windy, cold and wet, so museums, libraries and art galleries are definitely the places to be!

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme

MELBOURNE EXHIBITION BUILDING

Originally designed for the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880, the Exhibition buildings and the surrounding Carlton Gardens are now World Heritage listed. The Royal Exhibition Building is Australia's only World Heritage listed building. Completed in 1880 for Melbourne's first International Exhibition, it was the site of Australia's first Federal Parliament in 1901. With its meticulously restored interior, expansive galleries and soaring dome, it continues to offer a magnificent setting for trade shows, fairs and cultural events.

The Exhibition Fountain by Josef Hochgurtel is of Portland cement built in 1880. Josef Hochgurtel was born in Cologne, Germany, and trained under Herr Fuels, who modelled the Cologne Cathedral. In creating the Exhibition Fountain, he was assisted by August Saupe, who had worked on similar pieces in Berlin, Dresden and Copenhagen. The colossal fountain stands some 10 metres high on the south side of the Royal Exhibition Building, outside the Great Hall. It was constructed for the first of Melbourne’s two grand international world fairs. The fountain’s visual elements were designed to display the young colony’s confidence and advancement, simultaneously signalling the purpose of world fairs to display the produce and industry of nations.

Here it is hosting the Affordable Art Fair held in Melbourne recently.

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme

WOMIN-DJERRING

 "Womin-Djerring" (Coming Together) is the court in the University of Melbourne's Science Gallery group of buildings.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme.

SOUTH MELBOURNE

South Melbourne viewed from Southbank. The Victorian building with the clocktower is the South Melbourne Town Hall.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme

IVANHOE LIBRARY

The Ivanhoe Library and Cultural Hub is a state of the art public building offering access to 200,000 library items, several exhibition spaces, meeting rooms, artists' studio spaces and access to Banyule Council services. A great place to take part in all sorts of activities and then relax with a coffee or lunch at the attached café.

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Blue Monday meme.

FEDERATION SQUARE

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme

MELBOURNE GPO

Melbourne General Post Office (also known as Melbourne GPO) is located on the corner of Elizabeth and Bourke Street in Melbourne CBD, Australia and is currently listed on the Victorian Heritage Register. The former purpose built post office building currently functions as a shopping mall, having been redeveloped by adaptive reuse in 2004.

The architectural style of the building is Classical with French Second Empire influences and was designed in the Victorian period by architect A.E Johnson. Its historical significance is also due to incorporating distinct sections built over a period of 48 years between 1859 and 1907, and multilayered architecture, as a result of the four floors being constructed at different times. A distinctive architectural element is the clock tower which dominates the intersection of the two streets. Its location is still used as a point of reference for the measure of distances from the centre of Melbourne.

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.

SOUTHERN CROSS STATION

Southern Cross railway station (until 2005 known as Spencer Street station) is a major railway station in Docklands, Melbourne. It is on Spencer Street, between Collins and La Trobe Streets, at the western edge of the Melbourne central business district. The Docklands Stadium sports arena is 500 metres north-west of the station. The station is owned, operated and maintained by Civic Nexus, a subsidiary of IFM Investors and operating as Southern Cross Station Pty Ltd, under a 30-year lease to 2036 from the Victorian State Government, as part of a public-private partnership.

The station is the terminus of the state's regional railway network operated by V/Line, The Overland rail service to Adelaide, and NSW TrainLink XPT services to Sydney. It is also served by suburban rail services operated by Metro Trains, being one of five stations on the City Loop, a mostly underground railway that encircles the Central Business District. It is the second busiest railway station in Melbourne's metropolitan network, with 18.614 million passenger movements recorded in 2017/18. This figure excludes V/Line passengers who use the station.

Southern Cross was redeveloped by the Civic Nexus consortium, following an innovative design by Grimshaw Architects and Jackson Architecture which features an undulating roof. Construction began in October 2002 and was completed in late 2006, with the majority of the transport facilities finished in time for the 2006 Commonwealth Games. The central features of the design include a wave-shaped roof, a new entrance and concourse on Collins Street, a new coach interchange, a new food court, a bar/restaurant, separate retail outlets inside the station and a separate shopping complex between Bourke and La Trobe Streets.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme.

AT SOUTHERN CROSS

At the Southern Cross Railway Station in Melbourne City.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme,
and also part of the Photo Sunday meme.

ON THE HIGH ST

Northcote is the suburb I live in, and like most suburbs in Melbourne there is a main road through it, which in many cases is called "High St". A couple of days ago we went for a stroll and it was good to see life slowly returning to "normal". A good idea outside a pub was a designated area for "posting bills" - i.e. posters advertising venues, performances, artists, etc. This counterbalances the "Post No Bills" areas where no posting is allowed. In any case the bills make for a good mosaic!

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,

and also part of the Blue Monday meme,

and also part of the Seasons meme.

"COVID NORMAL"

Now that our lockdown No 2 is over and restrictions have been minimised in Victoria after 30+ days of no community transmitted cases of COVID-19, things are beginning to go back to "normal" in our city. Melbourne is coming back to life and people look cheerier, the roads are full of traffic, shopping centres are full of shoppers, public transport is beginning to fill up and cafés, restaurants and public venues are beginning to reawaken. The "Marvellous" is coming back to Melbourne...

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.

ROYAL EXHIBITION BUILDING

The Royal Exhibition Building is a World Heritage Site-listed building in Melbourne, Australia, completed in 1880. It is located at 9 Nicholson Street in the Carlton Gardens, flanked by Victoria, Carlton and Rathdowne Streets, at the north-eastern edge of the central business district. It was built to host the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880–81 and later hosted (in the Western annex) the opening of the first Parliament of Australia in 1901.

Throughout the 20th century smaller sections and wings of the building were subject to demolition and fire; however, the main building, known as the Great Hall, survived. It received restoration throughout the 1990s and in 2004 became the first building in Australia to be awarded UNESCO World Heritage status, being one of the last remaining major 19th-century exhibition buildings in the world. It is the world's most complete surviving site from the International Exhibition movement 1851–1914.

It sits adjacent to the Melbourne Museum and is the largest item in Museum Victoria's collection. Today, the building hosts various exhibitions and other events and is closely tied with events at the Melbourne Museum. This view is taken from a window high up the St Vincent's Hospital.

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.

FEDERATION SQUARE

Federation Square in the centre of Melbourne, lit up at night makes for a great place to visit (once the "stay home" restrictions have been relaxed!).

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme.

AT THE STATION

Fairfield Railway Station in Suburban Melbourne, at night.

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the My Corner of the World.