Sunburnt Suburbia: Australian National Botanic Garden

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Family Portraits

At our 20th Anniversary Ball we engaged Kellie from Romantic Events to capture some posed family portraits. She photographed most of them in a small pavilion at the venue, and some of us on a chaise longues, to get a period feel. Also to capture the style of the period we posed for some photos with relaxed, serious expressions - not all though, as it seems unnatural for photographs now.

Vacation in Melbourne

Last February Susan and I took a holiday in Hobart as the two of us alone. With the advice of our counsellor, we decided that this is a pattern that we should continue. So now we plan a holiday together at least once a year. This year we decided to visit Melbourne, our home city, as tourists. We also wanted to try out apartment living in the CBD so Susan organised a nice apartment at the Mantra on the Park. We spent 2 days doing tourist activities in Melbourne, just the sort of activities that we would normally do when visiting a city. Melbourne came up well in comparison to our other city experiences - it is a good place to visit.

Xmas & Summer 2007

Xmas started with the Foster family dinner at our house on the 22nd - a break from tradition. However the rest of our holiday followed the same pattern as the previous two years. A few days at Rye with the Miller family, followed by 6-days camping at Cumberland River on the Great Ocean Road with the Williams family. We had a good break, but no trip to Queensland this year.

Xmas & Summer 2008

We had the Miller family to Xmas at our house this year, and the following day Susan's family came. After a weekend at Rye, we took off on a 2-week road trip to Adelaide. This was our first visits to South Australia, and it was a good one. Though on occasions the weather was hot, we mostly had extremely pleasant time.

Just before we started our journey back to Melbourne, we visited the Australian National Botanic Garden. We passed 40 minutes walking its Main Path.

Our walk started with two sunning lizards. They were comfortable with people, and so Susan got quite close.

The Main Path through the garden takes in several habitats. It starts with the rain forest, which the ANBG maintains through the extensive use of mist sprays. We also liked the eucalypt lawn, with its open grassland.

The path finishes with plants native to Sydney and Canberra. Then we started south, driving the Monaro Highway to Victoria.

I am glad we took that route, as the drive is beautiful. The landscape has an Australian flavour on the European hill lands. Multiple open, small valleys of farms with hill tops covered in trees. Even in spring, dry grass colours dominated the land. This made a strong contrast with the 2nd half of our journey through Gippsland, which was particularly verdant. The drive home gave a great finish to our short break.

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