Yesterday, for a change the weather in Melbourne was perfect, no blazing heat, no humidity, rain or howling wind… Tal and I met on the corner of Johnson Street (after my customary coffee from Dench) and headed down to the Abbotsford Convent – the site of Tal new production “In other words”. But, on Saturday night, after going to a cult themed party in Carlton, while walking past Dench, we spied the bakers at 1am making bread and dancing to music in the kitchen – so there are secret gnomes making pastries in the middle of the night!
The Abbotsford convent is on the banks of the Yarra River and even though it is a 10 min bus ride down Johnson Street, it feels like you are in the middle of the country – I got a real shock seeing the city skyline, after being there for three hours. The site consists of a number of beautiful red brick and stone buildings, with huge wooden staircases, stained glass windows, Victorian tiled floors and huge rooms. The convent is slowly being restored after being saved by the local community from being turned into a housing development, but there are still a number of abandoned buildings which I happily wandered around while Tal sat at the old bakery and worked. The main building has been converted into a site for artists and musicians and feels very much like Frank Jobert, but on a larger scale. Lot happens on a Sunday – farmers markets, art exhibitions, which included some rather strange and wacky stuff as my mother would say… families, dogs, hippies (but not the smelly kind) etc. Tals performance will be held in the basement in the old laundry of the main building and the site is surrounded by beautiful (a bit dry in the drought) gardens.
Next door is the Collingwood Children’s Farm, complete with organic veggie patches, orchards, horses, hordes of geese, a pair of peacocks and Brahma chickens – sorry Paula, there were no Chinese Silkies, though I did look, and a tiger snake that lives near the green house – I did not stick around too investigate. After the farm I headed back to the convent for lunch with Tal at Lentil is everything and spent the rest of the afternoon drinking coffee and eating g-free chocolate cake.
Lastly, I must report that Melbourne does have its share of nutters – namely Phil, the dodgy Frenchman, who followed Matt into our house on Saturday evening after seeing him in his skin tight leather pants (he is a rock star after all) and wanting to get some of his own Mardi Gras action – he was rapidly chased down the stairs with much shouting and followed by wails of laughter.
Before I knew it is was over and I flew back to Melbourne for less than 18 hours, were I replaced my winter woolies with my bikini and filled my backpack ready to hit South East Asia and arrived in Bangkok in the middle of Songkran. Songkran is a festival celebrating the Buddist New Year - an intergral part of the festival is to clense yourself with water and the whole city turns into a water fight for four days, and while it is good fun, we decided to head down to the islands after 2 days as not much else was accessable in the city.
