Last night, I (with my family and 300,000 of my friends and neighbours) descended on Melbourne’s CBD for the inaugural White Night Melbourne event. It’s an all night party celebrating the arts running from 7pm Saturday to 7am Sunday. The organisers had hoped for 100,000 people so they must have been a little blown away with the final estimates.

From shortly after 7pm, people on foot took over the streets. The trams weren’t running. Cars had nowhere to go. People lined the streets from side to side.  For us, with two young kids, the crowds were a little overwhelming. The performers and the art installations were a little hard to see. If you looked hard and watched the crowds, there were gems to be found like the performer pictured above. He was the voice half of a duo making some great music in Flinders Lane. How happy is this guy!

I don’t know if it’s going to be an annual event now, but we might have to leave the kids at home next time so we can be more mobile and stay out later.

 

What do you do when it’s low to mid-30s day after day after day? You go to the beach!

Our choice of beach this past weekend was Surf Beach on the south coast of Phillip Island – an easy 90 minute drive from Melbourne. We had a fantastic southerly coming in off the Southern Ocean that brought the temperature down just the right amount. There weren’t many people there and as you can see, the water was amazing! Shallow and warm – perfect for a family day at the beach.

This is one of the reasons I love Australia.

 

 

 

My searching for the identity of this bird has let me down so this one will have to remain unidentified, unless of course, you can help me out…

For Saturday, I offer up this cheeky little satin bowerbird. Bowerbirds build structures made from sticks and various bits of detritus.  These structures are called ‘bowers’ and are built to impress the females, who will check out the bower to see if they’re impressed even before they inspect the male. These birds seem to have a particular eye for anything blue and will pick up trash, berries, and anything else they find that’s blue to embellish their bowers.

I hope you’re having a great weekend!

No post last night as I took the family to the new Cirque du Soleil show called Ovo. It was a bit irresponsible of me considering today was the kids’ first day back at school, but it seems the excitement plus the exhaustion (got to bed after midnight) appear to have balanced out and they enjoyed their first day back.

I hope you like birds because that’s what I’m going with this week. Today it’s this very colourful little Gouldian Finch.

 

It’s bird week on In Search of Style, starting with this little pair of tawny frogmouths.

I believe this young fella is a Common Myna. I found him (or her) and his sibling on our front walk as I was arriving home from work on Friday. They’re new borns not quite ready for flight. As they get used to their whole new world, they seem to have taken ownership of our front yard entirely. Anyone comes near, there’s a whole lot of squawking from the parents followed by swooping and grand attempts to lead us away. We’ve kept our distance – thank goodness for telephotos…

 

I know, it’s just an ostrich right, but I quite like the background so I’m sharing it!

Looks like it’s back to work for me tomorrow. This was my last day of summer vacation. It went fast, but we had a good time. With all the travel earlier this year it was nice to just stay local, visit with friends, go on picnics, go on bike rides, enjoy time by the beach and some quiet days at home with the family.

The challenge now will be to keep up the blog while working. I’ll do my best!

 

Another from Thursdays adventure to the zoo.

Sadly just one more day of vacation before it’s time to go back to work. We enjoyed a day visiting with friends over lunch followed with a couple of hours at the beach. A perfect vacation kind of day!

Taken on a borrowed camera, edited on a borrowed iPad, and uploaded using a borrowed laptop.

In this image, we have a makeshift game for the kids. Take a beached log and float it out perpendicular to the beach. Then challenge the kids to see how far out the log they can walk before they fall in. Lots of laughs and very cold kids.