The House(s) of Fran_mart

 This covers the start of our wanderings in Melbourne looking for an apartment.  We are staying in an AirBnB on Shamrock St, Abbotsford.  It is quite small but very satisfactory for a few days: apart from anything else it is very quiet!  There is not a rule against having washing on the balconies! Here is a view from the lift: the unit we are in is on the RHS. We walked along the river in the morning.  As usual with the Yarra Mark Twain's comment about the North Platte "Too thin to plough, too thick to drink." came to mind.  It seems to be quite a popular rowing route.   The water wasn't too troubled but there was a bridge over it: Victoria Street in this case. This is the Yarra Trail footbridge as seen from the end of the corridor on which we are staying. Graffiti on one of the many gyms around the area.  Not sure if Larry is wearing a Leisure Suit. Guitar shop next door to a drum shop: neither was obviously/audibly operational at 0830. An e...

 We have now sold our apartment in Canberra.  There were 2 reasons for this.  In priority order: We want to visit our daughter and family in Melbourne more than we have done in the past. This makes it a major drag to also fit in visiting Canberra (and if we don't go there why keep the apartment?) I am so pissed off with the ACT Government.  They seem to have no realisation that there are thousands of people (4835 at the 2021 Census and I suspect a lot more now) living there.  If they do so realise they don't care about them.  While I expect this from the ALP (only concerned about keeping the CFMEU happy) and the Liberals (only concerned about the top end of town on Mugga Way etc happy) I had hoped the Greens would be better, but they are only concerned about the tram, the tram, the tram and keeping ethic minorities happy. We have been keeping an eye on listings in Domain and realestate.com and visited Melbourne for a week to check out some areas.  The ...

 Dame Nellie Melba was famous (notorious) for having many final, last, never to be repeated farewell tours.  I won't say that we are now on our last ever visit to Canberra, but almost certainly we are on our final visit as property owners.  The sale of Bunda St is to be settled on 17 June and the removalists are booked for the 12th. The drive up from Mallacoota had some interesting moments beginning when I checked Live Traffic and saw a warning of Alpine conditions from Brown Mountain to Cooma.  Checking Meteye the likely temperature along that stretch was 10C so I suspect some algorithm had said that it is always cold along that stretch.   In the event the only driving problem was more or less constant drizzle throughout the drive which was no worse than a niggle.  We came along Imlay Road, as we had enough fuel for the whole distance and the only point of interest there was the appearances of a couple of Tardis at each end of the road.  A sign o...