We took a tram down to the end of Fitzroy Street and hopped off at the Western end of Acland St (it became a source of some confusion that Acland St has two ends). The first image is the Cenotaph - I am getting back into collecting War Memorials!
Heading towards the Pier there was a large building site (they are rebuilding the pier) with the fence on the Esplanade side covered by timber sheeting. That has been used as a space for poets to express themselves. Far better verse than usual for graffiti (quoting from
Graffiti Lives OK by Nigel Rees "A man's ambition must be small, to put his words on a shithouse wall.")
Getting out on to the remains of the old pier there is art on view, mainly penguin related.
Lots of it!
A sign explains how this is the work of school kids: well done Mrs Klose.
Of course we soon ran into prohibitory crap. We spoke to a local who seemed to feel it is a Good Thing and said it was supposed to be finished in a month. A sign showed it to be a Parks project, helping out tour operators.
A view of the (fenced off) marina.
The city sky line. Every time I see a view like this I think back to my first visit to Melbourne in the mid 1970s where the recently completed
BHP House stood out as way taller (at 41 storeys, 152.5 m) than anything else. It was by 100 feet the tallest building in Melbourne at that time. These days it doesn't stand out and is
not on t
he list of 31 buildings >200m.
We headed towards the Catani Gardens passing this sign near the entrance to the Yacht Squadron. Well done that Squadron.
The
Catani gardens with Canary Island Palms.
Every formal Garden needs a bandstand.
We wander about on the exposed sand which was not unduly full of shorebirds (ie none seen). The breakwater was replete with Little Black Cormorants: I guessed 200, and can count 204 in this image with a few more out of shot. (Also 25 Pied Cormorants on the jetty.)
We got a good view of the West Gate Bridge from the beach. Much more relaxing looking at it than driving across it!
At this point Frances suggested going to Acland Street to catch the tram. I mistakenly interested that to mean she wish to walk the historic cakeshop area. That is at the Eastern end of the street so we did about a km of wrong walking. Heading back towards the Western end we did gind some interesting street art.
And then a tram stop to take us back to our accommodation. St Kilda Junction has a fine collection of graffiti, especially on the "down" side. This lesser amount was on the "up" side.
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