The House(s) of Fran_mart

 For some reason both of us were awake very early on 16 December so we packed up the Mazda and headed off at 0600.  Frances drove the first leg to get in some practice at city driving: on discussing this we concluded that she hadn't done any big-city driving (neither Canberra nor Adelaide count - although the driving style of Adelaide motorists makes it a trickier place to drive than most).  The route was very simple: along Commercial Road (which becomes Malvern Rd) and a right turn on to the Monash Freeway. The traffic heading East on the Freeway was notably light at this time, but from around Dandenong Rd onwards the Westbound lanes had already clogged to stop-start.  I would hate that commute. At some point a copmobile was on the shoulder flashing a sign about "debris on the road"  There surely was: lumps of tyre all over the place.  A little further up the road a small lorry was parked.  It had double back wheels which on the drivers side were disp...

 We have seen balloons land in Fawkner Park a couple of times.  On 14 December it was a take-off site. A bonus snap of the CBD at dawn. On the 15th they also took off from the Park. They seemed to get very close, but presumably - hopefully, remembering a fatal accident some years ago at Alice Springs - the pilots know what they are doing! It is interesting how the balloons waft around.  They must get very detailed information on the wind at various levels as they go up.  The same flight path has been followed on both days.  Fortunately the Albert air ambulance hasn't come in from the North at the same time!

Through her Primary School our older grand-daughter, Arabella, has participated in a project by RMIT in designing an alternate version of a block in Cardigan St Carlton.  This is the street on which the component of RMIT is located and very close to the school.  The class had submitted about 25 entries for the project all displayed in a room for parents and friends to inspect for the project wrap up. Here is Arabella's entry (her team-mate was Tyra). The audience was encouraged to vote for the best three entries.  From family loyalty we were always going to put this as #1 but even without that bias I gave lots of points because the model also had a poster explaining what they had done and why which I rate as pretty good initiative for 11 year olds. Here are some other models. The winning entry was also pretty good and the team leader had worked the room rather well asking people to vote for her entry!  Again good initiative for her age.  Arabella's entry came 3r...

Following the success of starting our last trip at 0730, this time we tried for 0700 and overachieved, heading away at 0655 on 7/12.  There was a little more traffic than last time with a few very slow caravans causing some annoyance.  The weather was also manky until about Orbost (~170km).  However, as a strategy it seems to work well. The most interesting sighting was fishing Santa, sitting on the railing on the Avon River bridge just West of Stratford.  It seems this is an annual event as our daughter reports seeing it last year. The traffic got rather heavy entering the Domain tunnel - the presence of an ambulance with lights and siren suggesting a stupid had happened towards the West Gate bridge.  Not a biggie. After a very pleasant get together we the sunset was pretty good. As we were heading to bed, we had an issue arise with the louvres on our Winter garden which we had opened to let the breeze off the Bay in.  (The day had been pretty tropical.)...