Pepe le Peugeot has a Bingle.

Our apartment only comes with undercover one car park, which means that Jeff parks on the street.  This hasn't been an issue since we moved in, even though we live just a block from the beach.

This past Monday, when Jeff went out to go to work, this is what he found.

Poor Pepe le Peugeot. 

Jeff was clearly parked within the space.

A bingle.  And, on top of it, whoever did it didn't even leave a note.  Jerk.

Now we will understand the insurance (excess) process in Australia - not something that was on our Wish List, that much I can tell you.

Opera. Or in italian, Opera.

This week was a dichotomy of events.  On Sunday we went to a Formula 1/V8 Supercars race, and on Wednesday, we went to the opera.  We are very worldly.

We were invited to the Opera in the Market with one of our agencies.  Opera in the Market took place in one of the largest open-air markets in Melbourne, the Queen Victoria Market.  It has been in operation for 130 years and sells local produce, meat, seafood, and deli stuff.  They also sell trash and trinkets, but are best known for the food.

Seating for about 700 people.

The Opera in the Market cleared out one full stall and was a fundraiser for St. Vincent's Hospital Cancer Center.  The medical field is pretty interesting in Australia, in that there are both public and private hospitals, and you can only go to a private hospital if you have the appropriate insurance.  To make matters even more complicated, if you are on public insurance, the government tells you which hospital that you have to go to, you don't have a choice.

St. Vincent's is a combo of private and public, and is supposed to be a great hospital and they are in the process of building a new cancer wing that will offer patients more space and privacy.

The market stalls cleaned out.

It was a fancy event.  Dress code called for "Cocktail/Lounge"
"Lounge" for Jeff and I typically consists of sweatpants, so we went "Cocktail."

The opera was a hybrid event, too, in that there was a full orchestra, 100 person chorus, and the famed Aussie trumpeter, James Morrison.  Elena Xanthaodakis and Roy Best were the opera singers, and the orchestra was conducted by Guy Noble.  Some of these are apparently big names in the Aussie Opera scene.  We didn't know any of them.  Jeff thought that the trumpeter was a blow hard.

An illegal picture during the event.

The opera was interesting.  Apparently a noteworthy opera piece has yet to be conceived in English.  For me, the orchestra and trumpeter were the best parts (in addition to the great food).  For Jeff, he most enjoyed some random guy in our row that stole a banana off of the decorations and was eating it during the performance.  Jeff had some one-liners at the expense of the trumpeter; he tooted his own horn quite a bit.

Bingle Free Grand Prix

Last weekend the Formula 1 Grand Prix came to Melbourne.  The track is about 3km from our house, so we enjoyed a couple of days of crazy race traffic, hearing the cars testing at 7am, and just plain craziness around the `hood.  Kind of like our days of living in K`napp.  Only, there is not a huge statue of Dale Earnhardt minutes from us.

The track with the city in the background.

In addition to the Formula 1, there was also a V8 Supercars race at the same track, so I went on Sunday to entertain customers and Jeff decided to forego the luxury corporate suite in favor of partaking in the atmosphere, drinking Bundy, and hanging out with mates.

See the IRWIN Tools Ford on the upper right?!

They do a full-day of racing and events.  There were Red Bull drift cars, old-school V8 Supercars, old-school Formula 1 cars, and others racing throughout the day.  There were also aerial stunt planes, F-18s (debate if there was one or two F-18s), and a LOW fly-over of a Qantas 747.  The 747 was pretty impressive - based on how he was driving, fairly certain that there weren't passengers onboard.  He pulled some tight turns, but unfortunately no barrel-roll.

Arial Stunt Planes.  We saw them on Saturday when we
were walking around.  No one else seemed to think it was
different that there were planes doing loopdeeloops.

One of the F-18s.

Qantas 747.  LOW.

The most exciting thing that we saw was a lap competition between a Mercedes AMG, a V8 Supercar, and a Formula 1 car.  The track is about 5.3k, and the Mercedes started first with about a 40 second head start, then the V8 Supercar went out with a 40 second headstart, then the Formula 1 car....the Formula 1 car passed both in the back stretch, and the V8 Supercar passed the Mercedes right before the finish line.  It was pretty cool to watch.  They go FAST!

V8, F-1, AMG

In addition to our corporate guests in our suite, we were also 'blessed' to have the bad-boy of Aussie Rules Football grace us.  He has been kicked out of at least two football clubs for acting like a goon, and is currently on Dancing with the Stars, Australia.  He's a bone-head.  He asked my boss (whose wife was in attendance) if he wanted to go to a club to pick-up chicks.

"Fev" and Nick

All in all, it was a great day at the track - our car came in 7th (yay!).  The Formula 1 race was pretty boring - little passing, and no bingles.

Black swans love the Grand Prix.  They don't even have to
have tickets.

Michael Shumacher's parade car.  An apparent Formula
One legend, on-hand for the race.

Bundaberg tent.  Bundy is an Aussie Rum that EVEYRONE
drinks.  Haven't figured out why people drink it, yet.

Jeff's mate, Matt with the Bundy Bear.
Matt loves Bundy.  He's an Aussie.

Jeff says the IRWIN car is in this picture, but I can't find it.
It's like one of those photo hunt games.

LOUD.

Fomula 1 Cars from the suite.  We were at turns 15 and 16.
Not some puny NASCAR track with 4 turns.  :)

People jump on the track, even though they make
announcements and post signs that you can't be on the track
at any point in time.  Also, the track is accessible to the public
every other day.  You can drive your car around it at 40kph.

East Siiiiiide

`Twas a gorgeous Australia Labor Day Monday and all through East Melbourne, not a creature was stirring, not even .... a possum?  Fearing heavy traffic returning to the city from a long weekend if we ventured into the hills for a bushwalk, we decided to do another city walking tour from one of our guide books. This walk covered a few of the gardens along with a large number of landmark homes and buildings on the east side of Melbourne.  From this trek, we learned a few things:

          1)  East Melbourne is the quiet side of town.  Despite being home to plentiful unique, gorgeous, and historic row homes and residential buildings with close proximity to the city, sporting venues, parks, etc., Laura and I might has well have been wandering through a ghost town.  There was a decent amount of activity in the city for a holiday, but we wandered this bordering suburb eerily alone.

          2)  A historic walking tour is much more interesting if you bring along the details of said history. The genius amongst us thought it was a brilliant idea to make a copy of the walking tour map thus eliminating the awful inconvenience of lugging a guide book around town all day (for the record, the guide book is the size of a stack of post cards, not a 5lb bag of sugar).  This same genius failed to make a copy of the details behind the 21 historic landmarks we were to encounter on the walking tour.  It is, in fact, boring to look at a historic home that looks like every other nearby home not knowing what makes it historic.  I have since resigned my genius status currently residing at numbskull.  Some may argue nothing's changed.

          3)  The local drug emporium may not have been so difficult to locate back in the day.  Not partaking in substances of an illegal nature ourselves, it has been a curiosity how people who do, find methods of attainment in a new locale.  There are rumors that you can obtain a banned substance from a nearby Charcoal Chicken restaurant if you order in a certain way.  There are no indications that the authorities suspicions have been raised by patrons laying down a grand for a take-out chicken order.  How do people figure this stuff out?  It will remain a curiosity for me, but we stumbled on a not so subtle dealing place on our walking tour.  "Casa de Juana" seemed like an odd name for a residence to me and I was already suspicious.  Then I noted the neighboring residence to it's left and ... come on!

House on Left "Casa de Maria".  House on Right "Casa de Juana" 

Try telling me there's not a tunnel to Mexico or Columbia in their basements.  I suspect they worked for Company Caine and named their daughters Metham and Phetamine.  Seriously?

          4)  The Moomba Festival is on Labor Day and we are disappointed we missed it.  It's going on the calendar for next year.  As we walked ... alone ... we could here cheers erupting from a crowd somewhere in the city intermittently.  Turns out it was the annual Moomba Festival which combines an apparently Chinese-inspired parade and a water skiing tournament on the Yarra.  The parade would have provided great humor in merely trying to determine how it relates to Australian Labor Day, Melbourne, and a water skiing event.  And anybody bold enough to get in the Yarra deserves praise no matter the skiing performance that follows.  It is a disgustingly foul river that news and radio hosts repeatedly remind locals to not swim in.

Here's some pictures from the walk:

Nocturnal.  Didn't see any on this day.

Huge palm near Parliament

Tree-lined park path

Random JFK Memorial.

Part of the JFK Memorial.

Creepy carved "Fairy Tree"

Church turned residence.

This home is on the historic walk.  Apparently because
all of the iron work looks like a wedding cake. (?)

Socceroos

That's the name of the Australian National soccer team.  It is called soccer here.  And the Aussie's give their national teams nicknames.  Wallabies for rugby, Socceroos for soccer, Boomers for basketball ... I don't know any others.

So I found out about 4:45pm on a weekday that the Socceroos were in town that night to play a World Cup qualifier against Saudi Arabia.  As LT had a work function that night, I rang up a mate and met him down at AAMI Park to attend the match.  Attending a soccer match at the International level was a first for both of us, and I'll admit my expectations for an exciting evening were pretty low.  It's soccer.  Fun to play, typically mind-numbing to watch at the highest level.

So we ended up a section over from the Saudi Arabia section, amongst a bunch of Saudi Arabian fans.  A kind Saudi fan informed us the Saudi's needed an Oman loss and Saudi win to get in.  Australia had already qualified at this point.  A recipe for an away team blowout and we were amongst the away team fans who never took a breath from song nor chant the entirety of the contest ...

.... and oh what a contest it was!!  The Saudi's took a 1-0 lead 20 minutes in.  The Aussie's tied them up two minutes before the break and then gave up another one in the final minute of the half to go down 2-1 into the break.  The second half began with the Saudi's clearly trying to slow the pace and hold onto a 2-1 lead for an entire half.  It looked like they might as we watched Saudi defensemen hold possession for eons and my pulse faded.  I noted the location of the nearest defibrillator in the event this began to rival the boredom of a cricket match.

Then the Socceroos came to life and and attacked.  The crowd roared back with them on the heels of two disallowed goals and a Saudi that lay motionless until 2.37 seconds following the stretcher carry to the sideline.  The Aussie onslaught continued without results until the 75th minute.  By the 79th minute, the Socceroos had taken a 4-2 lead.  Three goals in three minutes.  The crowd was insane!!  4-2 was the final and our new Saudi friend had become sad prior to the final whistle.  Oman had won during the course of the match putting the Saudi's out of the World Cup.

Aussie Children Choir which did NOT sing prior to the match.

The Saudi section.  Never sat down.  Never stopped singing/chanting.

Loved the two Aussie's in the Saudi section with the large inflatable boxing kangaroo.
Some Saudis had begun the deflation process at this point.

Socceroos versus Saudi Arabia

Forrest Caves?

While we were visiting the country horse races back in January, we decided to visit the Forrest Caves.  While the name makes no sense to me, I knew it was a place that Jeff would love.

The coastline of Australia is unbelievable, with hills, rock formations, huge dunes, and miles of sandy beach as far as the eye can see.

Huge dunes...easily 100 steps to get down to the beach...

Gorgeous, untouched view of the beach and Forrest Caves.

The Forrest Caves were formed millions of years ago when a nearby volcano exploded and the red ash settled forming red rock.  The formations in the rock that have formed from the waves crashing down and around them.

Huge dunes and wind blown trees on the way to the beach.

What are the Forrest Caves?

The beach was nearly empty - I think we saw four people during the couple of hours that we were there.

Just the two of us on the beach.

Inside one of the Forrest Caves and the waves rolling in.

Jeff climbed out on the rock formations.

View of the Forrest Caves.

I think Jeff is contemplating the jump...

Me and Toots on top of the Forrest Caves.

Sea urchins in the stranded pools of water.

The sun setting across the sea rocks.

We'll definitely be back to check out a sunset or sunrise.