We awoke at half past six to an overcast, breezy and slightly chilly morning. Nonetheless, I requested of Tiki that she write some messages on my bare back with her finger. It’s a game we sometimes play to relax and determine if we can guess just what the other’s message is. Tiki showered at ten past seven, washing her dirty underwear as she did so.
During breakfast, we listened to Peter Evans’s dry sense of humour on A.B.C. radio. He played Abba’s current hit, “The Name Of The Game”. It was still overcast when the four of us boarded a tram for the city and alighted in Flinders Street. We walked along it in an easterly direction, past the building which houses the ‘Herald-Sun’. Billboards displayed the headline: ‘Charlie Chaplin dead’.
In the Treasury Gardens we came upon the smelly pool and fountains which, in combination, is a memorial to John F. Kennedy. Continuing on into the adjoining Fitzroy Gardens, I produced a twenty dollar note to purchase four tickets, at twenty cents each, in order that we might enter Captain Cook’s Cottage. The gentleman, however, informed me that his availability of change did not permit his acceptance of such an amount.
As Roger paid for the entrance of the four of us, a voice from the assembled crowd indicated to me that I had been recognised. A lady with whom I work introduced me to her son of twelve years and her sister. The trio was on a coach tour of the city with ‘Pioneer’ after having flown down this morning aboard a flight which had left Sydney at seven o’clock. The sun had been shining there at that time. They were due to be at the Tasmanian Ferry Terminal this evening by half past five to prepare to board the ferry that was scheduled to leave for Devonport two hours later. Their holiday of ten days was to ensue from that port, which is virtually in the middle of the island’s northern coast.
We looked through the rather empty Cook’s Cottage and walked up to the fenced miniature Tudor Village that was donated to the citizens of Melbourne in return for the parcels of food that were sent to England in the years that immediately followed the Second World War, when food there was in short supply.
Returning to the city centre via Collins Street, we passed the area where many doctors and dentists have their practices. En route to Swanston Street we passed the approximately octagonal tower that is a part of the Southern Cross Hotel. Having turned to the left we passed the fountain in the City Square in which the detergent that was apparent yesterday had all but disappeared.
Once we had crossed the Yarra via the Prince’s Bridge, we headed for the National Gallery where I changed the twenty-dollar note by buying four tickets at a cost of fifty cents each. Locating a cafeteria on the ground floor, Roger purchased four waxed cups of tea. We sat outside at a table overlooking the pool which is accompanied by a semi-pyramidal waterfall.
The ancient artefacts on the ground floor date back as far as three thousand years. On another floor I paid a dollar, which allowed Susan and I to enter the exhibition of British paintings while Tiki and Roger chose to sit outside in comfortable chairs. Some forty paintings date back as far as three hundred and fifty years and include the works of artists such as Gainsborough. One, which depicts the death of James Wolfe, is on loan from Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.
Exhibits on other floors range from antiques to crazy modern art to the interesting, yet quite poignant photographs of Robert Falcon Scott’s Antarctic Expedition which were taken at the South Pole before it set out on its ill-fated return journey. The negatives were actually found eight months later on the bodies of its members.
We boarded a tram and returned to South Yarra by two o’clock. The sun was well and truly out as we just sat about the lounge room and relaxed. Roger was reading the book, ‘Bicycles’ and appeared to be particularly tired as he lay on the floor and partly behind the door. About four o’clock we left in the appropriately brown Ford ‘Escort’ in search of a chemist shop so that we might buy some tablets to ease Tiki’s constipation.
It was extremely warm in the car and I was, therefore, only too willing to alight between Prahran and Armadale and purchase a small container of senokot tablets from a roughly spoken, gum-chewing woman. Roger drove us — Tiki later told me that he was particularly sharp with Susan while I’d been in the chemist because he hadn’t wanted to drive anywhere — in a westerly direction out past the Albert Park Golf Links to Port Phillip Bay. There he turned to the left and continued to Elwood thence inland to Elsternwick and north to South Yarra, by about half past five.
After dinner, at a quarter past eight, we left again and walked up Caroline Street, across Domain Road and down to Alexandra Avenue and the Yarra River where we walked for a mile along the southern bank’s bicycle track, which is divided in two by an unbroken white line. We followed the activity route while Roger tackled the monkey bars, hurdles and other objects while also exercising his sense of humour.
It was almost dark when we reached the First Parliament House. I expressed my view to Susan and Roger that walking can be enjoyable once one has overcome that initial period of determination that is required to prevent one from slipping back into one’s sedentary ways.
Right-arm, fast-medium bowler, Ian Callen, took eleven wickets during Victoria’s outright defeat of New South Wales, which materialised at the Melbourne Cricket Ground today.
A Melburnian tram stops at various stages of its journey and waits, should its driver be ahead of schedule. This permits him to turn his key in a clock at the times he has been designated.