Down Under

Here are some photos of our last day in Melbourne, July 2, 2023. As you can see in the pictures below of the Yarra River and the Melbourne skyline, it was a rainy but pretty day. Take a look at the picture below. This, my friends, is a “magic,” invented in Melbourne. “Magic is the coffee order that you won’t find on any menu, but one that signals to staff a certain caffeinated insider status…. The order is technically a double shot of ristretto (a coffee shot more potent than an espresso) accompanied by a three-quarter flat white.” Read more about it here and here . On our last day, we took a tram to the suburb of Fitzroy , northeast of Melbourne’s Central Business District. Fitzroy was planned as Melbourne's first suburb in 1839 and is now a cultural hub known for its live music scene and street art. This pizzeria advert we spotted in Fitzroy made me laugh.   Our last meal in Melbourne was a dinner of bread, cheese, olives, bourekas, and stuffed grape leaves that we bought earli...

On July 1, 2023, we joined the Melbourne Cultural Capital Walking Tour . It was mostly a tour of the city’s street art, with a bit about the city’s architecture and café/coffeehouse culture.   One of the stops on the walking tour was the art deco Manchester Unity Building, built in 1932 for the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a friendly society providing sickness and funeral insurance. The street art below celebrates Aboriginal culture.

We decided to devote Friday, June 30, 2023, to Jewish Melbourne. We read that Melbourne's Jewish population is concentrated around the suburbs of East St Kilda and North Caulfield, so we took the tram there. Our guidebook describes St Kilda as a “former seaside resort” with an “air of shabby gentility.” One of the attractions is St Kilda Pier, from which there are good views of the Melbourne skyline. We stopped for a nosh at the venerable Monarch Cake Shop on Acland Street. According to the shop’s website , “many of the recipes originated from the original shop in Poland and were brought to Australia and have been used here ever since.” The great majority of Australia’s Jewish population (estimated to be about 100,000) now lives in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia’s two largest cities. The Melbourne community (about 50,000) is primarily of Polish background and is considered to be more conservative, while the Sydney community has more Hungarian and German Jews and is considered mor...

The International Sociological Association organized a Phillip Island Wildlife Tour on June 29, 2023, for participants in the World Congress of Sociology. The full-day tour for a bus-load of sociologists included visits to Melbourne’s iconic Brighton Beach bathing boxes, the Moonlit Sanctuary Wildlife Conservation Park, and Phillip Island. Dating from the early 1900s, the 82 brightly colored wooden huts known as the Brighton Bathing Boxes line a section of Melbourne’s Brighton Beach. They are privately owned and apparently expensive to buy. The next stop on the tour was the Moonlit Sanctuary Wildlife Conservation Park , where we got to see wombats, kangaroos, koala bears, wallabies, a Tasmanian Devil, and dingos (wild dogs). Kangaroos:            Look at how Skippy (that’s what Australians call kangaroos) is clutching the arm of the woman feeding her. Not bashful.     Koala bears eating eucalyptus leaves:   Sleeping koala bears: Wallabies:...