Hello from Melbourne

Hello from down under! I'm travelling again on business - this time to a conference in Melbourne, followed by giving a training course in Canberra. And more importantly hopefully meeting up with Kat who has talked about marmite sandwiches, dancing girls and sailing :)

In the meantime trying to get over jet lag by seeing the sights of the city, starting with the view from top of the Eureka tower (below) - 88 levels above the ground, with sensational views over Melbourne, from Port Phillip Bay (above) to the mountains in the distance.

The tower has this totally freak-out-worthy feature - a glass box extending from the tower. I imagined this would be like the CN tower in Toronto which you can get serious case of vertigo by looking down between your shoes at the ground far below. No, this is much much worse.

The key feature is that the room isn't fixed, but starts within the tower and then moves, creaking with spooky additional sound effects that are so unnecessary given the general freak out nature of the experience. You can see the in-side and out-side states below:

For some strange reason I was the only person to try this! But got one of those be-a-man moments where wanted to show could over come fears.

After succeeding in this modest goal did a bit more exploring of the city. There are lots of references to Flinders - like the main station and this statue:

Matthew Flinders, RN, sailed with Captain Bligh and did much of the exploring of the coastline that Cook missed.

After a gentle boat trip down the river the afternoon was spent in the National Gallery of Victoria - where you enter by this water curtain which partially obscures the sculptures beyond:

Then the eyes started to get heavy and it was time for another 10+ hours sleep.

More to come....