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A “Children, Dog and Goat friendly event.” So goes the advertising for the Community Cup, a friendly footy match between the Megahertz from Melbourne community radio stations PBS and RRR, and the Espy Rockdogs, various band members from the Melbourne music scene.

Early start for me this morning, I managed to leave the house by 8:30! I truly am not one of the world's early risers at the moment. Saw my first Melbourne frost for the year along the railway reservation, 7°C as a I arrived at Monash with blue and stiff fingers. Then I found the 75 Degrees South blog. Currently -28.5°C down at Halley base in the Antarctic!

Evening ride in to the city, something I probably haven't done since last October when we moved to Oakleigh! The idea was to meet Jo at Pivotal Galleries in Richmond at 5:30, the scary thing was that for a block or two on the way in I found I was completely blank and couldn't remember which roads and bike tracks I used! Equally astounding was how quickly things change when you don't visit an area, the constant flux of buildings being built, changing hands, changing business, being bulldozed, see it everyday and it stays familiar, ignore it for a month or two and it is suddenly all very new and different.

The purpose of the trip was to visit the Richmond 3121 exhibition, works by Anthony Figallo and Daniel Moynihan, and an exhibition that we'd read about in the newspaper. I think I was expecting more of a photography exhibition, less of the drawings inspired by Richmond, but the whole thing was fascinating — the use of the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) as an emblem for the Richmond (Tigers) I thought whimsical and entertaining. Naggingly, many of the places I could half-remember, or thought I'd seen, but none seemed to be fully described, leaving me wondering if I really had, or if I'd just been past so many places so very similar...

Stopping in for a drink turned into an hour or two and dinner in front of the fire, me in bike riding gear, Jo in her work clothes, the other patrons dressed up in their Friday-night finest. Both of us a little nostalgic and homesick to live in Richmond — maybe one day we'll move back here. Gropius serves good food, but I still miss Ian and Via Ponté — it was only on this spot for around a year, but they quickly became a firm favourite.

The ride home was thoroughly enjoyable, a cruise along the bike tracks in the cold foggy night air, only faintly lit by the nearly full moon's light — something I haven't done for a long time, and vastly different to riding around during the day. Everything looks very different with the mist rising off the river and the sports grounds, feeling the temperature difference in the dips and rises of the track.

“Where's my camera? Is it repaired? How much will it cost?” I asked yesterday. Today I receive a voice mail message stating that they will endeavour to repair it next week. That is all. I call back to ask how much and get told that the help line can't help me, the help line has to email the technical support line who might be able to help me. She did tell me that I would be quoted the price of the repair prior to the repair being performed.

Weee, Canon called me back. Apparently the camera has been booked in to be repaired, there was no requirement for them to call me with a quote first — somehow that got lost in the twenty-minute form-filling exercise when I brought it in and asked how much it would cost a month ago When I asked, I was given a verbal quote of approximately $150-$155 — pretty much what a whole second-hand IXUS 300 costs! They have now put a hold on the repair pending a written quote being prepared and sent to me.

So the 69th Tour de Suisse has just finished, and on their last stage they had to ride up the Gotthardpass. Two years ago, Jo and I got to ride down that side of the pass!

Four weeks and no word from Canon. Where's my camera? Is it repaired? How much will it cost? I rang the help line, the help line can't help, the help line has to email the technical support who might be able to help. Sounds familiar...

Chopping firewood yesterday. Aching body today. Cause. Effect. It must be good for me — it certainly is satisfying to belt enormous chunks of tree trunk with a block-splitter and reduce them to handy, bite-sized pieces. There are so many other problems where the block-splitter could be applied too....

Grey and windy today. Winter in Melbourne. Bus driver tries to frighten the crap out of me driving through the red light at Dandenong road. Second time in a week that the bus driver decides he doesn't want to wait for the green but preempts it by two or three seconds. Could get interesting with the one or two motorists who decide to not stop for the red turning arrow the other way...

[revisited] I discovered about a month later that a new law has been passed that allows for a pre-emptive bus light to let them enter the intersection three seconds before the rest of the traffic — no idea where it was publicised but I sure didn't see it in the paper!

A late afternoon walk along the rail line in Oakleigh, off to investigate the gleaming colours coming from the coathanger's graveyard. The new colourful pile is an equally huge mass of plastic car body panels, we don't know whether they are being stockpiled for recycling, or whether its just easier to rent an old warehouse and dump them on the ground for storage! Also dumped in the vacant land at the end of Downing street was a mass of shopfittings, newspaper racks and shelving — then I realised, the newsagent in Portman street closed a week or so ago — guess they thought it was too expensive to dispose of their crap legally.

Then two movies in one weekend, amazing, seems to be ages since I've seen even one. Jo and I decided that it was time to finally go and see Star Wars III. Ho hum. 28 years after Star Wars was made, lots of special effects, lots of tacky looking fades between scenes — very reminiscent of a bad day-time soap opera. The battle scenes just look so over-crowded they're laughable.

Maybe I'm just too old to enjoy Star Wars. Maybe the movie just wasn't very interesting. Making it less interesting was the three individuals who insisted on answering their phones during the movie, and the one in front of me who sat there the entire time texting on his phone!

“Hey, what's that?” was the cry at breakfast. A pair of Black-faced cuckoo-shrikes (Coracina novaehollandiae) were flying about the garden, from the washing line to the gum tree to the apricot and back. Ok, it must be about time that I wrote down all the birds we've seen in — or above — our garden. The following table is from the Monash city council, I've added in a column for our house!

Bird species. An asterisk (*) denotes an exotic species.

Seems that we've seen birds here that the Monash City Council doesn't list, below are the rest of the ones we've seen either in the garden or flying overhead:

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A grey and dreary-looking morning, everyone sat around inside for far too long eating far too much breakfast.

In the afternoon the weather cleared so Jo and I headed out for a walk to Norman point — anywhere to get out of the cabin! Down Tidal river as the tide was at its lowest and just starting to come back in, amazing how quickly it covers the sandbanks once the incoming tide overcomes the outgoing current! Along the beach past dozens of cuttlefish shells, shells of crabs, weed and the thigh-bone of a large sea-bird — all the flotsam and jetsam of a less-frequented beach, not yet stripped bare by humanity.

The sun came out as we reached the southern end of the beach and started up the burnt-out area at the base of Mount Oberon. Black timber and grey ash, with only bracken and some grasses starting to sprout, and the grass trees showing a fan of green under their brown scorched tips.

Many birds earlier in the day, nearer the campsite, but only a few up in the blackend areas — a yellow robin, crows and a few wrens. Three sooty oystercatchers strutted around on the beach, their bright red beaks standing out against the gloss black.

With all the undergrowth cleared away, also standing out were the gleaming bottles and cans that have been hurled off into the bush. Most of the cans burnt away, but the shattered glass of the bottles twinkled in the sun. Before the fire you probably wouldn't have been able to see two metres into the scrub, now, the whole hillside is bare, revealing all the hidden treasures and rubbish. It would be fascinating to see a series of photos of the area taken at monthly intervals over a year or two as it grows back.

Home from work and packed and gone by 6:30pm, out into Friday night long-weekend traffic on the freeway. Bumper to bumper to Cranbourne, 40km/hr or so, always wary of the one in a hundred idiot determined to do something stupid in the heavy traffic in the rain.

Somewhere around Lang Lang we started getting hungry, will it be Korrumburra or Leongatha for dinner? Joked about stopping in at the Loch pub, which we'd done two years ago when heading out this way, then realised that it wasn't such a joke — we were just about to drive past Loch!

Off the highway and down the main street, not a car to be seen. The pub looked shut, but half a dozen cars were parked outside. Dead quiet as we walked up to the door and stepped inside — all voices stopped and ten heads turned to see who had arrived. A dozen people were lined up at the bar, sitting and singing and talking and laughing, one guy at the end playing along on a ukelele.

Ten to eight was just in time, the kitchen closes in ten minutes, we can have dinner if we order right now. Two big plates of slow-cooked beef casserole are ordered, and just as promptly arrive, then sitting in front of the fire they were just as tasty and filling as the last time we had a meal here. It was getting tempting to just stay, have a beer or two and stay overnight in the pub, but people were expecting us down at Tidal River, so we dragged ourselves away!

Australia Post actually called me back! I was starting to wonder if it was going to happen; I'd even jotted down a note to call them up and find out what was happening about my call on the 23rd.... The call lasted under a minute, “We've spoken to the delivery contractor and been assured that future deliveries will not be left unattended, you will recieve a card and need to pick parcels up from your local post office. Thank you, goodbye.”

I blame my uncle! Last weekend when we visited and got to see Graeme on his flying visit to Australia he had a shiny new camera. Not just any shiny new camera either — the same model IXUS 700 I've been debating with myself.... The last fortnight has been extra difficult too, with the old camera in for repair at Canon, and me with no camera. Prices seem to range from a RRP of $885 down to $660, with half a dozen businesses selling them for around $570 via eBay in Australia as “Pay in Australia, shipped from Hong Kong to you and identified as 'gift' for customs to avoid GST. Too dodgy, instead I bought it from a local dodgy-looking computer parts supplier.

I don't know why, they may well be perfectly legal, above board and everything, but their appearance always strikes me as shonky. Receipts on scraps of paper, an enormous staff of family members and friends, no service, no advice, no support, just low price. I wonder how often the tax office drops in for an audit?

Open the box, charge the battery, insert the memory card — oh yeah, the 32M card supplied is a joke, if not an insult Mr Canon. Fiddle about and take a photo. Yep, ok it works. Now what?

Just testing, having a bit of a poke around at audioscrobbler and displaying my most recent listenings: