Monday, July 23, 2012 at 07:33PM 
Today is my birthday. I’ve had quite a few of them actually. In fact, so many that I can remember using most of the things in this exhibit from the Powerhouse Museum.
Many thanks to those who sent birthday wishes. Had a great day, although thanks to the jetlag it ended at 7:30pm….
Life Sunday, July 22, 2012 at 07:18PM So, what would you like after 30 hours of travel? Would that be a cup of tea, or perhaps a nice lie down? How about a flooded kitchen? Thought not. Neither did I. All seemed well when we staggered back into the house. Although the kitchen floor did seem a bit shiny……
You can see the culprit above, the plastic fitting behind the washing machine had failed and released quite a lot of water into our brand new kitchen. So rather than any of the above, we were instead engaged in mopping up and making good, along with wondering if the place would ever get back to how we left it.
Oh well. Worse things happen at sea. For one thing, there is a lot more water there….
Life Saturday, July 21, 2012 at 10:13PM 
Today we flew home. But because the flight was not until the afternoon we had time to sample the Melbourne Europa Tower Skydeck , which has “the highest viewing platform in the Southern Hemisphere”. This gave some very good views, as shown above. 
It also had WiFi, so I could download some more Kindle books for the journey back..
Next we got to sit in an aluminium tube for 23 hours…..
Travel Friday, July 20, 2012 at 10:09PM 
This is in one of the Melbourne shopping centres, you get this view if you eat at Nandos, which worked for me. After lunch I dragged number one wife all across town and down to an industrial estate for some pinball action. I’d seen an advert for a place called Bumper Action that said they had lots of machines for sale.
The advert didn’t lie. They had loads. all on free play.
..including the best machine ever, on the left. No idea who the bloke is.
They also sold spares, and I was able to buy a replacement set of electronics for the clock on my TZ machine. If you are ever in Melbourne you should check them out. They have loads of juke boxes and some arcade games too. Lovely place, run by folks who really care about the important business of shooting small metal balls around a wooden playfield….
Once we had made our way back to town we headed off to the Imax to see the latest Batman movie. All I can say is wow. I reckon it was really, really, good. Spiderman last week was OK, but this film shows how it should be done. I was a bit worried that, at well over two hours, the film might drag a bit in the middle. But it didn’t. A fitting end to perhaps the best superhero trilogy that we have seen.
Travel Thursday, July 19, 2012 at 07:43PM 
Thought we’d get out of town for the day. So we went for a ride on Puffing Billy, which is apparently Australia’s favourite steam train. This is not Puffing Billy by the way, this is how we got to it. Essentially we took a train ride to take a train ride, which made perfect sense at the time.
This is Belgrave, where the train starts from. They seem to have some really cool cars there apparently. 
This is Puffing Billy (or at least one of them)
Levers and pipes
Heading home.
It was great fun.I love the smell of a hot steam engine.
When we got back I had another go at capturing the view from our room.
Travel 