Visit from Mervyn

My old friend Mervyn was passing through Sydney in his Delica so I invited him to stay for a couple of nights. Merv is an exhibited artist so Louka was very keen to see him work. She invited him to an art-and-craft competition (herself the other contestant). She provided materials from her "useful box" and oil pastels.

All agreed that Louka's artwork was more impressive than Merv's.

Merv entitled his artwork The crossy thingy thingy thing. Louka's is called People and Friends.

My half century

When Graham asked me what I'd like to do for my birthday, of course it had to be something Louka would enjoy too. So I thought back to something I'd found very exciting when I was young - sleeping in a train. This quickly expanded to a whole weekend in Melbourne, travelling there by train (with sleeping compartment) on Friday night, staying Saturday night in a nice hotel, and coming home by train again on Sunday night.

Louka and I took a taxi to Manly and the ferry to the city to meet Graham at Central. Then we went in search of dinner since the train was not scheduled to leave till 8:40pm. We found a hostel café just near the station and had fish and chips for dinner

There was no hurry to get to the station, but we couldn't hang around at the café for ever, so we went to see if the train had arrived yet so we could settle into our compartment. It hadn't. In fact, it was delayed till after 9 o'clock. The play board in the waiting room kept Louka amused for a short while. She also did her reading homework..

Then we tried walking (or in Louka's case running) to the end of the station to see if the train was in sight. Eventually it did arrive and Louka had great fun exploring the fold-away tables, bunk-beds and bathroom and all the objects in the little toiletries case provided.

Louka, of course, wanted to sleep in the top bunk. So I shared with her and Graham got the bottom bunk to himself. I don't think the beds are as wide as standard singles, but I did manage to stay up there, and slept ok. Woke next morning in Melbourne for raisin toast and tea for breakfast (hot chocolate for Louka). Then off to find our hotel.

We left our suitcase there and headed off for a ride on the free city circle tram - an oldish (1936) model.
That was fun for a while. We got out at the closest stop to Melbourne Museum and walked across the park. Louka enjoyed climbing on the carved stone blocks from a demolished building and running through a helical  bike rack.


We finally enticed her into the museum, and explored the outdoor rainforest exhibit. That was fun to look through, going along paths and through tunnels to see the plants and animals.
But unfortunately she was rather tired and soon got bored, only wanting to find a children's play area. Eventually we found a table where kids were making bee masks and let her make one too. Then we figured we'd had enough of the museum.

While searching for dinner we'd seen a few horse-drawn carriages waiting in a city street, so after dinner we thought we'd give them a try. It was a fun way to see the city, at a good pace and with the soothing rhythm of the horses' hooves.

Next morning we wandered round till we found a nice café for breakfast. The one in the Block Arcade had the added advantage of paper tablecloths where Louka could draw till the food was ready. Louka and I had pancakes with berries, cream and maple syrup, while Graham had waffles with poached pears, ice-cream and chocolate. Pretty decadent...

Then we took the free tram to near Victoria Markets. What I remembered was the delicatessen stalls, but there were lots and lots of cheap clothes stalls too, just like Paddy's Markets. However, we found a nice Mexican/Argentinian/Brazilian food stall for lunch, where I splashed out by having a sangria with my fried potatoes and rice. We did end up checking out the deli stalls, but with no-where to cook and no need for meals, all we bought was a chocolate each.

By then, there wasn't much time left for further activities, and we'd been on our feet a long while, so we sat in a park and rested before wandering off to dinner at the same café where we'd had breakfast. It was about halfway between the park we'd been sitting in and the station, so it seemed like a good idea. Louka drew on the tablecloth again. Then we wandered onward to the station, where the train was again delayed. They blamed the floods in Wagga Wagga.

We arrived in Sydney one and a half hours after the scheduled time, and I managed to get Louka to school one and a half hours late. The woman in the office was impressed with our reason for being late, and put an exclamation mark on Louka's late note!

6th birthday party

I wasn't going to bother blogging about the party, since I'd posted photos on Facebook, but I was browsing through old blog posts last night and realised what a great record they are. So, better late than never...

Louka's birthday is at an inconvenient time of year for parties. She's just starting to get to know her new classmates, and I have no contact details for the new classmates' parents. When I first mooted the idea of a party to Louka, she chose kids from last year's class. But over the next couple of weeks she kept wanting to add kids from her new class. I printed out invitations for them and relied on Louka to hand them out.

She wanted an aeroplane theme, and helped me choose pictures for the invitation. I found a nice picture of a propeller plane to paint for "pin the propeller on the aeroplane". And Woolworths had a couple of little toy planes to decorate the cake. But Louka also wanted a piñata. I don't think they make aeroplane piñatas. At last I took Louka to Spotlight, where I'd been advised there was a great range of piñatas, and she chose .... a toucan. 


I found parachute party toys, but the rest were pretty generic. I bought paper party bags and stickers for the kids to decorate them (I didn't think the boys would be into this, but they were). And Graham bought a water-slide and set it up in the backyard, along with Louka's old paddling pool from Trishy and Johnny. The slide was the greatest thing about the party - in between pass the parcel, pin the propeller on the aeroplane, musical chairs, paper plane folding, and piñata bashing, there was something fun for all to do. And I couldn't even drag some of them away to see the birthday cake.

Two of the kids were reported afterwards to have called it the best party they'd been to.

New bike

Graham gave Louka a challenge: if she could ride her bike, without training wheels, right round the bike path in the park without getting off he would buy her a new bike. So this morning, taking advantage of a break in the rain, she did it.

So we headed off to a bike shop to choose a new bike. It wasn't hard to choose. The Avanti Spice was the best ride of the three she tried. She rode it several times around inside the bike shop, with Graham or me jogging behind her to make sure she didn't crash into anything.

She rode it back to the carpark, then along a bike track beside the carpark. Then we took it home and she rode it in the park. It's a nice bike.