travelling allrite

After a good night's sleep it is time to head back to Sydney and home. It's already a quarter to ten by the time I exit the hotel and carpark. I set the music to John Williams' complete score to the original three Star Wars movies.  Being a Sunday, the traffic is relatively light and not in a rush and I don't have to stress too much about navigating my way along the motorways out of the city. I'm glad I chose to drive rather than fly. As I head past the airport the wind is ferocious, buffeting the car. It would be a rough flight. The car needs petrol, but I skip past the first few service stations until, an hour and a half later, I arrive at Avenel. On the way down I'd spotted hand painted roadside signs advertising smallgoods and a mysterious "bacon jam", so I thought I'd take a look on my return. I bought a jar of the bacon jam, a savoury spread, from the roadside stall near the service station and grabbed  some hot items for a brunch. A "sw...

There is something about the summer air in Victoria, especially in the mornings. Fresh and invigorating without the mind sapping humidity of the north. I am in no great rush to leave Beechworth as my hotel in Melbourne would not be ready until the afternoon. I visit the bakery for more snacks and the grocer for more bottles of the local cordial. When I do check out and begin my drive I admire the history of the town, the changing canopy of tree branches over the road. Then we hit the highway and I must focus on all the other cars and ignore the scenery. I decide to pull over before entering Melbourne and give myself a few minutes to rest and compose myself. The motorways into Melbourne are so wide it is difficult to know which lane to stick in so that you might take the correct exit. Fortunately most of the drivers seem patient bar two idiots that decide to weave unexpectedly through traffic. I manage to make it to the car park without any dramas and am able to check into the Travelodg...

This week marked film composer John Williams' 90th birthday. You know him from the music to Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET and much, much more, including the Olympics and the nightly news. It seems like every Australian state capital - but Sydney - is marking the occasion with a concert.  I had already booked tickets for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra's April performance in Brisbane, but when I saw a free concert in Melbourne and another in Adelaide this weekend I desperately wanted to go.  Now, if only B would have let me drive all the way to Adelaide or the skies above Sydney were not stormy and I could muster up the courage to fly, then I would right now be listening to the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra perform John Williams tracks I've never heard live before.  But that didn't happen, so I'm in Beechworth. Tomorrow I'll keep driving down to Melbourne to listen to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra perform John Williams outdoors in the Sidney Myer Musi...