Judy & Brian Tour Oz

Seymour Vic 29-31 March 2019 Took a few days off and drove down to Seymour, where we stayed at the Big 4 and took the train into Melbourne to go and see the flower show. The train turned out to be a VLine bus as the train, which was coming in from Albury, was already full. And so was the bus as it turned out. The bus was pleasant enough and took us all the way into the Southern Cross station, which has about 70 bus slots in the terminus under it. From here we strolled across the road to the tram stop, jumped on the first one and were there at Carlton Gardens in a few minutes. The flower show itself was better than I had anticipated based on our experience from previous years. Somehow, the outside displays seemed more open and flowed better. The only downside was the continuing threat of rain which thankfully came just as we finished outside so we headed for the comfort of the Royal exhibition Building, as did ten-thousand others. The pavilion was full but not sardine-like and we w...

Carlton Gardens March 26, 2015 Today we had set aside for a visit to the International Flower Show held at Carlton Gardens in Melbourne. Its a hundred km or so but a pretty easy run through Geelong and up the M1 to the big-smoke (pretty easy for me, Judy was driving) and follow the GPS into the parking area under Etihad Stadium. Great plan; for $18 you get to park all day and a nice man drives you up to the show in a big orange bus, and brings you back again. Hard to beat. Anyhow, the flower show was as good as the last time we were here a few years ago, at least Judy was feeling a whole lot better than then. What can one say about flowers? There are heaps of them to see, all the favourites: fuchsia, bromeliad, oncidium and the like. They even had tulips and stuff a la Floriade style. Its just as well we are heading to WA, where they have this disposition at the border regarding fruit, vegetables, flowers, food etc and delight in taking it all of you, or else we'd be overload...

We went to our second attraction for this visit to Melbourne, the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show held at the Exhibition Building in Carlton Gardens. Now you have to understand that we have a background of 24 years of Floriade, so we were expecting big things from this major event in this big city. Inside the hall were lots of individual displays which appeared to either be from 'schools' or professional flower floggers. Some nice flowers though and some very imaginative displays, especially the tree made out of orchids - you had to look twice and then closely to see that it wasn't a actual tree with its leaves all aglow with autumn gold. Outside we were looking for the show gardens but had to wade through street after street of shops first. When we did find them, all of about half a dozen, they were a bit ordinary. Highlight of the day (and this shows how unimpressive the show was itself) was a huge Scotsman about ten foot tall and a huge dog that we...