Australia: Melbourne. Again.
Yesterday after a somewhat harrowing journey with the added interest of a flight that took off over two hours late, I finally arrived back in Melbourne.
After greetings, a few of us walked to a grand little pub called Lincoln for a beautiful small plate dinner and a glass of Australian Chardonney. The walk was wonderful. Much of it went around an old cemetery. ‘The dead center of town’ as my father would call it. We walked along the outside of a wrought iron fence strung with rusting barbed wire and I took photographs of the dying light through the bars. 
There were many graves there for local nuns and I wonder whether they are buried using the names they chose when they took their final vows or the names they were born with. The head mistress at my convent school in New Zealand was called Sister Raymond. I wonder what saints name you would choose if you were able to rename yourself.
It is a stunning old grave yard, with some wonderful old buildings and head stones and stories, I hope to wander through on our next walk.
The food at Lincoln was great and my bed at the end of the evening was VERY welcome. This visit has been so busy so far that my eyes are going black. I am used to busy just not used to people busy.
Most of us love cemeteries, I am always happy to find this angel, I think she has been in every graveyard I have ever visited! Angels are everywhere. We know that there are male angels yet every statue of an angel I have seen is female. Hmm.
Today I have lunch with a few of The Fellowship in a restaurant called Thrive here in Melbourne. I know nothing at all about the restaurant your fellow readers chose and am looking forward to it. If you are in Melbourne and free at lunchtime come over and introduce yourself we will be there for a few hours starting at noon, there are no bookings so all welcome.
This morning I am sitting in bed (dragging out the last of my rest time) writing to you, waiting for my cousin to arrive. She is flying in this morning for the day, I have not seen her for about 25 years – she has been reading the blog since its beginning and is a founding member of the Fellowship reading every morning before commencing class in an Australian outback school so she is coming for the lunch. After our catch up and copious cups of wake up coffee, we will go and meet more of The Fellowship at Thrive and have a loud gossipy lunch. Maybe I will see you there?
I will tell you all about it tomorrow.
Love celi
41 Comments on “Australia: Melbourne. Again.”
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What a gorgeous cemetery! I find them so peaceful. I guess that’s a good thing. They should be dead quiet, right?
Enjoy your travels!!
Dead Quiet is a good choice for a graveyard. Enjoy your day too! c
Love the barbed wire on the railing photo. Old cemeteries are amazing places. Enjoy the luncheon and your cousin. I can’t believe how fast your trip is going!
Yes that barbed wire strung around pointy wrought iron fence – an interesting decision long ago – c
I love Melbourne. Enjoy your travels.
The highlight of my trip to Paris last year was visiting the grave of RinTinTin. He is buried in a very old cemetery in a far cemetery of Paris, so far, the taxi driver had
not heard of it. I love your cemetery too. And I am proud to have buried all of my creatures in a pet cemetery where I hope to be buried too.
Enjoy your long-awaited visit with The Fellowship folks!
I forgot to say how I especially love seeing the Celtic crosses in the Melbourne cemetery.
I so want to be a fly on the wall for that lunch! never mind, I will try and have patience until your report tomorrow! Enjoy. Enjoy!
I love the cemetery photos…and would love, too, to listen in on that lunch!
I love a wander around old cemeteries, rather than spooky they yse have a restfulness. That I might choose Wolfeius, a hermit as my saints name might give a hint that we also have been people busy. It’s been lovely to spend some time just ourselves here in St Kilda. Looking forward to the Fellowship catch up today. I too have no idea about our venue Thrive other than its central location and paleo offerings.
Morning! See you soon!
😊
When I read your reply to RuitFarmNorth, it just dawned on me what the barbed wire strung around a pointy wrought iron fence was for….Grave robbers, of course! And yes, as sad as cemeteries are for the most part, we are drawn to them, in a, can’t look away type curiosity. It’s a beautiful one though. And I think that most angels are women because we are just more…well angelic than men! 🙂
My grandad always used to call the cemetery The Dead Centre of Town too! Oh how I wish I could be at that lunch with you in beautiful Melbourne tomorrow. Have a wonderful time. our headmistress was called Sister Eileen but everyone knew her birth name was Judy so we all called her Jude (most disrespectfully) behind her back. And our favourite little nun who used to creep around on silent mocassins and catch us misbehaving was Sister Ann (we never knew her birth name) and we called her Stan 🙂
Please say hi to all the Fellowsip you meet tomorrow. I shall be with you in spirit, though I haven’t a clue what the time will be in France while you’re living it up in Oz.
Enjoy your day.
love,
ViV
I hope you are having a lovely luncheon! Cheers!
An added note for anyone who might be able to join: Thrive is at The Emporium, 287 Lonsdale Street, in Melbourne’s CBD. Morning, Miss C! See you in a few hours. My father calls graveyards The Quiet Neighbours. If I’m going to choose a saint’s name, it’s got to be after a nun who taught me when I was very little. She introduced herself to the class of 5 year olds as what sounded to my ears like Sister A Tractor. She meant Attracta (an Irish saint), of course, but was forever after known as Sister Tractor….
That’s priceless.
Nothing like an old well populated cemetery to give you a good look at lives and life.
i particularly enjoy wandering the old pioneer /early Texas historical ones. Small rural ones that would be forgotten in the woods if current generations didn’t routinely cut brush, pull weeds, and straighten tombstones are entirely different. “Muse Cemetery” is the name of one where some family is buried – mostly dirt, but named well, I think.
Oh, enjoy your gathering. Sounds so lovely. Hello to all there!
Gertrude – after Saint Gertrude of Nivelles. She is patron Saint of Cats, Travellers and Gardeners 🙂
Have a lovely long lunch
XO
I think I’ve been there. I met a beautiful girl in a bar in 1980 and stayed out far too late, which ended up in me crossing the cemetery and zoo very late at night in order to get back to the. Youth hostel…
aha!! you and I keep crossing paths in different decades.. the bone yard is the best in the dark!! c
It was fantastic, espesialy with the sounds from the zoo at night.
St. Teresa of Avila, who said, “From silly devotions and sour-faced saints, good Lord, deliver us.” And I, too, wish I could be at that luncheon of faithful souls! Much love, Gayle
Lucky you and Lucky them! Have a wonderful time! I love cemeteries or graveyards as some call them.
Linda
Saint Francis…patron saint of animals! 🙂
Trust Celi to be ‘different’ 😀 !! Get’s back to Melbourne and promptly does a photographic essay on an old cemetery and makes lunch arrangements at the first fully paleo- glutein-free food court place in Melbourne !!!! Am SO happy to see a few Australian Fellowship members able to get together at the same place at the same time – photos please, please! Knowing that Ella was also in Melbourne I kind’of kept my fingers crossed this would happen. Wish I had been able to get south as initially planned and have joined you . . . but !! Somehow I am a person who never looks back and have walked thru’ only a few cemeteries in my lifetime . . . but the photos are beautifully done . . . and *big laugh*, don’t believe in paleo nor glutein-free food a’tall, a’tall, a’tall – tho’ would truly have shut up about that had I been there . . . have an absolutely wonderful time: will be lifting a glass to all at lunchtime!!
What one does learn on your blog, even in Melbourne, Victoria 🙂 ! That ‘grand little pub called ‘Lincoln” where you had that bit of dinner last night, seems to be quite a Carlton landmark with brilliant gastro-pub ++ food and written up 4-5 star everywhere . . . . Hmmm, has Sophie ever had anything to do with the place . . . 🙂 ?? Had a 5-minute rest from work to read and am putting the proverbial 2 and 2 together!!
I wonder if angels are always depicted as women, in spite of the fact that the only Biblical angels are men, is because women are traditionally the softer, caring sex, just like most people think angels should be. Most of the carvers probably thought of their mothers as they carved 🙂
How exciting that you will be meeting members of the fellowship in person!!! I so wish I could be there to meet with you all!!! And having your cousin that you haven’t seem in ages flying in is so very wonderful!!! So fortunate! Isn’t life wonderful!?!?! Thank you for bringing us all together Celi!!! xoxoxo
What a wonderful cemetery! I love all the unique markers in the old ones. There’s one in Beaufort by the sea N. Carolina that has tour guides and some interesting stories about the graves and people buried there. We have a graveyard up on the hill, to date there are 4 horses, 2 goats, 1 pig, 5 dogs and a couple of chickens, all duly marked.
At the catholic high school I attended there was a itty bitty little old nun who made the malted milks, so thick you could hold it upside down and it didn’t drip. Of course we all knew her as Sister Mary Malted!
You’ll all be sitting down by now, eating and talking, having fun….hello to all. I thought about coming, but having moved only last week, there is too much to do here. I don’t mind, I’m very happy in my new home and don’t want to go away from it just yet. I’d choose Brigid for my name, she’s the patroness of all things I’m interested in….crafts and inspiration, healing and magic and transformation.
“Dead centre of town” is a phrase I’m familiar with from long ago, but I think it was my brothers that introduced me to that one. The other that a friend told me some years ago is “Marble Orchard”… I like that one too. I love cemeteries too, love to go from headstone to headstone reading about the owner they are representing. As far as saint names, none for me… not in anyone’s imagination could I ever earn the use of one. lol
I am jealous of your lunch and hope it ends up being such a good time and you all sit there so long they have to throw you out at closing time! Have a great time! ~ Mame 🙂
South Africa next ….. enjoy lunch all. No time for any of attendees to become camera shy, we are all waiting on tenterhooks for the pictures. Enjoy. Laura
I wish I could be there with you, have fun!
Enjoy your lunch and post lots of pics, which I know of course, you will.
I love cemetery’s too, I love looking at the names. Recently we had a holiday in Austria in a village called Ischgl and there was an amazing church and church yard there. They had wonderful wrought iron crosses which were very ornate and each grave had a candle alight, it looked so pretty in the dark with the snow there as well. Have a wonderful lunch. You need to come to the UK one day! 😀
What a treat to meet with some of your fellowship, I always love meeting up with you and John and Kristy! It looks like you are having a wonderful holiday with good weather and great friends! Cheers.
Hello, dear World Traveler! Those two trees in the amazing second picture – I think they are exceptionally beautiful, especially in the gorgeous light you captured. Do you happen to know what they are? I took a quick look in the Australian Register of Trees, but without success. Also, I would like to steal the term “people busy” from you… 😉
May the remainder of your trip leave you time to breathe and at the same time be minute-to-minute fulfillingly wonderful!
So it is tomorrow there and today here…. How did the meet and lunch go? a full day of leaping here for me! Leap to work, Leap to a visit to my therapist, Leap to a visit with my medical doctor, Leap to a visit back to work, then Leap to the rehab facility to home and finally LEAP home into my bed. Long day.
Mom update: Physical therapy has done a world of good. She is walker/wheel chair bound probably for good. Walker – is good, but she has to rely on the wheelchair a majority of the time. Her legs are just so atrophied. We are making changes to her home so that it is handicap accessible and she may get to be home next week or the following. I have many concerns with her returning to her home with minimal help there, but that is her wish of all wishes so I am making it happen.
Wonderful images .. Enjoy your catch up Celi 😀