Somewhere Else

The brilliant Irish writer Oscar Wilde died on 30 November 1900. He lived an unconventional life, especially for his time. So maybe it’s fitting that he also seems to be rather unconventional after his death as well.

That’s his unusual tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris above. It was sculpted by Sir Jacob Epstein and depicts an angel plus a quote from The Ballad of Reading Gaol – where Oscar was imprisoned for his homosexuality.

But the most amazing thing about this much-visited tomb is the fact that it is covered in graffiti (below). The inscriptions are in many languages, written by men and women, are all very positive, and proclaim Oscar to be “a perfect gentleman” or simply say “I love you”. Somehow it all seems to be very fitting.

Everyone has some favourite Oscar Wilde quotes. Here are a few that we like:

   “I can resist anything but temptation”

   “The truth is rarely pure and never simple”

   “The only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes”

While we were touring around Gippsland in the Morwell area, we saw this interesting object – the tall column on the right side of the photo above. What do you think it is?

There are many power stations in the area, so you might suggest that it’s a smoke stack. But that’s not quite correct. It is in the town of Churchill, and the tall object is a Big Cigar in honour of Winston Churchill with his trademark cigars.

Earlier this week we visited the Gippsland town of Morwell to see the famous rose garden. It was in fine form, with roses of almost every conceivable colour in the extensive garden.

But the roses weren’t the only colourful objects in town. Just down the street the Latrobe City Corporate Headquarters building (below) was putting on a good display of colours too – looking rather like one of those paint colour charts that you get from the DIY store when you plan to do some painting. Latrobe has adopted these colourful stripes as its corporate logo. You see the same design on local buses and work trucks.

Australian children’s author May Gibbs died 40 years ago today, on 27 Nov 1969. If you grew up in Australia, your parents probably read her gumnut classics to you as a child. These adventures of the two gumnut babies, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, were first published in 1918 and have been a hit with children (and parents) ever since.

In case you haven’t come across Snugglepot and Cuddlepie before, that’s them in the diorama above. It is inside Stirling Cottage (below) at Harvey in the southwest of Western Australia. The building is a replica of the house in which May and her family lived from 1885 to 1887. Many of the species of trees and animals that feature in her stories can be found in the area.

Yesterday we explored a small stretch of Ninety Mile Beach, along the coast of Gippsland in Victoria. About 6km southwest of the small township of Golden Beach, you can see these ribs sticking up out of the beach sand.

They’re not from a stranded whale or a fossilised dinosaur – they’re from an old shipwreck. In 1879 the iron sailing ship Trinculo was driven onto the beach during a storm. 130 years later, the skeleton of the ship is still on the beach.

Actually there is a second wreck nearby. The paddle steamer Paynesville was beached here in 1881, but that wreck is now covered with sand.

Yesterday we went to Stratford on Avon … well, almost anyway. We actually went to the Victorian town of Stratford, which is on the Avon River. There weren’t many Shakespearean connections evident, though the town does hold an annual Shakespeare festival. That’s the town’s theatre above. It used to be the courthouse.

A plaque on the library revealed that there are actually six Stratfords – the famous one in Britain, this one in Victoria, one in New Zealand, two in Canada and one in the United States. These six cities recognise their cultural links and describe themselves as the “Stratford Sister Cities”. Hmmm, it almost sounds like the start of a plot for a conspiracy theory adventure novel.

On the weekend we visited Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. Somehow this seaside town gave us a real sense of déjà vu, even though we had never been there before. Maybe that’s because there is another Sorrento in Perth, and we have also visited the original one in Italy.

We also wondered how the Victorian Sorrento manages to do such a good job of keeping its ducks in a row – those seagulls below were standing on a roof in the main street. They looked so regular and posed, that we almost wondered if they were real.

Today we drove to Gippsland in eastern Victoria, stopping off in Meeniyan along the way to see the small town enjoying its carnival day. Everyone was having a good time, and even the Beatles turned up for the occasion – in the form of the rock ’n roll themed motor home above. Someone likes to travel “with the Beatles”.

How often have you been told that on a clear day you can see for miles?

We’re on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria at present and spent the day tracking down sites associated with the navigator/explorer Matthew Flinders. There are plenty of such places along the coast here. Flinders also climbed to the top of the lofty peak named Arthur’s Seat. This memorial cairn marks his visit.

According to the plaque nearby, Flinders was able to see right across the wide bay to the mountains on the other side. Unfortunately, today was a wet and misty day here. So when we looked out, all we saw was…

We’re currently spending a few days at Dromana, on the Mornington Peninsula southeast of Melbourne. The 1950s movie On The Beach, starring Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck, was filmed along this coast at Mt Eliza to the north.

This coastline is inside Port Phillip Bay and the beaches are very calm. But their biggest claim to fame is these brightly painted bathing sheds/boxes. You find them at many of the beaches along this stretch of coast. There are similar sheds at some beaches in England, but this the only area in Australia where we have seen them