I’d been here in Australia for almost two years, and barring a couple of weekend trips down the Fleurieu Peninsula, I had not yet had a proper holiday. Granted, I didn’t quite need one while I was waiting for my resident’s visa, but then I had a very busy Christmas, and cleared a week off with my boss.

I chose Melbourne, not because it is the closest state capital from Adelaide, but because of a radio ad I’d heard offering discounted rail tickets on The Overland – the only passenger rail service between the two cities. Because of it’s location, Adelaide is actually a bit of a rail hub for Australia, with the main east-west and north-south lines passing through the city.

So, I booked myself a ticket there, four nights in a hotel in the Melbourne CBD, and a plane ticket back. I didn’t have a real plan, just that I wanted to see as much of the city as possible and get some photographs. I can always go back for special events and shows down there in the future.

I took a trip to Melbourne last week. It was a nice week away – chilled out, with a lot of walking, and a lot of snapping away with the Sony.

The photos are here.

I aim to write a little travelog over the weekend – but just in case that gets delayed, I figured I should get the images up first.

I’ve sorted out a couple more of my old libraries, and uploaded some more pictures from my holiday to Australia back in 2003.

New photo albums

Well, it was probably one of the most dullest ways to spend a week off work, but it was nice and (mostly) relaxing. I didn’t exactly get all I had set out to do either, but hey, it was supposed to be time off.

What I did manage was get out on my bike a couple of times – Ride #1 and Ride #2. I also managed to spend a whole afternoon just chatting with me sister as we wandered up and down the Marion shopping centre, and of course I got to spend time with my niece.

I also started sorting through the collection of data CDs I have stacked on a shelf in my study – most of which is defunct data (like old backups of this site from 5 years ago), or duplicates (like my photo albums, which I’m sorting through and going to place onto a single DVD – oh and post up the choice pictures onto here).

And then there was the reading, and the sorting of the myriad bookmarks, so I have been able to organise a lot of things that I want to write here and on Religious Funny.

Finally, I spent most of the weekend at my parents – helping my Dad with digging up half the garden in order for him to put decking where there was once lawn. Needless to say, I hurt a little now from the hard graft, but I’m surprised that I don’t feel as bad as I thought I would.

So, yeah, back to work today – and it was actually a pretty non-hectic day. Obviously, there was the marathon reading of email, but after that I got back into the swing again today.

Another thing I started doing in the last week was a timeplan in my head – when I’m going to be writing for Horus Kol, Religious Funny and Random Tweak – when I’m going to working on my new Python/Django projects – and when I’m going to doing other things like more drawing, reading, and general relaxing. It goes a bit further than that – I’m starting to think about what I want to be doing in 2010 and beyond already (and we haven’t even got into the last month of 2008 yet). Needless to say, this involves things like buying a home, and travelling more frequently and over more distance again, and getting into shape.

There’s nothing like a week off for getting your head together.

My friend Adam posted a link on his Pligg-site the other day, and it was an aerial shot of Wilpena Pound, which is a remarkable formation in the northern stretches of the Flinders ranges a few hundred kilometres north of Adelaide.

I made a small boast that I had a better one.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite true, because when I came to review the shots that I had taken when my family and I took a 45 minute flight over the area, I realised that I had no pictures of the pound itself from anywhere near as close as the photographer who took the National Geographic’s image had managed.

Still, it prompted me to sort out the better pictures that me and my father took from the air and upload them to the site:

Flight over Flinders Album