Australian Pilgrimage Part 6 - Melbourne - Week 1

We arrived in Melbourne on a cold cloudy blustery day just over two weeks ago. As we waited at the outdoor pick up zone I found myself wishing for that big heavy coat everyone had been telling me I would need when we got down to Melbourne. 

I finally got the big heavy coat last Thursday at the Wycliffe clothing room they call Dorcus after the lady in the Bible (Acts chapter 9) that made clothes for the poor. You know the one that died and the Apostle Peter raised her to life again. Anyway, the coat I found is nice and warm and even a good color to go with my other clothes that I brought to Australia. You can see part of it in this photo taken Sunday with our friend Edna at Glen Hill Community Church, in Glen Waverley.

That's me on the left. Our friend Uli gave me the scarf when we were in Armidale.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

John's brother, Doug, and sister-in-law, Melissa, picked us up from Melbourne airport on that cold blustery day and took us to his Mum's place for afternoon tea. It was great to see all of them after so long. For me it was about 7 years since the last time I was here. John came for a short visit in August of 2019 so 'only' 4 years for him. 

Afterward we drove to Ringwood, a suburb of Melbourne, to the house where we are staying for the next couple of months. It's provided for a very reasonable rate to missionaries in our denomination. 

I was pleased that thanks to some things that Mum and Melissa gave us and a few things we brought from Sydney I was able to throw dinner together before we needed to go grocery shopping. 

It wasn't gourmet but it met the need.
I chopped up some ham lunch meat we had with us from Sydney and added it to a bottle of pasta sauce and served over gluten free pasta. John had grated cheese on his. We had green beans on the side. Desert was gluten free bread with dairy free margarine and homemade quince jam from Uli in Armidale.

After we ate, John went grocery shopping for a few essentials while I stayed home to rest and unpack.

Over the next several days, in between lots of chores of various sorts: more shopping, banking issues to sort out, laundry, collecting boxes of our things from our church's attic (and then trying to figure out what to do with all the stuff--which we still are trying to figure out), processing mail from home, learning how to operate various appliances including the oven (It took us plus two other people to figure it out.), mending (which meant borrowing various sewing supplies from a couple of different people--that was before we had collected our boxes, which included a sewing kit.)

Calling friends and family back in America, including having a virtual meeting with my ladies small group (first time in a month). Working out times to connect given a 15 hour difference and a busy travel schedule was challenging.

And a few church meetings... (Bible study, prayer meeting, church presentation)

In between all that we also managed a couple of walks, including one with John's Mum our first Sunday afternoon. We also made tacos for 'tea' (dinner) for her on the first Wednesday evening here.

The first walk, on the first Saturday, was just the two of us. I wanted to see what there was to see within walking distance from the house where we're staying. So I looked on Google maps and found a couple of green spaces.

The first one was Norwood Park. It's only a block from here. It wasn't very interesting. There was a sign from last January suggesting people 'have there say' about an enhancement plan. It looks like it's still in the planning stages.

But despite the unenhanced state of the place there were some flowers to photograph.

The yellow flowering bush/tree is probably a wattle or related, not a great setting but certainly a pretty bush.

There were a few of these cute little wild flowers.

Then we were on to the next green space on the map: Evelyn Reserve, on Evelyn Rd. It quickly made up for what Norwood Park lacked. One of the first things we saw were these sulfur crested cockatoos on the grass.

Squabbles were frequent.

I don't know what they were eating but this one pulled up a lot of something.

We saw lots of trees covered with these beautiful little white flowers.

There is another section of Evelyn Reserve but we decided to save it for another time.

We went home a different way and found a street that lives up to Victoria's identity as 'the garden state'. There were so many beautiful plants, trees and flowers. Nearly every garden looked like it could have been in a magazine.

I couldn't take photos of them all. This is just a tiny sampling.  

I felt awkward about photographing the actual houses with the front gardens so I just aimed at individual flowers, or in this case, the tree without any things to identify the house. 

I loved the look of the ring of dropped petals on the ground around this shrub.

The next day John spoke at Mulgrave Reserve Gospel Chapel. I was sad to see how much the church has shrunk since last time we were there, but John is willing to speak to any size group. We appreciate the interest they have shown over the years and hope and pray that their numbers will pick up for them again in the future.

After church, since lunch wasn't happening that day at church like we thought it was, we rang Mum to see if she wanted us to come over for lunch since she lives nearby. But she wasn't home yet from her church (I think they were having lunch at her church that Sunday.) She rang back later, After chatting a bit she suggested we go for a walk around the lake at Jells Park which is near her apartment. It was a nice day for it--no rain and not too cold. So that's what we did.

An Australian black swan fishing. It took several attempts to catch it with it's head out of the water.

The birds on this islet are mainly Australian White Ibis I believe. They are quite large. They've nested here on this little island in the lake for quite a few years. We've seen them here other times too. It's nice to see some things don't change.

A stranger kindly took this photo of the three of us. In the background is the ibis island this time from another vantage point.

Australian coots

Sorry this is so long. I'll try to condense future posts more. Otherwise I could be still blogging about Melbourne long after we return home in a couple of months!