Australian Blog #4

March 7th-Friday- Vanilla slice is a great dessert. Just write it down and save that information. I had one after buying a few books at “Books in Print” on Glenferrie Road where we always seem to end up.

We had Friday Shabbat with a lovely family—Penny’s daughter, Emma, and her boys, Ben and Harry. (Ben pictured at left). I had spent time with Ben at the park the day previous and we had all walked to his school to pick him and his brother up at the end of the week.

It was a remarkable scene with scores of parents, relatives and neighbours gathered in the school yard, exchanging gossip and weekend plans. Ben is in “kinder” at five and Harry is an old seven. Absolutely sensational kids, very bright and extremely funny. They have been reared on little television, lots of books and lots of free space and time to play by themselves and with each other. But both are very sociable kids and a joy to be around.

March 8th-Saturday- We went to an auction of a house priced by the “vendor” at A$3.4million. Good thing that he priced it that high as nobody in the crowd of over 70 even bid on the house and the auction flopped. Many homes are auctioned here and only 66% of them get their price or any bids at all. It was a lovely unit but, in our humble opinion, worth nowhere near $3.4 million, Australian or American dollars.

For lunch we had a “Florentine” for dessert. New to me, it was almost a meal in itself, made of corn flakes, peanuts, fruit chunks, raisins and other stuff all on a thin chocolate base. Unbelievably tasty.

That night we went to The Black Balloon, a new Australian movie starring Gemma Ward and Toni Collette. No, it is not true that she is in every Australian movie. This one is about a family coping with a son’s autism and we found it very effective and very moving. We came back along Chapel Street that appeared to be one long 20-something party site. Lots of varying clothing combinations and lots of legs and tans on display. The street was jammed with people and we felt very old.

Tomorrow is Moomba Saturday, the day of the great Birdman Rally. Jen is not enthusiastic but is being a good scout to accompany me and we’ll tell you all about it in our next entry.