A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

Late afternoon over the Yarra River. Melbourne, April 2010.

It's taken me a while to post some of the photos that I took on a quick jaunt to Melbourne back in April. I was fortunate that what was a foggy and overcast morning turned into a sunny day, enabling me to snap off a few shots of the city before heading back to the airport.

This of course is an easy segue into today's potentially explosive and controversial Sunday Top Five, My Top Five Reasons Why Melbourne Is Better Than Sydney!

5: They play proper football there.

4: By and large - Collingwood supporters/Jeff Kennett aside - Melbournians are friendlier than their uppity counterparts in Sydney.

3: Melbourne is easier to get around. The grid layout helps, but Sydney's suburban insularity and shoddy public transport (coupled with supremely unhelpful locals) doesn't help.

2: The lazy reliance on the harbour, an impressive bridge and a dingy opera house that can't actually accommodate large-scale opera and ballet performances has meant that Sydney is an architecturally barren wasteland of ill-conceived and half baked buildings. It appears that some thought has been given to Melbourne in this regard.

1: It was founded and settled by ~~Van Diemens Land-ers~~ Tasmanians!

Some metrosexual buildings that have a slight comic book effect. Melbourne, April 2010.

If I had to live in another Australian city, I'd probably choose Melbourne. It's a good looking town, with plenty to do and less of a wanker quota than Sydney, Brisbane or Perth.

A fish selling Melbourne in trendy fancy-pants Federation Square. Melbourne, April 2010.

Off the top of my head, here are some other reasons Melbourne is better than Sydney: closer to Australia's "Mecca" of Burnie; better food; better shopping; better festivals; trams; better stadiums; less polluted; better traffic; better markets; better knitting shops; better tennis Grand Slams; Essendon; better cricket ground; former Australian capital; less expensive; less gangland criminals (now that they've murdered each other; less race-related riots; biomedical research; better health system; James Hird; St Kilda is better than Bondi; class division more pronounced in Sydney; Melbourne is more multicultural (in a good way); proper seasons; better scarves; less cockroaches; better dim sims; less uptight; wider footpaths; better coffee; better cycle paths; and nicer parks.

That said, Melbourne does have a rubbish airport.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

This will hurt me...

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