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.

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...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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