Day 1 October 31 - Why had I not discovered Sneeze Art until now?

Following a late night (due to getting our ‘stuff’ together), we had an early start to leave for the airport at 7.30am, driven by our friend Lesley who was kind enough to also get up at the crack of dawn.

We impressed ourselves by purchasing tickets online for the Melbourne Skybus using John’s phone while sitting in Hungry Jacks in Adelaide (eating a second breakfast!).  After a smooth flight, we landed in Melbourne, presented the phone to the ticket guy at the Skybus stop and we were on our way.  I love modern technology.

Our first task was to purchase new public transport Myki cards for me and Erin.  I just forgot to bring mine, while Erin didn’t bring hers because we had failed to mention to her that we would be roaming around Melbourne for the day.  Woops!

Next on the list was finding a lunch spot - not too difficult in Melbourne.  The only hard thing is choosing which of the lovely little cafes to visit.  We settled for one in Degraves Street and had some fabulous wraps and pots of tea.

My good deed for the day was helping a puzzled looking tourist with limited English skills.  She had probably learnt ‘Ladies’, ‘Gentlemen’, ‘Female’, ‘Male’, ‘Women’ and ‘Men, but the signs for ‘Girls’ and ‘Guys’ had her completely stumped until I turned up and pointed her in the right direction.

We spent a pleasant afternoon browsing around the shops – just looking.  We also visited a little art display at RMIT which included a display of works by a sneeze artist.  The fine gentleman fills his mouth with paint and then sneezes all over a piece of paper.  And then calls it art.  Although I was already aware that I missed out on the art gene, I’ve concluded that this might not be a bad thing.

We then headed out to Ringwood on the train and were met at the station by John’s dad.  Our preparations for dinner were interspersed with visits from various ghosts, witches, vampires, skeletons and a number of other cute little scarey characters who happily made off with the chocolate eyeballs and other Halloween treats that John’s folks had bought in anticipation.

After dinner I put my wonderful sewing skills to good use by fixing my handbag that fell apart as an act of protest about all the ‘stuff’ I crammed into it.  I’ve included a few preventative stitches so it should now cope with whatever I expect of it.

After a bit of TV, we were all ready for an early night.  I need to stock up on my sleep in readiness for the long journey to Japan which includes a 8 ½ hour stopover in Kuala Lumpur.  It’s a shame that sleep can’t be stored in a battery ready to access when needed.

It wasn’t until bedtime that we discovered that, despite the kindness of a stranger who we had asked to take our usual ‘At the Adelaide Airport’ photo, the photo did not come out.  It seems that he didn’t push that little button quite hard enough.  Looks like we’ll have to make do with an ‘At the Melbourne Airport’ photo instead.