Mornington is a modern seaside resort- well more residential than a resort really. It's some 60 kms from Melbourne on the peninsula, alongside Port Philip Bay. The beachside is interesting, it was here that Matthew Flinders came ashore in the bay in 1802, and there are memorials to that, including a large stone erection on the hill above the port.
But it was the following year that Captain Robins came ashore here from the "Cumberland" and surveyed the area and beyond, so starting the settlement that later became Mornington.

This week we have been up to town a couple of times, the first with Karen and Lee and Lee's sister and husband to the comedy club, preceded by a luscious dinner at the Scolar's restaurant just round the corner. What a great night out, although the comedians could have been better, (the compere was the best one!) the company was good.
The club was absolutely packed, we were a little late arriving from the restaurant so our seats were right at the back, but we could see and hear ok.


And yesterday we went back up there by train together, to spend a couple of days looking round the city and take in a theatre. We stayed in a hotel in the centre which was good for getting about the city, and quite close to the theatre too.
There are some great buildings in Melbourne, and over the next couple of weeks I will show you a few. This one is Flinder's street station, built in the early part of the last century, and is the main railway station in the city. Unlike London, and indeed many of the major cities in Britain, all the stations in the centre of Melbourne are linked, and a lot of the trains run through them all before leaving for the suburbs. What a great idea!


And just across the road is the Forum. When we first saw it we thought it was a mosque, we couldn't have been more wrong! It was built in the 1930s as a cinema, and still is, although now it has two screens, one above the other, instead of the huge auditorium that it was once.
Opposite is the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, where the current exhibition is of Hollywood Costumes. Celebrating 100 years of cinema, the exhibition was organised by the Victoria and Albert museum in London. Starting with costumes from Gone With The Wind and Dorthy's in Wizard of Oz, the show continues with Superman and Rocky, and on to the costumes from Margaret Thatcher and Avotar.
The displays taught us a lot about just how important the costumes are in setting the scenes in movies, and making the characters believable.






Our theatre visit was to a play which was inspired by the Movie Driving Miss Daisy. Set in the South of the United States, where in the sixties prejudice was rife, the play gradually unfolds a long lasting friendship between a prickly old matriarch and her kind hearted negro driver.
With stars like Angela Lansbury and James Earl Jones, it couldn't fail, but the script and the simple sets made it unforgettable.









Close by our hotel is Chinatown, a long street of Chinese and other Asian restaurants which we had to walk along towards the theatre. In the night, after the show, it was teaming with Asians, either going in or coming out of the various eating houses and clubs there. There are a lot of Asians in Melbourne, and this morning  when we visited the Casino on the South Bank of the Yarra, we saw many of them playing Roulette, Baccarrat and other gambling games.




As we walked along the Yarra Promenade we  came across  the three masted Barque Polly Woodside. Built in Belfast as a coaler in 1836, and sailed the world over for many years before seeing service in the second world war, she has been fully restored by the National Trust here and sits in what was a dry dock, unfortunately landlocked. What a pity, she could be taking young people on an adventure of a lifetime instead of being tramped over by tourists!

There is still a lot for us to see in Melbourne, we will return next week I think, unfortunately Betty is not moving at the moment, although everyone tells us it will, we can't wait forever for her to sell and we can get home. We'll see!