a roadtrip to Melbourne

We–Suzanne, Kayla, Maleko and myself– leave early tomorrow morning on a roadtrip to Melbourne.  Our route is  Keith, Penola, the Hamilton Highway, Geelong, the  Queenscliff ferry to Sorrento. Our destination is Karen, my sister’s  place at  Safety Beach on the Mornington Peninsula.

We will  stay  a week or so with Karen  then return to Adelaide via the Western/Dukes highways. This is a small  roadtrip–just to Melbourne and back.  

I remember the last time  that we made this particular  roadtrip to Melbourne via the Hamilton highway with the standard poodles (Ari and Agtet). It  was in the winter of  2013 and we stayed at Safety Beach,  Melbourne on route to the NSW coast near Bateman’s Bay. We were going to  to join  Jyl,  my other sister,  to help her celebrate her  60th birthday.

After the birthday celebrations  we travelled to Ballarat  via Canberra, Beechworth and  Echuca  to see the Ballarat International Foto Biennale (BIFB13).

I was exhibiting some early work from the Tasmanian Elegies project with a group of Adelaide  photographers in  BIFB13’s Fringe that had been organised by Atkins Photo Lab.

Unfortunately, the website of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale’s  prior  to that of 2017 have disappeared from the web. So an integral part of Australia’s photographic history has just gone. What is  left are our memories, and they quickly fade. There is not even an archive of  the work shown at BIFB17!

Whilst we are  at Safety Beach  we will be walking the poodles around the marina at Safety Beach and on the  Port Phillip Bay beach  near  Mt. Martha.

I plan to go to a talk at RMIT  by Martin Parr  about his work, take in some exhibitions, and if the weather is okay,  to spend some time photographing in Melbourne’s CBD. A  topographical photo session in Melbourne’s west has also been  booked with Stuart Murdoch on the Saturday.