Warning! Long-winded post with too many pictures.

I have to admit I've been in a bit of a funk after our return from Melbourne two weeks ago. Each time I visit my home state of Victoria, and in particular it's bustling, vibrant and fascinating capital city, I find it harder and harder to leave it behind. I was born in Ballarat, a beautiful, historical town only an hour or so from Melbourne, but my family moved to South Australia when I was very young, so my earliest memories of Victoria were formed some years later when we went on holiday to Melbourne.....I was twelve and I fell in love with the city instantly. I've visited Melbourne many times, but over the past few years we've been exploring more of Victoria and it seems that each region we visit is more beautiful than the last.

This most recent visit started out as a birthday gift from my husband, to take me to see the Ron Mueck exhibition at the NVG. We soon decided that we would take our two youngest, Grace and Noah, with us as they were only babies last time they visited Melbourne.

So, we started out in the city with the incredible Ron Mueck exhibition. I took far too many photos to post (more of them are on my facebook page) and we were also unexpectedly fortunate that the "Mary and Max" exhibition was on at ACMI as well. Adam Elliot is an extremely talented Australian film-maker and the exhibition was a showcase of puppets, props and drawings from his stop-motion masterpiece "Mary and Max". We were all so excited by this exhibition that we went back twice and now Grace has decided that she wants to be an animator! Since we arrived home she has been busy working on the characters and sets for her first animation experiment. We also visited the Melbourne Aquarium, Museum, Luna Park, Lygon Street and Southbank. We took a day to explore the Mornington Peninsula with it's gorgeous coastline and beachside towns and on the drive home went through Daylesford and the Macedon Ranges and stayed (unexpectedly, because Noah became extremely car-sick on the winding roads) overnight in Halls Gap in the Grampians which is the most spectacularly beautiful place I have ever seen.

While it is always nice to come home to your own bed and of course to friends and family who are close by, I would be lying if I said that I wouldn't prefer to live in Victoria....especially if I could bundle up everyone I'm close to here and take them with me! However, we will be back there later this year for the Tim Burton exhibition......!

And so I've been working my way out of my post-holiday 'funk' and have built a new little guy who has just caught a faerie (of the tiny, winged variety) and isn't quite sure what he's going to do with it. I've also posted a drawing of a very 'Froud inspired' goblin which may or may not make it into three dimensional form. I'm trying very hard to incorporate more drawing into my work days and am particularly enjoying charcoal, which is odd because it's a medium that I truly hated in my younger years....the grubbiness used to really bug me, now I love it....strange.

Till next time.