TUESDAY 1 MARCH - Australia!
Greetings blog followers from the beautiful city of Melbourne!
Today I achieved a lifelong ambition and touched down in Australia at the start of my second study trip as part of my Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship. After a long but uneventful flight with Qantas via Singapore I arrived in Melbourne on a cool first day of Autumn. The sun was out and so was the wind and the driver who drove me into the city was fairly unimpressed by the quality of the summer just passed. Following 13 years of drought many parts of Australia have been suffering from floods, storms and typhoons through the summer. Let's hope the next couple of weeks are more settled.
I am having to rethink my itinerary for the New Zealand leg in two weeks time as I am due to fly in to Christchurch from Sydney. That devastated city is desperately trying to sort out the aftermath of last week's earthquake and the death toll is still rising as missing people slowly become part of the grim statistic.
Before NZ I will be spending time in Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney. I have many people to meet and visits planned as I pursue my interest in dementia and aged care and especially my theme of storytelling and how this activity can help support older people as faculties fade with age.
My first afternoon after arrival was spent checking in to the Hotel , a delightful boutique hotel in Flinders Street in central Melbourne.

The best way to explore the city is to take the free City Circle tram ride. This is a great way to get orientated and to see some of the sites. I followed this with a good leg stretching walk to help to recover from 22 hours in then air. A short walk from the Hotel is the splendid Victorian edifice the Flinders Street Station. Next to the station are St Paul's Cathedral and the stunning modern architecture of Federation Square. A great place to start.


It was a real pleasure to meet up with one of my travelling companions from my US trip last year. John Ballard is CEO of Mercy Health, a large healthcare organisation based in Melbourne. John had kindly invited me to join him for dinner and he took me for my first Australian meal to the TAXI restaurant at the Transport Hotel in Federation Square.

This was a very special introduction to Australian cuisine at its best. We enjoyed an outstanding "degustation" 7 course meal sampling many of the specialities of this excellent restaurant. This and several hours of animated conversation was a wonderful way to start my visit to Melbourne and to Australia. It should be a great trip, once I my body clock adjusts! I am writing up my blog at 05.00 in the morning as sleep seems to be somewhat elusive. Looking forward to my first day of visits today to Mercy Health, Uniting Aged Care and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Federation Square where I will be learning about their work on digital storytelling.

Watch this space for more to follow!
Location:Melbourne
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