The Lonely Planet Christmas party - and Cliff gets arrested!

G'day

I know, I really must stop with these sensationalist post titles, but I couldn't resist - and when the weather's been as bad it has been this whole weekend I need every bit of fun I can get. But you'll have to read on to find out what on earth I'm talking about.


So Friday 26th was my last night in the LP flat on Melbourne's Southbank. Rain stopped play and I needed to pack anyway so the last few hours were spent indoors. I certainly know how to rock a Friday night. At least the sunset was spectacular in amongst the monsoon showers.

View across Melbourne toards the port

And then Saturday it was goodbye Southbank, hello Albert Park (so posh I have ex-Neighbours actor Guy Pearce as my near neighbour! Is that actually posh?). More soon on the new place.

Saturday was also the day of the Christmas party. I'll let the photos do the talking...

Luna Park, St Kilda - scary entrance

Normally busier than this I'm guessing on a Saturday night

The Lonely Planet employees band - loud!

Cliff's party shirt - louder (the band asked me to turn it down as they couldn't compete). The glamorous cabin crew is friend and colleague Marg (somehow not deafened despite close proximity to the shirt - and now I think I've milked the 'shirt/loud' joke as much as I can).

The other cabin crew members

Apart from loud bands/shirts and colleagues dressed like slutty stewardesses (their words not mine) there was also the chance to have 'fun' on the rides. Given the still-torrential rain it didn't look promising but I headed for the dodgems as they were at least under cover. My excitement was slightly tempered by the dodgems controller guy who certainly didn't see his role as putting the fun in funfair and warned us at the start that deliberately bumping other dodgems was not allowed and he would stop the ride if anyone did it. Somebody should explain the point of dodgems to him. Driving a dodgem car without bumping other dodgem cars is just driving!


And so to Sunday and my arrest. Ha ha! Actually it was a visit to the Old Melbourne Gaol, something I'd been saving for a rainy day and so Sunday was perfect!

And when I say arrested what I really mean is that as part of the visit you get to be pretend 'arrested' and processed in the original holding block where those arrested but not charged yet would spend the night. This place ran until 1994 which is a bit scary given the conditions.

No, I hadn't used this.

Prisoner Wilkinson: convicted of crimes against fashion

The rest of the gaol (not sure what the olde worlde spelling is all about but that's what they use) was excellent if a bit gruesome, with cell after cell telling tales of nineteenth-century murder with accompanying death masks of the murderers. Most famous of these masks (and of the gaol's former prisoners) is Ned Kelly.

The main corridor and cell doors

Kelly's death mask

Kelly, a folk hero or vicious murderer depending on your point of view, evaded the police for years, holding up banks and even whole towns, until eventually being captured in 1880. He was sentenced to death and hanged on the scaffold below - his mother, also a prisoner, was working in the laundry nearby when he was executed.

Trapdoor under the rope; release lever to the right near the door

Just round the corner from the prison is the equally excellent State Library of Victoria.

State Library with statues of St George killing the dragon and, er, Joan of Arc (?)

As well as being open to study even on Sundays (take note British Library!!) it has a beautiful domed reading room...

And some interesting exhibitions including one on famous Victorians which includes Ned Kelly's fairly effective but cumbersome (it weighed 50 kilos/7 stone 8) metal armour. I say fairly effective because, as you'll notice, there were no full leg coverings and this weakness is what the police took advantage of, shooting Kelly in the legs so they could arrest him.

So, all in all, and despite the best efforts of some truly awful weather, it was a pretty good weekend - unless you were John Brumby, leader of Victoria's Labor (sic) party who did really badly in the state elections and looks likely to lose power. So it's g'bye from him, and g'bye from me.

Cliff