The last blog entry was a cityscape, included to make a couple of points. I will explore this theme from time to time as it challenges me for it is not a genre that I am most at home with; and challenges are good.

So I continue with Melbourne, Australia, a city that has adopted me and I have adopted me and I have adopted as a second home.  Nothing in the city other than a few aboriginal place names (Dandenong, Maribyrnong) is older than Victorian times, so a collection of Victorian buildings sits alongside the modern and ultra-modern. The non-aboriginal place names are mostly British, names from homesick convicts and their guards who were never likely to make the return trip … Kew, Richmond, Balaclava, Malvern. Though I have just discovered a Brooklyn, now what tragic story does that tell.

And I explore this city as an adopted stranger so I photograph what so many take for granted. And I have taken for granted my birthplace London and have almost no images from it (unlike Muse&Mentor, who when visiting photographs what I take for granted in London’s fascinating buildings and history ) so I have made a resolve to try and rectify this error. These images are just a few of my collection from Melbourne; perhaps you can review where you live and see for the first time what you have always taken for granted; you don’t always have to travel to find images.

The modern

The tiles on a pub

And some images from the Royal Arcade, one of many Victorian shopping arcades

Including these fearsome Gog & Magog figures

And, with Melbourne, always the food