The Age reported yesterday that the median Abbotsford property sale price — that is the middle number when all the sales results are lined up in chronological order — was 12.7% higher in the first three months of this year compared with the last three months of last year. But there were fewer than 30 sales results in the line of numbers, and the data are therefore implicitly not statistically reliable. The median was $575,000 in the first 3 months of this year, compared with the median for the whole of Melbourne of $380,000, and the median for houses within 10 km of the city of $566,000 (that figure is up 15% on a year ago, compared with the whole of Melbourne figure which is up only 5.3%). Richmond and Collingwood were also up about 10%, but Fitzroy — also with fewer than 30 sales — and Clifton Hill were down about 5%. The median sale prices in the last 3 months were:

Abbotsford $575,000

Collingwood $533,250

Clifton Hill $531,250

Kew $993,500

Richmond $610,000

Fitzroy $572,500.

There was a blip in Carlton, where the median price was $945,000, up more than 50% on the median in the previous three months.

The Age has helpfully identified “10 of the best” — I like the modesty of these words in a best of list — inventive cheap eats. Southern Richmond’s Pearl gets an honourable mention for $16 eggs on toast (keep it real, Cheap Eats), but I have to admit it’s one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to, and you can go there for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a drink. Then the Builder’s Arms on Gertrude Street Fitzroy comes in at number 3 for a $14 “3 mint pea soup with smoked paprika butter with steamed prawns” which sounds rather good. And Replete just down from MLC in Hawthorn, but metres away from being Kew, gets another gong at #6 for $12.50 ricotta hotcakes with lemon curd and strawberries. Thanks to Flickr’s Spin Spin for the photo of an uncommonly unpopulated image of the Builder’s Arms.

There is a long list of Flickr groups about things Melbourne here (including Abbotsford, Collingwood Children’s Farm, Abbotsford Convent, Richmond, Fitzroy, Kew, Fitzroy North, Collingwood, etc.).

Someone has set up a Yarra River group. Here it is.

This photo is by Alan Lam. His photos are stunning. I am noticing a lot of talk about something with the acronym “HDR” in relation to photos that are a bit more stunning than usual. I’m working on working out what that is exactly.

It was only a matter of time until I brought Google Earth’s Abbotsford to this blog. Here it is.

Pays to be careful as a pedestrian in Abbotsford. This poor bugger was knocked down dead by a van back in May and died, and at 2.25 a.m. yesterday, some bloke standing near the corner of Nicholson and Victoria Sts gets dead after being hit by a white van. It’s an event a minute on Victoria St: someone was pulled over at 2.30 a.m. on 6 June 2006 with a vial of GBH. Of course he was not a local, but a burgher of that disreputable part of town on the other side of the river, Kew. There they found the big stash. And now it seems a Hoddle St servo got visited by those kids on the security video on tonight’s news, as recently as 23 June 2006. And these guys are like serial armed robbers man. You can rely on hearing it second on this blog.

With thousands of lycra clad fittos (and some notsofittos), I twirled through a few laps of Yarra Boulevard on 12 March when Bicycle Victoria blocked it off to cars (the next “cyclovia” is on 28 May 2006: 4 km of Sydney Road in Brunswick for 6 hours). It is one of the world’s few events where the coffee is free but water costs. It was all good. There were free muffins, and an Oxfam stall where these wonderful bags made fruit juice packs were for sale. I wonder if everyone else was as ignorant as me about Yarra Boulevard. Did you know that by going to the river end of Gipps St, following the bridge across the Yarra, and continuing up the path straight ahead, you reach Yarra Boulevard, and can then ride along an undulating and winding riverside bushland boulevard which starts nowhere in particular, ends nowhere, and is seemingly only used by late model Mercedes?

It’s 6 km long with just one intersection (and couple of side roads, one to Galatea Point, and another, happily, to the Studley Park Boathouse). Once you hit the Boulevard, you can turn left and ride to the end at Calder Highway having crossed over the Eastern Freeway and then u-turn back to the other end, Walmer St in Kew, and then u-turn back to where you started. You can also turn off towards the Kew end and ride along the loop of road closed to cars which the gate to Galatea Point gives off.

I didn’t actually know where the Botanic Gardens’ bats had ended up, but great views of the huge colony are had from the road, as well as of the Collingwood Children’s Farm and Abbotsford Convent. It was all good. There were free muffins, and an Oxfam Store where these wonderful bags made fruit juice packs were for sale.

There are hills; when I said “undulating” before, I was speaking as a driver not a cyclist. The fastest cyclists were doing the 12 km loop in 18 minutes. I did it in about 30, and was pretty buggered at the end of it. Riders would soar past me on hills in a nonchalant fashion as if they were on entirely different machines. Some of them were of course, but I overtook plenty of galahs with more money than sense on $8,000 bikes.

Yesterday I thought a few laps before breakfast would be a good thing and rode 24km up and down the hills, so tiring myself that while visiting my mother in law I fell asleep.

I took Miss K down to Galatea Point in Yarra Bend Park, just off Studley Park Road, a great little 20 minute walk you can drive to and be guaranteed a park (directions below). This is one of the beautiful views of the Yarra a great loop of which makes the Point feel like a promontory. Across the way is green lawn, and autumnal European trees (in the general vicinity of the Studley Park Boathouse). The combination of the bush and the park separated by the river is particularly pleasant, the best of both worlds, and I daydreamed of installing a kangaroo on the point, but have since confirmed my suspicion that kangaroos are excellent swimmers.

Along with nesting rainbow lorikeets, three eastern rosellas, and grey fantails, we saw, without even looking, one of the most splendid Australian birds, a flame robin, hopping around nonchalantly in front of us for as long as we cared to take in his scarlet beauty. My camera’s batteries had by then given out. Happily, I was able to borrow this photo from Julian Robinson of Flickr.
How to get there: One can only turn into the Yarra Boulevard from Studley Park Road while travelling away from the city, up the hill. This is how most people go to the Studley Park Boathouse. Having turned off, you can only go right, but if you do a U-turn and head back past where you entered, you come to a loop road which is gated off, much loved by cyclists. Veer right along it on foot after passing through the gate, and soon enough, you come to another gate announcing Galatea Point. Suddenly you are in the bush, though the din of the freeway is hard to ignore. One can also get there from Studley Park Road, walking along the river on the opposite bank from the one with the bike path on

Flickr is an addictive online photo sharing website. The quality of photos there is humbling. Down below is a little account of how easy it is to get a photo from a camera onto this blog, or onto Flickr. The Collingwood Children’s Farm, and Abbotsford, Melbourne, 3067 groups have been going about as long as this blog, but on the weekend, I set up sister groups for Richmond, Collingwood, Fitzroy and Kew. Above is a beautiful photo characteristic of a school of photographers with monnikers such as Ziz, Nettsu, Lonely Radio, Helen Morgan and — in the case of this beautiful photo — Donina, who delight in finding beauty in urban details, and, in the case of S2uart have nothing less than an obsession with such mundanities as shopping trolleys, an aspect of life which has spawned an online photographic community limited to Melbournians which boasts more than 20 members.This is how easy it is. I point with my camera and click in a way never before possible during history. I plug a little cord into it joining it with my Mac. Iphoto opens and takes over. The photos download. I drag them onto the Flickr uploader icon on the dock (the Mac equivalent of the toolbar) add some tags, hit “upload” and then click the “Open Flickr” button, where I add some titles and the all-important tags, and add them to some groups. Then, it’s just a question of right clicking on the photo and choosing “copy image location” and pasting it into the URL field in the dialog box which opens when I press the “add photo” icon in the blog post writing template in Wordpress.

Across the river is Kew, though for the purposes of this blog I have appropriated its parklands into greater Abbotsford. The Age has a suburb profile in it today with some interesting bits. The Age’s Domain’s suburb snapshots are slightly interesting: Kew is a suburb of 21,500 folks, while Abbotsford’s population is only 4,025. Kew’s average house price is over $800,000, while Abbotsford’s average is about $440,000. But back to the profile in The Age today. We learn or are reminded that:

• Xavier College Junior School, the imposing white building at the top of the Studley Park Road hill was first the home of a Catholic Businessman, T.M. Burke (hence “Burke Hall”) who gave it to Archbishop Daniel Mannix who gave it in turn to Xavier, with the Burkes later throwing in a chapel.
• Nearby Raheen, on Studley Park Road, meaning “little fort” in Gaelic, was Archbishop Daniel Mannix’s home, and is now Dick Pratt’s pad. “The Kew mansion was bequeathed to the church by none other than the controversial entrepeneur, John Wren. Mannix was known for his walks from Raheen into St Patrick’s in the city; his funeral procession followed the same route.”
• Booroondarra General Cemetry on High St “was once a popular place for a weekend outing, with people coming from all over Melbourne to see the memorials. A horse-drawn tram from Victoria Street brought some, while others would walk from Hawthorn or Richmond. According to historical notes, the greatest attraction was the glass-domed statue of the Springthorpe Memorial, with the David Syme Memorial being a close second. Plein-air artist Louis Buvelot, credited with leading the way for the founders of the Heidelberg School, is also buried here, as is John Wren.”
• There were 10 sales over $1.5 million between March 2005 and March 2006, two over $2 million, and for one, 29 Redmond St, someone paid $3.25 million.
• Kew Cottages formerly housed the Kew Lunatic Asylum and is still used as a home for the mentally ill, and that Wills St picnic area “has a wonderful lookout area” with “views of the golf course below and the city beyond” extending in the opposite direction through to the Dandenongs.

Here is a photo from Ne Koi’s Flickr pages of the Boorondarra General Cemetry.

The first Sunday Circuit was on 12 February 2006. There were over 4,000 riders who came out in the sun to do a few laps. The road was closed to motor vehicles at 6am and opened again at midday. The closure allowed drivers to get to the Studley Park Boathouse, and there were arrangements for residents who live on the river side of the road. It’s the same deal on 12 March 2006. This is part of a growing worldwide phenomenon of car free days initiated by the Mayor of Bogota and enthusiastically taken up by Parisians.Sunday circuits are part of a world wide movement. Parisians have access to car-free riding on roads on Sundays and public holidays when temporary traffic closures operate on streets around the city. The streets are then opened to pedestrians, bike riders and roller-bladers. The project is called Paris Respire or ‘Paris Breathes’. They describe Paris Respire as a ‘calmer, more convivial and pleasant way to rediscover the city’.

Columbia hosts a number of Ciclovia events. In cities such as Bogota, Cali and Medellin, 120km of roads are closed every Sunday and on public holidays from 7am to 1pm. It is claimed that one third of the population, around 2.2 million people ride and walk on the ‘open’ streets. Ciclovias were started in Bogota by Mayor Antanas Mockus.

Each year there are four Car Free Days in Centennial Park Sydney on the last Sunday of every season. The park gates are closed to vehicles from 9am to 5pm and given over to cyclists, rollerbladers and pedestrians.