Sunday was my most MANLY and BUTCH day in quite some time. Rounding up sheep and footy. Makes me want to beat my chest just thinking about it. Ug.

It started out on the farm, Dan and I being invited to help with some sheep. The first step was to move the sheep to a pen. The basic rule of convincing sheep to go somewhere is to frighten them. They’re perpetually nervous of people, so you just stand where you don’t want them to go, and they’ll go anywhere else that they can.

We had almost got the sheep to the pen when Steve, our host and part-time farmer, announced a small problem. A bull lives in the same paddock we were moving the sheep to. This was, of course, something he hadn’t mentioned before we started. I’m not sure I would have been quite so eager to accept had he said "Let’s move some sheep into the same paddock a huge bull is resting in".

But his advice was simply to keep your distance and run for the fence if the bull approached looking angry. I thanked whatever deity might be listening that I had a grey coat on over my red jumper.

In the end it all worked out. We got the sheep into the pen and gave them the appropriate medicine, then got them back out again. A few of them were unco-operative and had to be man-handled (ug!), but combined with driving rain and a bull watching from nearby only helped to get the testosterone flowing.

On Sunday evening Dan and I went to the MCG with fifty-five thousand of our closest friends to see the big men fly. Cats versus Kangaroos, and alas the Cats lost, but not before beer and pies and chips had been consumed in more rain. Nobody seemed to mind the rain except for the fact that it watered-down the beer. Nothing could slow down the constant flow of invectives towards the opposing players and umpires.

Today we were country bound. A tradition, that we have (okay, so we’ve only done it done twice now, so it’s not much of a tradition), is to take our visiting American relatives up to our friends’ farm near Ballarat. They’re also American, and enjoy having their fellow countrymen to visit. Perhaps they do weird American things together when I’m not looking; I don’t know.

We also traditionally get my mate Brian to tag along with us. So once again we met Brian at Spencer Street station, ready to catch the train to Ballan, where Steve and Gay and their son Chad would meet us in a small convoy of cars for the drive to the farm.

We had a few minutes before the train left, and since we hadn’t had lunch yet, I nipped down to the cafeteria to see if V/Line had absolutely anything the remotest bit edible. Fortunately they did (they must outsource the cafeteria service - government railways food isn’t normally edible), and I returned to the train, where we munched and slurped on sandwiches, drinks and assorted chocolate goodies during the trip.

The train left the suburbs and sped through the countryside. While Dan slept, the rest of us had a merry old time, making "the bush" joke ("there it is, the Australian bush") and casting evil looks at, and making Darwin Award jokes about, the kids at the other end of the carriage, who were forcing doors between stations. They all got out at Melton, just as the conductor predicted. (Who was it that said "the only thing wrong with public transport is the public"?)

About an hour after departure from the city we reached Ballan, and deftly leapt from the train to be met as planned. We all piled into various cars, and headed straight for… the fish’n'chips shop. Having loaded up with copious amounts of chips, Steve and Gay revealed the plan: to drive around the place looking at various landmarks, before heading to the farm.

Steve and Gay have distinct driving styles. Gay is cautious, but knows her way around the area very well. Steve drives a bit faster, but apparently doesn’t know his way around quite as well, and ended up taking the "scenic route" once or twice. Perhaps we should have held bets to see who would reach each destination first.

First stop was Lal Lal Reservoir, where we gazed out over the water and munched on chips. Then we headed around to the nearby Lal Lal Falls, a quite spectacular waterfall. After that it was up to the top of Mt Buninyong to check out the view, and a short visit to a gallery run by James Egan, an old bearded bloke who does a lot of interesting paintings.

We reached the farm and had our usual stomp around the fields, taking in the country air, watching out for snakes, and generally making sure we got our money’s worth out of our Blunnie boots.

Saturday night of course found us watching Diana’s funeral - in between eating dinner and playing chess and Trivial Pursuit. Having four channels on which to watch the funeral brought me to this conclusion: Channel 7 may be okay at covering football, but not funerals. In contrast with the grace and dignity that the other channels showed, Channel 7 was a mess.

7 had 3, count them, three commentators (what on Earth for?!), and as a result there was rarely a moment when at least one of them wasn’t talking. In those rare moments of silence, not only could rustling papers be consistently heard, but at least once a mobile phone rang loudly on air. But what topped it was that during the hearse’s trip away from the Abbey, a bloody great banner was slapped across the screen, with a big "7" logo and a "Vale Princess Diana" (or something) filling up the bottom fifth of the screen. In one shot, showing all of Pall Mall with the hearse at the bottom of screen, the banner even obscured the hearse! Well done 7.

Today our plan was to look at the Vic Market, to eat souvlaki, and to roam wherever we felt like roaming.

But first we set out for the city, the first stop being a cruise around the shops in search of a rugby top for Dan. Dan likes rugby tops, and apparently they’re about as rare in the States as hens’ teeth, so he was pretty keen to pick up one or two while he was here.

We went through Melbourne Central, stopping at the Canterbury shop, taking a look through their rugby tops, and making appropriately shocked expressions when we saw the prices. Alas, a good rugby top is not the kind of thing you can pick up for a mere few dollars. We went on to Myer’s massive sports department and had a look around there too. But nothing really leapt out, so the cash remained safely ensconced in its wallet. We knew we’d be passing Canterbury’s factory outlet in Richmond later in the day.

Next we headed north to the Queen Victoria Market, better known as the Vic Market for short. I have a wild theory that the market is not named after Queen Victoria as such, but is named for the fact that it occupies the area where there would be an intersection between Queen and Victoria streets. Of course, both of these streets probably are named after Queen Victoria, so one could argue that the net result is the same. In fact, one could argue that my theory is a pretty dumb and trivial one, which is probably true.

We walked around the food sections of the market, letting the delightful aromas waft above us and around us and right up our noses. Then we moved through the fruit and vegetable section. I can only presume that they use unnatural means to get fruit looking that big and bright. And juicy, where appropriate.

We made sure to get some hot jam doughnuts to keep us going until lunch, and of course to fulfil Dan’s tourist visa requirements, which state that a tourist cannot leave the country until they’ve eaten at least two jam doughnuts.

Then we browsed through a few aisles of the main, merchandisey bit of the market. We didn’t want to stay too long because despite the doughnuts, we were all getting hungry. But that’s okay, because the Vic Market is such that the stalls begin to repeat after a couple of aisles. For the most part there seems to be a couple of dozen of each type of stall, with very little variation between them.

We caught a tram to Bridge Road in Richmond, home of a million and one factory outlet stores - including Canterbury’s. Dan finally got his rugby top here, a very nice Geelong top in, of course, navy and white.

Richmond is also the home of the Zorba’s Souvlaki restaurant. Okay, so they also have one in Toorak Road, South Yarra, but it’s just not the same: it doesn’t capture the true spirit of souvlaki. The Real Zorba’s is definitely the one in Richmond. We feasted well on lamb souvlaki and chips, and with renewed energy, sprung out to explore the rest of Bridge Road.

Eventually we got to the bridge after which Bridge Road is named, and decided to head down to the Yarra river and follow the path along it for a bit. Once you’re a little way from the road, beyond the range of the noise from cars and trams passing over the bridge, it’s very serene and peaceful walking along the river.

We weren’t really sure how far we were going to walk, but we ended up following the path for quite a way. It wended its way vaguely towards the city, twisting and turning all the while, to such an extent that you could easily lose your bearings if you weren’t familiar with the area. We passed under numerous bridges, and past countless signs proclaiming that we were on the "Capital Cities Trail". Presumably it didn’t actually pass through more than one capital city, because it would be a helluva long trail if it did.

Finding ourselves almost in Burnley, we decided that rather than sensibly head back for a station or tram stop to get us back to civilisation, we would follow a branch of the path that goes off and follows what remains of Gardiner’s Creek, and more noticeably, the South Eastern freeway that soars and roars above it.

Of course the freeway obliterates any ambience whatsoever that the creek might once have had, but we strolled along the pathway anyway, joking amongst ourselves and having a merry old time. I bet not a lot of people walk along there for pleasure.

After a while the path went under the freeway, and it continued under it until reaching Glenferrie Road, next to the Kooyong Tennis centre. Apart from tennis, I usually think of the Rolling Stones when I pass by there, because apparently they played a concert there once. It’s the kind of thing you’ll see occasionally on late-night music shows, shot in black and white on one camera, with various stills edited in to relieve the boredom.

By this time it was almost 4pm, and we considered catching a tram down to Malvern (route 69, ooh err), but reconsidered when we saw how many noisy kids from the nearby schools we were going to have to share the tram with. Instead we headed for the station, and caught a train down to Holmesglen, with our goal being to have a cruise around Chadstone before we headed home.

As it happens, there were a bunch of schoolkids on the train too, but not so many that it was crowded. We got out at Holmesglen as planned, and walked down to the street, wondering if Chadstone was within a decent walking distance. I mean, everything’s in walking distance if you don’t mind walking, but we’d already done plenty of walking by that point that we didn’t want to walk too far.

We hadn’t been able to see Chadstone from the train (which is elevated, at that point), and we saw a bus coming, so we jumped on that. It got us to Chadstone in just a few minutes, and as it turns out, it had been a longer walk than we’d really have wanted to do.

Chadstone is the oldest indoor shopping mall in Australia, and the biggest too. It must be said, however, that none of these things make it a must-see for visiting tourists. Because when it all comes down to it, it’s just like every other suburban shopping centre in the world - a mass of ugly buildings surrounded by huge carparks that are almost always full.

So we weren’t intending to do a full tour or anything, but we did stop off for drinks and a short walk around it. Thankfully it was quieter than when we showed my father-in-law and his wife around. That time it was just before Christmas, and the place was packed wall to wall with humanity.

After a bit of a cruise around Chadstone’s many shops, we were all a bit weary, so we headed homewards on the next bus, to prepare for our weekend farming adventures.

On Thursday Dan and I set off for Southbank. Since Dan’s a bit of a boating nut, we thought we’d catch the ferry across the bay to glorious Williamstown, and check out the pier there, and get a look at the Enterprize replica.

I remember years ago when there was very little at Southbank, other than some big grey factories and an animated "Allens Sweets" sign that lit up at night. The sign might have looked cool, but the factories were pretty ugly, so they knocked that all down and built a big shopping/restaurants complex instead. It’s still grey, but much more interesting. And there are various boats heading to various locations all docked along the river there. Walking along there is a bit like walking along Lygon Street - in both places, the spruikers try to see if they can convince you to enter their restaurant/boat and spend some money on their food/ride.

But we knew we wanted the ferry to Williamstown, and we found it eventually. It was a quiet day for Les, the captain of the Williamstown Seeker, and we were the only passengers, so we ended up chatting with him at the helm, about boats, Melbourne, the weather, the bridges we were passing under, microbiology, nuclear physics, and anything else that came to mind.

We hadn’t got far when we stopped to pick up some more passengers. Dan, the boat-a-holic, was just innocently admiring the controls of the boat (Phwoor, check the thrust on that!) when Les asked if he’d like to drive the ferry for a little while, so Les could sell the other passengers their tickets and have a cup of tea!

Dan’s trip to Melbourne had been planned for a while. We’d thought about the various places we’d go, and since he likes boats, we’d planned to go to see some of the boaty-type places. But nobody anticipated that on his fourth day here Dan would find himself driving a ferry down the Yarra! Both of us regreted that nobody bothered to bring a camera along.

Dan didn’t even come close to crashing the ferry into anything, and Les came back after a while and we kept chatting about things until we reached Williamstown. Les advised us to check out the yacht club there (we could tell them Les sent us) and told Dan about a fleet of boats the same as his yacht, down at Geelong. Bonus.

When we reached Williamstown, we jumped out and explored for a bit. We went down a side street, through a laneway and past some big gates with all sorts of scary warnings about safety hats and unauthorised access being prohibited and things. That led to an obscure jetty, and we found the Enterprize replica.

The Enterprize was the boat that some of the early settlers to Melbourne arrived in. I’m not sure of the exact sequence of events, or why it was spelt that way, or where the original boat disappeared to, but the replica is a truly marvellous piece of work, all gleaming wood and ropes and sails and things. It looks incredible. There were a few people pottering about with various bits of machinery, still doing little bits of work on it. You have to admire the craftsmanship involved in something like that. It must take way more patience than I’d ever have.

Next we sought lunch. There’s quite a reasonable range of restaurants in that part of Williamstown, and we decided that given the nautical theme of the day, fish and chips would be in order. So we sat out in the sun and gobbled down some truly delicious food.

Then we roamed around to look at some more boaty things. After dropping Les’s name, two crusty old seadog-types let us into the Royal Williamstown Yacht Club for a bit of a Captain Cook. ("Oh yeah, well, if Les said it was okay, it must be okay.") There were a lot of boats moored there, most of which their owners had obviously spent a lot of time, care and dosh on.

We decided we’d head back into the city by way of the Westgate Bridge, a huge bridge over the Yarra. They built in the seventies - with only a short stop in construction when a large section of it crashed down, killing some of the workers. I forget how high and how big the bridge is, but it has to be that way to accommodate all the big ships coming up the river to the ports.

We caught an ugly orange bus to a little known shopping centre called Altona Gate. It didn’t look terribly exciting from the bus stop, so it was just as well that our Westgate Bridge bus arrived shortly afterwards. It headed along the freeway and over the bridge, from where glorious views of the city, the bay, and almost everything else could be glimpsed.

After reaching the city we decided to head for St Kilda Beach, so we caught a tram down there, looking out along the way for Albert Park Lake and the Grand Prix track, and of course the sights of Fitzroy Street, the traditional red light district. We got out at St Kilda Pier. By this point the weather had turned a pretty nasty, with rain and wind and other things that make you feel glad you bothered to bring along reasonably warm coat. We walked along the pier and the breakwater, checking out all the views of the city, the waves crashing up, and the boats bobbing happily in the water nearby.

We would have consumed some well deserved hot drinks at the cafe on the pier, but the guy there said he’d lost power (was it behind the fridge?), so we trudged back and into Acland Street, the land of a thousand cake shops, searching for some refreshments.

The real problem with Acland Street is that there are just TOO MANY cake shops. It makes it almost impossible to choose which one you’re going to buy your alarmingly fattening snack from. We eventually found a place that looked fairly hospitable, with various delicious things in the window.

One mouthwatering piece of cake and a hot drink later, we kept walking down Acland Street, skilfully dodging people who still hadn’t decided where to get their cake and hot drink (lucky it wasn’t a sunny Sunday afternoon, or it would have been REALLY busy!). We headed for St Kilda Marina, for a quick look at yet more boats, of which there were plenty.

That done, and many a boat having been eyeballed that day, we headed home, trying to resist asking our driver to let us have a go at driving the tram.

Today, after buying footy tickets for Sunday through the truly wondrous Ticketmaster/Bass Web site (which proved that high technology can overcome the monotony of queuing outside a ticket box or waiting on the phone for a lifetime - even if it does cost $6 extra per booking), we headed for the Polly Woodside museum. Dan’s a bit of a boating buff, so it was quite close to the top of the list of essential things to see.

The Polly Woodside is a metal sailing ship, built last century in Belfast, sailed around the world and renamed half a dozen or so times in its lifetime, which finally settled down into an easy retirement a decade or two ago. The National Trust has restored it and setup a maritime museum around it at its new home on the Yarra. Because that’s the kind of wacky, zany stuff the National Trust generally gets up to.

When we got there, the lady selling tickets had run out of tickets. She improvised by putting a small circular green sticker on my jumper to indicate that we’d paid. Naturally the green sticker fell off the jumper and flew off into the distance somewhere. I can only hope that somebody didn’t find that small circular green sticker, stick it on their jumper, and rip $7 off the National Trust by getting in for free. For myself I was merely hopeful that should I come across the lady selling tickets again, she would remember that I’d paid, despite my lack of green sticker.

The museum itself has improved immeasurably in the last few years - last time I was there it was looking a bit shabby, housed in some old sheds and with a cafe in a big but fairly shaky-looking tent. That old tent was freezing cold in winter, and it rapidly expanded and deflated if there was so much as a slight breeze. Now all the displays, and the cafe, have been moved into nice new, much sturdier-looking buildings, and they’ve added a lighthouse (or at least, the top bit of one) and a few other maritime-type bits and pieces.

Once everything in the museum had been thoroughly inspected, prodded, poked and studied, we walked along the Yarra foreshore, once an area of ugly industrial wasteland, now an area of ugly entertainment wasteland - the Crown Casino and other assorted attractions designed to separate you from your money.

We didn’t go in though, we just kept walking along the river, looking at the skyline and wondering if those big flame tower things in front of the casino would go off while we were there. They must be great for the homeless in winter. But I’ve often wondered how many seagulls have met their maker when the flames go off.

We partook of lunch at Southgate - our second attempt was successful, the first attempt having been aborted after just the beers when it became apparent that toddler and noisy hip restaurant with loud music don’t mix. Then we walked back through the city along Collins Street, stopping only to let our mouths water at Haigh’s chocolates, and to ensure that Dan nipped down to check out the luxury of the Town Hall toilets.

Walking past Parliament House, I asked one of the throng of police standing in readiness who they were expecting. Parliament House seems to be the standard point that protests head for - even when the protests aren’t actually protesting against the state government, which sits there. Today it was protesting students, said the cop. We saw them later, marching through the streets, ready to bring society to its knees with a revolutionary combination of face paint and street theatre.

Then we went for a walk through the Carlton Gardens so we could get sprayed by the fountains outside the Exhibition Buildings. A glance up at the very groovy mosaic on the side of the Fire Brigade HQ, a quick look in St Patrick’s Cathedral, and then we headed home, while Dan decided to roam around for a bit longer, in a vain attempt to see if he could lose himself somewhere in Chinatown, or at the very least get on the wrong train to come home and end up in Mooroolbark or Spotswood.

It was Dan’s second day here, and we headed into groovy funky Carlton. We jumped out of the train at Museu… errr Melbourne Central and strolled up Swanston Street, along the way pointing out the RMIT students, who at the time had been occupying one of the university’s finance offices for a couple of weeks. They were battling university policy with big banners and shouting into megaphones, the same way most protestors do.

Lygon Street, Carlton, is definitely Melbourne’s epicure epicentre. You could spend far too much time, money and appetite here buying all sorts of gastronomic goodies. Dan’s particular quest was to find the perfect baguette - it had to be nice and crunchy, and firm, not baggy. Once it was found, we managed to dodge the continual swarms of school children doing some kind of survey, and get on with the serious business of lunch at Thresherman’s and a gelato at that place opposite the park.

By that time it was raining pretty hard, but by the time we’d finished the gelati, it had let up a bit, and we walked back to the city, and spontaneously decided that a visit to the Old Melbourne Gaol was in order. My wife L and her mother visited there a couple of years ago, and came back with stories of being scared out of their wits by the dark, dingy cells with their hanged prisoners’ death masks.

I actually didn’t think it was that scary, but after a while we did hear a mournful wailing coming through the Gaol. It was my son Isaac, who had decided that it was not a very interesting place for a toddler to be.

We walked back to Melbourne Central for a much needed coffee/hot chocolate break and a look at the shot tower. It’s a 100ish year old tower that they couldn’t knock down because it is protected, so they built the shopping centre around it instead. It may not sound like much, but it gets a good reaction the first time people see it, especially if you don’t warn them first!

We went through looking at the shops and kept on into Myer. We saved the descent back to street level for the Bourke Street store, where we could get a lift that still had a human operator announcing each floor - a bit like the start of "Are You Being Served". Then we walked the length of the Bourke Street Mall, dodging trams and listening to what ever buskers we could find along the way, and stopping at Darrell Lea for the compulsory big bag of liquorice.

After dropping past McGills and the map shop in Little Bourke Street we went up and down the delightfully scenic Hardware Street, which I suspect is somewhere a lot of visitors to the city don’t know about. And that’s a good thing, it has a certain ambience it wouldn’t achieve if it were swarmed with the masses. The same goes for Equitable Place, which we also explored before heading home from Flinders Street.