Last Friday I made the trip to Melbourne to watch the Melbourne Rebels play the ACT Brumbies. The previous week the Rebels had their first win of the season so I was looking forward to a good game.
Unfortunately this week the Rebels lost and it wasn’t really a very exciting game. That’s a Brumbies supporter right in front of us.
While in Melbourne my daughter had an appointment in St Kilda Road so I went with her and while she was at her appointment I walked to the National Gallery of Victoria.
This monument looked a bit out of place amongst the skyscrapers and cranes. The monument was for the Victorians in the Anglo Boer War.
Also along St Kilda road there was a parking station for bikes which you can hire.
Unfortunately you need to plan ahead and have a bike helmet with you if you want to make use of this facility. No spur of the moment bike rides here.
Having lived in Canberra for many years we were able to make full use of the National Gallery of Australia but now that I live in Metung I don’t have that facility close by so I took the opportunity to visit the National Gallery of Victoria.
There was an exhibition on but unfortunately I only had thirty minutes to spare so didn’t buy a ticket for that, instead I took the opportunity to view the ballet costumes that were on display.
The camera focus is not good as I had to take the photo through glass. The jerkin is made of leather and looked incredibly soft.
Delicate and intricate stitching on this piece. Both of these pieces are by Akira Isogawa for the Graeme Murphy ballet Romeo and Juliet.
All the costumes were amazing, some I wondered how the ballet dancer would be able to dance wearing the particular costume.
Two aspects of the NGV that I always enjoy are the waterwall at the front of the building.
This gives an explanation of the water use.
and the stained glass roof.
While in Melbourne there are always interesting buildings to catch your eye.
A bit Romeo and Juliet like. 🙂
Gippsland Granny 
That stained glass is amazing! Can you not hire helmets as well as bikes? I wonder how many people come equipped with helmets, I suppose you would if you knew about the bikes in advance, but you’d think they might hire some out too. It’s lovely to have time for a wander round a museum, a nice little bit of culture. I was interested in the name of the road, was it named after the Scottish island of St Kilda?
You ask such interesting questions Lorna. Not being a Melburnian I had no idea of the origin of the name but Wikipedia has helped me out and your thought was correct.
“The Lady of St Kilda was a schooner which served from 1834 before being shipwrecked at Tahiti after sailing from Sydney sometime shortly after 1843.
The Lady of St Kilda was built in Dartmouth, Devon, England to carry fruit from the Mediterranean to London.
The schooner was bought by Sir Thomas Dyke Acland (a member of a prominent British political family) in 1834 and named Lady of St Kilda for the island of St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland to commemorate a visit to the island by his wife, Lydia, in 1810. Acland had named the vessel after a Lady Grange, who in 1734 was imprisoned by her husband on the St Kilda archipelago in Scotland for 17 years for protesting about his scheme to restore Bonnie Prince Charlie to the Scottish throne.
Thomas Acland sold the vessel in 1840 to Jonathan Cundy Pope of Plymouth. The vessel was again used as a trading vessel and sailed for Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne in February 1841. The vessel was usually moored off the foreshore, which was soon known as “the St. Kilda foreshore.”
In July 1842, the Lady of St Kilda sailed for Canton.
The ship is of cultural importance to the suburb of the City of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia known as St Kilda, and the former municipality the City of St Kilda (now Port Phillip) which was named after the ship after it was moored off the beach there in the 1840s.”