I recently travelled to Victoria to meet up with the rest of the INFFER team members (see the INFFER page) to discuss the Italian application, capture learnings so far and plan next steps for implementation of the framework in regional Natural Resource Management group investment planning for 2011. It was a highly productive and effective few days – we covered a lot of ground and all have some work and thinking to do as a result.
I particularly enjoyed an early morning walk with Geoff (Park) and Anna (Roberts) along the banks of the King River where we did a bit of bird watching and even spotted a platypus, a first for me so I was very impressed.
It was amazing to see north east Victoria looking so green – I can’t even remember the last time I saw it looking like it does now. It seemed like there was water everywhere we looked, with all the dams, basins, rivers and lakes that we encountered full to overflowing; so vastly different from the conditions that the locals have been living with for the last decade or more.
There’s no city on earth that’s quite like Melbourne, with it’s enormous and growing collection of public art, trams, funky modern office buildings, cafes and restaurants, parks and gardens, hip and happening lanes and leafy inner-city streets. It’s a city that’s never forgotten about the people who live in it, work in it and visit it, and that makes it one of the best cities to spend time in. Walk east along the Yarra and you’ll get to the Botanic Gardens where there are fantastic native grassland, alpine and wetland gardens as well as beautiful collections of exotic plants set out along serpentine paths, as backgrounds to wide expanses of lawn and around the main lake. It’s a very under-rated treasure. I loved the Ian Potter Foundation’s Children’s garden designed by Andrew Laidlaw, where along with an inspiring veggie garden, there’s a gorgeous sculpture of the Bunyip Bluegum the koala, Bill Barnacle the sailor and Sam Sawnoff the Penguin along with their friend, Albert, the Magic Pudding, as captured below.
The Magic Pudding crew
Now that's a veggie patch!
Waterwise and grey-themed garden
Melaleuca wetland walk
Well, that’s a wrap. Until next time…
