Mozzeenet

Seeing animals in a zoo falls short of seeing them on an African safari but Melbourne’s Werribee open range zoo gets closer to that experience than others.  We visited it for the first time last weekend with friends.

On the safari tour we drove amongst rhinos, zebras, giraffes, hippos and various other smaller animals.  On the walking trails, we saw lions, cheetah, wild dogs, monkeys and meerkats (in enclosures).

It still feels weird that those animals are here in Australia and that they’re captive in a zoo. On the positive side, the zoo does breed endangered animals and releases them into the wild e.g. a Mongolian wild horse that was close to extinction.

Looking forward to seeing some exotic wildlife on our trip to Borneo in Malaysia in the next couple of weeks.

A strange sight to see our courtyard white with hail stones after a brief storm yesterday.

Glad I was indoors for that!

It has been particularly cold the last couple of days even though it had warmed up the last couple of weeks.  Don’t really get consistent warm weather in Melbourne until December.

However the leaves on the silver birches at the front of the house have all appeared in the last few weeks which I find quite amazing.  I don’t know how they suddenly pop out without us noticing.

The other plants have started to grow more too and it has been great to have some regular rain recently too.  I planted some nasturtium seeds and a couple have sprouted. We need to get some more plants for the flower bed outside the kitchen window so I have been reading up a bit from some books borrowed at the library on plants that don’t need much watering.

Now and then we like to try a new restaurant from the Good Food Guide and Friday was one of those days. The entry to ‘The Italian’ is through Flinders Lane - very Melbourne.  There are a bunch of well-known restaurants clustered in the lanes all around that vicinity, including Jamie Oliver’s ‘Fifteen’.  I didn’t know they were there until I read the guide and went there on Friday.  You’d have little hope of stumbling on these places as a tourist.

‘The Italian’ is within a very ostentatious building, mostly taken up by one of the big law firms.  The restaurant itself is a cavernous space with soaring ceilings and a very modern fit-out.  We both had quail with polenta for the main and for entree, I had beef carpaccio while Andrew had veal tongue! It was delicious and the bill was surprisingly reasonable.

There are so many restaurants in Melbourne that I want to try.  It was interesting reading Matt Preston’s picks in The Age a while ago, after really getting into Masterchef.  He did mention one of our favourites, Afghan Village, at Camberwell.  It’s superb and a bargain at that!