I'll see your Nunhead Cemetery and raise you a Yarra Bend Park

Yarra Bend Park — the journey. The walk around the entire river bend takes about two and half hours or so, door to door. That's my door, obviously, not yours, so you'd have to factor in your personal location in order to calculate a more accurate estimate for your own purposes.

But why bother? When you can take a stroll with me and Geordie the Golden Retriever. I would call him the Wonder Golden Retriever except I am no longer twelve.

Okay. So we start in the suburban park opposite our house. The city skyline looks remote in the photo, but it looks closer in real life, and it's only a fifteen-minute trip from our house to Flinders St Station in central Melbourne, as long as the train puffs up as soon as you get there. Otherwise it takes four hours of watching actual grown-up people reading Harry Potter books. Still. I mean, aren't they old hat or something now.

A local park for local people.
I wish I knew what it was actually called.

"I feel very thtrongly about law and orderlineth."
[Pause. Miss Schlegel sniffs and looks around a bit. Then she returns the camera to its case.]
"Okay, okay, I did the thing you said. Now get bullthit thith thing off me!"

Firstly we climb high up the banks of the mighty Yarra River.

Then we move meander back down.

By roads not adopted, by woodlanded ways

Which takes us to more lovely parkland.

You can't see the river, but it's just to your left. This path takes us to Studley Park Boathouse, complete with some examples of Karl Popper's falsifications.

Geordie woofs a lot at the falsifications. I try to explain to him they don't actually exist, but I get in a muddle.

Studley Park Boathouse does look tempting, and they can make a presentable coffee there, but Geordie and I disdain to mingle with what I assume must but a bunch of other barren depressos who are supposed to be working from home and their neutered retrievers. Instead, we cross over the suspension bridge, and continue our walk round Yarra Bend on the other side of the river.

When the proper path finishes, we take the secret and treacherous path. This is my favourite bit. It's not really secret. But it is quite extremely treacherous. Note the sign that says Beware of Snakes. Please don't note the sign that dogs should be on leads.

"Oh pleath don't makeme wear my howwid lead, Mith Thlegel. I want to go thwimming and we-tweeve some duckth!
For I am a Golden We-tweever!"

Told you it was treacherous.

A gum tree. I wish I had photos of the gorgeous flocks of black cockatoos, eastern rosellas, red-rumped parrots, wattlebirds, willy wagtails, superb fairy wrens and kookaburras that we frequently see, but I am a crap photographer with a shitty camera and slow-motion reflexes. If you're interested in the birds of Yarra Bend, there is a complete list here. It's just a boring list.

I love birds — colourful, inquisitive, clever Australian birds. When I was writing a big chunk of my book in Tasmania late last year, I watched a family of superb fairy wrens teach their babies to fly. It was wow.

There's a little bit where you have to go up to the road. It's a very posh part of Kew, I think. If I had a gazzilion dollars, and I practically do, I'd buy this house.


And this would be my view.

And this would be mysteep path.


At the bottom of the path, we walk along the banks of the Yarra for ages.



"I wasn't like every other kid, you know, who dreams about being an astronaut, I was always more interested in what bark was made out of on a tree."

Hansel in Zoolander

Till you come to the flying fox colony. It was raining by then, so the pictures is too dark, but the colony is several thousand strong.

Then a bit more of a walk.

Under the ugly but kind of cool and spooky bridge.

Then over the pipe bridge past Fairfield Boathouse.


You can't see Fairfield Boathouse because it's behind those trees. The other day I suggested to Wilcox that we get married there. I like to throw these things at him to ensure he's not in danger of having sudden heart attacks. It seems he is.


Then we go home. I didn't take any more pictures because I got bored of taking pictures.

So. How was it for you?

Oh, and by the way, if you're thinking to yourself, okay, this "Miss Schlegel" must live around the Northcotey, Clifton Hilly, Collingwoody area of Melbourne, she — if she really is a she — is cultured enough to have read E M Forster and quote Betjeman like an ABC-type, yet sometimes sardonic in her approach. Hey, I think the real "Miss Schlegel" might be...

If you thought all that, then I tip my hat off to you, you're right.