Category: Musings

So, there’s no snow in Victoria at the moment, but there is a fair bit over in New Zealand. We’ve just come back from a trip to Queenstown using Value Tours, and can recommend them.

We got to three different mountains: The Remarkables (reasonable snow but a bit small, so it didn’t take long to have skied everything of interest), Coronet Peak (lots of runs, comfy chairs on the lifts, good views, but very exposed, and all the snow was artificial), and Cardrona (a bit further away, but excellent snow, and good pizzas and noodles). There was a fourth, Treble Cone, that only Dan made it to, and it had more skiable area, catering more to the black-run types.

Now that we’re in Spring, the snow is getting a bit soft, and the cover is reducing. Good for boarding, apparently, but is a little too sticky for my taste. Speaking of taste.. the bananas were great. Can’t wait til we get them back in Victoria at a reasonable price.

What a poor ski-season it’s been this year in Victoria. Admittedly, we went to Lake Mountain and not Mount Hotham, but this picture still gives you an idea of the state of things. It’s mid-August, and there should be enough snow to go tobogganing!

Perhaps this photo overstates things. Even though there were patches of rocks, grass and dirt, it was possible to steer between them, following a winding path of snow to the bottom. In fact, the fact that you needed to steer probably made it a little more fun than it would’ve been normally.

I’ve been impressed at the web sites available for public transport, overseas. I’d given up on the hope that Melbourne would get some decent websites for its public transport system, and now I’ve come across two of them in a matter of weeks.

Firstly, there’s the Journey Planner that Metlink runs. It’s just like the one I came across in London, and liked a lot. It schedules train, bus, tram and walking between a flexible set of end points. Previously, looking up timetables on their site and figuring out what to catch when – well, it was a total nightmare. I expect I’ll be using this new one a lot.

And I’ve also come across the best map of Melbourne’s trains and trams I’ve ever seen. It has everything, all on one map. In colour. Print it in A3 and give it to everyone.

I have no idea why I’m so excited about public transport web pages. It’s really not the sort of thing I would normally care about. But these are so much better than what I’d expect that I can’t help but tell people.

I hope I get over it soon.

There’s really no excuse these days for having a site as ugly as mine, so I had to fix it. Bring in.. WordPress. It’s made it all look very slick. Now I just need to work on improving the content.