Weekend days off in Adelaide and Balnarring / Seminar in Melbourne

After flying in from Auckland…I travelled on up to Adelaide to Rich and Jess as Caroline set off home at Melbourne. John came out to meet me with Alex and very kindly took the big bag away so I could go with just hand luggage…

Met by Rich at Adelaide airport out for long drive back up to Port Willunga, amazing skies and beautiful sunset. Both boys in bed when I arrive and a great meal cooked by Jess. Great to catch up with friends much missed in SE London. But this is a great place to live. The following day we were on Southport Beach with Alex and Noah. Fun and games and a fairly long fairly scary swim out to the reef. Where Rich informs me about the various dangers hereabouts…the occasional Great White and a Blue Ringed Octopus colony. Danger aside (and, yes snakes get a look in via a handwritten sign about avoiding them in the sand dunes), they live in a very lovely place and have some new friends among the teacher diaspora from London…Great to see them…hope to stay longer next time…

Back to Melbourne after lovely meal out where John again meets me and we head back to the house…

The following day down with Gina and Alex and Ollie to quite a different beach at Balnarring via a night at the Moore’s house out on the peninsula. Dennis and Frances generous with time, food, hospitality – lovely house and enormous garden. Well set up for Alex and Ollie with trampoline, hammock and so on…

Catch up with Neil and Sophie and Maisie on the beach at St Kilda on a blistering hot day. My other friends who left last year…Also doing well and loving Melbourne. Because what is there not to like? I’ve never seen it in the sun before since on previous visits we’ve come in August in the winter. A beautiful city. Nice lunch out in Federation Square…Visit ACMI later – the BFI equivalent – where thanks to Neil and Sophie I was lucky to see an exhibition by Candice Breitz http://www.acmi.net.au/candice-breitz.aspx – identity and popular culture themes…

Lovely meal at Lucinda and Andy’s house, catching up with former MA and now PhD student – also great to see John Yandell from London there.  Lucinda also came to the seminar.

Gina kindly drove me out to Monash Clayton campus and I met with Neil and many of his colleagues including Michael Henderson and Scott Bulfin. The seminar seemed to go well in spite of disconcerting video link up to empty-ish rooms round the Monash campuses! But the room I was in was full of good and interesting people. Some great questions about my book and the work and good discussion afterwards. I hope they all enjoyed it as much as I did. IN fact

In Melbourne in the evening – out to a lovely restaurant treated by John and Gina – last night of the tour and all…Home tomorrow – really missing family now and wanting to be home but not especially up for a very long haul – looking forward to catching up with everyone in London nonetheless in the chilly northern hemisphere and seeing skies where Orion is the other way up. I will miss the Southern Cross though…a strange beautiful group of stars…

Final three days in New Zealand were busy with work meetings and trying to keep up with online teaching and email.  Lots seemed to happen immediately I left which needed sorting out in one way or another.

However we still had time to meet with Sara Archard in the early years team here – lots of synergies and inventive uses of technology. Caroline went to observe Noeline teach and I met with Paul Cowan who took me through the ed-linked site and the various innovations that we need to hear about back at the IOE.  It was really very good stuff with a simple podcast link and upload facility for iTunesU if required.

In the evening we were taken to dinner by the Faculty up in Hamilton at the Victoria Street bistro.  Wonderful food and great atmosphere; we were joined by Garry and Helen and I had a chat with Bronwen Cowie Dean of Research and others.  Hosted by Russell Yates. A nice evening…

Thursday 28^th was also busy – though we thought we’d left time for preparing the Faculty talk for the final afternoon the next day…very hot morning over in the campus with meetings again – I visited Screen Studies Dept and met wit Geoff Leland, known to Cary, Andrew and David and many others. He bought me lunch and we chatted about mutual interests and also about one of his projects looking at Shirley Temple contests; he’s building a website about it and going to California soon to research it on the ground.  I didn’t get to meet Gareth Schott this time but I found his door.

In the afternoon we walked in the heat up into Hamilton from the campus looking for a present to give Garry and Helen to thank them for everything they’ve done for us.  We visited the Art Post (thanks Terry for the tipoff) where there were so many nice things. We got them a glass bowl and Caroline also shopped for home.  Home later for pizza and beer with the family.

The last day was spent in meetings and preparation. We saw Sara Archard again and her partner Simon this time – with some swapping of news of Lee Green first.  They are escapees from SE12.  Good talk and then from there to the library balcony area where we worked on our colloquium presentation for the afternoon.  Seamless hook up to projector and speakers and we were away with Caroline talking about work with CPD and research conducted for BECTA followed by me talking about LKL, MODE and DARE collaborative with examples drawn from two projects I’d been involved with – MMM and Computer Games…

Great talk and wind down in staff room afterwards with lots of great Waikato education people and lovely meal out in the evening with Garry, Helen and Jesse.

We’ve been very very very well looked after here…

The next day: Caroline back to London and me on to Australia…