Xuan and I headed to Emerald Lake Park today which is located in Melbourne’s outer east, about 50 km from the city. The park has two lakes, Lake Treganowan and Nobelious and offers barbecue facilities, paddle boats, walking tracks, fishing and the famous Puffing Billy heritage railway.

We spent the afternoon walking on the tracks and taking photos along the way. A lot of our time was spent taking photos of cute little red mushrooms we discovered scattered around the park. After some research I found out that they are called Amanita muscaria and are poisonous.

Last night we headed into the city in Melbourne to take some photos. Xuan had her brother’s old SLR and she wanted to experiment with some night photography. It also gave me a chance to play around with my new Canon IXUS 960 IS compact digital camera that I recently picked up.

Although the quality of the night shots taken with my compact camera don’t really compare to those of the SLR, it still managed to take some reasonable photos after some playing around with the shutter speed settings. The photo below was one of the better shots taken with the compact. It is of the Yarra River taken from the bridge on St Kilda Road. On the left is Southbank and the right is Flinders Street Station.

Xuan and I headed up to the Yan Yean Reservoir Park in Melbourne’s north today to do a little sight seeing. As we expected the water levels in the reservoir were very low and the ponds around the park had nearly all dried up due to the drought. We walked around a little and then decided to head to the Sugarloaf Reservoir in the Christmas Hills hoping to see more there.

When we got to Sugarloaf the views were spectacular even though the water levels were extremely low (19.8 percent full according to Melbourne Water at time of writing). It was sad to see reservoir so empty but the massive emptiness did make for some amazing views as you can see from the pictures below. The last 3 photos were taken by Xuan.

A group of us headed down to Fairhaven this weekend for a bit of rest and relaxation away from the city. Fairhaven is a small coastal town near Aireys Inlet and Anglesea on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road.

We rented a large house overlooking the beach which was sensational. The place had five bedrooms, two living areas, bar area, pool table, barbeque and a large upstairs deck with spectacular ocean views. We couldn’t have hoped for a nicer place to spend the weekend.

The weather wasn’t great so we didn’t head down to the beach for a swim. We did go and check out the Split Point Lighthouse though which is one of the main attractions along the Great Ocean Road. Some scenes from the Australian children’s television series Round the Twist were also filmed there.

Today Xuan and I headed down to Frankston beach to see the ‘Fairytales & Fables’ sand sculpting exhibition (19 January to 6 April 2008) at the Frankston Waterfront, near the pier and Kananook Creek.

The theme of the exhibition is of favourite childhood fairytales and fables from around the world including Jack and the Beanstalk, the Wizard of Oz, Hansel and Gretel, the Tortoise and the Hare, Puss in Boots and quite a few more.

It’s just so amazing how detailed these sculptures are as you can see by the photos below. I also found out that the sand that the sculptors use isn’t ordinary beach sand as this type of sand doesn’t hold together very well. It’s a heavier sand where as each grain is square, so it sticks together better.