Trip to Melbourne

It was my son's birthday on Tuesday. The last time I saw him was in the middle of February, when my mother was in hospital and thought unlikely to recover. Since then, of course, there have been lockdowns and travel bans and the desire to avoid places with lots of people. But now Victoria has gone 27 days with no new covid cases, there are no active cases anywhere in the state, restrictions have lifted, and the prospect of sitting in a train with strangers for over an hour isn't as worrying as it was earlier. 

I drove to Ballan station, and got quite a surprise when I drove into the carpark:

Normally all those spots are taken! One of these three cars is mine. There are some other cars behind where I am standing, but there are about 100 empty spaces, where normally I would expect less than 10.

While I have been not travelling, upgrade works at the station have been in progress. There are now two platforms, although the new one isn't operating yet. They are expecting it to be in service by the end of January.

This sign is new. I thought it might be warning of swooping magpies, but the subtitle, "About the artwork" had me looking everywhere for the art.

It turned out I had already walked over a part of the artwork. It is in the concrete pathway:

The train to the city was not crowded at all. There were about 6 people in my carriage, so it was easy to maintain social distancing. The city was also not crowded:

I took that photo at about 1:00pm. A normal lunchtime would see hundreds of people just on the tramstop. I was sitting waiting for my son, who had said he would meet me at 1:00. I had finished my city shopping early, then found this shaded spot to wait. It was good to see that more than half of the people walking around were wearing masks, even though masks are not compulsory outside any more.

This was the shopping I did:

A few mainly Japanese items that are not easy to come by out in the sticks! The matcha-flavoured KitKats were an impulse buy after Pamela recently posted about Japanese KitKats.

Eventually I met up with my son, and we found somewhere with outside tables to eat lunch. It was good to see him again, and under far less stressful circumstances than our last meeting. We had a good talk, then headed our separate ways. 

The train home was much more crowded unfortunately. Until we got to Melton every pair of seats had one person in it, but at Melton many school children boarded the train. I ended up with a tiny little girl sitting next to me. She looked like she could only have been in Prep or grade 1. I took comfort in the idea that very young children seem less likely to spread covid. I was happier sitting beside her than some of the blokes I saw on the train who were "wearing" their masks under their chins!