Coop's Shot Tower

I slept late - bliss! - then headed out a little before lunchtime and wandered around Melbourne, ending up in the Royal Exhibition Building (where there was a design fair on) and then the Museum.

On earlier trips to Melbourne, I've been impressed with how they've incorporated old buildings into modern architecture. I remember going to a meeting n a huge, newly built glass and steel office, where they'd kept an old, much smaller building intact inside and used it as an internal conference/meeting centre - quite surreal to see it there and to walk into that building-within-a-building!

The shot tower in my picture dates from 1888, and today has been preserved, with a glass cone constructed over it, as the dramatic centrepiece of a modern shopping mall.

It took me a while to decide which shot to blip today. I was torn between the shot tower, or this scene of a lonely server in Hosier Lane wondering why he never gets any customers.

You can see a few more shots from my day's wanderings here.

I'm at the airport now, due to fly ~1am. Another call with the Perth baggage handlers today, and I've been assured that my luggage WILL be on the same flight as me from Hong Kong to LHR and so I should be able to pick it up off the carousel as if it had been with me all the time (ha!).

Anyone want to bet it'll be there...?!?