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Early aircraft aloft in Melbourne Museum Pygmy Blue Whale skeleton Tilting windmills Colt Navy revolver – slightly extruded by lens Polynesian canoes The Moon and me Airborne skeleton My species and other animals Look at me Carved by someone consigned to mental asylum Who’s lunch? One of my favourite exhibits Take 2 Fish and boat Ghosts Bikes Heavier duty bikers

We were issued with identities when entering the Titanic exhibition at the Melbourne Museum today. I turned out to be Wallace Henry Hartley, the bandmaster who – according to survivor accounts – courageously kept the band playing until the moment the waves swept them away. He had already been across the Atlantic 80 times, apparently.  Makes me wonder whether I’m doing the same, speechifying about the risk of icebergs while the collective vessel speeds ever deeper into the ice-field?

As we went through the mock-up for the first-class cabins, The Beautiful Blue Danube was playing, one of my 16 Desert Island Disks. The exhibition, despite the crowding, is one of the best I have been to. You touch a wall of ice that gives a sense of how cold the waters were that night – and the exhibits that most moved me included a pair of children’s marbles, a pair of pince-nez spectacles and a cracked porthole.

One of the unquestioned rogues of the piece (in terms of cutting corners on lifeboat provision and making good his escape when so many others perished) was Bruce Ismay, buried just across the Common from us, in Putney Vale Cemetery. Many years ago, we met one of his descendants (initials DI) in Pembrokeshire, via my godmother Kay, who worked for her. My main memory of her is that she had just finished hand-grinding a telescope lens – a fact that stuck in my mind given that the lookouts on the ship didn’t have binoculars: those had been left behind, it seems, in the rush to put out to sea on that ill-fated voyage.

Melbourne Museum itself is brilliantly laid out and designed, the exhibits a constant source of wonder and new information. Later, we went to see James Cameron’s 3D film, of his Titanic expedition, Ghosts of the Abyss, which was extraordinary, with robot arms extending to inches in front of our nose, even while the full display was seven stories high. Really brought home the horrors of the disaster.

Polly Woodside 1 Polly Woodside 2 Elaine and historic catches Ready to fly? Girl with pearl earring Graffiti 1 Graffiti 2

Flew down to Melbourne today, spotting where we went to the coastal headland with Paul and Micelle. I bought three books at the airport and got a good way through one on the flight, a fascinating history of flight, The Airplane, by Jay Spenser, sub-titled How Ideas Gave Us Wings. The other two books are: Tim Flannery’s Here on Earth, which Elaine plunged into, and Climate Wars, by Gwynne Dyer.

Haunted as we flew, though, in a plane chock-full with Japanese tourists, by the story I read in a book I picked up in the airport bookstore, an account of what happened to a group of Australian nurses who fell into Japanese hands after the fall of Singapore.

On Radji Beach tells of the dreadful events that followed the attempted surrender of the survivors of a ship that was bombed as it fled Singapore. The Europeans were separated out and marched into the sea, where they – and 21 nurses – were machine-gunned to death. Miraculously, one nurse survived to tell the tale, after surrendering again, this time more successfully, and spending the rest of the war in a Japanese camp.

One wonders if these present-day Japanese travellers have any clue of what their country did before and during WWII? But then I wonder whether Australians recall how the Aborigines were hunted down like foxes, or young Britons remember things like the Opium Wars?

Always think that I prefer Melbourne, but temperature here is significantly lower, rain has been falling and our room at the Stamford Plaza is dark and rather noisy. Still, we found a wonderful restaurant on the other side of the river, Pure South, and had a tremendous meal – immeasurably enhanced, for me at least, by the smell of the recently trimmed box hedge smack alongside where we were sitting, one of my favourite aromas. The InVivo sauvignon blanc from New Zealand was rather nice, too.

Lawrence Hargrave memorial Elaine and Paul and wind Volans moment Mural (detail) in nearby station Queen Victoria dressed up for the Art & About Sydney project Are we amused by The Wildhearts? Captain Cook Prince Albert the Good Penny Farthing made of modern cycles Ditto King Edward VII Ditto

Curses! Perfect day, with a sting in the tail. We took a train this morning to Helensburgh to have lunch with Paul Gilding and his wife Michelle. Having filmed Ian Kiernan the other day, I had decided to do Paul next. After a lovely lunch at The Palms Cafe, Stanwell Park, we arrived at Stanwell Park station, where I set up the camera and began filming. I then stopped the camera to avoid some background distraction, then I seem to have failed to depress the start button properly.

Depressing. Paul did an excellent interview, among other things talking about his impending new book, The Great Disruption, but those seven minutes of the past, present and future have now blown away among the eucalyptus trees. Will have to catch him again, somewhere else where our paths cross.  But if I’m going to make a serious project out of this, I’m going to have to create a failsafe process to ensure this doesn’t happen again. It’ll be clapper boards next!

When we first arrived at Helensburgh, Paul and Michelle drove us to the coast in their Prius, where we were going to walk on the beach – but the wind was pretty ferocious. But I did get to visit the memorial to aviation pioneer Lawrence Hargrave, who experimented with combinations of box-kites in November 1894. A nice Volans moment.

When we got back to Sydney, we went to visit the Australia Museum, only to find it closing within five minutes, so took a leisurely stroll through the parks, loving the statues dressed up for the Art & About festival, and listening to a street band, The Wildhearts, whose guitar/fiddle/drums format reminded me of Fairport Convention (one of my favourite bands in the late 60s and early 70s) and The Dharmas (one of Gaia’s) in their respective early days.

One of the tracks on the Wildhearts CD I bought from a guitar case in front of the band is called Yesterday’s Today. And it struck me that Paul and I are living in a world that we both predicted many years ago, of climate change and gathering threats to our collective security, though we both agree that the coming ‘Great Disruption’ will offer huge opportunities, if we know where to look – and respond.

And, even though cursing my luck (or lack of professionalism with my camera), I found today remarkably uplifting – including the giant, 12-metre high Bike Bike, by Alasdair Nicol, made out of scored of “pre-loved” bicycles. A work of huge genius – and a wonderful symbol of how early experiments and designs can mutate and evolve over time.

Blue Mountains: King’s Tableland lookout Blue Elaine An obsessive’s graffiti Wentworth Falls Coal mine entrance: a day after the Chilean miners were rescued from their entombment Dave points out aspects of the kangaroo outline Two kangaroos

Rather than drive, we opted to take an Oz Trails mini-coach out to the Blue Mountains, as recommended by Lonely Planet – and indeed it proved to be the best option. The perennial blue haze – which was particularly intense today – results from sunlight refracting through eucalyptus oil particles in the air. Took in the Olympics complex en route, at Homebush Bay, but the main purpose was to see things like Wentworth Falls. Lunch in Leura, in a light drizzle – and with pink cherry blossom falling from the trees and drifting fairly deep in the gutters.

Then visits to Katoomba and the so-called Three Sisters, a giant rock formation, involving a descent into a rainforest in a cable-car and ascent in another, running almost vertical through living rock, and an Aboriginal carving of a kangaroo – which I was told I was the first to see what was wrong with the beast when the group was asked (clue: its neck and head are thrown back at an unnatural angle, suggesting it has been hunted, killed and laid out for carving). Saw a couple of kangaroos on the way back to catch the Rivercat back into Sydney.

Chairs ready for Andrea and I Birds flock over the Harbour Bridge Crushed, I thought it was called, but can’t find it on the Internet

Across to Westpac’s skyscraper this evening, to do a panel discussion with Andrea Spencer-Cooke, organised by the UN Global Compact (UNGC) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). I kicked off with a private session with senior Westpac executives, then we went up one floor to the 23rd – where there was an impressive turn-out, a lively debate, an energetic discussion period and then a very interesting networking session.

Afterwards, a number of us – Simon (Longstaff), Rosemary (Sainty) and Victoria (Whitaker) from the St James Ethics Centre, Andrea, Elaine and I –  went out to dinner at a restaurant at the end of the pier that houses the Sydney Theatre Company. Fascinating and extremely wide-ranging discussion. As we walked back to the Intercontinental Hotel, it was fascinating to see the seagulls flocking above the Harbour Bridge, illuminated by the spotlights and, presumably, seeking insects attracted by the lights.