I met up with a girlfriend for a long walk around South Melbourne. It’s one of my favourite places to walk as the houses and terrace homes are all old and beautifully maintained. Some of the places have the blue signs at the front (like those around London) to learn the history of the place.

I wonder who lives in these places as you hardly see anyone about. Certainly I wouldn’t be able to afford any of these places – not in my wildest dreams so instead, I travel to the suburb, park my car in a quiet street then just wander around. Some of the corner buildings still have a hint of the old painted signs like the photo above that used to be a pharmacy.

The area behind the South Melbourne town hall (below) is marked by rows of buildings built in the late 1800s. Without the cars parked in the street, blink, and you could mistake it for being 1893 or thereabouts.

The South Melbourne town hall is a spectacular building but I didn’t take a photo as they had scaffolding. It’s undergoing some renovation work.

I vowed to come back again in my own time to do a full day of walking around South Melbourne.

This week I also tidied up my journals and numbered them. I’ve been writing journals of my life since I was 15 and have recorded all the places I’ve been to, things I’ve done and people I’ve met. Some journals were quite specific depending on the particular adventure for example a sea ride opportunity onboard an Australian destroyer in 1995.

In such journals I also kept some “artefacts” to remind me of what I went through. I saw this programme they gave me as part of the Sea Ride and it was interesting to note all the activities on for a typical day in the Navy. Reading my journal onboard at the time, I recorded what was happening every day.

It made me realise that I have tonnes of “ripe material” for stories. Characters, places, settings, scenes, situations, I can use these journals for inspiration and ideas for creative storytelling. Even the language and slang over time in work, business, life and corporates from the 80s, 90s, 2000s has been captured.

My writing course is ticking along. I’ve completed Module 2 this week which was learning about Point of View. Our assignments build up every week to the point of writing a full story. We also received feedback from our Module 1 assignments which was all about Development of Characters.

I’m enjoying writing and finally bought a full licence of Scrivener. Every day I write a creative story of about 1000 words. It’s quite addictive coming up with characters, dialogue and scenes. Maybe one day I’ll submit my stories to a publication. For now, I’m just practicing to get flow in my writing.