This is a small Book of images that might justifiably be called 'shutter therapy'. When the COVID 'lockdown' (grr!) prevents me from wandering further, I'm constrained to finding subjects nearby.
Brighton is an old (1841) and relatively wealthy suburb by Melbourne standards. Especially after the railway line from Melbourne arrived here in 1861 allowing city professionals and business-people to commute, Brighton became the sea-side, somewhat rural, retreat of the 'upper'-middle class. But over the decades the Victorian houses and gardens of this once gracious suburb have been thoroughly worked-over. What's left, for the most part is homogenized, dense and smaller-scale. Almost all of the once-grand mansions have long since disappeared and their extensive gardens decimated by real-estate 'developments'.
Billilla is an exception. Built in the 1880s and held in the same (diminishing) family for generations, it was donated some years ago to the local government that maintains rather than restores it (which maybe a blessing... ). The Council maintains the gardens without giving them particular care. But they are permanently open to the public and contain some mature trees and shrubs that I have seen nowhere else: possibly remnants from 19th century private gardens.
As always, I urge you to download the linked PDF file. Please don't view it on Google Drive (where it is located) but open it on your computer or tablet in a PDF reader like Adobe Acrobat "full-screen". That's how you'll see the images as I intended. (If you must use a phone to view these images you might as well use the Google Drive viewer.)
An overview of the pages in this PDF. Please click to download.
