Melbourne Patron

I am an absolute sucker for pretty lights. So when I saw the Dandenong Festival of Lights advertised, I was pretty keen to go. Basically it looked like a big bunch of colourful, lit-up sculptures with a Chinese twist, in a park. The website more classily described it as celebrating "Chinese culture through a display of hundreds of beautiful and unique silk light displays". We chose a night to go - Friday, 2 October 2015 - and rocked up to Greaves Reserve (Dandenong Showgrounds) around 7pm. There was ample parking, and it was needed: there was a queue of people lining up for tickets probably 300 metres long. An usher said it would be the busiest night of the event's duration (why, I'm not sure). The queue moved quickly though - we probably reached the gate within ten minutes - but I did make a mental note for next time, to buy tickets online beforehand. The entrance was promising: a huge, intricate, colourful archway, lit up against the night sky, framed b...

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away (OK - just in the Dandenong Ranges of Melbourne, but still), there were fields of beautiful tulips, in all different colours. The colours were so bright, you could see them from miles away. People flocked from far and wide to see the beautiful tulips, exclaim over them, and take lots of selfies to share on social media. One day, a little Dutch girl decided she wanted to go and see the tulips. Her family were visiting from the kingdom of the north, so they all went together. They hired a motor carriage and travelled the long distance, arriving at the tulip fields along with hundreds of other people, who parked their carriages in long rows in a neighbouring field. The day was grey and a little bit rainy, but the gay colours of the tulips still stood out brightly. You could take a ride around the fields, or pick your own tulips, but the little girl and her family were happy to wander between the rows of flowers, ...