We live in a lovely neighborhood.  Walking to the east is a very nice residential area with great homes.  The wildlife sanctuary is across the street to the south - we saw an emu there while walking yesterday.  There are golf courses, parks and more wildlife areas to the east and north.  There are kangaroos in there but I have yet to see one.  The birds are amazing and so many different varieties we have never seen before.  There are cocatoos flying all over campus.

Yet the area, and it seems the city as a whole is one big paradox.  There is great emphasis on environmental consciousness - recycling, using your own cloth grocery bags, even reusable plastic bags for meat in the markets.  The produce is organic and chickens, eggs etc are free range and a great emphasis is placed on Australian products.  Yet in the city of Melbourne  (including the suburbs) there is grafitti everywhere.  Things don't need to be standing still to be taged - the trams and trains get hit.  And there is litter everywhere, paper, bottles, cans etc.  Hard to imagine how you reconcile environmental concern with a disregard for litter.  In the CBD they have embraced the grafiti as art and many of the laneways are decorated in quite colorful ways (I'll post some pics of that in the near future).

These are some pictures from cascade park - about a 10 minute walk from our apartment: