The Bed Report 3: Quest Warrnambool Accommodation Review

As Warrnambool is a decent-sized regional city at the western end of Victoria's Great Ocean Road, it makes a good base for sampling both urban and scenic pleasures.

The modern Quest Warrnambool apartment complex is well sited to take advantage of both, being placed neatly between the ocean and a shopping strip.

In one direction, past Lake Pertobe, is the excellent sandy swimming beach of Lady Bay and the refreshments available at its surf lifesaving club.

In the other, Liebig Street is lined by a variety of restaurants and shops, along with a theatre and art gallery.

Our one-bedroom apartment centres on a spacious living room, with a long sofa and TV at one side and a dining table at the other.

Behind the table, the kitchen area is equipped with oven, stovetop and dishwasher (with just enough utensils for some light self-catering).

The living room opens onto a long, broad balcony which overlooks the small communal swimming pool below.

The bedroom and bathroom are both a reasonable size, with a large wardrobe and washing machine respectively.

The decor, like that of the living room, emphasises unprovocative neutral tones with a tinge of natural colours.

Given its size and location, this accommodation would be a great place for a week-long getaway by the sea.

Just the Facts:
Quest Warrnambool
15 Liebig Street, Warrnambool VIC 3280, Australia
Phone: 03 5564 1200 (Internationational +61 3 5564 1200)
Web: www.questapartments.com.au
Rates: From $135 per night

Disclosure time... on this trip I was hosted by Warrnambool Tourism and V/Line. To read previous accommodation reviews, click on The Bed Report label below.

Warrnambool Attacks! Part 2: Cyborgs & Aliens

In last week's post, I was walking through the Invasion exhibition in Warrnambool, Australia, when I turned around to be confronted by a shiny metal head with glowing red eyes...

... which was, of course, from the Terminator series of films and TV programs. No matter how fictional, still scary up close:

Around the corner in a darker room, I'd entered alien territory. Here's the Predator:

... and in the room beyond that, an Ood from Doctor Who. They look vaguely as if they could be related, don't they?

Next to the Ood, my favourite TV science fiction villain of all time: a Dalek. My earliest distinct memory of watching Doctor Who is the 1960s Patrick Troughton story The Evil of the Daleks, which featured a Dalek civil war in glorious monochrome. What's particularly interesting about the Daleks is that though they look robotic, they contain an evil blobby organic creature and thus are cyborgs.

Nearby was a future inhabitant of our own planet, from the 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes:

Within a case was one of the prosthetic skulls used to turn actors into aliens in the excellent TV series Alien Nation (again, for some reason, I'm thinking of the Ood):

Also on the cyborg list was Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation, at a difficult time in his career when he'd been re-engineered by the Borg. Looks like he'd be accepted into the gritty 1970s British TV series Blake's 7, no questions asked:

Finally, we peered through glass at this model of the robot from Fritz Lang's 1927 movie masterpiece Metropolis. It seemed somehow fitting that we should finish our journey back through time with one of the first cinematic robots:

Disclosure time... on this trip I was hosted by Warrnambool Tourism and V/Line. The Invasion exhibition continues at the Warrnambool Art Gallery, 26 Liebig St, Warrnambool, until 28 January 2013. Entry: adult $15, child $7.50. Warrnambool can be reached by V/Line trains from Melbourne and Geelong.

Warrnambool Attacks! Part 1: Robots & Spacesuits

You may have heard that the US government recently declined a petition to construct a fully operational Death Star (spoilsports).

However, at an entirely different official level, the city of Warrnambool in southwestern Victoria, Australia, is proudly displaying an image of the partly-built orbital death machine from the Star Wars movies on its art gallery wall:

Rather unexpectedly, this coastal city three hours from Melbourne has found itself the exclusive Australian showcase for Invasion, an exhibition of science fiction costumes and props gathered from a wide range of TV shows and movies.

This temporary recasting of the Warrnambool Art Gallery as a science fiction hotspot was the brainchild of gallery director John Cunningham. Adopting the philosophy of "Why not?", Cunningham made contact with the Ideas Museum of Movie Magic in Falkirk, Scotland and asked if he could ship one of their travelling exhibitions a bit (well, a lot) further than usual.

The result is a strange and stimulating array of costumes, with the odd prop among them, encountered past this charming gent from Mars Attacks:

As I inspected the exhibits, I realised there were more replicas than original items among them, though often the replicas had been used by the original filmmakers to promote the finished product. That was the case with this model of Iron Man, used to publicise the first movie featuring the superhero:

Further on I spotted the B9 Robot from the original Lost in Space TV series, generally just known as "Robot" when addressed by young Will, or as "You ninny!" by the simperingly evil Dr Smith. The relationship between the three of them made the show, which otherwise was noted for its forgettable storylines and bland characters.

To keep with the Lost in Space theme, this suit was worn by Matt Le Blanc (of Friends fame) in the 1998 movie. Judging by the suit, he's shorter than he looks on the telly.

These next exhibits demonstrated the eclectic range of the Invasion collection. In the foreground was the shimmery uniform worn by the Arnold Rimmer character in the Red Dwarf episode Holoship (one of my favourites). At the rear was an odd-looking "nude" version of the android Kryten which apparently appeared in the very forgettable Season VIII of Red Dwarf.

My notes fail me here, but I believe this was a replica of the Forbidden Planet movie robot, Robby:

At the far end of the room, in an area by itself, was the gem of the collection - this authentic early version of the Darth Vader costume, in which the villain's helmet was crafted from black perspex. Behind him is a matching stormtrooper:

At this point I was only halfway through the exhibition, pleasantly surprised by both the diversity of costumes and how close one could get in order to examine the detail.

Then I swung around to find a shiny metal head glaring at me with glowing red eyes...

[Cue cliffhanger music from Doctor Who, run credits]

NEXT POST: In the second half of my Invasion review, I face off against aliens and an imaginative array of cyborgs. And Daleks take to the Warrnambool streets!

Disclosure time... on this trip I was hosted by Warrnambool Tourism and V/Line. The Invasion exhibition continues at the Warrnambool Art Gallery, 26 Liebig St, Warrnambool, until 28 January 2013. Entry: adult $15, child $7.50. Warrnambool can be reached by V/Line trains from Melbourne and Geelong.