Travels in Australia - Andy Webb 2003
Melbourne
Thursday 3rd July - Melbourne
We entered Melbourne in a shroud of mist, driving over the large traffic bridge was quite a bizarre experience as we you couldn't see anything but large shapes off the sides. Once we were over we then had to navigate our way around the city to find our hostel. I had been warned about Melbourne's famous right turning technique where you have to position yourself on the far left of the road, wait until all the traffic has passed and then make your right turn without getting chopped in half by a tram, luckily we managed to navigate to the Queensbury Hill Hostel (our bed for the night) without the need for a right turn.
We were lucky enough to get one of the last rooms aswell as off street parking, the hostel itself wasn't particularly very endearing, it was very large and new looking, more like a large travel lodge combined with a university than a hostel. After a quick wash we headed out to explore the Melbourne nightlife. This is when the first realization that I only had a few days left started to hit home, anyway I lodged the thought at the back of my mind and looked forward to a couple of drinks and a nice meal.
We started at Dantes' Fitzroy Cafe & Bar on Gertrude St which was an oddball bar with a large collection of antique and strange memorabilia including an English Red Phonebox, giant packet of Marlboros and old chocolate bars! We then explored Brunswick Street where we were recommended a lot of good restaurants, maybe because it was Thursday not much seemed to be open, we tried some Salsa place for drinks but left rather hastily when it looked like we were about to get signed up with a bunch of middle aged fanatics. Eventually after quite a lot of indecision on my part, we decide on a nice cafe/restaurant called Deelish. It had a very nice ambience, and the risotto/pumpkin/broccoli/feta balls were delicious!
After dinner we hiked down through seemingly deserted streets into the back streets until we found the Bennett's Lane Jazz Venue. It was a small pokey smoke filled venue, but with a lot of character. Our entertainment that evening was the Paul Williamson Quartet who were quite simply brilliant, the drummer especially with an interesting use of shells and abstract sounds.
We headed back to the hostel and sometime during the night I found myself lying on the floor between our two beds, one of the perils of booking a shared room with 2 single beds!
Friday 4th July - Melbourne & St.Kilda
We set off early to book into another hostel for the last night, we had decided to check out a place called the Nunnery, which was, as you can guess an old Nunnery. It was in an old Victorian style building and to be honest looked in need of some repairs. Anyway we were able to secure a double room, and swiftly dumped our stuff before heading to the Rental Car place.
We grudgingly dropped off our Volkswagen before heading out into the bright crisp sunshine to explore Melbourne. Our first stop was for breakfast where we simply couldn't resist the brightly coloured Tropica Juice Food Bar (Elizabeth St). The whole of the front seemed to be constructed from fruit, inside a chirpy English guy did his sales pitch and sold us a bright purple juice with top secret South American ingredients, 2 breakfasts and some great Belgian waffles with Ice Cream. I can heartily say that if you live in Melbourne make this your place to have breakfast its great!
Our bellies fall we headed over past the Flinders St Station to Federation Square, a newly constructed part of town made up of Cubist style buildings that kind of verged on ugly and interesting. We then checked out the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, which was a work of art in itself, the exhibition was quite interesting, but I can't help feeling for a city of Melbourne's size they could have done with a bigger space. After that we checked out the Melbourne College of Art, who had a degree show on, quite frankly though, I've seen many before and there was nothing ground breaking or exciting to be seen here.
Before we got the tram to St.Kilda we spent about an hour exploring the Botanical Gardens which is quite a pleasant way to spend your afternoon. The tram journey to St.Kilda took about 20 minutes, St.Kilda is the beach resort of Melbourne, and is also considered the place where all the artists and cool people reside. Whereas Melbourne streets were really clean and seemed safe, St.Kilda had more of a bustle about it and there seemed to be a lot of colourful characters wandering about. On top of some of the shops were metallic sculptures which seemed inspired from the flower power days of the sixties. We stopped for a quick lunch of pizza before walking a long the beach, which not surprisingly due to the time of year was virtually deserted. We walked as far as the harbour which offered up nice views of Melbourne from the distance, before heading to the Esplanade Hotel for a few drinks. The Esplanade or Espy as its more affectionately known is one of St.Kilda's main entertainment venues, with two music venues, a small pokey room downstairs that doubles as a pool room in the day and then the main bar and venue upstairs with big leather chairs to get lost in. We decided to take advantage of happy hour but it turned out we could only buy the cheap drinks from downstairs and then we had to sit outside the main bar to drink them, however it wasn't really an imposition as we got to watch the sunset with a large jug of beer!
Rather bizarrely we headed back into Melbourne for a cold shower before then returning to St.Kilda just an hour later on the same tram. Our tram was full of football supporters of to see one of the end of season play offs, one guy overheard me talking about English football and immediately announced he was a Wimbledon fan, although how much of a fan he was I didn't know as he was unaware that they were about to leave London for Milton Keynes and that half the fans had formed a new non league Wimbledon side!
We started the night in the Fringe which is a nice place to start your evening, before strolling down the main street where we came across a man dressed in some sort of sailor/admiral's costume doing a kind of cabaret and poetry while selling second hand books. After a while quite a crowd had assembled, and I must admit he was very good, if only all street hawkers were this good. Helen picked out three books before we moved on for dinner at Tien Tien, a nice Vietnamese restaurant. Our venue for the evenings main event was Zimmer which had a latin night on, this place was excellent fun with lots of dancing, big sofas, shiatsu massage chairs (which looked liked fun!), great wine, seedy hispanic blokes ogling anyone with breasts and of course, great music. When the place started to wind down we headed to the Vineyard next door, which was a restaurant by day, but a nightclub by night. This place was much more touristy with loud live music that sounded like it was coming from a stereo system although that may have been the amount I had drunk, especially when I mistook a pile of tea cups for Yoda heads without ears (?!) Helen got talking to a couple of girls from Brisbane, while I just seemed to take great amusement in watching everyone else dancing. Their Bloody Mary's though, were very good, very spicy. We left when we decided it was not worth spending 25 mins trying to fight your way through the dancefloor just to go to the toilet! For some reason we tried to get into someone else's cab that was already full, how on earth they seemed to think they would fit seven people in one cab I don't know, so we hired our own one and demanded he take us back into town and to somewhere still open.
It appeared that his choice of establishment was quite wide of the mark to our expectations, and thus we ended up at a place called the Bullring. All I can describe about this place is that it was in a large hall, very loud, lots of obnoxious drunk people (like myself!) and very little character. Just as I was about to turn around and walk out, Helen had already ordered a drink, so it looked like we were staying, for now. At one point we came across some bizarre double pony-tailed guy who for some reason we started talking to, when I say double pony-tailed perhaps I should say double-sided, as he had one going from his beard, aswell as the usual one at the back. I think we may have made a quick exit due to offending someone I can't remember! Amazingly I managed to navigate us to another pub before bed, it was an old style traditional pub called the Old Caledonian Inn, it was then that Helen realized she had left her books somewhere, oh well looked like the cab driver would be getting some extra literature for his bookcase! For some reason, unbeknown to myself I got talking about Rugby to this guy at the bar, this is actually quite strange because for one, I hate Rugby and secondly I know very little about it, certainly not enough to have a conversation!
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Melbourne Skyline |
Juice Bar |
Museum of Modern Art |
Saturday 5th July - Melbourne
We awoke to frantic knocking at the door, it appeared we had 5 mins to pack and leave as they needed to clean the room, I managed to negotiate another half an hour. All our stuff packed we left the Nunnery and headed down to find a hostel for Helen to check into for her remaining 2 weeks in Melbourne, I was still too dazed to realize that I was leaving tonight. Luckily I was able to leave my bags in Helen's room which was handy, so we locked everything up and headed out for my last day in Melbourne.
First port of call was a cup of tea, as both of us were unable to face food due to last night's extravagance! Being the last day, I had a bit of souvenir shopping to do, so we headed over to the Queen Victoria Market, which had lots of choice for tacky gifts. After an hour and $70 lighter mission was accomplished and we escaped the hordes of people and then went on my next search for a decent world map from Australia's point of view. In the end I settled for an Upside Down Map which seemed quite novel as I had never seen anything like it before.
We headed over to the Rialto Towers which is tallest reinforced concrete structure in the Southern Hemisphere at 823 ft. They certainly looked impressive from street level, and the lift up took all of about twenty seconds to climb 55 floors. We'd picked one of the best days to do this, there were perfectly blue skies with stunning views of the Melbourne area. You are able to walk around 360 degrees with two outside viewing areas where you have to fight with your fellow tourist for the binoculars or the camera holes! In fact it was so impressive we stayed and had a drink on the top.
Back on ground level we headed over to the Exhibition Centre, where there was a boat show taking place, it looked like we had arrived at the right time, as there was a display of water skiing and boarding. One guy, who I guess must have either won a competition or was just their idea of comedy, was quite obviously inept and in between displays would quite happily get dragged around belly first through the water! We then had a drink in Automatic just down from the boat show, it was a horrible feeling knowing your running out of time, only 7 hours to go till I had to leave to get my flight. After Automatic we passed a street performer who was enlisting the help of all those people who try and hide behind people or shy away in a bid not to get picked. It basically involved him juggling knives while on a tightrope wearing a 1920s swimming costume, all good fun.
We had been recommended by Lonely Planet to check out a place called Honky Tonks, so using their trusty map we headed to the supposed location, which appeared to be down a dark alley, when we got to where it should be there was nothing there except a blank door. Either LP were lying or it was some exclusive place that didn't open till later. We settled on a nice place called the Stellar Bar for what was to be my final Melbourne Bar experience, for now.
My last meal in Australia was in China Town, which we had meant to check out a couple of nights before, when you have very little time, coming here was perhaps not the best option, as there were restaurants everywhere. On place we tried looked like a morgue before we settled on the Banana Palm which turned out to be a really friendly curry house with great food, once again. The one thing about Australia is the quality of the cuisine, the fish is fresh, everything tastes fresh and is beautifully prepared, oh and most of the restaurants allow you to bring your own alcohol. We consumed a nice bottle of red, which actually did a good job in numbing my now quite horrific realization that I was leaving in less than two hours.
We returned to the Hostel to sort out my stuff before heading to the bus station, where I was to catch my bus to the airport. I can wholeheartedly say that I had never been so sad to leave a place before, the whole vibe of this country especially Melbourne really had an effect on me, that I'm sure one day I'll go back. Trying not to get too emotional me and Helen said our goodbyes, before me bus rolled away towards the airport.
In contrast to my entry to the country, they seemed to have no problem getting rid of me, I was through and boarded in record time. And so, ends a short but memorable adventure, one that has given me a huge appetite to see more of this country. I was glad to have sampled the Western side of Australia as most people head for the East Coast, and to have seen some really diverse wildlife. The Indian Pacific is a journey that everyone should do once, there is nothing quite as relaxing as going on a long train journey, but I do advise, if you can, to get a cabin. The Nullabor's sheer size is awesome and spurs you on to investigate the real barren heart of Australia. I was disappointed not to have seen more of Adelaide as a city, but we made some great friends and it would be great to return one day to see them. The Great Ocean Road is also a must, get your own wheels as you then have the freedom to take it at your own pace. Finally, Melbourne is a great place, very continental, very clean, but with some great nightlife. Whatever you do, do it in style!
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St.Kilda art |
Rialto Towers |
Rialto Aerial View |
Thanks go to:
Cam & Fi for letting us stay in Perth and driving us in Kalbarri
Marg & Fred for your hospitality in Adelaide and showing us the Barossa
The guy who runs Kangaroo Island Coach Tours - great day out, we learned a lot
The Kangaroo who jumped in front of us on our way to Shark Bay - you bastard you cost me $500!
No thanks go to:
Australian customs
Dolphin Campervan Company
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