We’ve just returned from an eventful and daring (yes, daring!) two-week tour of Melbourne, Cairns and Sydney. Our last tour for some time now, due to Stef’s impending work at JP Morgan. Our work visas have been granted and we just need to validate them by re-entering Hong Kong, once this is concluded we can apply for our Hong Kong ID cards. I suspect that learning to hack and spit like the Chinese will take a lot longer… From now on we’ll be taking a series of long weekends around the region – on the list is: - The Philippines (Cebu, Manila and Boracay), Vietnam (Hanoi and Laos), South East China (various incl. back to Guilin/Yangzhou) and Hainan Island (Sanya).
To do the Australia trip justice I’ve planned to produce 6 blog postings:-
- Melbourne City and Countryside
- Cairns – Green Island
- Cairns – Great Barrier Reef
- Cairns – The Countryside – Kuranda, Water Falls and Rain Forests
- Sydney – The City
- Sydney – The Countryside – Blue Mountains and the beaches
Does this help - we're visiting the RHS
After a good 9 hour daytime flight south to Melbourne (Tommy Cooper joke: “Cos it’s strange, isn’t it. You stand in the middle of a library and go ‘Aaaaaaagghhhh’ and everyone just stares at you. But you do the same thing on an aeroplane, and everyone joins in”) we took a taxi to our vintage hotel.
Our hotel - New York's not the only place with yellow cabs..
Amazing, but true...
- Population is approx 4 million of Victoria’s 5+ million
- Settled by white Europeans in 1835, Melbourne was first a home for the indigenous population (locally known as Kooris) for as much as 50,000 years prior. A major gold rush attracted world attention in 1848 and a boom period ensued, which lasted nearly 40 years. It also gave the city its magnificent public architecture, gracious parks and opulent mansions. Established as the commercial headquarters and seat of government, Melbourne was the birthplace of Australian Federation.
- Much to Sydney’s discontent, Melbourne has specialised in being the sporting capital of Australia, in fact it is the only city in the world that has five international standard sporting facilities (including three with retractable roofs). Each year Melbourne plays host to tens of thousands of interstate and overseas visitors who come to see the Australian Open Tennis Championships, the Australian Grand Prix, the Australian 500CC Motorcycle Grand Prix, Spring Racing Carnival, the Australian Football League Grand Final and not forgetting the Cricket.
- Melbourne's famous tramway system is the largest outside of Europe and the fourth largest in the world. It stretches along 244 kilometres (152 miles) of track, and has 450 trams.
- The Story of the Ned Kelly Gang, made in Melbourne in 1906, is recognised as the world's first feature film, running to five reels. More about him later.
- Famous people born in Melbourne (or Melburnians as they’re known): - Germaine Greer, Nick Cave, Olivia Neutron-Bomb, Cate Blanchett, Steve Irwin, Jason Donovan, Kylie/Dannii Minogue, Geoffrey Rush (he’s so good I thought he was English!), Barry Humphries (Dame Edna), Pat Cash and Mark Viduka – didn’t recognise any others on the extensive lists!
Parliament of Victoria building
Melbourne Cricket Ground – looks better from the air ;O)
We stayed in a great location as we were next to many parks, historic buildings, and markets and not too far to walk to Flinders St area and the Yarra River. In fact it is possible to walk Melbourne City Centre and all places of interest and we didn’t use any cabs. Melbourne is a very friendly and laid back city, with clean air and plenty of space for everyone on the roads, parks and pavements, overall you could have a great quality of life there, if you didn’t mind being 26+ hours away from family and friends in EU and are happy to be cooked to 40c+ in the summer.
Our first day was Stef’s birthday (waaahoooo!!!) we walked to St Patrick’s cathedral, not because of her birthday, but in spite of it.
St. Patrick's Catholic Church - spire out of picture, in Space
Nice interior
Then we walked across Fitzroy Gardens, through Treasury Gardens & down to Flinders St.
Treasury Gardens
Captain Cook's cottage shipped from the UK - I guess they scooped up the post box by mistake
Detail of the cottage
Theatre in background, free tram in foreground
Interior of St. Paul's Anglican Cathedral
Australian Centre for the Moving Image (note: not Melbourne..)
Birthday girl advertising the Comedy Festival
Flinders St. Train station (could be Kings Cross, London before regeneration)
View from The Brasserie Restaurant where we celebrated Stef's birthday
I managed to get the chef to do a surprise desert for young Stef
View looking down the Yarra River towards Federation Square
As a birthday treat, at 4pm we got the coach to Phillip Island to go and see the Penguin Parade! Phillip Island is 90 minutes south of Melbourne and is where the smallest penguins in the world can be seen coming out of the sea at dusk to go back to their nesting sites in the hillside.
Phillip Island - click to enlarge
Phillip Island reminded us of the
Côte Sauvage
in Brittany where we have our flats
What a great end to our first day!
On
day two (Thursday 25th March) we walked to the Queen Victoria indoor
food, crafts, clothes and souvenirs markets.
The Old public
baths with separate bathing for men and women
Stef walks to Queen Victoria Market
Seafood looks excellent
Market stalls look like this..
As they often told us, “Australia is
probably the only country in the world that eats its coat of arms!” The coat of arms depicts the kangaroo and the emu. It
is thought the kangaroo and emu were chosen to symbolise a nation moving
forward, reflecting a common belief that neither animal can move backwards
easily. As we have found, the Chinese will eat anything, specialising in snake
and small insects. And so to, your Australians will equally eat most things, but
tend to prefer the more gamey dishes which incl. crocodile, emu and kangaroo.
I’ve eaten all three in London previously and it makes sense to me also.
Not sure why this statue was outside the coffee shop, but it appealed to me!
Before our trip, we brought an ‘Eyewitness’ travel guide to Australia, and high up the
list for Melbourne was to visit ‘The Old Melbourne Gaol’. And like Alcatraz in
San Francisco – it didn’t disappoint!
Some background info..
Nice and dark,
well preserved and presented and Victorian!
Death masks were made of the prisoners for study....spooky!
Each cell told a story of a prisoner
Almost attractive in its architecture
The infamous Ned Kelly - man in the iron mask
Some of the legend - I need to watch one of the Ned films now
Info on the hanging scaffold used in the prison
A classic jail as you'd imagine it..
The Melbourne Public Library
How cool is that?
The Princes Bridge
Australia is a vast continent with everything to scale!
Booking
the trip last minute meant that unfortunately we couldn’t get a hotel room
long enough to see the F1 GP on Sunday at Albert Park. However,
the drivers and media were in town and from the top of the Eureka
Tower outside viewing area we could both see and hear the cars practicing.
The Eureka Tower is 300M and 92 floors tall. It was completed in 2006 and the sky deck is located on the 88th floor. It has both the highest public viewing deck in the Southern Hemisphere and the fastest lifts at 9M/sec. At that speed you actually shrink to half your size on the way up!
Told you it was high!
Overlooking the Sports stadiums mentioned earlier in the blog
Flinders St train station and Princes bridge
This is the sky deck that moves in and out of the building, you pay extra to stand on the glass floor!
View towards the Aquarium on the Yarra River
Stef doesn't appear to look any older than yesterday..
We
finished up our time in Melbourne with a beer in our hotel pub – The Cricketers
and had a picnic in our room with the food we’d brought in the Queen Victoria
Market.
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