| HOME ARTICLES PHOTOS | ||
 |
Melbourne (give it time.... lots of pictures to load.)Most of our nine weeks in New Zealand and Australia were spent with nature – hiking, kayaking, and enjoying birds and animals. Usually, we spent only a few days in each place before moving on. Our pre-trip reading told us Melbourne is the quintessential Australian city. The name suggests it is very English. Then we learned that Melbourne has more Greeks than any city outside Athens. We learned a lot more about this remarkably interesting city and this is our picture story:
Melbourne is full of “look-at-me” buildings. Most notable is the Federation
Square complex, perhaps as 21st Century as anywhere in the
world. Something of an engineering marvel, the first step in construction
was building a deck over 12 railroad tracks then serving the city.
Designed by Lab Architecture Design, a London firm, the square
accommodates up to 20,000 people at a time. That firm, according to our
tour guide, is now in charge of Beijing’s stadiums for the 2008 Olympics.
One design innovation is that a huge cavern under the deck sucks cool air
in during the night and releases it during the day to cool the buildings.
The cost is one percent of that for mechanical air conditioning. While some of the content of the buildings is decidedly “avant garde”, other elements are more plebian. This building is devoted to racing.
Two nights later, we tried the Comics Lounge on Errol Street. As hostel members, we gained free admission and for $25 each – a bargain in Melbourne – dined well. The entrance was small and easily overlooked, but the room was large and almost full on a Thursday night. This headliner was tremendous. He could clean up his act a bit and star on Comedy Central.
The second act was Hung Lee, a Korean with some very good material based on being a hip teenager with a traditional Asian mother. While the headliner left for another venue as soon as he was finished, Mr. Lee stuck around to talk with audience members.
We stayed at the Oasis YHA hostel, a good one in North Melbourne near the University. It was on the tramline; we bought a weekly pass and rode the trams everywhere.
Terrace cottages dominated the housing in “our neighborhood”. The owner of the one-story on the far right said it was worth about six hundred thousand. At the current exchange rate, that’s about a half million U.S. dollars. He thought the two story houses would bring a million Australian. ;
Sage Welch was of great help to us in Melbourne. She is the granddaughter of Carol and Geo Levin in whose Ballard (Seattle) home we met in 1992 and married in 1994. Sage and her friend Adam arranged our first (and only) “footy” game.
Adam is a third generation fan of the Western Bulldogs. We sat in their section. Six of the 10 teams in the Australian Football league are based in the Melbourne area.
Points result from kicking the ball through two sets of goal posts. Through the higher, middle set counts six points; through the wider, shorter set counts one point. Few kicks are straight on, most are at an angle. Some are free kicks; others are made on the run. There is a lot of scoring. Final score of this game, won by the Bulldogs (Hoorah!), was 132 to100.
Supporters are rabid and dress in team colors. On the tram after the game we sat with these Bull Dog fans who had just returned from a holiday in San Francisco. (Yes, they saw Barry Bonds hit a home run.)
After the game, we met Sage and Adam in Chinatown for a late supper. Ruth found this wonderful delicacy on her plate – pig’s ear. We all had a taste and won't be ordering it again.
These are our two of our hostel friends, Simon and Jess. Fashion models, they are in the process of moving their careers from Perth to Melbourne. Simon added to our knowledge of footy. A high school star, he played in the top minor professional league.
We
bought only one tour in Melbourne. This was ov
The
Great Ocean Highway is comparable to our treasured Big Sur in California.
One difference is that this highway gets closer t
We
reached London Bridge as the sun was going down. The two “towers” used to
be connected until one January day in 1990, the center fell in.
Miraculously, no one was injured but one couple was stranded on the right
tower. TV news helicopters arrived on the scene
Back in Melbourne the next day, the #57 tramline took us from the hostel to Victoria Market. Housed in a complex of low brick buildings, it is larger than both Pike Place Market in Seattle and the Granville Island Market in Vancouver put together, and lies in the shadow of tall buildings. (Despite a five-year drought, Melbourne continues to construct more buildings. Lack of water was so severe that buckets placed in shower stalls caught water for plants, if you insisted on showering.)
We walked all through the market admiring the food, particularly the meat cases. We bought some chicken and cheese but didn’t have capacity for much else in our share of the hostel refrigerator.
Simon and Jess mentioned they were moving to the YHA hostel in the upscale beach town of St. Kilda. When we told Sage we planned to go there she said, “See some of the real Melbourne first.” So on Saturday, the next to our last day, we ventured out to Footscray, “a changing neighborhood” where many people have moved from Africa. We found a market, somewhat like Victoria, with a different clientele and merchandise. Here is a Muslim woman with her children. We ate in this Ethiopian restaurant. The food had strange names and looked different, but tasted great.
The next day, we first visited Captain Cook’s cottage. Actually his parents’ home, the building was taken apart in England and sent to Melbourne for re-assembly. This city respects buildings. Along side all the shiny new high rises, many restored 19th century buildings remain.
Then we walked to Brunswick Street, another neighborhood changed in a different direction with cafes and shops. It reminded us of Union Street in San Francisco.
After walking up one side of Brunswick Street and down the other, we chose this Greek restaurant for the colorful ceramic bench. Fortunately, the food and service were good.
On this Sunday afternoon trams came every five minutes; many were going to St. Kilda.
So, late in the day, we hopped one and caught these para-sailers over the beach at St. Kilda.
We had coffee and tea with desserts in this beachside café. Now we were ready to move on. The next day we flew to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef.
This week in Melbourne was the least expensive of the nine on our trip because we had only one expensive tour and we didn’t spend much on restaurants. But it wasn’t cheap. Altogether, we spent about $1,080 US. “About”, because our figures are not precisely accurate with currency exchanges and estimates in our daily log. The breakdown is: hostel for seven nights, $370; restaurants and groceries, $340; two evenings at comedy programs, $150; two tram passes, $25; footy game, $35; Great Ocean Highway Tour, $160. Prudent Ventures site Copyright © 2007 by Al Krause & Ruth Higgins
|
|
|
|
||
Our
guide pointed out this tall luxury condominium building. This and many
other apartment buildings are situated among office buildings. The
banners in the foreground celebrate April’s Comedy Festival. These
notices adorned the city, and this location was particularly significant,
viewed by thousands of people between the square and the railroad
station. Some 30 venues and more than 200 entertainers were involved in
the festival.
At our
first opportunity, we went to Town Hall, the Comedy Festival’s main
venue, to buy tickets. Most of the performances there were sold out for
the week. We followed directions to the Trades Hall site, where we were
able to buy tickets for three performances. It happened to be Tight-arse
Tuesday, so we got them at discount. These three women had a song and
dance routine about memory loss. They and the others we saw were good,
but did not surpass performances we had enjoyed at an Auckland club a few
weeks earlier. 
Australian
Rules football is something of a cross between soccer
and rugby but much faster and much better, in our limited experience.
Footy is as fast as basketball without timeouts or delays for foul
shooting. The game is on an oval cricket field about three times bigger
than a U.S. gridiron. Fourteen players from each team are on the
field at one time and there are only four substitutes.
er the Great Ocean Highway,
a long day that started out with a visit to an aboriginal center in Geelong.
There a new generation aboriginal, Norm Stanley, is intent on providing
authentic information about his heritage. He played his didgeridoo and we
bought his CD. One of his songs was, “Wanna be a
Footy Star.”
o the water and is
dotted with attractive towns that provide holiday lodging; it is about
five times longer than the US version.
within minutes,
broadcasting pictures and reports of their situation. Officials wanted to
send their newly acquired rescue chopper; there was some delay getting it
ready and making the trip from Melbourne. Meanwhile, the plight and names
of the stranded were all over the news. Two big problems, according to
our guide/driver: the guy had called in sick that morning; both he and
his female companion were married to other people.
After
some searching, we found this organic section. A bigger find was Tina
from Shanghai. Actually, Tina found us. She had been on the Great Ocean
Tour sitting in the back of the bus while we were near the front. We
scarcely spoke on the sightseeing stops. In the market, she came running
up to us. What a surprise to have someone know us! After much sharing of
what we all had been doing since then, she got away without us taking a
picture. We went through the market searching in different directions but
we couldn’t find her. She’s an interior designer for Louis Vuitton,
setting perfume displays in department stores throughout China. She had
attended an international trade conference in Sydney and added this
holiday. We told her how much we liked Melbourne, calling it the ‘Paris
of the Pacific.’ Tina wasn’t impressed – she was off next to the real
Paris. 
