Garrett

With the Australian Open being held in Melbourne, I figured it wouldn't hurt to stick around the city yet a little longer to go see one of the major tennis tournaments in the world. I really wanted to see Federer since this is probably the only tournament that you wont have to sell your right arm to get in and see possibly the best tennis play ever. I had looked for tickets before online but since the draws weren't actually decided on until only a couple days before they were played, I elected to wait and just get scalped tickets the day of the match I wanted to see. As it turned out, the day matches on the main court (Rod Laver Arena) on the first day had Mauresmo, Federer, and Baghdatis all in the line ... read more

This marked my second trip outside of Melbourne since I arrived here in Nov. last year. I thought it was just a small town just outside of Melbourne but Geelong is Victoria's second largest city with 200000 people. Since I've seen almost everything there is inside the Melbourne city proper, the idea was to do day trips to the surrounding areas to get a better feel of the state of Victoria. The train is pretty cheap too being only $15 for a round trip out to Geelong and back which is roughly an hour from the city. I arrived in Geelong around 10:30 and just started wandering aimlessly around the town. As luck would have it I stumbled across the main tourist office in town and was able to get a city map and found out ... read more

Christmas really didn't feel like xmas this year mainly due to the lack of snow and +18 temperature we had here, though that is the coldest recorded xmas day Melbourne has ever had. I think it also had to do with the fact that xmas decorations were few and far between so it never had that Christmas feeling in the air. I found it quite odd walking around town and catching a xmas song coming from a store dealing with snow since they never get it here. Chrismas Eve was a big night out for a few of us. Most of the germans here celebrate on xmas eve so we all went out to the bar to celebrate with them. This is the first year I haven't been home to celebrate with the family and I ... read more

Melbourne Town Hall Melbourne Town Hall is the central municipal building of the city of Melbourne and it is the seat of the Local Government Area of the City of Melbourne. Melbourne was officially incorporated as a town on December 13, 1842, however, it wasn't until 1854 that its first Town Hall was completed. Begun in 1851, the work ground to a halt with the beginning of the Victorian gold rush. The foundation stone of a new, grander Town Hall was laid on November 29, 1867 by the visiting Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, after the demolition of the first. The current Town Hall officially opened on August 11, 1870 and is another piece created by architect Joseph Reed. The building is topped by Prince Alfred's Tower, named after the Duke. The Tower includes a 2.44 ... read more

Melbourne has a surprising number of buildings and areas that date back to before the 1900's that have managed to survive over the years. A lot of it is due to the fact that they seemed too lazy to tear down the rundown buildings for many years and then when they finally got to the point where something had to be done, it was at a stage where they were trying to preserve the history of the areas so would either fix them up or keep them as is and protect the site from demolision. The Docklands When they drew up the Melbourne grids in 1837, the surveyors left the marshland empty and in time, the area became the location of some of Melbourne’s first industries, especially those connected with the livestock trade. With the building ... read more