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Published: March 11th 2006
This is a brief entry to fill in the New Year gap left by the previous blog. After this we can get reasonably up to date with our current experiences - ones which over the past few months have followed very similar trends, but more later.
When we arrived in Melbourne, and finally navigated the city the way we wanted to (the map we had was out of date and used some different road names), we went to the information centre and found a number of camp sites to phone around. We ended up staying in a place called Williamstown, outside the city - but commutable.
Obviously the main point about this blog is our New Year celebrations, which were good, but a little about Melbourne. It’s a nice place! The city has a good feel to it and good facilities - one being its public transport. We found free wireless internet in the shopping centre (we had to as the library hasn’t got it sorted yet) which made life easier, and after buying ourselves an Xmas pressie of a TV card for the computer we discovered the digital TV reception was excellent. This being very useful during New
On the Razz
Still sober but not for longYears day - which rained continuously.
New Years Eve! We had a good one, a very good one. It started well when we discovered that all public transport was free - all night, and those who have followed our travels know how much we really like free things. So, getting in and out was sorted, simply a free train journey there and back. Alcohol? It was going to be pricey and we’d already found out that the city was going to be an alcohol free zone; i.e. no wandering around with a bottle of wine or 24 tinnies - so; plan B. We decided to put the bottle of Thai red bull (the strong stuff) which we’d saved to good use and mixed coke, whiskey and the red bull in two 600ml coke bottles to take as a back up. This turned out to be a very good idea. After arriving in town and checking out the bars we started to realise that; A) beer was three times its usual price and B) everywhere was ticket only and full. After our first wander - with a brief stop to watch a band - we watched the first volley of
fireworks on the river. Not the biggest display we’ve ever seen, but they had a lot of variety, lasted a long while, and were pretty impressive.
We wandered around for a while after this, mainly looking for a bar and found one after about 45 minutes, burying our gall at the price. I couldn’t continue to hide my emotions though when my first beer was knocked over (not by me) with little more than sip gone from it. BUT - a very nice man who saw the incident offered me his beer, a very touching gesture, but then Gill managed to blag another beer from the bar staff - result!
After a tip-off we found ourselves at the Casino. Beer was the normal price, food was cheap, and we weren’t too drunk to be suckered into the whole gambling thing - besides Gill’s $2 bet which won her $5. Unfortunately this bet was just before midnight and didn’t leave us enough time to see the next round of fireworks close up.
We wandered back to the railway station, post New Year, but fancied one last beer. ‘Unfortunately’ the only place we could find was a strip bar;
so after a couple of drinks and a demonstration of the versatility of candles later - we went home.
That’s about it. We stayed up chatting till about 4am, spent the next day hiding from the rain and nursing a hangover whilst trying to cook during the intermittent dry spells. Then a few days to recover and goodbye Melbourne and off to Bright, Victoria - and paragliding.
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