Australia day in Melbourne

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I had a really good time in Melbourne. But I don't think I did all the things I should've done, I feel as if I didn't utilize my time wisely. I think mainly because I used a fair amount of time online trying to figure out my next destinations, buying tickets and just sorting out stuff before I left Australia. The other reason is that I arrived in Melbourne without much of a plan and didn't have any ideas on what to do. I guess that I'm one of those people that has to plan ahead; not too much, but have some sort of notion on the stuff to do and the timeframes. Next time.



In that city I stayed with Dave Hodges and his girlfriend Steph Stefan; excellent hosts. I met them while I was working on a dive boat in Queensland and Dave was one of the three people I got to take diving one day. At the end of the day I invited them for a beer and invited some of my friends from the boat. A few days later I ran into them again in the town and invited them over for beers and pizza to the house I was living in and they got to meet a few of my other friends. We stayed in touch after that and they offered to host me when I went to Melbourne. By coincidence they're Couchsurfers as well.



I arrived in their house at sometime in the morning and worked on the blog for a while and a few hours later I took a train to Southern Cross Station and started walking around the city center and along the South and North Banks.

At around 5pm we had agreed to meet outside a bar to have a few drinks after they finished work (Dave works for IBM and Steph for a publishing company). We went up to a rooftop bar with a great view of the city. The bar is on top of a building called "The Curtin House (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtin_House) and it was pretty cool. The thing about the place (and Melbourne for that effect) is the vast amount of hipsters, of which I think ironically they've become a mainstream urban tribe themselves.



After Curtin House we moved across the street to "Lounge" and there we met with Nicolás (Nico) Varas. He's the son of a classmate of my father, about my age and I hadn't seen him in years. It was really good seeing him again and it was a relieve for both of us to speak to a fellow Chilean in our own version of the language (it gets a bit tiresome speaking and thinking in English 24/7). I also met his American girlfriend, Megan who was really nice as well. A few hours later we called it a night and we all went our separate ways.



The next days weren't very productive in terms of sightseeing. I woke up and spent most of the day either writing the blog or looking up info online, buying airline tickets, etc. I was meaning to go to Tasmania on Sunday, but Saturday 26th was "Australia Day" and Dave invited me to go camping with them, so I changed the flights for Tuesday.



On one of those days, out of the blue I decided to go to an area called "Mornington Peninsula", which I had heard was nice. By car it takes about 1 hour, but by public transport it took me almost 4 hours to get to my destination. That day was pretty much wasted and I could've easily used it to go to St Kilda (beach area in the south east of central Melbourne) or wander around the city, etc. I had to take a combination of trains to get to Frankston and then a bus to the very end of the peninsula, in Seaport. There wasn't much to see there, so I back-tracked a little to a town called Sorrento. A bus driver had given me the info that from that town there was a ferry that crossed over to the other side of Port Phillip Bay (Queenscliff) and from there I could take a bus and train to get back to Melbourne, via the opposite way I had come from. I thought about it and I had to make a decision: spend the night in that town with nothing to do and take the ferry in the morning or take the last bus back to the train station and spend the night in Melbourne. I opted for option number 2. So I arrived at midnight to the house, with a feeling of a wasted day with long hours on public transport. Fortunately I had a book with me and reading is something that I did plenty of in Melbourne. I was reading "This thing of darkness" by William Thompson and couldn't put it down. It's an historic novel about Robert Fitz Roy and his travels in the HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin onboard.



Friday afternoon I wanted to do some sightseeing, but stupidly enough I left without my wallet. When I got to the train station I realized this. What I also realized was that my copy of the key was in the wallet, so besides having no money, I had no way to get back into the house. I did however have the book, which I read in the doorstep for a couple of hours until I was "rescued" by Natalie (Nat), Steph's twin sister who had gone to the house to bake a cake and who was also going camping the next day.

That evening, Dave invited me to a friend's birthday in a place called "Naked for Satan" (http://www.nakedforsatan.com.au/) in an area called Fitz Roy. We went with Nat and I invited Nico and Megan as well. The place is huge and it also had a new rooftop area called "Naked in the Sky", where the birthday was. The only way in is through an elevator and there was a queue. When we got to the end of the line, we had to put our names down and wait to be called on the phone. Meanwhile we went to have a drink in a pub nearby.

We finally got called and went to the rooftop. It was a great place and it wasn't packed. I had a few beers there and a few hours later a lot of people had left and Nico and I decided to have a few more beers in town. We went to a place called "Elephant & Wheelbarrow" (http://www.elephantandwheelbarrow.com.au/), that had live music.



Saturday morning Dave, Steph, Nat and I left the house to go camping with friends of theirs. We went to a place called Stockman's Reward in the "Big River" State Park. It was a 2 hour drive more or less and before arriving at the park, we had to go through a town called "Marysville", where we had to wait for a small parade that was blocking the street. We arrived at Stockman's Reward about an hour later and we met their friends: Sara, Mike, Brent, Tania, Desiree and Rachel. We just chilled in the camping site the rest of the day, had a bonfire, beers, etc.

The next day we went to a waterfall in Marysville for a while, had lunch in the town and in the afternoon just chilled by the bonfire again. The campsite was pretty well stocked with tents, cooking area, etc. Everyone was friendly and we had plenty of time to talk around the fire.



We left on Monday at around lunch time, we got to the house in the afternoon and the rest of the day we didn't do much.

In the morning, I left for the airport to get to my next and final destination in Australia: Tasmania.

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Photos

Rooftop
Dave, Steph, Daniel

Lounge
Daniel, Dave, Steph, Nico

Australia Day
Flag, fire and beers

Camping Australia Day
Dave, Rachel, Daniel, Steph, Nat, Tania, Brent, Mike