The trip to Melbourne began with a taxi ride to the Ballarat train station. I was rather amazed at how substantial the train station is for the size of the town. Apparently, the state of Victoria has a pretty thorough network of trains. The train trip in was fun, taking about an hour – and dropped us of in another world. Ballarat, Bendigo, and Daylesford were very white, very European towns. Melbourne is very multicultural. Malay, Western and Eastern European, Chinese, Vietnamese, Aboriginal, African, all mix together side by side in the fast paced busy streets. In some ways I was reminded of London – school boys and girls in uniform, but louder, somehow bigger – not physically, but energetically, and instead of people of Indian and African descent, as in London, there are more east
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