Melbourne

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11th June 2009

After finally arriving in Melbourne and a good nights sleep, we set out to explore Melbourne in just two days. First up we went to get a birdseye view of the city on top of the Rialto Towers. Just like Auckland we took lots of photos of the cityscape and Alex got excited as he got a glimpse of the Albert Park F1 race track. It was then on to Melbourne Gaol, the infamous site of the hanging of Ned Kelly. We managed to spend a good 3 hours morbidly reading the accounts of terrible crimes, mistaken executions and general injustice (there was a 3 year old boy held in prison for being idle!!!!). We were then under arrest and taken to the city watch house and placed in a cell. Luckily for us it was just a mock up, however prisoners were held here until 1994 and reading their graffiti we got a feeling of what it was like to be in here. Too celebrate our freedom we decided to have a coffee and cake, why not spoil yourself after doing hard time.


12th June 2009

We started off today by walking to Federation Square. This was only recently built and was quite a work of art. Talking of art there was an exhibition of light and sound on the edge of the square so we had some fun walking around that. We continued our walk along the river, until we reached the unification bells. These made one hell of a sound, which was a little less tuneful than we expected but still more tuneful than Elaine singing. The walk finished at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket ground for the uninitiated) where we decided to visit the national sports museum. Ironically we skipped the bit about Cricket and Aussie rules "football". There was an interactive section where we had a little too much fun both leaving the building with a limp. Finally we had some nice tapas at a bustling local bar before catching the train to Albury to see Katrina, Roy and the boys.

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