Blogs from CBD, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Oceania - page 5

Well the time has come for us to leave Melbourne. We have been here for approximately 4 months and I have really come to like Melbourne. Apart from the spasmodic weather Melbourne is a great city to live in. Unfortunately as a backpacker it is not so easy. If I lived here permanently with a grown up job and didn't have to save most of my spare money on travelling I would LOVE it. There are so many bars, restaurants, festivals, live music and events. Christmas was interesting in Melbourne. Given that we didn’t know that many people and the ones we do know were not likely to invite us to their families for a big roast turkey dinner (they have BBQ, how screwed up is that? you can't put BBQ in sandwiches for weeks afterwards). ... read more

It feels a lifetime ago since we sat at Waiheke planning our ‘Grand Tour’ and decided that to cross Australia we would complete the famous Ghan trip from Darwin to Adelaide. Despite our best efforts it did not work out so we took the shorter option – the Overland train trip from Adelaide to Melbourne. This is an 11 hour, 828km journey through the most spectacular of scenery and, after completing the journey, we could not recommend it enough. Our train was made up of six passenger carriages, a large locomotive, a luggage car, and a car transporter; it was approximately 190 metres in length and travelled at an average speed of 85km/hour with its Emu emblem front and centre. You check-in as you would at an airport but then the romantic notion of train travel ... read more

A month and a half ago I set out on a journey of a lifetime. A spur of the moment, jump in the deep end sort of journey, totally unplanned with really not much thought going into it. Originally I had my place confirmed at Southampton University to study English Literature and History, something I felt I was doing for the sake of doing it. My summer 2012 was the most enjoyable of my life, having traveled to Greece with school friends, Spain to the Pamplona Bull festival (and no, I did not run and will never run), then Italy with the family, followed by a flight back to Greece for a bit of Island hopping, alone, and finally Berlin, just to travel some more. All this traveling was very unplanned which is what made it ... read more

Hello and welcome to my first blog entry, I am currently residing in a backpacking hostel in Southbank, Melbourne. Me and James have been here approximately 1 week and as usual have spent most of our time looking for work (damn you expensive Australia). Anyhoo, we have both found jobs, yippee! I am working in a coffee, cake & gelati (ice cream to the English) kiosk in a casino complex and James is working in an Irish bar. The hours are long but the money is good, well in compared to England anyway, I am getting paid double what I was in the UK for a much less taxing job. James' job pays a lot better than mine but he doesn't get as many hours. They are training him in all things bartendery, he lied on ... read more