Erm, Where Did the Sun go?

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G'day blog fans!

Somebody has stolen our sun! Yes, we arrived in Melbourne in the peak of winter and have spent five weeks freeeeeezing cold! This may have been bad planning on our part but, despite the moaning, it has been really lovely to see the city and its surroundings in the winter months. Again, much to everybody’s surprise, Australia does have winter and reaches temperatures of 0 degrees at night.

We came in search of the Australian dream, seeking fruit to pick in order to qualify for a second visa and top up our rapidly decreasing funds; unfortunately, contrary to the Government literature, this is not as easy as it seems, and we couldn’t find a single grape in need of our help. In light of this slight timing problem, (all the fruit had already been harvested) we failed to find ourselves any employment. It also seems that fruit-picking is a rather falsified notion and actually a mine-field of scams and deals. Sadly, it wasn’t worth travelling 500km and paying $180 each a week for a ‘possible’ job in order to earn $1-5 per tree. If people are desperate enough to stay in Oz then good luck to them, but we certainly weren’t willing to spend three months bonding with the branches! Let’s hope Perth brings us more luck on the job front.

For the duration of our stay in Melbourne, we’ve taken residence in Katie and Gerard’s spare room - friends of ours from England. As the job situation didn’t quite go to plan, we’re grateful at how incredibly lovely they’ve been hosting us for so long. This meant that we had five weeks to explore Melbourne. After the luxury of a strong currency in Asia, we suffered from initial horror at the price of things in Australia, especially jumping from 15pence to £5 for half a lager! Moneywise, we’ve spent the equivalent of our full three months' India budget in just five weeks here. With nothing to gain from sitting around worrying about our unemployment and economic downturn, we set out to ‘throw some money at the situation’ and have a bloody good time. Nikki’s newest phrase, ‘When it’s gone, it’s gone.’

So, after an initial few days catching up with friends and dancing the night away, we booked ourselves a trip down the famous Great Ocean Road. This is the long, winding stretch of road which runs along the scenic southern coastline from Torquay to Warrnambool (600+km round trip), stopping in Geelong, Torquay, Aires Islet, Lorne, Apollo Bay, Port Campbell, Cape Otway, Twelve Apostles and Warrnambool . Collecting a hire car from the centre of Melbourne city having not been behind the wheel or on the right (correct) side of the road for five months proved a little terrifying. We embarked on a three day adventure which involved some stunning views, Koala Hunting, harsh winds and Casual Bum Game to liven-up the shots. If you look at the photos you’ll see some of our favourite views along the way, including some amazing surfers at Bell’s Beach.

The weeks following the GOR trip were less busy… it’s very easy to slide back into watching TV, sleeping in and pottering! Melbourne has an overwhelming ability to suck you into the ‘coffee culture’. Many an afternoon has been lost to a cuppa tea and a Melburnian newspaper. There isn’t a great deal of tourist attractions in Melbourne city during the winter months, especially for us as there are only so many zoo’s and history museums one can visit in a year; however, we did make a few exceptions by visiting the Immigration Museum where Gail enjoyed the fact that she wasn’t the teacher chaperoning 30 kids. We also called into the Melbourne National and International Modern Art Gallery and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

The time came for us to get active so we set off to Bendigo in search of our fortune at the famous Deborah Goldmine. This place was great and for £15 we went on a two hour tour with lovely Brendan to learn all about the Australian Goldrush in the 1850-1860. This involved donning hard hats and going 62 meters underground where we walked the mines, learnt about the processes and generally smiled our little faces off! Did you know many people tried to smuggle gold out using any orifice? You do now.

The weather in Melbourne is known for it's unpredictability... roughly translated, that means it rained every time we set off out for a trip. This was a little annoying to say the least. One wet trip was up to the Dandenong mountain ranges. The ladies at the tourist information looked as though they hadn't helped anyone for days and literally pounced on us as we walked in. The walk through the 'rain forest' was aptly named as we strolled around looking at the art embedded in the trees. The heavens also opened upon us on our little trip out to the Mornington Peninsular with Our friends Andy and Katy. This area is famous for its wineries, micro breweries and cheeseries (word?). You can imagine how pleased we were to have a pregnant designated driver whilst we all trotted in to our first wine tasting at 11am. This involved lots of appriciative noises and pretending to know about wine. Secretly, we just wanted to get pissed. The day hit a low point after the cheesery as Nikki felt sick from the disgusting blue cheese, Gail felt car sick (again...) and Katy had morning/afternoon sickness. Luckily we all picked up again in the micro brewery as we got back to basics with beer tasting. Katy had water.

Whilst in Melbourne, we wanted to attempt some sport related activity. The highlight of which was a trip to the 'G' (Melbourne Cricket Ground - Ozzy's shorten everything, see below) to watch an Ozzy Rules footy match. The state of Victoria is absoloutley mad on this sport and most of the AFL teams come from here so on match days, everybody is kitted out in their team colours. Gerard kindly kitted us out as Melbourne Demons fans outfits, taught us the rules and let us scream our heads off for two hours. It was fabulous! Further sport related activity involved joining Les Rock for indoor rock-climbing and forcing ourselves to stay awake at stupid-o-clock Auzzie time to watch England's crap performance in the World Cup.

Finally, here's a little list of short abbreviations, Aussie-isms and some slightly racists/offensive terms that are totally acceptable in Australia for you to have a ponder over.... Have we taken 'PC' too far in the UK...?

'Ranga (I.E - Orang-utan) - ginger person - the new female, unmarried living with partner Prime Minister is ginger - imagine the crap she gets!
Smacky-ville - an area where heroin users hang out
Wog - NOT in any way aimed at black people. This is a term used by both white and ethnic minorities to describe ethnic minorities.
Crack the shits - get angry
No dramas - no problem
Doona - duvet
Heaps - always used instead of saying ‘a lot of’
Tanty - tantrum
Crook - sick
Prego - pregnant.

Basically, shorten any word and put an 'o' on the end. For example, our friend Katy, who is prego might say, 'Yeah, I've got my meeting this arvo with the Obo about the prego.’ Translated, this means she is seeing the Obstetrician about her baby.

So, Melbourne was a welcome relief after 6 months in Asia and we had heaps of fun-o crackin' the shits with everyone.

Thanks for reading Blogees.

Kylie and Sheila x

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Comments

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Casual bum
I am sat at work crying with laughter at casual bum 1, 2 & 3.......................can't wait to meet you out in Ozzie ya great galars (Alf says that off of H&A!!!)