Life in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

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We arrived into Melbourne just before a long weekend and a week before the Melbourne Grand Prix around mid-March, planning for it to be our new home until July. Due to our complete lack of forward planning we stupidly thought we could book 3 nights accommodation and we would have found a place of our own easy enough after that. As it turned out nobody in the backpacker accommodation/short term rents were leaving until after the Grand Prix, no surprise there! So we spent the first week living in about 4 different hostels, our friends couch (thanks Brid), then a share house for 2 weeks. Finally we found an apartment to call home; a one bed / studio apartment in an old house in St Kilda; a regular haunt for backpackers living in Melbourne.

St Kilda is a pretty colourful place. We had a couple of prostitutes who worked the corner at the end of our street. But if you ignore the pros, bums, drug addicts and alcoholics it a really good spot. Up the street from us there are lots of cafes, restaurants, pubs, it’s an eclectic mix of all types of people, it’s a trendy place to be. Handy too, only 20 min on the tram to the city. We picked up jobs easily enough in our first week here and settled into life in Melbourne. We would work away during the week to keep us in beer money then do all the touristy / fun stuff on the weekends.

Melbourne is known for its cafe culture and sport. We have immersed ourselves in both. Going for a coffee on our days off, there are a million different cafes in the city and its hard to get a bad coffee here, breakfast out has also become a bit of a habit on the weekends. There is always something going on in the city. We saw Maeve Higgins and Des Bishop at the comedy festival as well as an Aussie comedian Hughesy. We went to a Matchbox 20 concert at the Rod Laver arena and to see Spamalot at the theatre. By coincidence there was a good gang of friends from home out here at the same time as us so it was good to meet up with a few familiar faces for the occasional beer or two. We did all the touristy stuff too, with visits to the Gaol where Ned Kelly was hung, a tour of the MCG, a trip up the Eureka tower which gives great vista across the city, we went on a booze cruise around the local wineries including some bubbly at Moet Chandon and of course the trips to Phillip Island and the Great Ocean Road. We even took a trip out to Ramsay street home of Neighbours!

As for the sport it’s all about the Aussie Rules, its huge here, they are very passionate about it. So we adopted St Kilda as our team, unfortunately it turns out they are crap and haven’t won anything since ’66! We’ve been to a couple games in the 2 stadiums, Telstra Dome and MCG, both within walking distance of the city, the atmosphere at the games is usually really good. Some teams have a huge fan base and are VERY passionate fans and when these teams meet you usually get 80,000+ people in the MCG and the atmosphere is unreal. We had the Grand Prix back in March, with the 40deg heat and the hangovers from the night before it was a bit of a killer. The noise, the heat and the dirt was unbelievable. We had the misfortune of watching Ireland get beaten by Australia in the rugby at Telstra dome; they knocked on more ball then a team of school boys!

That’s the great thing about Melbourne there was always some festival going on or sporting event to keep you entertained. Unfortunately our time in Melbourne has come to an end, 6th of July we fly to New Zealand. So time to pack in the jobs again, pack the bags and head off.

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