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Published: January 18th 2006
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Ele and I headed off to melbourne on the overnight train from sydney, leaving behind a sad and excited Thomas (sad we were going but excited about settling down and starting life in Sydney). We had booked into the base backpackers in the St kilda's beach area of melbourne which was a bit like living as a student again as the bar was downstairs and had lots of drinks promotions and events including a wet t-shirt competition to entice people to attend the bar (no we did not do the wet t-shirt competition!)on thursday nights.
Once we had caught up on some sleep we went out for dinner with my friend Jayne and some of her family and friends. She was home for christmas and amazingly was heading back to England a couple of days after we met up. It was really good to catch up and hopefully will be able to catch up again when Jayne returns later this year. Hope you like the photo's Jayne😊
We spent the next day exploring the city centre of Melbourne, including visiting Federation Square, the Royal Exhibition Hall and the Melbourne museum. We weren't allowed to take many photo's in the
museum hence why the only photo is of me in the neighbours kitchen! However we spent the bulk of our time in the Aboriginal section, learning a bit about the Aboriginal culture and the history of Australia. The Aborigini people have been treated pretty horribly since Britian colonised OZ and some mal treatment was going on until the 70's such as half caste Aborigini children being taken away from their families to special school's. However conditions seem to be much better now.
The next day we went on the Neighbours tour! it had to be done and you know if you were here and had grown up watching neighbours you would have done it too! You couldn't go to any of the sets in side the TV studio's but we were taken to the street used for Ramsay street and also erinsbrough high. On the way there they played music from the TV series and on the way back they played a cd made by "Dr Karl" and his band. Some of this music was truly atrocious(in my opinion)! However the tour was fun and we learnt some fun facts about neighbours for example erinsbrough is an anagram of
neighbours and the guy who plays harold is one of the writers as well.
The next day we visited the healesville sanctuary which is an hours train journey from Melbourne and situated in the Yarra valley which is a popular winegrowing region. Unfortunately we didn't have time or the transport to go for a wine tasting but the valley is very beautiful so I would say it was worth a visit in its self. Unfortunately we didn't have time but we did really enjoy visiting the Sanctuary. Initially we stormed our way around the sanctuary from one enclosure to another trying to see all the "meet the keeper" talks where you could sometimes meet the animals too. These were really interesting and we got to see a bird of prey display with all of australia's native species as well as a talk about the platypus and the koala. Also got to meet an aboriginal man who spoke to us a little about his culture and also gave a boomerang display - he told us not to buy the heavy tourist ones which are thick and heavy and simply won't fly. He was very entertaining!
We then moved onto
Canberra - Australia's capital (and not a lot of people know that) which just to make sure you know its the capital it has its own state - Australian Capital Territory. Known as the bush capital it has been designed to blend in with the surrounding landscape which I think it has done rather well. Before this site was chosen as the location for Australia's capital there was pretty much nothing here except for a few farm houses and a pub! This was chosen as the site of the capital as there was great competition between Sydney and Melbourne as to who would be the capital and it was roughly between the two! It is also a very nice location set in a valley amongst beautiful mountains, with the parliment set on top of Capital Hill opposite the war memorial which is set at the base of a mountain. One of the things I liked about the set up of Canberra's layout was it did not feel regimented however important monuments and buildings for example (again) the war memorial, old parliment building and the new parliment of Australia were perfectly set up perspective wise e.g. in perfect alignment - I
have a lot of admiration for that kind of thing.
Having mentioned the Parliment and War Memorial several times I feel I ought to tell you a bit about them. We visited the new parliment which is a quite unique piece of architecture as its built into the hill, consists of 6 buildings joined by glass corridors, has over 4300 rooms in total and apparently the basement includes various restaurants, a travel agent and other shops so that once a member of parliment is in the building they should have no reason to leave until their job is done. However there is no accomodation contained within the building. We ended up doing a free guided tour around the building, which admittedly we thought might be a bit boring and were planning to sneak away if it proved to be so, however this was not the case. It was interesting to learn about how the parliment worked and the design of the building. It contains the second largest tapestry in the world, the largest being in Coventry in the U.K.
We covered Canberra on foot which is do-able however very tiring in the midday sun, therefore we thought the
best way to reward ourselves was to have a BBQ with some of the people from our hostel! This included a purchase of Kangaroo and I must say it was very tasty but probably not something I would have often because you can't help but feel slightly guilty, especially as we saw a wild herd happily hopping about the morning after from our train back to Sydney! It was kind of like having a good beef steak though, especially as we had ours slightly rare!
Many people we spoke to were a bit down on Canberra, particularly the Australian's, however if museum's, history and architecture your idea of fun its definately worth a visit. We were only there for a day and the local's we met told us that despite reputation Canberra does have a nightlife. However we were to tired to venture out and had a very early train to catch the next morning! A disadvantage of getting to Canberra from Melbourne was that the transport links aren't great which is odd for a capital city but there we are.
We then headed back to Sydney and moved up to a place called Port Macquarie - next
Native animals of Oz 101: Koala
This one was living at the Healsville sanctuary in the Yarra valley near melbourne blog update very soon!
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Jen Cooke
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Hey Sarah, Looks like you are having an amazing time, all your pics are making me very envious! Me and Chris are getting ready for out trip...have set a date for 10th April. Not too far away now! Can I ask you a question? How much money do you think you spent in SE Asia? We are trying to come up with a rough budget but have no idea! Help! We are probably going to be in Asia until middle of may when we are going to go to sydney. My uncle lives there but is going away for 3 months, so we are going to flat-sit. Perfect set up! Anyway, any advice would be very much appreciated! If you get a chance then you can always email me. Hope you are all having an excellent time! Jen xxx