Advertisement
Published: September 12th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Welcome to Melbourne!
Ok - we found this a few weeks after we got here at Port Melbourne - but it looks good here To be honest, by the time the plane started to land (and after listening to those two kids scream for eight and a half hours), I was really just glad that the plane was landing and, for all I cared, it could be landing at Prestwick. Claire, however, was in her element and took loads of pictures of the approach into Melbourne which I'll attach (cause some of them are actually quite good!).
The weather was awesome - not a cloud in the sky and, even although it was 9am, it was really nice and warm. We had no problems at all at immigration and proceeded to the baggage pick-up area. Presumably because the flight was from Bangkok, the Aussie Customs department were all over it - they had a dog sniff about everyone’s bags (including carry on bags) and kept giving it sweets every time it barked at a bag. It crossed my mind that, had I been the dog, I'd probably have got wise to this and just barked at a random bag, every time I wanted a sweet.
Now, as we had no less than seven large bags, my efforts were going into retrieving them from
Nearly there!
And the kid was still screaming! the belt and putting them on the trolley. Claire's efforts, on the other hand, were going into staying as far away from the dog as she could (she isn't an animal lover for anyone that doesn't know!) and every time the dog and handler even looked towards Claire's direction she would raise her arms and jump back - I'm thinking this is what possibly caught the attention of one of the customs guys. I didn't actually notice this, but apparently the dog got a bit excited at one of our bags (or maybe it was just time for another sweet) and the guy put a big stamp on our customs declaration and, out with our sight, must have got onto his walkie-talkie.
We got all our bags (which I have to admit I was quite surprised they all made it from Glasgow without any problems) and proceeded down the customs channel - where we were ushered into channel number 3 - which, as it turns out, is the one for all the suspicious people and every single bag had to be hand searched. In saying that, it wasn't an issue at all. The customs bit of the airport is
quite different to any others I'd seen - its not like you go through a red or green lane and you may or may not be stopped in the green lane - everyone is stopped and 100% of bags are x-rayed - ours, however, were being hand checked. It soon became clear that the girl searching our bags shared the same opinion as me on the dog and its enjoyment of sweets and seemed to know that she wasn't onto the next major bust of crack cocaine smugglers. She did, however, seem to suspect that we may have bought some dodgy picture frames or photo albums in Bangkok which contain a strange type of wood. Anyway - we got through and had a bit of a joke with her, and were then officially in Melbourne (and I was then very glad that I wasn't indeed in Prestwick!).
Work had arranged airport transfers and, true to their word, two drivers were waiting on us (as they had been tipped off at the amount of bags we had). So they asked where we were going - to which we didn't actually have an answer. We had requested the UK travel team
The city
Our first views... at work to book us into a serviced apartment and it was all going so well when they confirmed the price etc. I emailed them back to say perfect, please go ahead and - when I checked my e-mails at the airport in Bangkok, they hadn't actually e-mailed me back! So I tried to look up the address of the apartment - there were pictures of it, phone numbers to book it in the UK and a note of everything that it was within walking distance of - but there wasn't actually an address! On top of this, the two drivers (or their bosses who they phoned) had also never heard of it! So we drove to the area that it was supposed to be in - and hoped that the driver's office would be able to find the address before we got there - they couldn't. They had tried everything - phone books, tourist offices, internet... no one had heard of the saco apartment (I think it was called this anyway). We called work in Melbourne - my first call to my new office "we're lost and don't have anywhere to stay".... hmmmmm!!
So we then found somewhere
Melbourne Trams
This is the City Circle tram which is for (us) tourists - it is a free service that takes you round the city with a bit of commentary on the sights where my laptop picked up wi-fi (from a random person's home internet connection!) and looked up the pictures of the apartment. The drivers knew immediately what apartment it was - and also that it wasn't called the saco apartment. By that point, I had kinda realised that saco apartments was just a booking agent in the UK - and that they obviously don't give you the name and address of the apartment in case you decide to go and book it directly. We got there - they confirmed that our pictures were indeed of their apartment - but that they didn't have any reservations for us!! What a joke...
Melbourne HR had told the drivers if we had any problems just to take us into the office and they would find us somewhere and, as they had another pick-up to do, that is exactly what they had to do.
So picture the scene - Claire and I had been travelling for 21 hours. We were wearing jogging suit type stuff, hadn't had a shower in about 26 hours, hadn't slept, hadn't really eaten and really just felt like s*** - and we were heading for my new office.
The Central Business District
The office was one of the first things I saw in Melbourne! Great stuff.
We were met by the HR girl who helped us in with our bags. I said to her, in all seriousness, please just take us to a meeting room, I'll book somewhere and we'll get off and have a sleep - no probs she said. Next min, we were going through a door and she said "ok, so this is your department" - at which point everyone was coming over and saying hello. We were actually mortified - but, to be honest, everyone seemed amazing and no-one seemed to care at the state we were in.
We went to a cafe next door for a sandwich while work arranged somewhere to stay. Claire asked what was on the chicken sandwiches and was told chicken with salad, chicken with sweet corn, chicken tandoori - I got quite excited and thought the girl said chicken with kangaroo (don't know why - but thats what it sounded like), so I asked for a kangaroo sandwich. You can imagine the look on the girls face - it turns out Walkabout in Scotland is quite unique in that it sells kangaroo burgers and not all cafe's in Melbourne sell the tourist icon of Australia on bread!
We went back to work, got the address of where we were staying and headed off. By this point, we had been up for almost 30 hours so you could imagine our feelings when we finally got into an apartment to find it smelled of I dunno what, hadn't been properly cleaned, had no windows and, basically, was like a youth hostel. We looked at each other - decided that there was no way we would sleep there (the beds were filthy) and got a taxi to the Hilton, where we spent our first night. 32 hours later, we were sound asleep!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.114s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0699s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb