'WAAAYYOW. She's such a charmer, oh no'

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Once again we left somewhere, in this case Sydney, feeling our time there had been all to short, with lots more adventures to have, and tons more to explore!

Having done all of our other travel around Aus by bus, for our jouney to Melbourne we decided to travel by train, which was scheduled to leave Sydney at 7pm and roll into Melbourne about 8am the following day. However, these hospitable Aussies wanted to make us feel at home and so they very kindly scheduled maintenence work to be done on the line. Thus after 8 hours on the train we had to get off and catch a bus for the last 4. Oh how we jumped for joy, especially when they came round to wake us at 4am.

On arrival we headed straight to the hostel on one of Melbourne's wonderful trams. We even paid, which we soon realised wasn't particularly necessary. Our hostel in Melbourne 'Urban Central', was like 'Big' in many respects, if a little more spacious - little character though. The double room we were in had a TV though, meaning we could keep up to date with the cricket and watch an episode of Spooks one night. Our room was very nice, however the cleaners seemed to have a habbit of just walking into the room without knocking, resulting us having to jump into our ensuite bathroom (oh yes!) to hide on one occasion when they caught us getting changed.

Anywho enough about the hostel and onto Melbourne. I must say that after Sydney, Melbourne initially seemed slow, with less to do and perhaps less charm and excitement - oh dear, how wrong we were again! The city was just such a grower, as on departure we both considered Melbourne to be the most chilled out big city we'd ever been too, with awesome culture and arts, excellent eateries and some cool outer areas. Oh I want to go back!!

We started our time in Melbourne by getting a pie and exploring the local market. Yeah real exciting. The next day was even better as we had lots of chores to do - book accomodation in Christchurch, book NZ bus travel, post stuff home etc - still in between we got a curry, which now seems an odd choice since it was 37C outside!

It wasn't until sunday that we really got into Melbourne as we headed to the really interesting shrine of remembrance, which was a fascinating buiding with excellent views over the city, also interesting to read about the contribution of ANZAC troops in a variety of wars. We follwed this with a walk through the botanical gardens, which were cool, but we didn't have time to sleep in them which was disappointing. To be fair this was all in order to take us to the mighty MCG where we were headed to watch an inter-state twenty20 match. On our way we passed the Rod Laver arena where the Melbourne Open is held, and I once again cursed our original plans which meant we missed this tournament by only three days. We did manage to see some players I didn't recognise warming up for it though which numbed the pain ever so slightly.

When we arrived at the ground, we were told that tickets were very reasonable at $10, but if we had a train, tram bus ticket it was free. Now this seemed a great enviromentally friendly sceme, but we had been too enviromentally friendly and had walked there which apparently got you no discount, and so we walked 5 mins to the nearest train st, brought a $3 ticket and went back and got in for free. It's a funny world. Getting in early was good as it meant we got to see a womens twenty20 match, however the match was disappointingly one sided. I liked the MCG the moment I got inside, for one its nicknamed the 'peoples stadium', instead of the 'telstra.....' (arena/bowl/wtc) like all other stadia in Australia. Outside there were statues of great cricketers, AFL players and Rugby stars, whilst inside pictures of great moments at the stadium adorned the walls. Thankfully there wasn't one of Steve Harmison's first ball of the 2006/07 Ashes. The stadium itself is massive, and quite unlike any other cricket stadiums I've ever been to, with three massive tiers. For this game only the bottom tier was open, but I let my imagination wander to what the stadium would be like full with 100,000, pretty sweet I imagine. Nikki of course was well up for it, being a new cricket devotee, and hoping to see a bunch more sixes in the blink and you'll miss it form of the game.

In the end the mens match was a bit of a one sided anticlimax as well, despite the other Hussey's best attempts to get New South Wales back in the game. I think it was especially low key as all the Aussies were focussed on the closing stages of the national teams dramatic victory over India, shown on the screens at the back - oh how they celebrated when Clarke took three wickets, at which point I think I gave myself away as a pommie as I decided against joining in with the celebrations. Still it was great to see a game at this cricketing mecca, and afterwards we headed into the centre for a few beers with Pritti, Ellen and some other girl who I don't really know. It was good, especially as you can comfortably be sitting outside at 1am in sandals, t-shirt and shorts. We left the pub late so that we wouldn't have long to wait before they showed the Arsenal vs Burnley match live in the hostel - by the end my eyes were three quarters closed. Obviously due to the tiredness, it's a long time since Arsenal sent me to sleep!

And so the day came that we'd been salivating for since the start of the trip, and I'm sure you've been dying to hear about...we went on the neighbours tour. I know take a breath, have a sip of tea and prepare to be fascinated! We met our tour bus at the neighbours centre in the middle of town, which naturally had 'Neighbours', and 'Ramsey Street' on the side in big letters. The bus was filled with both the young, very young, mentally young, mostly Brits, though there was a few Aussies. On the bus they played old episodes, including the very first episode which was terrible, some might argue nothing changed... What was interesting about the tour was seeing the miles and miles the Melbounre suburbs span for - no wonder there's no one in the centre, they're all out here in suburbia! Our first stop was the school they use as Erinsborough high in the show. Its a real school and everything, and kinda looked like it does in the show. We got a pic with the fake sign outside. Then we moved onto the place we had been dreaming about in our minds...Ramsey street itself! For those of you heading to Melbourne the street is actually called 'Pin Oak Court' but for millions more its Ramsey street. My first impression was that its a whole lot smaller than it looks on screen, apparently they film scenes with them walking along the street in slow motion so it looks like its longer than it is... Anyway it was fun to be there, stand outside Susan and Karl's house and be in the place where so many TV moments have happened. I do wonder what it like for the people who actually live in the houses however, having people coming round every day to stand outside their houses and looking through their windows, still I suppose they knew what they were signing up for.

After this, we went to the studio, well they only let you into a bit of the outside studio, where you can see 'Grease Monkeys', the mechanics and the famous bus stop where people always leave Erinsborough from. We got a peek through at Lassiters but sadly that's not part of the tour. Finally the tour ends with a star (I think neighbours are using the term star here a bit losely) meeting, our bus was lucky enough to meet the lovely Janelle (why couldn't it have been Libby, Susan, Karl, Harold or Janea...?), who was very nice, signed pics, had pics taken with people and answered my questions about the stupidities of Neighbours. It was quite sad though as she'd quite clearly love to still be in the show. However this wasn't our first meeting with Janelle, oh no, we had also met her the night before at the "Neighbours Night'!!!

Which to be honest with you I didn't like as much. It was fun and all, mainly because I was with Nikki and Pritti and they both rocked!! We had lots of fun and stupid dancing, but sadly there was too many stupidly loud British travelers with the grace of a bulldoser. I'm not one for looking down on people but really if they wanted to just get pissed, watch neighbours, and act like idiots for their entire trip they should have done the decent thing and stayed at home, or gone to Faliraki or somewhere where they expect that kind of thing. Sorry rant over. Its just a little TOO tacky in some of these Australian backpacker places, lowest common denomenator stuff. Anywho, at the night we met 4 stars - Mal (who the girls all swooped for), Dylan (who was the same person in real life as on screen), and Steve who seemed to normal to be on TV, nice bloke though.

On our way home we had a fantastic round about chat with our Oriental cab driver about the Australian class system. He expressed that what appealed to him so much about Australia was that it wasn't riddled with class divisions, like say England can seem, and that anyone could have a good life and be treated the same irrespective of there social standing. What mattered yo him was coming together with your 'neighbours' at weekends and having a beer - where everyone was equal. In some respects I found myself agreeing with him, although I have no concrete knowledge of the issue, it did appear to me that as travelers we weren't stigmatised as backpackers as you are in some places, and stick out, we we're just people, not judged by how much money we would bring, but by our personalities, and how much we brought to there community in that respect. Without wanting to get too deep, I did find that appealing - there didn't seem to be too many restaurants/shops just for those with money, even with our limited funds I felt we could eat, drink and sleep in good quality. As I might have said before as well, the Australians (an later as I would find out, the Kiwi's) love of the outdoors, and their beautiful countries for me boosts their quality of life no end.

Before the neighbours night we went to St Kilda, a beach front area ten minutes from the city centre, which has some of the most enticicing cake shops you could ever imagine. Being an easily inticable individual (I would never have survived in the garden of eden) we ventured inside to find sin much more fun than penance, as our tummy's were to delicious cakes and chocolate drinks. Whilst in St Kilda we also visited 'The Esky', which is a really famous (in these parts), and very cool, gig venue. Sadly there weren't any appealing gigs on whilst we were there but the bar was well worth a visit. Otherwise we just took a stroll along the beach, and through 'Luna' fun fair. The sun shined, it was a nice day.

To totally confuse the order of this blog, and the order of things in your mind, after the neighbours tour we went to see the indie-rock band Kings of Leon at Festival hall. Now tickets for this gig were like gold dust and I had been trying to get them for a month with no luck. However on the day of the gig we were sitting in an internet cafe when over the radio I overheard they had just released an extra 20 tickets and they were available now - so on to ticktex I went and Nelson's your uncle! Fate, or perhaps just really good luck. Anyway the gig was excellent, and unlike in London it wasn't sold out so that every square inch of floor is filled with 5 people, so there was space to move and get to the front if you wanted to and get squashed there. Also the standing area (where we were) was no alcohol so there were no drunk morons which was nice. KOL themselves were on fire, especially with 'Charmer', pretty much my favourite song of last year. Great stuff. On the way back we got chatting to some guy from Chicago about Batman (as Melbourne has a batman park with me and Nikki thought was cool, sadly the park didn't much live up to its name though).

We took it a bit easier the following couple of days, partly due to the 40C heat. On Wednesday we headed to the ACMI movie museum, where we played lots of unique fun independent video game, and then went to the bohemian 'Brunswick street' which was a smashing alternative area with lots of wierd shops, people and food eating places. We settled on an Afgan restaurant where Nikki, Pritti, Dutch Ellen and me enjoyed some very spicy Afgan food and a couple of bottles of wine. Then we went to a bar right on the river with lovely views of Melbourne. Our final forray in Melbourne started with another early morning Arsenal game which preceded a visit to the Melbourne museum, in which we spent about three hours in one very interesting exhibit about humans. After this we decided we needed to get out of the heat and sit down, so we went to the pictures and saw Will Smith in "I am Legend' which proved a perfectly acceptable way to spend a couple of hours. After the cinema we got an indian in the Casino foodcourt, and then went to an check out the excellent cultural free events they stage in Federation Square. Here we enjoyed an amazing glass percussion show inside the square's glass structure, and then checked out the wall of books.

That was what we did. Here's what I thought of the place....

Well I just really loved every minute of my time in Melbourne. It simply has to be one of the world's coolest, most hassle free, culturally excellent, random (tons of wierd schulptures all over the city) laid back, uncrowded, well designed (if perhaps lacking a spectacular skyline or iconic building) city in the world. I'm sure its immensely liveable in and a real treat to visit. The people are great too, friendly with little arrogance or pretention, happy people. In the end King's of Leon sung 'Charmer' pretty much summed it up.

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Photos

I think this is a shoe in for best picture of the trip
Go Nikki go!!!

Nikki at the bus stop of shame
After shooting her husband, sleeping with the 64 year old next door, and conspiring with werewolves Nikki was forced to leave Ramsey St.

Grease Monkeys
Like the acting, the burgers were a bit wooden

Federation sq
Melbourne's wonderful cultural centre

Comments

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waayyoow
she stole my karma oh no