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Published: February 18th 2011
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Hmmm... where to start with Melbourne?
We lived here for just short of 8 months – from 21st Jan 2010 to August. I loved this city, everyday I spent here was exciting, so many things going on, so much to explore and I met so many cool and interesting people. The city itself was much bigger than I was expecting, much more hip and much more expensive. It has lots of history and one of the best museums I've ever visited. It has a huge market in the CBD (Victoria Market), a massive over the top casino / restaurant / hotel / cinema shopping complex right on the Yarra river, and the skyline is awesome and includes the tallest building in Australia. Coffee is taken very seriously and is always excellent, the bars are varied though expensive and the restaurants have food from all around the world - though Asian is probably in the majority (depending where in the city you are).
We spent the first few summer months in St Kilda, a cool seaside suburb of Melbourne. We stayed in a hostel called Home Travelers Motel (HTM), we met some really good people here from all around the
world and we hung out with a big group of friends - these summer months were all about partying. It was hot every day, and our days revolved around playing football or Frisbee on St Kilda beach or the neighbouring Botanical Gardens, or just hanging outside at the hostel and playing table tennis. Late afternoon we would usually a few beers (Tecate, $32 a slab of 24) or some cheap wine (goon) then play drinking games then sometimes go to a bar or club in St Kilda or just back down to the beach. If we left St Kilda we went to Chapel Street to check out the shops and bars, or the CBD. The only way to get around was on the tram and we usually risked it without a ticket. Everyday day was a laugh - I wish I took more photos during these few months but I was too busy having fun to get my camera out my bag - there are a lot of pics tagged on Facebook. Melbourne flooded one Saturday in March and there were hail stones the size of golf balls. I was in the National Art Gallery and we got evacuated. All
trams to St Kilda were cancelled and the roads were flooded so we walked the 5k's home, I was wading for large parts of it!
Eventually money ran short and I got a bar job at the start of March which turned out to be brilliant. I was doing close to 50 hours a week and was the barman at a bar restaurant in the CBD which serves excellent local seafood and tapas / Mediterranean style food, great coffee, Aussie wines and lots of beers / cocktails. It's in Melbourne's equivalent to 'the city' meaning we were closed at the weekend as the majority of the clientèle are business people. Phil started doing the glasses their on our busy Friday nights too. It was pretty chilled, the guys who run the place are very sound and let me Phil drink what we want – which me and Phil took full advantage of - I ate for free too. I uploaded a lot of my music onto there computer which we played continuously, plenty of bluesy rock / blues / soul / jazz / acid jazz for the daytime and for the evening anything upbeat but mainly funk / reggae
style / trip-hop. Friday nights electro / a bit of old vocal house / nice d'n'b and some select hip hop... We had some pretty serious after work drinking sessions, the owners like a drink and the parties go all night... We often locked the doors at 1am on a Friday and crank the tunes up, then normally roll out a good few hours later. Good times! I made some great friends here including the owners, and the free food and drink saved me a fortune. Laura arrived in April and it was amazing to be with her again, I hadn't seen her since November.
Phil and I went to the Australian open and saw Cilic beat Warwinka, and we all went to the Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park – both awesome events. I went to a couple Aussie rules footy games at the Etihad, both St Kilda Saints games. We did two road trips, the first was for 3 days to the Great Ocean Road with our friend Jimbo. This was awesome; we went to the famous surf spot Bells Beach, the lighthouse from 'Round The Twist', the Twelve Apostles which are huge stacks in the sea
and we had our first encounters with wild koalas and kangaroos. We came back via the amazing Grampians mountains and did a couple of walks there. I have blogged the second road trip to Wilsons Prom separately (see July 22nd)
We moved from St Kilda to Brunswick in May, now well into Autumn. We still had bright blue skies, the sun was still warm but the wind was cooler and the trees were shedding their leaves (except the palms!). Brunswick is close to the centre but with its own thing going on – its a bit of a hobo hangout with independent shops, bars and coffee shops. We lived above a pub called the Victoria Hotel. Rent was much cheaper than St Kilda and Lor and I had our own room with a high ceiling, a wooden floor and a comfy bed. The pub downstairs was different, pretty ramshackle and retro with lots of random furniture, ping-pong table, pool table, pinball, jukebox. They played good music and sometimes could be heard kicking out some decent hip-hop. I'd like to have spent more time down there but beer was expensive in Melbourne pubs – standard $7-8 a pint sometimes more,
ave $1.65 to the pound, you do the maths!
I got a bike from a Finnish guy for $50 which proved to be a money saver – I regularly rode to work and back (except Fridays) which saved on tram fare. I also joined Brunswick library which meant I could borrow up to 30 books / CD's / DVD's at a time. This period was all about putting some serious cash away in order to buy a car and go on tour. Lor was waitressing, then sorted out some supply teaching and earned some good wonga. Phil did IT call-out work for Dell and did Friday nights on the glasses at the bar, until he got a full time at a timber yard for the last month from one of the Irish lads we lived with. Eventually by July we got enough money together to buy a car and we began planning our trip around Australia. It was around this time I also heard Nic was expecting– brilliant news. We planned to leave at the start of August, and now we have a new travelling companion – Martiel, a French waiter from the bar.
Goodbye Melbourne – I
will miss you!
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