Old friends on the other side of the World

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We'd heard a lot from various people we know about Melbourne being a "great place to live in", a "working city" or "a place you either love or hate", so we had high hopes for our visit.

We were going to stay with some friends from London who'd recently moved out there so thankfully no hostels!

First impressions were good - the city has a quite comfortable feel to it for someone from Ireland or Britain..despite the excellent public transport and decent weather. It feels like a UK city should had they had the chance to start again and do things right. We went for lunch in the Brunswick Street area near where our friends live...sitting outside in the middle of winter in a place which, by Aussie standards, is cold was a nice welcome to the place. This part of town reminded me of the better bits of Camden in London mixed with the Upper West Side of New York - full of alternative clothing stores, independent music shops and trendy pubs 'n' restaurants. The people here 'know' they're beautiful, if you know what I mean.


24 hours and a big hangover later, we did a bit of exploring round town on foot - this is a nice place to wander around - before heading along to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) to experience an AFL game. Aussie Rules is something of a man's game...kind of rough gaelic football on a cricket field played with a rugby ball of sorts. Thoroughly entertaining, despite being blinded by the sun for much of the game.



A separate blog entry covers our 5 day excursion to Tassie to visit some friends we met in Bolivia. All I can say is that Tasmania is just like Ireland or Scotland but with all the ridiculous animals you'd expect to find in Australia!

On our return to Melbourne, we borrowed a car and did a crazy day trip along the Great Ocean Road to see the scenery, and in particular what's left of the Twelve Apostles - a spectacular set of crumbling sandstone columns in the surf. I say crazy because the drive there was 4 hours from Melbourne and we had to come back that same day...with one driver (time to learn, Laura) it was a bit of a strain. The Apostles were probably just about worth the effort...I got a few great photos despite forgetting to reset the ISO settings on the camera from 1600, and got to see some lovely scenery along the famously winding coast road from Geelong (Torquay really). I even managed to obey the signs every few miles reminding me that "in Australia" they "drive on the LEFT" (!)

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