Advertisement
Published: October 6th 2007
Melbourne highrise
City of Melbourne as seen from across Yarra River.After backpacking and moving to one new place to the next for almost a month now, I started to understand the importance of having a home base. A place where you feel belong, a place where your heart is. Thus in my case, I am becoming an unofficial bum in Australia, of which I can’t complain much anyway. Homesick started to hit me pretty hard, and I came to a realization that as much as it sounds fun and exciting, traveling can also become a difficult adjustment with no sense of security.
It was quite depressing to bid a ‘goodbye’ to travel buddy Ryan at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith International Airport, and I was forced to prolong my stay in Australia for another week. On a brighter note, the unexpected stay brought me to Melbourne, the second biggest city in Australia to visit my high school mate Fika, who happens to live in the city of which all Sydney residents cringe from the name of it.
Melbourne has been an archrival of Sydney since day one in almost all aspects, and due to long debate of both cities of
Twelve Apostles
The world known ocean rock formation along Great Ocean Road. Notice the hazy day due to high intensity of wind blowing, carrying droplets of water across the land. not allowing the rival to become the nation capital, the Australian government decided to move the governmental seat from Melbourne (which was the biggest city in Australia then) to newly born city of Canberra which is located strategically in between the two. It sounds extremely serious, and I am longing to experience the difference between the two.
Thursday, September 27th, 2007 - Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Arriving in Melbourne's Southern Cross train/coach station at seven in the morning after a 12 hour overnight coach ride from Sydney, I went directly to Fika's tiny apartment in suburb Glenhuntly, which will be my base home during my stay in State of Victoria.
It was quite a change from a sunny warm Sydney, to cold gray Melbourne. Misguided by the weather, I left all my warm clothes in Sydney, so I had to bear with my only long sleeve shirt and several layers of t-shirts. So I started cold in Little Bourke's Chinatown in CBD for barbeque pork with egg chiffon breakfast, which turned out to be an excellent meal.
Melbourne is beautiful. It has been an archrival of Sydney, and quite frankly, both cities are special for its
Right turn from left only signage
Only in Melbourne. It caters the needs of tramway line along some busy roads in the city center. own reason. Melbourne is charming and quaint, many beautifully preserved Victorian architecture is still operating, and newly built sophisticated glass and metal towers are built in between them.
Melbourne is one of a few cities in the world that still depends on street trams on its busy streets. I had an opportunity to ride one to get to the worldly famous Melbourne Royal Botanic Garden, located in south of the city center. The garden itself is an excellent collection of plants from all over the world, an almost impossible collection to achieve nowadays due to modern strict quarantine measurement taken from Australia. I spent a good half day in the region, starting from the Victoria War Memorial and ending up around the garden, strolling in the beautiful paths surrounded by exotic plants.
Friday, September 28th, 2007 - Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia As originally had agreed on, I started the day at St. Peter's Anglican Cathedral next to Federation Square in central Melbourne for a pick up at seven in the morning. I signed up for the Great Ocean Road daytrip excursion from EcoTour Wild Wombat Escapes, which is an excellent tour group to join. There
Flinders Street station
One of Melbourne's prettiest architectural points of interest. were only four of us doing the tour today: Alyssea from Milan and Sandra/Caroline from Dublin. Owner and tour guide Chris did a wonderful job to keep us informed and entertained.
Unfortunately today wasn't a typical enjoyable day to sightseeing, as gray cold Victoria has proven to be a place where you can experience all four seasons in a day. Starting with a sunny day, it turned to windy, hail, rain, and back to sunny within a couple of hours. We even built a snowman (well close to an iceman) where we were stopping for a break at Lavers Hill.
The Great Ocean Road itself was breathtaking. Winding road was built next to the ocean, curving its way around hills and valleys while wild ocean were licking from down below. The whole section is a surfer's dream vacation place, with rough waves and easy access to surf. Torquay is the world's destination for surfing, in fact, we saw several surfers on action here.
World famous Kelly Slater has visited Torquay, too.
Many of interesting ocean sculptured limestone monuments are left behind by nature along the coast, including famous Twelve Apostles (of which one of them has
Snowman at Lavers Hill
Everybody says that you can experience all four seasons in one day in Victoria. Here is the proof of our winter experience in the Great Ocean Road. collapsed in 2005), Loch Ard, and another London Bridge that was collapsed in 1990. Apart from nature's best art display, we also had some wildlife sighting encounters, including some koalas, kangaroos and a echidna. It was very defining moment to spot them in the wild.
Saturday, September 29th, 2007 - Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Fika and Arif decided to take me around the Mornington Peninsula for a drive around Melbourne. It was interesting to observe what most international tourists would not see, including some colorful beach houses and local bar.
Back to Melbourne city center, we went to Eureka Tower, which was completed this year as Australia's tallest building. It also claims to be the tallest residential tower in the world, with gold plated windows on the top of the tower. From above, we witnessed the ongoing Australian rugby finals between Geelong Cats and Port Adelaide, at the nearby Melbourne Cricket Ground. Interestingly, the opposite Federation Square had a social gathering in front of big screen showing the game. Today, the whole country laid its eyes to Melbourne for the finals.
Sunday, September 30th, 2007 - Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Darling, it has been a pleasure
- Edna Mode from
Streetscar
Melbourne is one of few cities in the world which still allowing trams running along its busy roads. The Incredibles (2004)
Not surprisingly, my last day in Melbourne started with some low clouds hanging over the sky, just like the past couple of days in State of Victoria. After attending the morning mass at Fika’s church of St. Francis in Melbourne CBD (City Business District - the downtown), we headed back to the controversial Federation Square to check out the Pixar’s ’20 Years of Animation’ - a limited exhibition that highlights the successful company which produced some of the most memorable animation movies in the market, including Toy Story 1 and 2 (1995, 1999), A Bug’s Life (1998), Monsters Inc (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), the Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006) and the most recent Ratatouille (2007), to name a few. It was certainly an interesting exhibition, as there were plethora colorful sketches and intricate models that occupied visitors’ attention to wonder about the exhibition for a couple of hours.
What an interesting museum, I thought, as I look at the bolding title of the hosting museum for Pixar’s exhibition. It read, “Australian Centre for the Moving Image - ACMI”.
Based on standard living, cultural and climate, Melbourne is ranked as the most livable city in the
Bells Beach
A famous beach for world's greatest surfers, including Kelly Slater, located in Torquay at the Great Ocean Road. world, according to ‘The Economist’ in 2004. We were wondering around Melbourne CBD for the rest of the day, and surely Melbourne is a city to be. Several other places we managed to check out - the Victoria Market (an alternative and cheap way to find Australian souvenirs), the Victoria State Library with an interesting Karin Catt’s Portraits FAMOUS exhibition (and Fika’s favorite LaTrobe reading room, where she spent hours of studying per day during her uni days), the obligatory Hard Rock Café Melbourne, and lastly dark stoned St. Peter’s Catholic Cathedral (impressive structure with intricate trumpet organ, series of chapels and wood carvings).
I started to wonder how it would feel like to be a resident of Melbourne.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.512s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 26; qc: 130; dbt: 0.2741s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.5mb
FJ
non-member comment
its not
RUGBY! we play aussie rules football in Melbourne, not that northern rugby rubbish