Hi everyone,
We’ve had a great week in mellow Melbourne, home of Australian cricket, tennis, trams and of course, Madge and wobbly Harold W. Bishop* from neighbours.
*** Special bonus fact #1 – Harold Bishop’s middle name was Wayne – who’d have thunk it?***
We’ve been staying with our friends Martin and Nicola, who are living and working out here at the moment and have very generously allowed us to stay for a week, eat their food, use their stuff and generally put our grubby things all over their nice smart house. We’ve offered to return the favour next time they fancy a trip to Stoke Newington, but we fancy they might not take us up for a while!
Melbourne is a great city, and one that really grows on you. It's smaller and more laid back than Sydney, so there aren’t so many ‘sights’ you have to see, but it’s fun just to wander around browsing the shops, drinking coffee (they reckon they’ve got the best cafes in the world here…) and enjoying the laid-back lifestyle.
Cafes and cakes
‘Fed’(eration) Square is the heart of the city. It’s not so much a square as a collection of modern buildings housing exhibitions, restaurants etc. and an outdoor area where people get together to watch sport, performances or TV shows on a massive screen.
So first off we found ourselves a sunny corner, ordered a pizza and watched an episode of Ready Steady Cook as the office workers busied about around us. It was a bit like being back at university really! They seem to love UK cooking shows here – particularly Gordon Ramsay’s (for a country already not averse to using the F word, this seems a slightly dangerous thing!)
After a couple of days in town, we felt like getting out and about and hired a car so we could go exploring. On Thursday we had a lovely day driving out east through the Yarra Valley and Dandenong mountains. The valley is famous for its wineries – so obviously we stopped at a couple for coffee and cakes in the sun, and a look at their cows! Strangely, we didn’t see any vines though. This, together with the high prices have left us with the sneaking suspicion that they import their wine from France and re-package it!
Anyhow, it was a really beautiful drive through farmland and forest, and we also managed to stop for a couple of lovely walks to see waterfalls and spot wildlife – kookaburras, red parrots and a lyrebird
Shaky video clips for bird fans here:-
Kookaburra: http://www.youtube.com/v/9PCXVYtMr5Y
Lyrebird: http://www.youtube.com/v/2VgeUHYNfCo
Martin and Nicola took Friday off work, so the four of us set out to drive the Great Ocean Road – a road built in the 1920s, apparently with a view to rival the Pacific Highway in California.
It’s a fantastic drive along the coast, which takes you past bays and blowholes, and the Twelve Apostles – rocky outcrops which have been cut off from the mainland by wave erosion. You can really see how when even on the relatively mild day that we visited, the waves really smash in dramatically.
There are also stories of some of the 180 ships that were wrecked along this stretch of coast, many of which had made their way all the way from Europe, making it especially poignant and sad that they got so far only to be wrecked at the very last stretch.
We drove a couple of hundred kilometres stretch of the road, breaking the trip with an overnight stop so that we could take it easy and appreciate the scenery. And the beer of course. And yet more fish and chips!
*** Special bonus fact #2 – the children’s TV show ‘Round The Twist’ was filmed at the Split Point lighthouse on the Great Ocean Road (“have you ever. Ever felt like this?.” – anyone remember it?!)***
Back in the city, they have an international Comedy Festival on here during April, so we got ourselves some tickets to see the Best of the Edinburgh Festival on Saturday night, which was, as you would expect, a good laugh with acts from London and Boston as well as Australia.
The tram journey back to St Kilda afterwards was also quite ‘entertaining’, as we were sat next to a tweed-clad chap who seemed to be impersonating Leslie Phillips (complete with ‘well, helloooo’), a particularly creepy serial killer type who was even paler than Phil (!), carrying a tool kit and sniffing a little too much for comfort, and a bunch of rowdy lads who seemed intent on beating someone up, but seemed disappointingly oblivious to the crazy gang sitting next to us! Sarah had a strange dream that night featuring Hannibal Lector in ‘Carry on Tramming’ and we were relieved to wake up in the morning with all of our limbs still intact!
Melbourne is Australia’s sporting capital, so naturally yesterday was Sport Sunday – starting at 2am for Phil, who got up to watch the Newcastle-Portsmouth 0-0 thriller (!). Then after a morning walk down the beachfront in St Kilda (the ‘sport’ continued in the form of us watching joggers while eating more cakes), we made our way to the MCG – home of Aussie rules football – for a clash between two Melbourne teams – Carlton and Collingwood.
It was a great match with 78,000 fans and plenty of action to keep us entertained through the four quarters of play. We counted at least 18 players per side on the ginormous pitch, as well as six referees, on-pitch coaches, physios and girls running on with drinks. It is basically organised chaos, and there’s so much going on that the referees don’t even seem to notice the fights that regularly break out between players during the match (one mass brawl caught on video - http://www.youtube.com/v/dKquG6YUrI8)... very entertaining!
We had decided to support the favourites - the Collingwood 'Magpies' (they were in Newcastle-style black and white stripes) - but the underdogs, Carlton won through in an excitingly close match that ended 111-88. Sarah and Nicola declared themselves firm fans of this game - a decision that had nothing to do with the skimpiness of the players shorts. At all.
Later on there were English Premier League re-runs and the London marathon to catch up on, before we fell into bed, exhausted.
We’ve a last day in Melbourne today before catching the night train back to Sydney tonight. It’ll be our third spell in Sydney and we have a couple of days staying in Glebe, so we’re hoping to revisit a few of our favourite places before flying to New Zealand on Thursday (armed with the copious notes that Sarah’s Mum and Dad have been emailing through as they make their way around the South Island – very handy!)
Hope all’s well with you all at home. Lots of love,
Sarah and Phil x x
