Am I really in Australia?
You know that image you have in your head of Australia? Yeah, you know, the one with a blazing sun, vast open spaces covered in scorched red earth and filled with kangaroos? Yeah, well it’s not like that everywhere (the country is SO vast!) and it’s certainly NOT like that in winter.
It was 1pm and we were on our second flight of the day. As we approached our final descent into Melbourne flight attendant cheerily announced that it was a freezing 9 degrees outside. It was the middle of the day and an ungodly 9 degrees! Matt and I starred at each other in shock. We’d just come from a frazzling, flip flop wearing, sun cream lathering, sweaty 49 degrees in Hong Kong, and now we’d arrived to this. Now, I’m no medical expert but I was almost positive that a sudden drop in temperature like that could be fatal. Well, I say sudden; it had been 14 hours since we’d last experienced that kind of temperature but had since then been cocooned in a 20 something degree recycled aeroplane air and blankets. This was going to be a pretty nasty shock. As soon as we collected our bags then, we rushed immediately to the airport toilets to change… into literally EVERYTHING that we had. I was now wearing pretty much ALL my clothes, and I still felt a chill.
It must be stressed, therefore, that when travelling from Northern-Southern hemisphere from our summer, to their winter that two drastically different wardrobes are required. In Vietnam we had moaned ceaselessly about the unrelenting heat and humidity and how much we longed to go to somewhere cooler, and now, barely five minutes after accomplishing such an ambition, we were already regretting it! ‘Where’s that genie… bring him back! I’ve changed my mind!’…
Melbourne, it has to be said, did not strike me as Australian. In fact, I had considerable trouble remembering where I was for the first few days. To me, it seemed more like America or Canada than Oz. At least the Oz I had had in mind. The streets were arranged in blocks and lined with trees, the yellow taxis were reminiscent of the NY style cabs, there were wide expanses of parkland and super tall buildings everywhere and the whole place had a kind of Manhattan in a movie set kind of feel. As we walked the streets it looked like autumn but felt, thanks to a particularly nippy wind, like winter.
Aside from the cold, however, I was loving being in Oz; loving being in an english speaking environment again. Whilst miscommunication in other languages can be entertaining, and learning a new language rewarding it is always nice to able to converse with utter ease in your own language, and to understand and be understood be everyone.
After a few days spent video editing, chatting with locals and banishing our jet lag, we wandered out onto the streets to get a feel for the place. To me, Melbourne seemed like the kind of place where you didn’t need to actually do much to have a good time. Or maybe I should rephrase that. You didn’t need to SPEND much.
We first hopped on the free tram service which forms a handy frame around the centre of the city and hopped off wherever took our fancy. Our first stop was to sample the delights of Victoria Market – a market that’s been around since 1878. (Market open every day apart from Mondays and Wednesdays) It was here you could peruse through aisles and aisles of the most bizarre and interesting arranged stuff. Amongst the delights the market had to offer were the following gems: gigantic furry caterpillars, the kind normally seen in IKEA-esque places, Oz inspired beer coolers,didgeridoos, crocodile Dundee style hats (as modelled in one of the pics!), magnetic wine racks, socks with Che Guevara on them and some truly hideous jumpers. Nothing in the end took our fancy (although I was quite tempted by the novelty of having a South American revolutionary on my socks!) so we moved on to kick leaves in the park and make our way to the Melbourne Museum, which was showing an exhibition of artefacts found from the wreck of the Titanic. The exhibition wasn’t free but the museum itself was for those with valid student cards. (Remember to bring them though. No amount of persuasion works!)
After that we wandered through colourfully graffitied streets to get to Brunswick Street, where we’d be told by the lovely people at STA Australia, was the place to go. At first it didn’t start out as the world’s most promising street but further up it turned into an ecliptic mix of funky boutiques, trendy cafes and bars, vintage shops and restaurants selling international cuisine. Melbourne has the highest Greek population outside Greece and Cyprus so it was unsurprising to find so many Greek style places, what was more startling, however, was the number of Vietnamese restaurants. Here we were having left the country barely a week ago and having travelled thousands of miles away and we were met with dozens of places selling Vietnamese food. We’d been recommended Brunswick Street, especially for a place called Bimbos- a place famous for its AU$4 pizzas. Look out for the giant baby we’d been told. As in turned out, the baby wasn’t as gigantic or as prominent as had been made out. Still, inside the place looked good, and the pizzas we even better.
After hopping back on the tram, we checked out Federation Square – the place to be to watch the world cup apparently. There wasn’t a match on when we went, and as such the place failed to impress, although I can imagine that were we there for a game, it would be pretty awesome.
On from Federation Square we took the tram, past a sculpture of a cow in a tree, to Melbourne Jail – the place where the notorious criminal Ned Kelly finally met his maker. It was closing as we arrived, so we didn’t unfortunately get the chance to go in, but the ghost tour looked interesting and the whole place serves as a good reminder of the country’s unorthodox beginnings.
In the evening we headed up, courtesy of STA Australia, (normal student price AU$18) to the top of the Eureka tower to see some amazing views of the city. All in all, a good day, and a relatively cheap one.
In my opinion, Melbourne gets the thumbs up. Visit it if you can, just remember to bring lots of layers!