A Tiny Taste of Melbourne

I was lucky enough to see two of the three largest cities in Australia in my first two weeks in the country. However, I didn't get to continue this trend; I spent the next four months in Brisbane, rather than traveling from city to city. I didn't mind this, since I loved the city of Brisbane, but I absolutely did not want to leave Australia without seeing its second largest city, Melbourne, especially since it was a city I considered studying in for so long. I only had two problems with making the trip down to Victoria: time, and money (relatively unimportant things, I know). Time was an issue because my flight was booked for the day after finals officially ended, and money was an issue because I'd managed to spend most of mine going on trips to sand islands, beaches, and my Easter break trip to New Zealand.

Fortunately, a few things happened that allowed me to buy my Virgin Blue ticket down to Melbourne. I met James, and since I wasn't sure when I'd get to see him again, I managed to push back my flight home by a week (which cost only at the Qantas office on Adelaide St). Also, Rove McManus, of channel Ten's "Rove Live," announced a stand-up tour. My friends and I were huge fans of his late-night comedy, and had been extremely sad earlier in the semester when we found out that, to get tickets to his show, you had to enter a drawing months before the season started; so, when he announced his tour, we vowed to see a show. Then we found out that, unfortunately because of show obligations, he wouldn't be making his way up to Brisbane until September, well after we left. However, his Melbourne shows were on a perfectly timed weekend, a week before I left the country.

Planning the trip was made easier by my kind friend, whom I had met some years prior, who lived in Melbourne and had been asking me to come visit for my entire stay in Australia. She put me up for the weekend and helped me to plan my short (slightly less than three day long) stay.

Quick Tips:

Although Melbourne is a fun, cosmopolitan city that has plenty of parks, tourist attractions, restaurants, bars, and clubs, I wouldn't recommend spending your entire trip to Victoria here. There are plenty attractions outside the city limits that are worth seeing, many of which I unfortunately missed (oh well, that means I need to go back, right?!).

I've described the Great Ocean Road in my "Wandering Australia's Great Ocean Road" journal. This trip, which takes you past Torquay and Bell's Beach, Victoria's famed beaches and home to surfing gear giants like Billabong, and down the magnificent Great Ocean Road to Port Campbell and the Twelve Apostles, is the most popular day trip from Melbourne (although you can go on two- and three-day trips as well). My twelve-hour trip took us to numerous beaches, into a forest of eucalyptus trees filled with koalas, and into a rainforest.

Other day trips include Phillip's Island, which is well-known for the parade of tiny southern penguins on its beaches, and Bendigo, a gold-mining town to the northwest of Melbourne.

Best Way To Get Around:

The most comprehensive and novel form of transportation in Melbourne is the Tram. The rails of the third-largest tram network in the world run down every major street in Melbourne's CBD and surroundings. To catch one, just jump onto the platform in the middle of the road (being mindful of cars and oncoming trams, of course) and hop on the next tram. You don't have to worry about buying a ticket beforehand - the ticket machines are actually on the tram itself. Tickets bought on the tram (Metcards) are also valid for Melbourne metropolitan buses and trains. These tickets are bought by zone and can be bought in either 2-hour, daily, off-peak daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly increments. There are also special concessions for those only traveling in the "city-saver" region and those that are either students or seniors.

The two main train stations in Melbourne are Flinders St Station, which is an ornate building across from Federation Square and sitting on the banks of the Yarra, and Southern Cross Station (previously Spencer St. Station). Southern Cross has just recently been remodeled and has quite a different look from any station I have ever been in, including an undulating roof that skateboarders all over Victoria would die to have a skate on.

Melbourne's Skybus runs from Southern Cross Station to Tullamarine, the main international airport (Avalon, serviced by Jetstar, is a much longer ride away). The ride takes twenty minutes and offers stops at both domestic (for Qantas and Virgin Blue) and international terminals. A ticket costs one-way or round trip and buses leave Southern Cross every ten to fifteen minutes.

If you are from another country and just learning how to drive on the left side of the road, Melbourne is not the place to start. The most bizarre thing about driving here - which I experienced a couple times - is the "hook turn". Because of the trams, which take up the right-most lane on most roads, if you want to make a left turn, you have to pull over to the left-hand side of the road, wait until all traffic has cleared, and then cross all lanes at once. Yes, it is as crazy as it sounds!

The one place that my host in Melbourne refused to let me miss was Federation Square. One of the most controversial buildings in Melbourne, Federation Square was apparently built as a tribute to Australia's centennial year. It is definitely an odd-looking building, seemingly created from a bunch of odd shapes in gray and beige tones. I was told that the main plaza, in which I spent the most time, is designed to look somewhat like a desert, although it is not nearly red enough to be any desert in Australia. I could see why so many people disliked the building and thought it was a scar on the face of Melbourne, yet it was different, and interesting, so I could see why a lot of Melburnians enjoyed the new structure as well.

Getting to Federation Square is extremely easy; just across the street is the regal-looking Flinders Street station, one of the main stations in Melbourne. The roads running next to the Square all feature tramlines in their centres, although I am not sure which lines (a map of Melbourne tramlines can be found at RailPage).

I spent most of my time wandering around, but not actually going into, many of the different institutions Federation Square housed. A couple of these are the Ian Potter Centre, which I later found out is the oldest collection of Australian art in the country and holds close to 20,000 artworks, and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. There was also a market going on within the Square, which seemed to consist mostly of used books. If you get hungry, there were at least a couple dozen restaurants available to please your palate.

The part of Federation Square that I found to be the most useful was its expansive Visitor Information Centre. This was just off of the desert-themed plaza, just across from Flinders St Station, a cathedral, and Channel 7's large news ticker. On my way there, I passed a huge crowd sitting on the plaza's steps, listening to a man putting on some form of comedy show. This reminded me of Queen St in Brisbane, where entertainers often attract huge crowds as they attempt to balance themselves atop a ladder whilst juggling knives and the like.

The Visitor Information Centre doesn't warrant a huge amount of description; it had a lot of pamphlets, a lot of people full of information, and even more people frantically flipping through pamphlets and grilling people for information. As I had already planned my trip down the Great Ocean Road for the next day, I didn't have much need for pamphlets, but it was fun to look through and see what I could possibly do on my next trip to the city.

I made it back to Federation Square later in the day and used it as a starting point for my walk down the Yarra, past Birrarung Marr, to Melbourne's major sporting complexes, which is described in another entry. Overall, I rather agree with the side of Melbourne that find the structure interesting and different, and while it isn't a huge attraction that will take up large portions of your day, I think it is worth taking a look at.

Standing at Federation Square, I could see the Yarra River, a river that is nearly as polluted as the Brisbane, stretching from the CBD down past the major sporting complexes of Melbourne - the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) and Rod Laver Arena. Even though I had missed tours through both stadiums that day, I was still intrigued. I had seen Rod Laver Arena and the grounds of the Australian Open during many late nights in the middle of January, when tennis' first Grand Slam of the year is held. I wanted to see them for myself, even if the players weren't there, and as I had no other plans, I set off down the path by the river.

The path was surprisingly quiet for its proximity to central Melbourne. City sounds of trams and cars floated over now and then, but only added to the scene. To my left was one of the newest parks of Melbourne, Birrarung Marr (meaning "river mists"), which was created around the same time as Federation Square in the early 2000s.

About halfway along the trek, a mini-circus appeared on my left. I could hear plenty of happy kids and blaring circus music from inside the large white tent. I passed up on the chance to go in though, because, well, I wasn't a parent or a child.

I turned around many times as I was walking to look at the city itself, which was visible both standing regally against the horizon and perfectly reflected in the Yarra. When I did turn around and walk in the correct direction, I enjoyed being in the shade of the trees, gazing down the river, so much that I barely noticed when I reached my destination. When I finally looked to my left, I saw Rod Laver Arena looming through the trees. This arena was named after one of the greatest Australian tennis players of all time, who won 2 Grand Slams - meaning all four major tournaments in one year, not just a single major, as the term has morphed into - and would have won more, had he not turned "pro" and been excluded from the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open, all of which were only open to "amateurs" for many years in the 1960s.

When I moved away from the river and slightly uphill, I realized that I didn't know where to go. I certainly couldn't just walk into the arena, and I wasn't even sure if the grounds were open to all that wanted to come in, or just to members, or what. I realized quickly that there was not much that I could do inside anyway, and that I was content just to see the place up close. I would just have to come back in a few years' time to see the complex bustling with people, dying in the heat but thoroughly excited to be taking in such great tennis action.

The walk back was just as enjoyable as the way there. I didn't have to turn around to see the late-afternoon sunny haze envelop the city. I finally took advantage of one of the many benches next to the well-trod path and spent as much time as I could there before having to go back into Melbourne to get a ride to where I was staying.

Just like the Brisbane River, I found that the Yarra is quite a nice place to have an afternoon stroll next to - as long as there is no chance that I could fall in, since I might come out glowing green!

Regardless of the fact that we always had homework due on Wednesday that we never started until the night before, my friends and I always found ourselves in front of the TV on Tuesday nights at 9:30.

There weren't many Australia TV shows that we enjoyed; the few that made it on TV between American shows like Desperate Housewives & The OC were either soap operas or reality shows. We found it difficult to believe that people would willingly watch a show like "Neighbours" enough to keep it on air for 20 years. It was equally hard to believe that a show entitled "Border Security," which chronicled people trying to lie their way through immigration and sneaking illegal items like live wildlife or $12,000 in cash through customers, even existed. That's why we were surprised when we stumbled across Rove Live, which, as the title says, was a live, late-night variety show/talk show hosted by comedian Rove McManus. The segments on his show, like "Flick Your Switch," where he showed a live view of a random high-rise apartment block and tried to get as many people as possible to turn their lights on and off, kept us laughing hysterically.

Therefore, when we found out that Rove was doing his first standup tour in years, we knew we had to get tickets. Unfortunately, we had a nasty surprise in store for us when we looked up the tour dates - Rove wasn't going to make it to Brisbane until September, well after we departed Australia's shores. However, my friend was lucky enough to snag tickets to a show when her family would be in Sydney. While I didn't have any trips planned, I had been considering visiting Melbourne for the entire semester, and this show, combined with the chance to visit a friend, were the reasons I bought the plane trip down there.

The show, his second on the tour, was put on in the Athenaeum Theater on Collins St in Melbourne. It was completely sold out and absolutely bustling with people when my friend and I arrived, approximately fifteen minutes before the show was set to start. I had been fortunate enough to get second row tickets (a product of my obsessive logging on to check if tickets had gone on sale one day early in May), so we settled ourselves in and enjoyed the two opening acts. I don't remember much about them, besides the fact that they were relatively funny and one of them had been on Rove Live before.

The first glimpse we had of Rove was not of the man himself, but rather, of four large posters, each showing him at different stages of his life. Then he came out, to a fanfare of applause, and had us laughing to the point of crying for the next hour.

In typical standup fashion, he jumped from topic, finding a funny side in everything from large trash pickup to a Chinese girl that realized at the age of 22 that she didn't have an arsehole. My favorite part, though, was his discussion of musical instruments. Apparently, in grade school, Australians have to learn the recorder as well, and like all disgruntled American students, Rove didn't appreciate it much either.

After the dancing and singing finale, in which Rove sang his own version of "Oh Mickey You So Fine" about Lindy England, and a short encore, the lights came on and the show was over. Neither my friend nor I could feel our faces as he filed out - that is how much we laughed. The show was worth every dollar of the $25 each we spent, and Rove was much funnier as a standup than in any segment of his show… and as a big fan of his show, that means a lot.

My last day in Melbourne unfortunately was not to be a full one - I had to be on my way to the airport by 1.30pm to catch my flight back to Brisbane. On top of that, the friend that had so kindly let me stay with her had to be at work pretty early, so I needed somewhere to go. Since I had all of my luggage (I suppose it shouldn't be referred to as "all of" since it consisted of a purse and a backpack, but the backpack contained my laptop, which can get pretty heavy after a while), I didn't particularly want to go somewhere that required a lot of moving around. Wandering around the CBD and its surrounding parks had been fine when I had just the purse, but I felt my shoulders would get angry with me pretty quickly if I tried it now (and I thought the people that I was bumping off of the sidewalk with my large bag wouldn't appreciate it either). Having heard quite a bit about St. Kilda, and knowing that it had a beach - a perfect place to sit and lounge for a couple hours - I decided to go there.

I was fortunate enough to not have to worry about getting there - my friend dropped me right on the Esplanade. I walked under a small pedestrian bridge and found myself on the beach. It wasn't overly populated, being a very overcast Monday morning; the few people there were occupying themselves doing their morning workouts. I wasn't really in the workout mood, and didn't particularly feel like leaving my laptop sitting alone on the beach, so I plopped down in the sand and occupied myself with a bit of people watching.

The beach wasn't exactly the most spectacular I'd seen in Australia - especially considering that I had gone down the Great Ocean Road only the day before - but it had sand and water. It reminded me of a cleaner Galveston, since there was such a lack of surf and the water wasn't quite the blue I was used to.

After a while, I gave up on the people-watching, partly due to the fact that the sky was getting ever more gray. I wandered up the beach and a bit inland and found myself standing in front of a very familiar, giant leering face. The reason this face, the entrance to a small theme park named Luna Park, was so familiar was because it is also the entrance to a theme park off of Sydney Harbour, also called Luna Park. The St. Kilda Luna Park, while being less famous, is actually the older of the two parks. It opened in 1912, and the "moonface" entrance and one of the rides, the Scenic Railway, have been there ever since. The Scenic Railway is even the oldest continually-operating roller coaster in the world. Unfortunately, going into the park was another thing that my luggage stopped me from doing, but it was probably better for my wallet to gaze from afar anyway.

I spent the rest of my time in St. Kilda walking along Fitzroy Street, which is a hub of many of the most hip bars and restaurants in Melbourne. I recognized one permanently-closed establishment very quickly from the few episodes of "My Restaurant Rules" I had seen that semester - it was Whisk, the home of the second Melbourne contestants on the show. Not many of them were open - a few pubs had lunching businessmen enjoying a beer or two in front of them, but that's about it - and any that were looked too expensive for a quick lunch, so I ended up eating in Subway. I enjoyed myself, but I would love to go back to St. Kilda at night, though, and see the area in its full glory.