Melbourne

Friday 21st Sept 2007
Left at 15:00 for Gatwick, had a good journey there, no traffic surprisingly for a Friday night. Flying with Emirates, first to Dubai (7 hours), with a 3 hour layover and then onto Melbourne. Dubai is the busiest and largest airport I’ve ever seen, but with hardly anywhere to sit. First flight wasn’t particularly good, though they did provide a decent gluten free meal, but next flight was excellent, and I did manage to get about 3 hours sleep, despite being wedged into the centre aisle like a sardine. The entertainment system was great with your own screen, but able to watch what you wanted and pause it without having to wait for films on a loop. Watched some good films, a Kevin Costner one about an assassin called “Mr Brooks”, “Chaos” with Wesley Snipes, both good and “Ocean’s 13” which was mediocre. Finally arrived in Melbourne at 05:30, local time, after 31 hours of travelling.

Sunday 23rd
The weather has been very similar to back home. The houses here are all mostly single storey and look quite Victorian in style. We went for a drive around the suburbs just looking at houses and admiring the frontages with metal lacework. The sense of space here is what first makes an impact, it is similar to the States in this aspect.

Monday 24th
Managed to sleep for 10 hours last night, despite having slept in the afternoon yesterday. Felt fairly normal, had a leisurely morning, went for a mini explore of Brunswick Travelled to Healesville Sanctuary an hour West of Melbourne. Saw all the animals indigenous to Australia. It was laid out beautifully with tracks through woodland. They had a Birds of Prey show, but it wasn’t a patch on the Hawk Conservancy. For me the best part was the kangaroos and koalas. It kind of reinforces that we are here, seeing such unusual animals. Looking forward tomorrow to going off and exploring Melbourne.

Tues 25th
Dave and I got a day pass ticket and went into Melbourne on the train, took 25 minutes to get to Flinders St. We walked up to the Melbourne museum first. It had a terrific body exhibition with plastinated body parts (the same as the exhibition I saw in London years ago), and many other interesting facts. The animal section was great as well with every species stuffed and on show, many dinosaur skeletons and an amazing spider and bug section with about 50 different tarantulas. There were beetles that were 10 inches big. Though the bug bit was quite horrible, it was also fascinating. We then rode the trams for a bit, as Dave had never been on a tram, or so he said….I think it was just an excuse for him to have a powernap!! Pottered around the shops, walked miles, went to Hard Rock Café to get a couple of pin badges for Dad’s collection, and had a look around there.
Felt v tired today. Probably travel catching up with us.

Wed 27th
We went to the Old Gaol, which I didn’t expect much of, but it was excellent. We were there for 3 hours. The cells were only 5ft by 9ft, but they all had interesting billboards in them. When first incarcerated, prisoners were held in solitary confinement, for varying periods of time, sometimes years. When exercising they were made to wear hoods. The gaol was the site for 136 executions, including Ned Kelly. The scaffold and trapdoor were still in place. At the time the prison was built, phrenology (the study of skull shape and its affect on character) was just coming to the fore. Every person who was executed had a death mask made so that scientists could analyse their skull shape. Next up was the Aquarium. It was really good, better than the one in Cape Town. The main shark feature instead of being a moving walkway was a giant bowl and you could just sit in it as long as you liked and watch everything swim over the top of you. They also had spiders, frogs, crabs and usual aquarium stuff.

Thurs 27th
Drove to Ballarat, which was 110km out of the city and took about an hour and a half to get there. Ballarat was the centre of the gold mining in Victoria in the 1850’s. There is a whole town called Sovereign Hill, which has been realistically re-created in the authentic style of the time with churches, foundaries, schoolhouses, shops, banks, post offices, saloons, hotels and various houses that different classes would have lived in from the very poor to the well off.
They had also restored part of the original mine and we did a tour of that, which was good. All the staff are in 1850’s costume which adds to the atmosphere. A great deal had been done to ensure authenticity. Unfortunately it was not a particularly nice day, cold and very windy, with dust being blown into our faces, but it did add to the atmosphere. The last 5 days have gone by quickly. Off to Adelaide tomorrow.