Monday, June 1st, 2009, Melbourne
Bob: We were a bit weary from two solid days of traveling and correspondingly kept our ambitions for the day quite low. Finding a large IGA right around the corner from our Formule 1 hotel was a stroke of luck. The IGA chain in the U.S. stands for Independent Grocers Association and basically is an assortment of grocery stores who are independently owned and operated but purchase goods from the same suppliers and therefore offer the same brands. What we have found in Australia is that the small IGA stores are more like convenience stores (e.g. 7-11s, etc.) and have a very limited selection of groceries. The larger ones, however, offer a full line of groceries including fresh fruit, meat, cheese, and so forth. We were happy to find milk and apples reduced for a quick sale ($0.50 per liter of milk, $1.50 for 6 apples) and the "Black and Gold" IGA brand of Tropical Muesli that contains raisins, and bits of pineapple and dried banana. Picking up some navel oranges and mixed berry yogurt allowed to make what I call a "Heinke breakfast" because it was at her house in Hamburg that I first had her patented mix of rolled oats, fresh fruit, yogurt, and milk. After breakfast I spent an hour or so composing an email about our experiences in Broken Hill while Monika went out for coffee. Putting the email and pictures on our USB transfer drive, we then started meandering around downtown Melbourne, which we found to be a very pretty city laid out in a perfect grid. Special lanes in the middle of the wide boulevards are allocated for the system of trolleys that criss-cross the downtown area. It was fun to watch them whirring around and occasionally clanging out a warning to cars or pedestrians. |
Monika: Bob started out the day by composing an Email about Broken Hill and selecting pictures for an Email. So I decided to look around a little and find a proper cup of coffee -- we had bought in Hornsby something called instant latte -- nescafe with milk --. This probably is not too bad if you have a proper cup and really hot water. I had a little plastic cup and warm tap water. It was better than nothing but made me hanker for some real coffee. In downtown Melbourne you can't go too far without encountering a McDonald, Hungry Jack, or food court. I wandered around trying not to be in the way of all the poor slobs who were hurrying to work. I finally opted for a food court where a got a nice 12 ounce cup of latte. Thus fortified, I came back to the hotel where Bob was just finishing up. I helped by downsizing the pictures to email size and then we went off. We found a rather nice Tourist Information Kiosk, where the nice lady told us about the beautiful State Library just a few blocks away and also about a FREE tram that goes around the outside of the CBD area, approximately a 10 x 5 block rectangle. Melbourne also has a free tourist bus, that goes a little farther afield. |
Bob: Running across an outdoor information kiosk staffed by some very enthusiastic but cold-looking ladies, we stopped off for some advice about how to take the trolleys, where we could find free internet, and so forth. It turned out that one basic loop line just surrounding the downtown area, the eponymous "City Circle" line, was absolutely free! In addition, there is also a bus line circling the city that is arranged for free use by tourists. The lady also suggested we try the library for internet service, so off we went in that direction. It turned out that Victoria State Library had two complete rooms that offered free internet service, one for 15 minutes at a time and one for an hour at a time. We used the latter service because we knew that reading and answering emails typically takes about that long. In a typical British fashion, there were queuing lines for the internet stations in each room, but as far as we could tell the actual time limits were on the honor system. That is in contrast to the libraries in our area which have the time limits for using the internet programmed into the operating system. |
Monika: Well, our first stop was the library which was truly gorgeous and in addition had plenty of internet stations. Downstairs were about 20 stations for 15 minute use, and upstairs about 50 more designated for one hour use. The whole thing was on the honor system. You wait in a queue, when its your turn you go to the next empty internet station and you police yourself to get off after one hour. There was also WI-FI available and many people sat at empty carrals with a laptop. What amazed me most that it was absolutely quiet although this was a very big room with a lot of young people. We spent a productive hour sending emails to kith and kin and catching up on facebook. After our hour was up, we walked around the library. On the next floor was a beautiful reading room underneath a high dome. There were galleries with exhibitions around the next two floors. The first one was on rare books with beautiful examples of old bibles and the first encyclopedia. There were books of all the major religions and also books that changed the world, like Darwin's "Origin of the Species" and Karl Marx "Das Kapital". The next floor was all about the history of Melbourne with some emphasis on a famous outlaw Ned Kelley, the last man hanged. From each floor you could look down to the reading room or up to the dome; it was a wonderful place to take pictures. |
Bob: Since the City Circle line had a stop at a corner near the library, when we had sent off our emails we hopped on the trolley for a free trip around town. We boarded an old, wooden trolley that dated from 1936 and was essentially a rolling piece of history just like the cable cars in San Francisco. Once we got rolling we had a wonderful ride as we rattled, banged, and chuff-chuffed our way down to the harbor and then back along the Yarra River and back to the library. The chuffing was the air compressor pumping up the pressure for the braking system, I think, but it certainly sounded like the Little Engine That Could saying, "I think I can, I think I can!" So if you ever get to Melbourne be sure to take a trip on the tourist trolley just for the fun of it, and, as Neville says, you can't beat the free price of admission! |
Monika: We were getting hungry and found a food court across the street in a shopping mall that had an interesting glass cone over it. Melbourne is essentially a modern city, and although there are many old buildings there are also a lot of modern, futuristic looking ones. By now we were tired enough to opt for the free tram since we were close to one of its stops. The trams they use for the free service are the old trams from the 1930s and they rattled along. But it sure was fun driving all around and being told what was interesting at each stop. They even went all the way around to the waterfront at the dockyards where they turned around by simply having the driver go to the other sid of the tram. Once we had made a complete loop, we decided to go one more stop to Elizabeth Street and wander down to our hotel, where we stopped for some R&WR: Rest (Bob) and Writing (me). |
Bob: Returning to our room for the afternoon, I took a nap while Monika updated her journal. I gradually revived during our quiet evening meal while we watched an Australian newscast. It started out with about ten minutes of national sports news, followed by five minutes of political and economic news, followed by another ten minutes of local sports news, and concluded by a one minute weather report. Overall, it felt more like a half hour sportscast interrupted by the occasional news item. I am not the most perceptive person in the world, but I began to get the impression that a basic theme of Australian culture was a preoccupation with sports just like a basic theme of German culture is a preoccupation with time. Having regained some energy, we ventured out again to see a bit of Melbourne by night and we were very glad that we did so. Quite a few of Melbourne's architecturally-unique buildings are illuminated by night in such a way that they really stand out better than during the daytime. The Flinders Street train station, for example, and the cathedral catty corner from it across an intersection, were both very nicely illuminated. Across from the cathedral, however, were some architecturally unique buildings, shaped something like angular blobs of multi-colored Play-Doh that had been stuck together by some giant's hand. Possibly they were Modern Art expressed in an architectural form, and is often the case in my encounters with Modern Art, I didn't quite see the point in them, and I suppose like most such art you can either love them, hate them, or simply ignore them. I did like, however, an illuminated spire atop the arts center across the river from the Flinders Street station. The spire had the graceful lines of the Eiffel Tower, but a lot shorter and much more slender. The illumination changed from moment to moment, so I had to wait for just the right moment to get the picture. Ambling back to our hotel room for the night, we browsed in a number of souvenir shops and found some interesting things including some highway warning signs for wombats, kangaroos, and emus, which I found amusing. After getting back to our room yet again, we were ready to call it quits for the day. |
Monika: After a dinner of rolls with cheese, we decided to go for a night walk. We walked over to Flinders Street Station and enjoyed photographing the city at night. |
| Index |
| Prolog | Map of Australian Walkabout | Epilog |
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