Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009, Melbourne
Bob: Some days just have to be devoted to chores, even if you are traveling. In the morning Monika washed clothes while I caught up on my journal. Our next chore was walking to the train station to make our reservations for the train links from Melbourne to Canberra, from Canberra to Sydney, and from Sydney to Brisbane up in Queensland. Fortunately we were working with an intelligent, capable agent at the Southern Cross Train Station, so that was all set up with no hassle. Having those dates established gave us the exact nights we needed to make hotel reservations for, so after lunch we visited the library to search out hotel rooms in each city. Searching different web sites for cheap and convenient places to stay proved to be very difficult and time-consuming. Although we found a decently cheap place convenient to the train station in Sydney where we just had a one-night layover, we could not find that combination in Canberra. Ultimately we settled for a cheap but not very convenient hotel on the assumption that we could get a cab from the bus station out to our hotel on the outskirts of the city, which later turned out to be a very bad assumption. |
Monika: Bob was going to write on the computer a bit, so I decided to do our laundry. The hotel had two washing machines ( 4 dollars) and two dryers (3 dollars). So for 7 dollars and some time we again had a full contingent of clean clothes for the next two or so weeks. After this it was time to start planning the next phases of our trip. We first went to the central rail station and made reservations for our trip to Canberra on Friday and on to Brisbane with an overnight in Sydney because I didn't think a night on the train would be all that pleasant. Besides which, we wanted to see something of the countryside and that is impossible at night. |
Bob: After eating lunch at a Vietnamese noodle house, a surprisingly large meal, we decided we had to do more checking of bank accounts and returned to the library for yet another Internet session. Finally done with chores around 3:00 p.m. or so, we tried to head over to see the immigration museum we were both interested in, but we were waylaid by a used bookstore and the Australian equivalent of a "dollar store". Bookstores are of course dangerous for people like us, and dollar stores always tempt me to go in and browse around just to see what is available for a couple of bucks. I couldn't resist and in the end we purchased some pens with aboriginal designs on them, a CD of Australian children's songs to sing along with our granddaughters, and a CD of folk songs for me that I HOPED were real Australian tunes. By the time we were done shopping, it was way too late to go to the museum, so we carried our purchases back to the hotel room, went shopping for groceries, and had dinner. |
Monika: After that it was off to the library (using the free tram of course) to book hotels for Canberra and Sydney. I had real problems finding cheap and relatively close-by hotels using both Hotels.com and lastminute.com.au websites. We finally settled on the Greenleigh Hotel in Central Canberra. It did not look too far from central Canberra on the map, but there were no distance indicators on the map. Sydney was simpler since we now knew the city (or at least the CBD) and were able to find a hotel close to where we stayed before but cheaper. All this took all morning and by then we were ready for lunch. We stopped at a nice Thai place where Bob had chicken and rice and I had noodle soup. This made me think of the lunches I had at work with my colleagues Paul Tran and Stu Metzel at a similar Thai restaurant in Springfield, Virginia, when I was still working. On our way home we stopped at a used bookstore since we were getting low on books. We did find a Sci-fi book that looked interesting. Next door was a type of dollar store, which we can't resist. I picked up some interesting looking ball point pens and a book and CD of Australian Childrens' songs for the grandchildren. Bob kept looking through all the CDs hoping for one of Australian folk music. We finally got out of there and went back to our hotel to rest from all this wildly exciting activity. |
Bob: But the night was clear and balmy, so after dinner we took off for a nighttime walkabout along the Yarra River. Crossing over on a pedestrian bridge that had an intriguing series of stainless steel sculptures of different immigrants to Australia, we reached the South bank where we had previously had lunch during the Volksmarch. |
Monika: After it got dark, I suggested we walk down to the river to see whether we could get good night pictures of the South bank of the Yarra River and the bridges that cross over the river. One old railroad bridge had been restored as a pedestrian bridge and had stainless steel sculptures along it symbolizing the history of Australia. They were nicely illuminated and looked really interesting. |
Bob: From the South bank, the brightly lit nighttime skyline of downtown Melbourne was perfectly reflected in the smooth, inky-black waters of the Yarra, and I thought it was quite beautiful. We also saw a Ferris wheel from some kind of carnival or amusement park beside the river sparkling in many different colorful patterns that were also faithfully reflected in the calm waters of the river. Very pretty. |
Monika: The south bank views also had both of us trying our hand at panoramic pictures. On the other side of the Prince bridge the ferris wheel was going around and around, changing colors all along, and everything was being reflected in the Yarra river. Very picturesque. After we both had taken all the pictures we wanted we headed back for bed. Nice having a hotel in the middle of downtown, even if the room is very small and there is very little outside light. |
| Index |
| Prolog | Map of Australian Walkabout | Epilog |
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