Day 97: St Kilda

Friday 11th March

Albert Park

Grand Prix track and park

Beach front and pier

St Kilda Botanic Gardens

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Staying in hostels with the 18-21 vibe and surrounded by people who are either hung over or rushing to their next trip isn't much fun, so yesterday my last job was to get down to St Kilda. A friend I met in New Zealand who now lives in the city advised Habitiat HQ as the place to go. It's $5 per night more, but comes with a free breakfast and has a friendly, homely, vibe to it. When I arrived last night there was a charity event going on. A work mate did the same thing last year in NZ. It's caller "Shave for a Cure" and involves people volunteering to have their head shaved to raise money for a leukaemia charity. Tonight one of the hostel staff was doing it- a guy with a huge afro and pirate beard. Everyone was in the main room watching, many with a cheap beer from the hostel bar, as he was shaved and the collection bucket passed round. Afterward there was a FREE barbecue dinner. Love this place- no wonder there's various awards all over the reception area!

I didn't feel like doing a great deal his day though. I decided to go have a quick walk down to Albert Park- a large park surrounding a long lake. I'd planned to walk around it whilst reading. However Melbourne was about to host the Grand Prix, and the route was around the lake. The park was still open, but so was the site of the race. Time to explore.

Walk like you know where you're going, don't look threatening, and don't stop. Those guidelines have got me through and into many places without causing (too much) fuss. I don't think though that there was anything that stopped me from being here though. So I walked some of the track and wandered through what would be the VIP area. It was still mostly under construction, but the main structures were up. I was in Tasmania for the race, thankfully. Would have been nice to go, but expensive and the hostels all put their prices up to make the most of the busy period.

Having done that I (with some difficulty) found my way out of the Grand Prix enclosure and went out to the beach. St Kilda has a long, lovely beach, including the time honoured Luna Park with its many rides and the pier. I walked along the coast, and out to the pier, where many old men sat fishing. At the end is a small kiosk- much more reasonably priced, oddly, than the one at the shore end of the pier. So I had a sit down with a $2 ice cream, a wee old school glass bottle of Coke, and read about the local wildlife. If you come here at sunset the penguins swim onto the rocks at the end of the pier and the Australian water rats can occasionally be seen.

It was beginning to get late, but I had just enough day light left to make a quick trip through the St Kilda Botanic garden. This wee garden is as well kept and as nice as all of the small botanic gardens I've seen in Austalia and New Zealand. Today there was even a wedding going on, with the guests now milling around as the bridal party had photos taken in various locations.

Afterwards I was off to Aldi. Food's quite expensive in Australia. I'd expected this in New Zealand- it's a relatively small, under populated island in the middle of the Pacific so shipping anything in is going to make it expensive. Yet here, even I. The cities, the price can be similar to New Zealand. Aldi's started to move in to challenge this. The European supermarket often charges far less than the local stores and is gradually forcing prices down. Note, I don't believe it's to the detriment to farmers- they're buying from the same market and don't have any home brands- it's mostly cheaper European stuff.

Day 96: Melbourne

Thursday 10th March

Free walking tour 

State Library

Prison and Ned Kelly

Gold miners and their rich kids

Parliament

World's oldest standing original China Town

Modern Melbourne

Tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere 

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A few of us from the tour group were spending some extra time in Melbourne. Someone had found a free walking tour. Normally these cost around $30 (£15) but one company has set up on a donation based system. Apparently they'd been excellent in Sydney (wish I'd gone on it) so we all met up at 10:30am outside the State Library to spend a morning exploring the city.

We past the old court house and the gardens which include the Victorian-era exhibition centre (one of the few Victorian buildings not pulled down in the 60s & 70s) were closed for a rose and garden competition. Inside the courtyard of the old prison our guide showed us were Ned Kelly the Bushranger (outlaw, some would say Australia's Robin Hood) was hanged. I would later go to see his armour in the library exhibit about him.

The Parliament building stands at one end of the original grid system the city is based around. The grid itself was built when Australia was still a British colony. This is the reason for the lack of public squares and parks in the city- the Empire had learned that rebellions started in squares. No square no rebellion. Easy. The state parliament building stands at the top of one of the major roads running through the grid system. It was once planned to be used as the federal parliament, back when Sydney and Melbourne were competing for the title of capital. Instead Canberra was picked as a point between the two and given its own mini-state.

Today Melbourne is no where near as big as Sydney. Yet it was once Austrilasia's largest city. This was caused by two economic boom periods. The first was when gold was found nearby causing thousands to descend on the colony (seems this happened to a number of places in the Southern Hemisphere back then) until vitually all of the gold was found. However, many of these miners were frugal, unlike their children. The second boom came a generation late when the kids took the cash and spent it all. Once all of this was gone, however, it left the city with a myriad of grand architecture and parks. A few of these protected buildings still remain, though many were destroyed for "progress". Thankfully they left behind places such as the library and the arcades- Victorian/Edwardian shopping malls, with many up market shops and cafes which have been there now for many decades.

Melbourne has, arguably, the world's oldest China Town. There's some contention with places in California, but theirs burnt down where as much of it here is still standing. We had a quick wander through before stopping for coffee and snacks.

Good, cheap, food isn't so easy to find in Australia, let alone the cities. There's no Greggs here, and Aldi's only just started to invade. But I found BreadTop! It's a really good, cheap, bakery, where everything looks fresh, the dough is light and fluffy, and there's things I could never imagine. Most of its $2.50 (£1.25) when here I'd expect to pay 50-100% more than that. I've since had sausage donuts, a tuna and egg thing, and a spiced chicken bun here, but on this day I got a naan bread covered in lightly spiced sauce and caramelised onions plus an almond and custard donut/bun/slice/thing for lunch. Love me a decent bakery. :)

We walked though some of modern Melbourne, including the new city square and down to the tallest building in the city. As we walked we pasted by Melbourne's new popular cultural past time art project. It used to be illegal to put graffiti on any building. Then people were allowed to put it on there own. Now many companies pay professionals to spray great art works onto their walls. The city now also provides spaces in small alleys for anyone to practice their skills. Thus street art has become a tourist attraction in its own right, people flocking to these alleys to see what's new. In fact there's so many people it's hard to get a decent picture of the art without people in the way!

Let's be honest, there's not all that much in the Southern Hemisphere compared to the north. So when someone says the biggest/smallest/widest/oldest/most popular "in the Southern Hemisphere" it's only mildly impressive. It does sound great the first few times, but after 5 times in a morning the awe gets lost somewhere. However, the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere is still impressive. 

After the tour we went into the Eureka Tower- 297.3 metres (975 feet), 91 floors, it stands over Melbourne in blue glass, with white lines running across its surface. Kind of looks like a ruler. At the top some windows are coloured gold with a little line of red running down. The design is based around a workers strike near the site during the late years of the British Colony. The workers' flag was blue with white stripes. Some of the workers were shot, hence the red line.

It is the largest building in the Southern Hemisphere, and the world's largest residential building. At observation deck there's a little cafe, photo booth, gift shop, and Australia's highest post box (there's probably a higher one in the Andes, so no SH title there). We also chose to go into a small box they have which slides out of the side of the building, with a glass floor, so you can see all the way down to the ground!!! The floor isn't perfectly clear and the fog was rolling in at this point so the view was only mildly worrying. Great spot to see the city from though.

Pretty Pictures from the Coppermine Road Tracks

I'm going to keep this short so that I can post lots of lovely photos for you all. This is a walk I've been wanting to do for a while. It lies on the far side of a range of mountains from where I live & work, but is relatively easy to drive to due to the Manuatu Gorge that runs through the mountain range. Apparently its the only gorge to run right through a mountain range in the world.

The majority of tracks in the New Zealand wilderness have been made by hunters and loggers, but, as seen in Taranaki, some have been created by miners. This track is another one of those, in an area that has small amounts of Copper. I will shortly add videos and pics with a short history of the place here, but for now here's lots of pretty pictures. (Click on one to get a slide show)