Melbourne!

Now, we've promised you that you will hear from us very soon, and here we are with a whole post dedicated to Melbourne! We spent over a week in the metropole and we've experienced so many things that we thought it's worth its own entry.

Last saturday, after we drove along the coast, we saw the skyline of Melbourne (see picture above) appearing slowly in front of us. The traffic was just pure madness! We were, of course, not aware of the 'special' traffic rules here, so the first thing we did was going to Starbucks to discuss our route through the city in order to reach the information center (or just be close to it!) In the city itself the traffic was even worse: the cars were driving bumper to bumper and it was somehow impossible to reach any parking garage! We did manage to get into one after some hours - but we went out after 2 minutes, because for 30 minutes we would have to pay $6,50 and for one hour $15,00! We found a garage for $8,50 a day so we parked our car there.

Well, then we gathered some information leaflets from the information centre about what's going on in Melbourne. Our next challenge was to find a decent place to stay for the coming week! We phoned with several owners of caravan parks and they all had tent sites for us! The first caravan park was called Honey Hush; beautifully located between factories, dumpyards and highways. We thought this was a bit too high profile for us, so after 5 minutes on the campsite we drove further to the next one. ' Hobsons Bay Caravan Park' looked even lovelier than the previous one! Unfortunately, no one was in the office. There was just a lovely lady, we call her Rosie, who collected the money for the tentsite. At that point we were still not sure whether to stay or to go on, but when she hissed through her black teeth that we would get the 7th night for free, we could hardly hold back our joy. Well, we ended up staying at 'Hobsons Bay Caravan Park'. Throughout the week we had some nice neighbours from Germany and from Ireland, so afterall it wasn't bad there at all!

On monday we went for a walk through the city and through the dozens of shopping malls (some of them have over 300 shops!). Our first impression of Melbourne was very good, we loved the atmosphere & city panorama a lot. But after we saw all the shops and skyscrapers from down below, we decided to take a good look at them from 250metres above! We went into the Rialto Towers and to be exact on the 360degrees observation deck high in the sky. The view was breathtaking (see picture on the left)! We could see every glimpse of Melbourne, as it was a sunny clear day. We spent about half an hour up there. The good thing about the observation deck was, though, that you could come back in the evening again to look at the city with all the lights on. Of course we took the opportunity to do so. It was even more stunning than during the day and a completely different experience (see picture below).

The next day we went to the Federation Square (Picture on the left), the heart of central Melbourne. We visited the ACMI, the Australian Center for Moving Images. There was an exhibition from Christian Marclay which was fairly interesting for us. The rest did not quite impress us either. We enjoyed watching some short movies made by students from different schools throughout the region, though. In the afternoon we took a ride on the City Circle Tram, which gave us a small impression of different sides of Melbourne. On tuesday we went to see the Fitzroy Gardens. In this big park we saw Cooks Cottage (see picture on the right: it's the home of James Cooks parents, shipped to Australia to be rebuilt in this park), a flower conservatory and a dry fountain. The use of water in this area is very restricted: the government bans all water consumptions that are not necessary.

The next attraction was the Melbourne Aquarium! It is hosting a big amount of animals living in the sea, from seadragons to clownfishes to sharks and seasnakes. We loved all the different aquariums and even some terrariums, but our favourite was the massive fish tank. Inhabited by huge stingrays, sharks, turtles and other fishes, this was truly a wonderful display. It became even more interesting when 2 divers appeared with a bucket of fish in their hands - it was lunchtime for the seacreatures (see picture above). All the different species begged for food in their own way, with a turtle coming back all the time to be pushed away because he never has enough... A spectacular sight!

In the late afternoon we paid a visit to the gigantic State Library of Victoria to research the different dollar coins from Australia: a collection is building for both of us.

Thursday was our internetday! You got your previous blogentry back then, and this took us quite some hours and nerves, thanks to blogger.com (we still love it though). We didn't do anything else this day because it rained very much.

Friday morning started with a visit to the massive Queen Victoria Central Market. Nearly everything is available there, but after a while it seems like every stall is selling the same as the previous one and that's where our attention slipped away. We also took a stroll through the delicatess department of the market. The air was filled with dozens of scents from fish to meat to herbs and cheese. In other words: it stank. Still it was a nice experience to see the lively market.

Our next (not planned) stop was the Shrine of Rememberance, which pays tribute to the Australian soldiers serving in wars throughout the past and present years. (Picture on the right: View from the top of the Shrine)

In the afternoon we went to the Botanic Gardens. We liked it much more than the one in Adelaide, and we are becoming true experts in examining all different kinds of treesand bushes.

On saturday we went to Phillip Island! This was going to be our wildlife-experience-day. Two days before we bought a 3 Parks Pass which allows us to visit a Heritage Farm, the Koala Conservation Centre and the Penguin Parade.

The Heritage farm was located on Churchill Island. We liked it very much as it had a farm and a beachside residence from a wealthy man, dating from nearly 200 years ago. The house was furnished in original style including a woman in a maitressgown (sitting just in between the furniture), who was happy to answer all of our questions. We patted some goats and horses, and that was basically all that we could do there.

(Picture: Apparently for some people these signs are necessary...)

Our next stop was the Koala Conservation Centre. A boardwalk took us on the same level as the koalas, which offered great photo opportunities. Some of them were literally just 1 meter in front of us! It was pretty hard though to spot them in the eucalypt trees.

Every single one of them looked cute, so we couldn't select the best picture. Here are the best.

Unfortunately we don't have any picture from our last - and probably the most interesting - experience of the day. In the evening we went to see the penguins! Hundreds of people were stationed in front of the beach anticipating the return of the penguins from sea. It was rather cold and it took quite long, but as soon as the first Little Penguin (as they're called) rolled on the beach in between the waves we knew it was worth the waiting. As it got late, more and more penguins appeared and it was impressive to see the clumsy creatures walking into the beach vegetation to their nests. The reason we don't have any pictures is that it was not allowed to take any. Apparently it would scare the penguins, so we were more than happy to respect this. If you're really interested, you can have a look at http://www.penguins.org.au/

Then it was time for our drive back home, 130kms away from Phillip Island. We did much bigger distances of course, but this drive was full of traffic lights, confusing lanechanges and loaded streets, even at night! We did manage to reach Melbourne, but that's also where it went wrong. If you miss one exit you're screwed! Trust us, you do not want to be lost in the chaos of Melbournes traffic at night. We were. It took quite some time to even realize where we were, and it took much longer to find a route back to Williamstown, which was worse because of the pressure of the fuelmeter (it sank below "E", which doesn't mean Extra full...). Anyway, we made it, and today we are spending our last hours in Melbourne! We have to get some things organized, do the laundry, the dishes from some days (but we can manage ourselves perfectly here), and of course pack everything again.

Tomorrow we'll continue our journey, heading for Canberra, Sydney and all interesting spots in between. We loved every minute in Melbourne and we hope the East Coast has more exciting cities in store for us to see.

See you soon!


PS. In some time you may notice a grand change in the layout of our blog. We plan to change the header as soon as we can, since we just read about the Spice Girls quitting their tour after the American leg of their tour. Which means we will not get the chance to see them live.
For us it is a big letdown, as it really would have marked the highlight of our journey. For now we lost our support and it won't come back until they decide to change their plans.

Distance travelled as of 03/02/08: 10880km