Melbourne for a couple of weeks with Pete, Julie, Nico and Alex (many thanks, guys, for putting me up and up with me). A great place to live it seems, the city has just about every sport, concert, show going plus all in a beautiful bay with the beach at the end of the road, can't be bad. A good atmosphere about the place too, a relaxed major city well into socialising, music, coffee (BIG time into coffee, Pete's local shopping street had about 5 coffee shops within 100 yards!) and the outdoors, with wide streets, trams and open spaces.
The suburbs are just like suburbs the world over, non-descript or being re-born by the trendies if they are unlucky. In the leafy outer-suburbs, weekdays means seeing ladies doing coffee mornings, speed-walking the dogs or the babies or both plus health / fitness shops ("spas") everywhere - odd when the rest of the shops are fish and chippies, or restaurants of some nationality or other; weekends means brunch in a cafe by the beach or lunch / people watching after a beach walk or cycling, scuba diving, snorkeling or sailing too! Can't be bad.
Managed to find a pub which specialised only in local beers too! Micro breweries are a big thing here, and producing things like Pale Ale and Dark Ales not just fizzy pop lager!! Hoorah. And with a new quote for me to add to my Facebook profile: "When I read that drinking was bad for you, I gave up reading" (Henry Youngman).
But generally the "hotels" or "taverns" are barns of places at rail stations or major road junctions which are also the local bookie, off-license, bingo hall (Keno here) and gaming arcade all rolled into one! With decor to match a seventies British Legion club. But prices are high (about same as at home).
Bad news about the bushfires raging around Victoria state though - still going 3 weeks on, millions of acres of forest gone not to mention, towns and the death toll. Victoria has about half the water reserves it had 5 years ago because of ongoing drought. Floods in Queensland and NSW at the same time, crazy. Weather went from 45C with gale force winds off the desert to 20C in 2 days! It was like standing inside an electric fan oven.
Then a flight to Tassie, as it is known locally. A 1 hour flight cheaper than a 10 hour ferry ride over the renowned stormy Bass Strait, sounds good to me even if you like sailing.
Picked up a campervan - a bloody monster! It turns out the Tassie is full of Aussies in campervans, so I got the last one on the island - a VW Crafter complete with shower, toilet and TV!! Far too high spec and too big for me (and no 4WD so no going offroad either), but a doddle to drive even on the small windy roads over here.
Tassie reminded me exactly of NZ - rural, forests, mountains, rivers and rough coastlines with small towns and cities, all with a mix 0f Victorian stone / brick public buildings with clapboard houses and churches and modern Neighbours bungalow estates. The people are really friendly and the National Parks are beautiful. Did some day hiking in the forests and mountains when the weather permitted, but got rained out of the west coast. 2 weeks in Tas was not enough, it is the size of Ireland despite looking so small on the atlas, but the weather is very changeable (and cold in the van at night, down to 5C in the mountains!).
Just a couple of other things:
- School uniforms. Amazing. Throwbacks to the fifties with pinafore dresses or pleated skirts, closed toe sandals and woolly socks (yes, for the girls) and shorts, long woolly socks and black tie-up shoes for the boys (many of whom are bigger than me). And all with colourful school blazers and ties, all it needed were caps!
- Diet: if its local its fried - everything (even fresh scallops and prawns!), if its not BBQ'd meat, and all with chips. If not then its pizza, pasta or asian. Coffee is taken with cakes, doughnuts and muffins. And chocolate shops everywhere too! Sounds like heaven for some of my readers I know, but....I noticed that Julie balances everything out with salads and fruits at home.
- Road kill: bizarre to a foreigner. Masses of it, and all of it in weird shapes. Wallabies, echidna (a giant, punk hedgehog), Tas devils, wombats, possums. Cats, dogs??? No chance. Drivers only go for the odd shaped ones here, maybe there's a points system?
Anyway, all done.
Photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/laurentmik/Melbourne_and_Tasmania_2009
Cheers!
Mike
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