Melbourne

So far so good in Melbourne, we are nearly halfway into our stay here and are slowly making our way through all the ‘must see’ things.

Melbourne is much bigger than the cities I have visited so far in Australia, it has a population of about 4.2 million and it shows, the place is very busy and there are always people about – this of course means there is plenty to see and do (if you have the budget that is). One thing I’m not so happy about though is the weather, it is the worst weather I’ve experienced in Australia, it’s still not terrible, being 18-22 degrees but it is really grey and cloudy, with much more rain than I’ve become accustomed to.

Took plenty of pictures as you’ll see below, we’ve had a good few days so far. Checked into the hostel on Wednesday afternoon, it’s not the best hostel in the world, a little noisy and basic but it will do, we then went for a wonder around the shops. All the usual Aussie shops are here like Target, Myers, David Jones, but also some from back home like the Body Shop and H&M.

On the second day we had a free guided tour around the state parliament building, this was very interesting and the guide knew his stuff, telling us all about the gold rush here in the 1850’s and the split from New South Wales to form its own state, the parliament here follows the Westminster system and the upper/lower houses look a lot like our Houses of Commons/Lords. After that we went wondering and found some of Melbourne’s famous street art, there are about three or four alleyways full of graffiti, I think most of it is just scribble but there were a couple of good drawings.

Yesterday we had a guided free tour of the city (you know one of those tours that you pay what you feel it was worth at the end), the tour lasted 3 hours and was awesome. We walked around much of the city and the guide was good, we gave him a whole $20 for his effort. We then went around St Paul’s cathedral, which was OK, not as nice as the cathedrals back home, and the cheeky bleeders wanted $5 for a ‘photo licence’ for you to take pictures inside, I managed to take one anyway – I’m sure Jesus wouldn’t have minded and anyway it is my cathedral after all (St Paul’s).

Today we went to the Victoria market down the road to get some fruit and veg, the market was, well a market. We then went to the state library and had a walk around, it was a rather nice library and had a couple of exhibits inside including the suit of armour worn by the infamous Ned Kelly during his shoot out with police.

We have got a few other bits to see such as the casino and various gardens/skyscraper views. I’ll post another update before we leave here on 12th and head to Malaysia!