Melbourne

29th May 2010 A morning of packing was followed by an afternoon movie and general hanging around in Starbucks. Although we were able to leave our big bags at the hotel, we still had to carry our hand luggage with us and had decided a few days ago that it would just be best to be in one place for a while. The cinema seemed like a good option :). However, we had underestimated how busy it would be and failed to get tickets for anything besides the Prince of Persia, which was predictable but good. ...

2nd February 2010 Our first stop this morning was Avis to pick up our hire car for the next 3 days in order to drive up the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne to Adelaide. Having successfully retrieved the car it was back to the apartment to load up our kit and check out. With all the jobs done we headed out of Melbourne picking up Andy along the way, who was going to join us for the first leg of the trip to Warrnambool, and after a few wrong turns we eventually made it out of the city and onto the freeway heading west towards the start of the Great Ocean Road. ...

1st February 2010 When we bought our tickets for the IMAX, we got some reduced price tickets for the Melbourne Museum at the same time so this morning we decided to check it out. The museum is housed in a modern building, full of natural light across a wide open plaza from the Royal Exhibition Building. The first thing you see as you enter the museum is the skeleton of a junior blue pigmy whale, the largest living mammal on the planet, right next to this is a pair of 12 metre long pythons. We continued towards the Wild exhibition through the dinosaur walk, charting the lives of the various dinosaurs right up to the Australian megafauna, thought to be the distant relatives of todays crocodiles. ...

31st January 2010 This morning we went to explore St Kilda and its craft market. St Kilda is Melbourne’s seaside resort with its strip of beach and pier stretching out to sea. We started off by walking along Acland Street, St Kilda’s main drag where the cafes and cake shops were packed with people enjoying a Sunday morning coffee and cake. Then we headed to the beach where we wandered along the broadwalk before going up to the Esplanade to check out the market stalls dotted along it plying their arts and crafts. ...

30th January 2010 Melbourne is the capital of the state of Victoria, and also Australia’s second largest city. It is widely known as Australia’s cultural capital due to its dedication to the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, sport and tourism. Since Melbourne is very much a city with a vibrant cafe-culture which prides itself on its ’livability’ we decided to spend the morning walking around, getting our bearings and getting a feel for the place. ...

29th January 2010 Today we spent 9 hours crossing the Bass straits from Devonport in Tasmania to Melbourne on mainland Australia. The crossing time past relatively quickly and it didn’t seem long before we could see the Melbourne CBD on the skyline. From the ferry port it was a straightforward tramride to the apartment we have booked for 4 nights not far outside the city centre, which should do us nicely as a base for explorer Melbourne from. ...