Melbourne
The flight to Melbourne was very smooth although you lose 2 hours on the way over from Perth. Then we had to put our clocks forward an hour on Sunday. What a contrast to the west coast though. Whilst Melbourne is a pleasant city we much prefer the west coast and the outback. But we might change our tune when we venture out into the countryside later today. We are hiring another car to explore the Snowy and Blue Mountains on our way up to Sydney, stopping off for a visit to Heather’s sister who lives just north of Melbourne. We spent Saturday in the city, however. It has some interesting architecture including some very modern box-like buildings in Federation Square. One of these houses the Australian Centre for the Moving Image where we saw an excellent film called “The Lives of Others”. I hadn’t been to the cinema in the morning since we used to go to the Saturday Club when I was about 6! The film was German and was about the Stasi persecuting a playwright in East Berlin. It was very well acted and the plot had several twists. Apparently it won the Oscar this year for best foreign language film. Then we went to the Immigration Museum which followed the history of immigration to Australia. We had a walk along the Yarra River and managed to get ourselves locked in to the Botanical Gardens. We were released by a nice man with keys! In the evening we went to China Town to brush up our chopstick skills. Yesterday we went to St Kilda on the tram and wandered round for a bit. But Katie was keen to “do something” so we returned to Melbourne and went to a climbing wall which has recently been opened here. They taught us a different system for tying on and belaying. The grading system is different here so we didn’t know what we climbing really. It goes from 1-30, 1 being a walk uphill and 30 presumably being something along the lines of E10. We hovered around the 12-18 bracket. It is the only wall we have seen in Oz and we came to the conclusion that they don;t have a lot of experience in route setting as several of the routes we tried were bizarre to say the least. But it was good fun and satisfied Katie’s need for some action. We went out for a Greek meal in the evening. The hostel we are in here is not very nice and the kitchen is a bit of a health hazard so we ate out. So we are off to pick up the car in a few minutes. More news anon.
Tags: Travel, Tag Index
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