Llew Wanders the World

I woke up (very) early on the Spirit of Tasmania, headed for Melbourne and decided to go for a wander to look for some form of entertainment. Lo and behold, I found an international rugby match (Australia vs. Scotland) showing on the on-board televisions and sat down to watch as the ship approached Melbourne in the ealry hours. Before I knew it the ship had docked and I’d disembarked and collected my pack and trusty walking stick (I couldn’t have left it behind, after the 100+km we’d shared together on the Overland in Tassie.)

This left me in (what I later determined to be) the southern part of Meblourne at 07:30 on a Sunday morning.

I actually already had some plans for my stay in Australia’s second largest city, but they couldn’t be put into place just yet… After an exchenge of e-mails from Sydney and Tasmania, I was to be the guest of Jeff and Allison, a couple I’d met in the Cook Islands. However, due to my rapid departure from Cradle Mountain and then Devonport, I was in Melbourne two days early. And I certainly couldn’t go phoning them at this day and hour to inform them of the fact, even if I had had their number.

So I decided to entertain myself by heading into the centre of town. Watching a city come to life on a Sunday morning is an interesting, not to mention relaxing introduction. After asking some directions, a quick tram (streetcar) ride and a pleasant walk around the still almost-silent downtown, I found myself at Federation Square, the heart of the city. I sat on the steps in the square and enjoyed a breakfast of crumbly pita bread and honey (it was almost enough to make me feel like I was back on the trail again) while waiting for the tourist office to open and direct me to somewhere I could access my e-mail and write to Jeff and Allison.

Eventually I did find such a place and wrote them a quick note, as well as looking up their phone number. I decided to sit and enjoy the sunny morning in the square while time passed until I could reasonably give them a call. Eventually 10:00 came, and I tried but it appeared they were out. No matter, I was enjoying the rest, the weather and my book, and resolved to just sit and continue my day of leisure, phoning every few hours until I got ahold of them or until it got dark and I needed to find an alternative place to sleep.

I whiled away a very pleasant morning in this fashion, only breaking it when I took advantage of Melbourne’s supremely multicultural character with a walk up to Chinatown where I had a great (and inexpensive) Vietnamese lunch. After lunch I returned to the square, this time adjourning to the covered, open air atrium since it was beginning to rain. The hours continued to pass, but I was content just to continue with my rest and reading until, finally, at 19:00 I popped into a nearby backpackers to arrange a bed for the evening, having failed to reach Jeff (not that I could have expected anything else, having arrived two days early entirely un-announced.)

Later that evening I interuppted my lazing about, reading and movie watching and did eventually get ahold of my prospective host on the phone. Jeff seemed overjoyed to hear from me, and at the fact that I’d arrived early, and we made plans to meet the next afternoon once he’d finished work.

I left my big pack at the hostel (this had been another argument in favour of just sitting around and reading the day before. Despite the fact that I’d grown accustomed to it, I really didn’t want to have to lug my bag around as I explored the city) and wandered out into the centre of Melbourne. I spent the morning walking through everal of the covered, but still exposed, shopping arcades or “blocks” that abound in Melbourne’s Central Business District. Many of them are wll over 100 years old and have the architecture and decor to prove it. After my short walking tour of the posh shopping area, on a whim I jumped aboard one of the free eighty year old trams that circle the city centre, enjoying the chance to put my feet up.

This was followed by a bit of meandering about the city and a relaxed hour spent at the ticket office in the central train station waiting to arrange my tickets to Adelaide and Perth. One of the great joys of independent travel comes with the fact that you rarely have to worry about time. I spent my hour in the ticket queue relaxing, reading and perusing brochures, while so many of those around me fussed and fretted about the time they were wasting. Indeed, it almost certainly would have been quicker for me to phone the Great Southern Railway for my tickets, but I didn’t mind, almost enjoyed the wait at the office.

After my travel arrangements were made, I wandered across the CBD once again, towards the parks that sit on its eastern edge. I had a delightful stroll through these, and especially enjoyed Fitzroy Gardens. While small, the conservatory there is very well maintained and the soft, peaceful music played inside made it a perfect place to sit and finish my book from the previous day. After this, my wanderings took me past a couple of the small cottages on the park grounds, as well as the Fairy Tree, a stump carved and coloured 70 years ago by a Melbourne resident and children’s writer and the Model Tudor Village donated to the people of Melbourne in thanks for their support of England during the Second World War.

My urban greenspace wanderings continued down to the Melbourne Olympic Park, home of the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground (the centre of the Aussie Rules Footbal universe,) the Australian Tennis Centre and Rod Laver Arena (the home of the Australian Open tennis championships, where hopefully the graduates of the Tennis Centre head on to play) and then back towards Federation Square along the north bank of the Yarra River.

I still had some time before meeting Jeff and Allison, so spent a relaxed couple of hours wandering through the National Gallery of Victoria and admiring its collection of Australian art. My knowledge is rather limited, but I did still notice some parallels between developments in Australian and Canadian painting at various points throughout their histories. The styles followed similar lines through the years, as did the flowering of national identity and the use of distinctly Australian or Canadian subjects as the countries came into their own.

Finally it was time to meet Jeff and Allison. I waited and waited on the appointed corner, and was just about to make my own way out to their place when the two of them rushed across the street, meeting me with big smiles. Apparently they’d been trying to contact me in some form or other all day to let me know they’d be a bit late, and that they’d made plans for us for the evening. Thankfully I was clean, dry and reasonably well dressed, so the proprieters of the jazz club where we went for dinner didn’t mind admitting us, despite the huge backpack that Jeff had refused to let me carry.

Fortunately we’d arrived early, and, despite the ear piercing feedback as they prepared the sound system, Jeff, Al and I were able to do a bit of catching up. This mainly consisted of me talking, talking, and talking some more, though they assured me they were happy to listen to my tales of adventure since we’d parted ways a couple of months earlier in Rarotonga.

After a wonderful supper, and equally wonderful big band performance (the singers in particular were great) we headed back to Jeff’s place in Essendon where I was introduced to my room (again! My own room! Hurrah!) before everyone headed off to bed in anticipation (for two out of the three of us anyhow) of an early morning at work.

The next day was a nice mixture of relaxation and activity. In the morning I had a big breakfast, answered e-mails and had a bath. A BATH! The afternoon saw me take a tram into town to explore the Queen Victoria Market.

Some of you may be aware that my favourite places in Toronto include St. Lawrence and Kensington Markets. With this in mind, it was natural that I’d like QVM, but it was even better than I could have imagined. Perhaps three times the size of St. Lawrence Market, the QVM was a dream come true. I started out in the bustling (if smelly) fish and meat area, glorying in the activity all around. I slowly wandered through, then across a laneway to the (like so many things in Melbourne) covered open air fruit and vegetable section.

This is where I REALLY fell in love with the place. Two aisles of stands, perhaps 200m long each, every stand heaped with fresh produce. All around, cries from the vendors “4 dollar mushies! Mushrooms, 4 dollars a kilo!” “Mangoes! Three for two dollars! Eight bucks a box!” “Fresh pineapples here! Beautiful big pineapples! Only two dollars” “Mushrooms! Three eighty now! Three eighty a kilo!”

I was hooked. I needed to do some shopping for the dinner I’d planned on preparing the next night, but that was nowhere near enough. I was in love with the profusion of colours, smells and sounds, and was overwhelmed by the urge to stuff bags (and myself) with kilos and kilos of delicious (and cheap! So cheap!) fruit and vegetables. In the end, I left with all my dinner ingredients, not to mention two huge pineapples, a pint of strawberries and five grapefruit (these last three, which I planned on having for lunch and dinner cost a grand total of six dollars.) As I made my final purchases I started chatting with the lady vendor, bemoaning the price of limes here ($1.20 each! each! Not EVERYTHING was cheap) and talking about my love of markets like this. She related a bit of the market’s recent history, explaining that even in the past ten years, it has shrunk considerably from its previous size, mostly due to the advent of large grocery stores. I can’t imagine why anyone would rather shop at a sterile (and pricey!) supermarket instead of a wonderful and vibrant place such as this. Nonetheless, many of the areas once occupied by fruit and vegetable sellers have now become sort of a bazaar, with stalls selling all manner of eclectica. There was even one that sold obscure (by Australian standards) sports memoribilia.

After a bit more blissful wandering about, the market started to shut for the day (I should have waited to shop… Prices dropped even further at this point!) and I headed back home on the tram for a relaxed afternoon spent writing my Overland Track weblog entry and gobbling delicious fresh fruit.

I originally planned my next day in Melbourne to be another administrative one, during which I’d change my train ticket to leave on a later date and attempt to get an Indian visa.

The first task was easily accomplished, with Allison and Jeff being overjoyed that they’d get to entertain me for another few days (indeed, it was their exhortions that led to my changing the ticket in the first place.)

After spending a good chunk of the morning sorting out how to actually get there, I eventually figured it out. I borrowed a bicycle (pushbike in the Australian dialect) and helmet from Jeff and Allison and headed out on the 10km ride to the consulate in the suburb of Coburg.

It was fun riding a significant distance on a bike for the first time in years, although I occaisionally found myself struggling with making use of the new muscle groups required (though there was only hill I had to walk the bike up.) The trip was made much more enjoyable and less nervous by the profusion of bike lanes in Melbourne. Even here in the inner suburbs, every street with a significant amount of vehicular traffic had a bike lane.

After some riding through residential and light industrial areas I eventually got to Coburg, and was delighted. Busy Sydney Road was lined on either side by all manner of one and two story retail shops. The cultural diversity of this section of the city was spectacular, with Vietnamese, Greek, Turkish and Lebanese businesses rubbing shoulders. A small pedestrian mall was packed full of people, despite it being 13:30 on a Wednesday afternoon.

I made my way to the Indian consulate waited about 30 minutes to finally speak to someone. Once again, I almost enjoyed waiting in the office, simply because I could do so without concern for other activities. I quickly learned that there wasn’t a hope of my obtaining a visa before departing Melbourne. Not only would it take 5 business days, but the embassy would be closed for the festival of Diwali one of the two business days I had left in the city. Ah well. I’d still spent a wonderful day seeing the city by bike, with the wind blowing through my hair and the sun shining down on me, and had found my way to a vibrant and interesting suburb that I wouldn’t otherwise have seen.

My trip back was by a less direct route (this is my vain way of saying I got slightly lost) as I headed too far down one road, but eventually spotted a familiar tram route and followed it home. The only downside of the experience was the serious abuse that my bum took during the ride. Even now, three days later it’s still a bit sore.

The evening was spent preparing dinner for Jeff (sadly Allison would be away at work for the remaining evenings of the week.) My usual Thai menu was on tap, and Jeff arrived home just as I finished cooking. I was delighted when he wouldn’t stop raving about how wonderful it looked, smelled and tasted. He even spent a little while on the phone with Allison describing the leftovers she had to look forward to!

Jeff and I ate out in the back yard as the sun went down and spent two or three hours savouring our supper and chatting about all manner of subjects, mostly travel. I never seemed to be able to talk to Jeff for more than a few minutes without learning something else surprising and fascinating about him. One of the best traveled people I’ve met, Jeff volunteers lots of time in the Victoria cycling community, has ridden from Vietnam to England by recumbent tricycle and written a book about the experience, cycled across West Africa on a tandem bike and is in the process of selling the (incredibly polished and enthralling) documentary he filmed about the experience. Despite all this he managed to be genuinely interested about my (comparatively modest) travel plans.

The following day was one I’d been waiting for ever since finishing the Overland Track. A day where I did absolutely nothing. I lazed about the house, reading stuff on the ‘net, watching a DVD or two and listening to the radio (I’ve thoroughly enjoyed both NZs National Radio and the ABC radio here in Australia. I’m very fond of CBC Radio One back home, and english language public broadcasters around the world are so similar as to be almost indistinguishable. I’m not certain if it’s the tone of voice or the type of stories or what, but it takes about ten seconds for me to pick out a public radio station, whether it be NPR, Deutsche Welle, CBC or ABC.

Anyhow, the rest was just what I required, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The following day was another busy one.

The first task was to recover my nightguard (a plastic tooth-cover that keeps me from grinding away my tooth enamel as I sleep.) I’d noticed a few days beforehand that I’d left it ferry over from Tasmania. I’d phoned in and been assured that yes they had it, and it would be no problem to come by any time today to pick it up.

My trip down to the ferry docks took rather longer than I’d planned. The first reason for this was that the trams were seriously delayed and detoured due to a monstrous fire in a paper factory the night before. The second was that I stopped at my beloved Queen Victoria Market again for lunch. While sitting on a bench in the middle of the market’s bustle, I enjoyed a nice piece of organic Gouda, two tomatoes, a honeydew melon, 250g of strawberries and a mango. Total price: $4.80.

After lunch I popped over to the Mercat Cross Pub for a beer and a view out over the market from above. Total price of a pint of Cascade Pale Ale: $6.40, or 133% of what my lunch food cost. As I sat, I met John, a Melbourner who spent about nine months a year living and teaching English in China, and who was planning a trip from there to India by land through Burma.

After this I finally made my way to the ferry docks and went up to the inquiries desk to retrieve my nightguard. After a lot of confused looks, searching around the premises and so on, it finally became clear that the people I’d spoken to earlier (and my nightguard) were actually in Devonport, Tasmania. Well, could they just send it over on the boat the next day? “Ermm… No, we’re not allowed to do that. We can only mail it to you.” After a lot of disappointed noises and quiet politeness they eventually agreed to bend the rules for me and send it on that evening’s ship. Whew.

After this odyssey I caught a tram back into the city, then another one to the beach suburb of St. Kilda. It was nice enough, but I certainly wouldn’t characterize it (as many people do) as being one of the most interesting parts of Melbourne. The beach was nice, if far too windy to enjoy, but to my mind the most intriguing part was Luna Park, a theme park near the beach that followed the Coney Island mold, having been built in 1912. It wasn’t open when I passed by, but even the exterior was fascinating.

My perusal of St. Kilda complete, I headed back to Essendon and met Allison and a very excited Jeff. Did I know what was happening? Had I seen the storm blowing in? The just coming over the horizon was a very well defined thick, black, ominous band of cloud.

Within a few minutes we’d headed out to a large local park to watch a large and powerful storm approach and (hopefully) to experience some of its power first hand. Sadly, the storm was a bit of a dud, and after waiting for a bit we piled in the car again and headed out to rent a video (Super Size Me,) procure some ice cream (great combo that) and spend a quiet evening at home.

The next morning I woke early, as did Jeff and in no time we were out the door on the way to the local FM community radio station (I wish I could give them a plug here, but I’ve forgotten the frequency and call letters) for the start of the show Jeff hosts. (Did I mention that he never ceases to surprise me?) The three-hour show consists of Jeff and a couple friends (John and Don) commenting on the issues of the day as presented by the local papers, interspersed with some music and a half hour radio play.

Not only was I invited to sit in the studio and listen, but also to actually take part in the show. My contributions consisted of: Trying to fake an Australian Accent, some comments about John Hinckley, Jodie Foster and Ronald Reagan, and the occaisional one-liner related to the news stories they were discussing.

Even if my contributions weren’t particularly profound I did have fun, and at least I didn’t embarass myself in front of anyone who actually knew me (save for Jeff of course.)

After the radio show, we took a fond final look at the QVM, and a fond first look at the South Melbourne Market (there’s ANOTHER ONE!) Though the Queen Vic was definitely my favourite of the two, though the SMM will forever hold a special place in my (and more importantly Jeff’s) heart, due to what we found there: An authentic Bavarian pretzel. After first trying them in Germany some three years ago, he’d been on the lookout for these yeasty treats in Melbourne ever since, but to no avail. Until that day. His face lit up, enraptured, as he took his first bite. So excited was Jeff that he phoned Allison to let her know about his discovery.

‘Twas a credit to his character that he insisted he’d get more pleasure out of sharing them (he’d bought two) than from eating them both himself. And besides, he could always buy more (as he did when we left the market.)

After our trip through the SMM, we took a walk through the quiet, historic (if verging on run-down) neighbourhood of South Mebourne, before finally making it to the ferry terminal where, lo, my nightguards had actually arrived, wrapped in their rigid plastic case, a seasickness bag, then a paper cover, then a large envelope. Despite all of this packaging, one of them had somehow got broken, but that’s why I had a spare to begin with. No worries.

With the evening drawing in, we headed back north to Jeff’s parents’ place, where we’d spend the early evening babysitting his niece before I caught my overnight train to Melbourne. Jeff’s mum, dad, sister and brother-in-law were all headed out to a hippy theme party for the evening, so we had free entertainment as they dressed in preparation for departure. Not only did I get free entertainment, but also cheap books from the church rummage sale or “fete” that had taken place that afternoon! Hurray! I’d actually finished my previous book a few days earlier and had been subsisting on Jeff’s fascinating tale of his tricycle trip (he only had the one copy in the house, otherwise I would have taken it with me.)

Finally the time came for departure. I said my goodbyes to Allison, and Jeff and I headed downtown to the train station, only to discover that the train had been delayed by “at least two hours.” Not only that, a mobile call from Allison let us know that I’d left my hard won night-guards behind. Back we went.

A couple of hours later, Allison and I re-said our farewells and Jeff and I drove down to the station once more. This time the train was set to go, so after a goodbye hug and exhortions to keep in touch, off (or rather on) I went.

The Overland was a ten hour overnight train trip from Melbourne to Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. Astonishingly (for those not used to the scale of countries like Australia and Canada) this is the SHORTEST of the three train journeys offered by the Great Southern Railway.

Which was fortunate. Since the overland is the shortest, it also receives the oldest, noisiest and least luxurious of the GSRs cars. Not only did this serve to keep me from getting much needed sleep, but the fellow in the seat next to me did his part as well. He was clearly a friendly and well meaning gentleman, but he drove me near mad with his incessant and mind-numbing talk. I was very thankful that I had my earplugs with me. This allowed me to claim I needed to drown out the constant clanking of the cars and tracks (which I really did) and at the same time to drown out his drone as well (he continued talking to the passengers in nearby seats as I slowly drifted off.)

The next morning, I woke and found myself in Adelaide, rested and ready to explore a new and (hopefully) exciting city.

Deepest thanks (of course) to Jeff and Allison. Not only did they give me a place to sleep in Melbourne, they were “hosts” in the true sense of the world, going out of their way to make me comfortable and to ensure I had a good (and just as importantly, relaxing) time in Melbourne. It was (and always is) SOOO nice to have an actual HOME to stay in. It’s one of the things that keeps homesickness away and makes travelling all the better.

Upon arriving in Melbourne I’d only known Jeff and Allison for a week or so in the Cook Islands and felt a bit odd calling and staying with such recent “acquaintances.” Now both of them are firmly in the “friend” category and I sincerely hope I get to see them again, whether it be in Australia, Canada or wherever in the world we might cross paths.

Tags: Australia

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