I love Melbourne, I mean I really really do…… nah I’m just pulling your chain. Melbourne is great - it’s even the centre of the Universe!

Before I start writing this I feel I need to caveat it with a statement - my writing often gets really boring! I am sure it is legible and with alright spelling and average grammar, but I have just read Orwell’s ‘Why I Write’ on Lauren’s recommendation. I am now all to aware that I write verbosely, with too many commas, as well as use excessive common sayings, adjectives and adverbs (in the form of emoticons and ‘really’). So I’m gonna practise not being obtuse in my writing.

Day 1 of the grand world tour was successfully survived. Old flatmate Stu picked me up from Melbourne airport and we chin-wagged (no wait that is an expression) the whole way to his flat. His flatmates are Michael aka Neil, Michael aka Sharman who isn’t actually a flatmate, Paul aka champinoman (pronounced champ-ee-no-man), and Margret aka well she doesn’t have a moniker. Dinner was ready and the internet was flowing. We played Risk with spaceships until 3am in the morning. I think I left my life in one country to pick it up in the next one. I got far too little sleep for the first day but resolutely got up in the morning to start my worldly education on foreigners.

To explain the title I had high expectations of Melbourne. People from Christchurch say ‘you will love Melbourne, it’s just like Christchurch’. People from Wellington say ‘you will love Melbourne, it’s just like Wellington’. My first impression was I’m from New Zealand and it is just like Australia. I find everything in Aussie big, clean, in your face and made of beige brick.

According to the information literature Melbourne has been voted the most live-able city two times (more than twice Paul corrects me) in recent history. It is also the sporting, economic and cultural capitals of Australia says the ‘City Museum’ in the Old Treasury. In the case of sport that makes it the sporting capital of the planet given Aussie’s dominance on every playing field. Melbourne is the capital of the best state in Australia, all of the other states are bad. Especially Tasmania.

Cynicism aside, I love Australia and Melbourne is no exception, It is gorgeous to look at, eat at, shop at and especially travel at. I don’t hide my contempt for John Howard and his governments snubbing of Kyoto but Melbourne’s public transport system puts New Zealand’s ‘do they have a rail system’ to shame [and NZs is owned by Aussies]. Cable trams were established in Melbourne in 1885 (I got a pamphlet from a museum) and the one that I was on today that broke down looked like it was from the 1800s. Facetious comments aside I spent AUD $12 on a 1 hour return trip into Melbourne (I’m actually in Geelong), and unlimited tram and bus rides once in the city. ‘O’ for oarsome!

The other highlight - since I can’t rave about how the entire centre is one great shopping mall ’cause I can’t fit anything else in my pack - is the Australian Centre for Motion Image (ACMI). It is a multimedia museum so it doesn’t have many exhibits in the traditional sense. Rather it acts as a focal point for travelling exhibits, contemporary film and media studies, and film festivals. Unfortunately I missed by a couple of weeks a series of films and lectures on auteur Benito del Toro of Pan’s Labyrinth and Hell Boy fame, this weekend starts a series on Punk culture, but I shall be gone for that :(

Did I mention that Melbourne is pretty to look at? One thing that gets me about Australian cities is that they were built 50 or so years before New Zealand cities and they had/have more money. The grand stone neo-classic/neo-gothic buildings of the 1800s juxtaposed with steel and glass post-modern architeture gives the city an overall Art Deco aesthetic (think the Chrysler building).

A rather long post but what would you expect for my first official day of travelling. These will get shorter and less frequent as time goes on - but I shall at least try and live up to the points with which I started.

Oh I almost forgot: DO NOT SEE SPIDERMAN 3! ‘Nuff said.

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Comments

  1. Lauren

    Oh hun, that was a good read :) Yay for George, and yay for no fancy-pants psych stuff - I can actually understand this one!
    This is good cos I get to travel vicariously through you from my dark office corner, keep it coming x

    51:55 10:46, May 15 2007

  2. Marieke

    According to Dylan Moran, in Melbourne, anyone who’s not a one-armed orange-haired blind lesbian sculpturist and works only in zinc is a boring conservative stuff shirt.

    Enjoyed the read a lot. And keep those commas coming; you’ll make up for all those who massacre grammar and just eat, shoot and leave.

    51:56 12:12, May 16 2007

  3. Matty

    Benitio Del Toro is the guy from Traffic and the ‘Samoan’ in Fear and Loathing, you mean Guillermo Del Toro (I wonder if Del Toro is Spanish for Smith?), hehe I corrected you on something, I feel smart, “Vicariously I, correct spelling while you fly…..”, Mmm Tool, pop culture reference, I really like them, really really like them rather a lot, did you notice this is all one sentence?

    51:79 19:52, Jun 02 2007

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