First things first, Aussies shorten all their words so they pronounce it Melbin, not Mel-born. Got it? Good. So every time you read Melbourne in this blog, think Melbin in the voice of Crocodile Dundee. Because they all sound like him. Trust me.
The Spirit of Tasmania II chugged into Melbourne at a glacial pace, giving us a nice long look at its skyline. I was quite surprised at the size of the city when I first saw it. I'm not sure why but I thought it would be smaller. As it were, I'd say it's somewhere between Seattle and Chicago’s skylines in both height and width. I guess I thought everything in Australia would be smaller even though Australia is a huge country.
This is not from the boat but still shows a nice view of the not small skyline.
Sometimes it's nice to just jump into a cab after a long journey and move quickly to your destination. That would have been a tad spendier than I wanted, so public transit for us! We picked up some transit cards and jumped on the closest tram. Figuring out where you are going on the fly always works out. This time, it actually did. The tram dropped us off a few blocks from our new temporary home in Collingwood.
There were a few moments that I felt maybe we were wandering through too sketchy of a neighborhood. There was graffiti everywhere and everyone knows, where there is graffiti, there are trouble makers. As we would soon find out though, graffiti is all over Melbourne. The city is kind of known for it because it is one of the few in the world where it is legal. Totally did our homework on this one. As a bonus, this area of the city had some of the best work we saw with massive pieces all over the place.
I was like, "Oh, man, we're gonna get shot in this neighborhood." Then I remembered we weren't in America so the chances of that happening were slim.
This was our first AirBnB experience and it was really great. Our hosts, Sarny and Jack and Santa, were terrific and the location was awesome, just a few blocks from two of the hippest streets in the city, Smith and Brunswick, and public transit. There was even a fancy coffee place a block away where you could see the papers on the type of bean you were about to imbibe. $7 a coffee limited our enjoyment of that place.
We took our time exploring the city, often finding ourselves just hanging out on the rooftop deck of our place before wandering out for a bit. We went looking for the Botanical Gardens one day but wound up in the Shrine of Remembrance. It is a really cool war memorial/museum with a lot of interactive displays and interesting exhibit layouts. The building itself was quite nice as well.
Admiring the night sky on the rooftop deck.
Santa hanging out. After a tentative first few days, he warmed up to us.
Shrine of Remembrance. We weren't looking for it but I'm glad we found it.
A flag inside the original ambulatory. They new war museum, opened in 2014, was built below the existing Shrine, which was built in the 1920's-30's.
Animals are something we both wanted to see in Australia but didn't get a chance to go out and find in the outback. Luckily for us, zoos exist. Lucky for animals? Not sure. Anyway, we went out to the Melbourne Zoo for an afternoon. It was quite small but had a few nice exhibits. Highlights included a ring-tailed lemur habitat where you could sit amongst them, cute meerkats that would all stand up together, a baby gorilla, a swimming platypus which is super weird looking, and a miracle baby baboon that a rather large lady was blocking all the little children from seeing because she just had to have 5 minutes of shaky camera phone footage of it. Miracle baby because all of the females were on birth control and then...out came a baby. As Ian Malcolm would say, “Life finds a way.”
We also saw some lions laying around until some lady started calling out to them. All three of them got up and started a chest shaking series of roars. I'm not sure if they were agitated or excited. It was pretty disconcerting but a really unique experience none the less. If we had been in the wild with them doing that, well, let's just say my pants would need a good washing.
If I had to chose which animal to be bitten by, I would not choose a baboon.
Obligatory Australian koala bear shot! Look how friggin' cute it is with the eucalyptus hanging out of his little mouth. They sleep like 20 hours a day.
This is a tree kangaroo. MJ watched him for like 20 minutes and he barely moved. I don't know what he is looking for down there.
Holy crap this little lady was super cute and rolled around on the hill and used that branch as a toy. Her dad sat with his back to the glass and the area was roped off because he gets pissed when people are too close.
Standing at attention. One time, they all just stopped and stood up because they heard the jangle of the zoo keeper that usually feeds them. They starred at her with barely controlled violence as she told them she didn't have any food.
Just chillin' in the ring-tailed lemur cage.
Most of the time though, we just wandered around, stopping for a bite or a drink here and there. It's an all around good city for walking and public transit. All of the graffiti makes for cool finds all over the city, if you're willing to walk down some shady alleys every so often.
On one of our last nights there, the city celebrated White Night. Starting at 7PM and running until 7AM, the downtown core is opened up with performances, bands, video and projection mapping installations, food carts, and a whole lot of people. Like, shoulder to shoulder crowds filling the width of multiple entire city streets. I can't recall the last time I was in such a large crowd of people. Maybe never.
This was a massive projection mapped animation across the Parliament Building. Looks amazing in a still photo, amiright?
Smoke effects make everything look awesomely atmospheric.
It's 3 AM, let's all hang out in this shady alley.
We made our way, very slowly, across downtown to the National Gallery of Victoria. They were having a special for the Warhol and Weiwei exhibit. $10 instead of $30. It was a good deal, and a surprisingly short line, so in we went.
The exhibit is quite large and there is some pretty heady stuff. Normally, not a big deal. But when it's 2 in the morning and you are looking at video about faulty construction in China, hyper-color images of General Mao, rooms made entirely out of Legos, and an entire gallery dedicated to cats on the Internet, it's all a bit surreal. I'm not usually up and about in a city at 4 AM, especially not when I'm dead sober. That was probably the most interesting part of the experience. The last time I was up that late was at my ex-boss's house and drugs and/or alcohol may have been involved.
This amazing Ai Weiwei sculpture, Forever Bicycles, is in the lobby of the art museum. I think it is over 300 of the same exact bikes attached to each other. And the wheels spin!
A room made of Legos forming portraits and quotes from famous political dissenters.
Thus ended our time in Australia. Melbourne definitely felt like a city I could have spent more time getting to know. Though it was a bit short on the craft beer scene, there were many fancy coffee shops that we didn't get a chance to try. It was a short few weeks but we got a good taste of the populated parts of the country. Next time, I think we may head into the outback and see what dangers lurk there but, in the mean time, off to Bali and an entirely different type of culture and people.
We had the fun on White Night. Sober, sober normal fun with 50,000 of our closest friends.