Melbs Part I

 *cracks knuckles*

Right, that's enough fluffy philosophizing. Let's actually talk about all the good stuff that I got up to in Melbourne! Hopefully the last post will prove to be useful context for the next few posts about Australia's two largest cities.

Sunday 30th November

It turns out that Queenstown, New Zealand has a tiny airport. We arrived early enough to return our car and walked from the car rental lot to the terminal, a whopping distance of a couple hundred yards. If that. After breezing through Jetstar check-in and security, we had a fair bit of time to kill before our noon flight. I had introduced Grace and Pola to Hearts the day before, so we played a couple hands. I got massacred.

The flight was quick (3 hours) and smooth. While writing a blog, they came around and served food. Beef pies!! You don't see meat pies at all in America, so I've been very happy to get my fill of these goodies at every opportunity this trip. I also enjoyed a Solo, an Australian lemon soda that rivals New Zealand's (quite sugary) L&P. 

When we landed in Australia, we all went through customs together. Thanks to an aggressive scrub before flying, no hiking boots were subjected to biosecurity inspection. I hopped into an Uber with Stan and Pola while Grace caught her own back home. I was quite sad about dividing the team at this juncture. We'd had such great bonding in NZ and it was unfortunate that while I was still on holiday, all three of them would be returning to work.

Driving the half hour from the airport to South Melbourne was a shock. The largest road I'd taken since Boston had been 4 lanes at the Christchurch airport. But now we were on a massive 12 lane highway heading into the city. The road was also lined with funny arid flora - tall, scraggly trees with pom-style poofs of leaves. Smooth bark. Very scraggly. Unlike New Zealand's familiar ferns and beech forests, this new flora was fascinating.

We threw down our stuff, started laundry, and then hit the city. In that short afternoon, we wandered through Melbourne's grand Shrine of Remembrance park and the adjacent Royal Botanical Garden. That's where I learned that everything was a eucalyptus tree (it's not, but it seems like it) and witnessed a ridulous plethora of bin chickens (Australian Ibis) and swamphens. Parrots and lorikeets flew all around the strange garden too, using colorful language to match their colorful apperance. Unfortunately some intermittent rain threatened to intensify and we took cover just before getting dumped on. A nearby wedding on the banks of a pond wasn't so lucky.

We headed back to Stan and Pola's to move the laundry and pick up a car. They drove me around Albert Park - home to Melbourne's Formula 1 track before we went to Chevapi Grill in South Melbourne for dinner. The two-story Victorian/modern architecture perplexed me because I couldn't decide to what extent the neighborhood was gentrified. But, anyway, these thoughts left me when we tucked into a Balkan beef burger with delicious polenta fries (a Melbourne staple) and baked white beans. After some grocery shopping we retired home to watch a ridiculous Australian sitcom called Kath & Kim before bed.

Monday 1st December

It was the beginning of advent, not that you would know it from the temperatures. I commuted with Stan to CBD on foot, a short walk where I caught my first glimpses of the city. He and I both went to work. Unlike his work, my job was to explore the city. This started with checking out the Victorian Flinders Street Station, with its beautiful rounded entrance - surprisingly similar to Boston's South Station - and ornate cream exterior. 

Feeling a bit lost in the midst of the morning rush, I headed around the corner to a small parallel street and ducked into the first decent cafe I saw: Dukes cafe. It was full of locals and - although intimidated - I ordered a flat white and sat down. A tourist in tourist's clothing. My flat white arrived in a generous ceramic coffee cup. The coffee was topped with the customary foam feature an impressive spade-shaped pattern. I took a sip. Whoa. So that's what coffee is supposed to taste like. The complexity of the beans popped and morphed in my mouth. The froth was so creamy and delicious. It was easily the best coffee I'd ever tasted, by such a long margin. 

Once I took the opportunity to bump into a waitress and nearly send someone else's coffee flying (still so embarrassed), I set out again, ready to really tackle my task. Melbourne is known for laneways and arcades - tiny alleys bisecting the long blocks and featuring cute, small shops, patisseries, chocolateries, and others. I turned into the central, most famous arcades - which are called Block Arcade and Royal Arcade - to look around. Many of the shops were closed due to it being Monday, but this allowed me uninterrupted opportunity to examine the fancy stained glass roofs and other Victorian details.

Continuing to head away from Flinders Street and the river, I came to the State Library of Victoria. The building itself is cool because it has a huge four-story hexagonal reading room but I also examined some exibits on the role of books in different aspects of society.

The library also had an exhibit on Ned Kelly, a bushranger from the late 1800s. The bushrangers were essentially outlaws, stealing from the government and staying on the lam. Ned had an iconic metal suit that very nearly resembled the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The slit in the helmet was especially excellent, offering an extremely frightening spectre to all opponents. With armor down to his knees, Ned Kelly successfully rebounded from several bullet hits in police shootouts, which left mighty dents in the outfit. Finally, the police shot him in the lower legs and that was that. Ned was an Irish immigrant and after issuing a few statements to the people and the court about how much prejudice he had received, tons of people sided with him. Still, he lost the court battle and was sentenced. Ironically, his suit of armor is now on display in a library established by the judge of his trial.

Leaving the library (and making a quick stop at Melbourne Central mall), I hopped on a tram to leave CBD and hit the National Gallery of Victoria. Many consider this to be Australia's premiere art museum. In the museum cafe I enjoyed a delicious burrata salad and a glass of wine before hitting all the amazing Medieval and Renaissance art.

When I was done, I walked back into CBD and saw a couple of the same arcades again before heading to Pola and Grace's workplace. Grace met me in the lobby and we hopped in her car bound for an evening of Westie in FitzRoy, a neighborhood northeast of CBD. FitzRoy looks a lot like South Melbourne (dilapidated Victorian upstair facades over weirdly modern street-level storefronts) but we barely had time to look. Diving into a restaurant, we speedily ate an order of polenta fries and took a wood-fired pizza to go. We were only a couple minutes late to West Coast Swing where we had a couple great classes and enjoyed a really fun social. They have an excellent community here in Melbourne and the dancing was really fun.

Tuesday 2nd December

Stan was kind enough to take off the Tuesday so we could do a little road trip. With so many nearby options (Great Ocean Road, Philip Island, Grampian Mountains), it was hard to decide. Ultimately, however, it was going to be the peninsula for its versatility.

But first we needed breakfast. There's a famous croissanterie in Melbourne called Lune. The pastry chef there had been going through a bit of a mental health battle in the 2010s and decided to go to Paris to learn patisserie. She succeeded and today Lune's croissants are the best in town. Deliciously filled (or plain!), the croissants explode on contact, just as intended. Everything there looked awesome but I went with two classics: plain and almond. Yes, I stuffed myself on two croissants. When in Rome...

If you look at a satellite view of Melbourne, you could be mistaken into thinking that it sits at the back of a cute little bay. That's at least the mistake I made before arriving there. Instead, Port Philip Bay is a gargantuan waterbody with a 265 km (165 mi) circumference. Stan and I decided to hit the east leg of the bay, and we were in the car quite a while to get out to the interesting bits. Don't forget everything you see is "Melbourne" - just not "Melbourne CBD". 

Our first real stop was The Briars Wildlife Sanctuary in Mount Martha. It seemed a shame to come to Australia and not see any core wildlife, so was hoped to find some in the sanctuary. Also, Stan's other goal was to share with me what "the bush" is like. 

Check and check.

The bush is fascinating. Scraggly mid-size trees are scattered through a grassy "forest floor". I hesitate to call it forest though, as the trees are sparse enough that you're bound to get burnt if you aren't careful. Stan was quick to point out that in the bush, you'll often find patches with long-dead trees that haven't decayed one iota. Isn't that weird? They're still as solid as the day they died. Just grey and lifeless. Admittedly, there is forest in Australia and the trees do get taller. But much of the wilderness consists of thin bush and lots of grass. Plenty of eucalyptus too.

On the fauna side of house, we saw so much. I haven't fully catalogued it all yet, but we saw kangaroos (which are apparently like rats), a wallaby, emus, and boatloads of parrots, wrens, cockatoos, ravens, laughing miners, ducks, a heron, and so on. At some point the noise from the parrots was such that I couldn't focus on the diversity of individual smaller birds. It was a sensory overload! The parrots and lorikeets - with their intensely bright colored plumage - were really amazing. But the biggest win was seeing the emus. We were walking along the trail when I saw two bison-like mounds moving in some tall grass. Looking more closely revealed that they were the huge bodies of the emus rather than some North American beast. Stan pointed out that emus cause the greateast threat of injury of any animal in Australia; I guess it must be a combination of severity and likelihood, like any great risk matrix. It's supposedly easy to see them, but they're very tempramental.

Unfortunately we did not see koalas (even though they had recently been seen in the park). Nor did we see kookaburras, but we heard 3-4 of them further off in the bush. What a sound! So ridiculous.

Moving on, Stan and I stopped in the area of Rye (remember, still Melbourne) to grab a quick bite. He had chili eggs while I had something generic. The cafe we chose was in eyesight of the brilliant blue water of the placid bay and we saw a pelican fly overhead.

After eating we continued to Point Nepean National Park. This park consists of the tip of the peninsula, the end of the bay where it meets the mighty Pacific. Mostly sand with dense bush, people can follow a single asphalt road through the small park to a fort at its tip. Swallows flitted above the trees and out over the water as we walked. Where the road narrowed, Stan and I could see that the bay side was super quiet while the ocean side was wild with waves and tumult. Both sides were beautiful as crystal water refracted gorgeous stand and craggy limestone rocks beneath.

A sign warned that a Prime Minister went missing, presumed dead, while surfing here in the 1960s.

The several-kilometer road undulated up and down a few knobs on its route to the very tip. At the end, the deserted fort was well-overgrown with shrubs and trees, a post-apocalyptic reminder of a former conflict. The fort had been built during the World Wars to protect Melbourne against foreign attack. Much of the fort was built into the stone of the knob and one could go to several different above- and below-ground levels. Down by the water, the beach was stunning! Yet signs admonished visitors to stay on the trail as unexploded ordinance could still be lurking. It all seemed a bit silly though; Australia is so far away from other countries that these weapons are basically pointless.

In fact, Stan found the guns had only been fired twice in combat: immediately after the war commensed, a German ship that had moored in Port Philip Bay was denied exit by the firing of the two guns. It promptly turned around and was captured.

That evening, we got back from our long drive just in time for dinner. Stan and I headed to a sushi place in Bentleigh (they have amazing Asian food here in Australia) before he showed me his ballroom studio. We also went to Brighton Beach, home of the famous multi-colored beach shacks for an impressive skyline view of Melbourne pre-sunset. Relocating slightly up the road to St Kilda's beach, we admired the sunset over the bay. Ideally, we would have also seen a large band of penguins come to roost just after sunset (as they do literally every day, go figure), but new ticketing and gating procedures prevented us from getting close. Thankfully one or two ostracised penguins stayed on the colony outskirts where we could catch a fleeting view in the gorgeous dusk.

What a great day for bush, wildlife, and sunsets. Melbourne was off to a fine start.

Nap time for me, more to follow soon.