This preamble is too long and is likely boring and extraneous. I encourage you to ignore it and jump to the rest of the blog below my aerial photo of Melbourne.Returning our Budget rental car at the Cairns Airport for our flight to Melbourne was a small confusion, one of those things that happens on trips.
The overhead signage made it clear where to return rental cars for all of the companies ... except not Budget. We had picked up the car in the domestic terminal parking, so presumed the return was there. Nope. The only sign we could see for Budget directed us towards the international terminal, so questioningly that's where we went. There were a few stalls marked for Budget, but it was outside of the lot for most of the car returns and it wasn't explicitly signed for car returns. We tentatively parked there and determined that I'd wait in the car while Ginny went in and enquired at the counter. I waited. And I waited. I tried her cell phone.
Here I should interject. In the States our phone plan is with T-Mobile. Their standard plan gives us free text and data almost anywhere in the world, and worldwide voice calls only cost a little (20 cents/minute in Australia). So we both take our phones on trips; we figure that's a way to find each other if we get separated. But that plan works only if BOTH phones are turned on and not in airplane mode.
No answer - I got her voicemail.
She had not taken her camera. Once, in a German hill town with the streets a warren and higgly-piggly, we had parked our car somewhere and couldn't find where we left it. We approached various people and tried to describe where we had left it ... that's almost impossible in a strange town filled with half-timbered buildings and cobbled streets with few signs, especially with only a rudimentary knowledge of the language. Luckily we eventually found someone who thought they knew what we might be trying to describe ... they surprisingly were able to show us a way to the car. After that, if we were in a location where we might get lost, we'd developed a habit of taking strategic photos at every turn of our route ... like bread crumbs, we could always retrace our steps on the camera's screen. But who needs to do that in an airport, right?
Eventually I broke the cardinal rule ... if separated, one of you stay where you last were together, otherwise you might both wander forever missing each other. I got out of the car to look for her.
Luckily I hadn't gotten too far before I ran into her. She had gone into the international terminal and found the Budget counter there unattended, so she walked to the domestic terminal. The counter there was unattended too. Trying to return to the car, she ended up searching through the various parking areas until we found each other. When we returned to our car another couple pulled up and asked us where they should return their Budget car. We finally used the key drop at one of the counters, along with a note about where we'd left the car. We forewent the quick dinner that we no longer had time for, and hurried to check in. A few days ago we got our credit card bill. They must have found the car. The statement was for the expected amount.
Welcome back to the travel blog.
In many ways, when two people are flying together, it's handy to be in a plane that has only two seats abreast next to the windows. But in other ways, having three seats abreast can result in fascinating conversations if people are interested in talking. The plane we were on had three abreast. The woman who had our window seat seemed pleasant - we exchanged the normal pleasantries, but she was busy reading so we were quiet. Eventually, as we got close to Melbourne, her home, she began engaging, pointing out things through the window and telling us about Melbourne. I think she didn't mind me reaching over to take photos out the window.
We grabbed a cab to the hotel. We're not in the habit of using taxi's (or Uber - Wall Street's way of transferring money from those slaving in the gig economy to their coffers). We usually either drive, bike, or use public transport. But throughout this trip we took taxis to/from the airports to save the hassle of both of us schlepping our luggage on public transport - we did enough of that when a bit younger.
I'm glad I didn't have to drive in Melbourne; it's questionable whether I would have gotten used to Melbourne's unique way of making a right turn from a busy two direction street (I'd read about it, but never quite figured it out from descriptions.). I watched attentively as our taxi driver, when we needed to turn right, would pull to the left, almost into the crosswalk, to let traffic behind him pass, and then just as the signal changed, would turn right across all lanes of the stopped traffic. Eventually I realized that there was a separate signal with a right turn arrow that synchronized the traffic for those maneuvers. It's easier to understand when seen than when one reads about it. And amazingly, it works.
Months before we left on our trip we had decided on a good but economic hotel that was centrally located and handy for walking. We'd stayed at a lot of Ibis in Europe ... economical, functional, dependable, and clean. So we had booked the "Ibis Styles Melbourne, The Victoria Hotel" - a strange amalgam of two names that, we found, were equally well understood by using either of the two names individually or both in tandem.
When our taxi pulled up in front of the hotel we were a bit worried, hoping our rooms would be on the back.
It was Saturday night. Across Little Collins Street from the hotel was a nightclub with the door open, people standing outside, emitting music with a low-frequency thumping beat. (I wonder how a Daintree cassowary would react. Their bird calls are super-low frequency - a sound that travels best and further through the rainforest or other obstructions ... Hmmm ... Primeval music)
In the ensuing Sunday and Monday evenings the door was closed and silent. It was just a blank, unmarked door in an unmarked wall without any sign. Had I been younger and single it would have been worth exploring that night.
Luckily we needn't have worried about the noise. During the rest of our stay the activity and noise wasn't happening. And to our relief, our assigned room was far, far away on the back. We had to take an elevator to the 6th floor, walk down a long hallway through a few sets of glass fire doors, then take another elevator to the 7th floor, more glass fire doors, 2 corridors, and finally, our room.
The hotel apparently was at one time one of the elegant major hotels in the city. It seems to have gradually expanded, albeit much more functionally without its former elegance, amalgamating several adjacent buildings. When we checked in the clerk apologized for the distance to our room and said they'd get us a closer room the next day. But the room, and its walk, were fine with us. Like every Ibis we'd previously stayed in until then, the hotel and the room were perfectly fine ... functional, clean, and well kept.
After settling our bags into the room we tried to find a place to eat our delayed dinner. We walked a bit but finding nothing better, resigned to a Starbucks, eating sandwiches amongst the typical Saturday-night-downtown couples in it. It was caddy corner from the busker's plaza, so after eating we wandered over to join the crowd listening to his music (he was very good) and watching the dancing.
Exploring Melbourne
Melbourne is well-known for having lots of of trams (street cars), and as this picture shows, has a fair number of cyclists. I wonder how they deal with the danger the tracks' rails pose to people biking. (See summaries of their danger from City lab here and from a cyclist here, both referencing a Study of Toronto here)
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| Reminder: click on any picture in the blog to enlarge it |
On this trip we noticed massive transit tunnels and accompanying transit and improvements for people walking and biking being built in Sydney and Auckland. On a previous trip to China we saw such projects everywhere.
Vancouver Canada has a well developed public transit system; it is the only major North American city with NO freeway within its city limits. Now more than 50% of all trips are totally by walking, biking, or using public transit. Background to Vancouver's approach to transportation is here
People in Seattle, WA, USA voted for, and taxed themselves for, major public transit system improvements which are partly built and partly in planning. (map here and history of voter approval here)
...BUT...
The system in Seattle depends on the continuation of federal funding at past levels. Trump has indicated he would abolish most, if not all, of the federal funding for public transit. It's heartening to visit countries like Canada and Australia which seem to be forward looking and robust while Trump's USA seems more like Britain post WWI, walling itself off and isolating itself from the world, its arms and fingers tightly clutching at its past and its hoard of gold.
Our first stop: Federation Square.
Built in the 2000's it's a very large precinct with an expansive plaza swarming with people on this sunny early spring day, with multiple stepped levels opening into angular public buildings with complex geometries, all built over a rail yard.It's the center of tourist interest: it's next to Princes Bridge and Swanston Street, which together are the focus of most of Melbourne's tram system, and it's across the street from the major Flanders Street rail station.
In the square were all sorts of canopied booths - one especially caught my eye - a recruiting booth for the State of Victoria police: "Be a Force for Good". What a great way of thinking about the role of police - far removed from the rancor that's happening in Seattle about the role of police. I sent the photo to one of Seattle's police community relations officers.
Major promenades and parks fan out from Federation Square in both directions along the Yarra River. And it has a surprisingly large and well-staffed two level tourist information center where we oriented ourselves and picked up walking maps.Melbourne's Streetscape:
Melbourne's center has an unusual grid layout that has created much of Melbourne's ambiance. Major multi-lane di-directional streets are very long blocks apart, about 760 feet in both directions.
Running roughly parallel to the Yarra river are Flinders, Collins, Bourke, and others major streets. Halfway between each are smaller streets, mostly 1 lane, one-way, sometimes with parking on one side (Flinders Lane, Little Collins Street, Little Bourke Street, etc.)
Running perpendicular to the river are the major streets such as Russell, Swanston, Elizabeth, and others. But there are no intermediary secondary streets interspaced between them. Instead, in place of any intermediary streets, in the 19th century a number of narrow arcades were built with glassed roofs arching overhead. Carefully maintained, they are now one of Melbourne's major attractions. One of the tourist information maps outlines a route through them. We followed it..
Melbourne is a mix of the formal and more elegant past and the cacophony of the 21st century. Between the major streets are many (far more than the tour books suggest) small alleys or lanes containing other attractions which Melbourne tolerates and is noted for: street art (graffiti) - layers upon layers of it in continuous anarchistic change. Much of it is a horrible mess, but much of it is in the best tradition of street art. I especially liked the eye below the arc of color.
Art, Bridges, Promenades, and Parks
Melbourne also curates a more relaxed personality. Extending from Princes Bridge and Federation Square in both directions along the Yarra River are parks, promenades, and walks linked across the river by many modernistic pedestrian bridges.
The art along the river is less spontaneous than that in the lanes, but it's still lively.
One of the bridges across the Yarra, Sandridge Bridge, is an artistic ode to immigrants.
It is a former railroad bridge from the 1880's that was converted in 2006 into a bridge for walking and biking. It has large steel sculptures, "The Travellers" by Nadim Karam, some of which periodically travel across the bridge on a system of rails. (We weren't there at the right time. We didn't notice them moving.)
It includes a multitude of glass panels, one for each country from which people immigrated to Melbourne.
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| Click on the photo to enlarge it to read |
For each country the panels list the regions the immigrants came from, an historical summary of the waves of immigration including the cause of the wave(s), and the number of immigrants from that home country.
I sadly wonder if the Statue of Liberty in New York City, which is inscribed "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore." would be erected today if it was newly proposed.
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| Photo by Donaldytong from Wikimedia Commons under share-alike license |
Along both banks of the Yarra are a variety of promenades and walks.Downstream (to the west and south of Princes Bridge and Federation Square), it is urban and crowded.
A short walk upstream (east of Princes Bridge and Federation Square) the river is lined with parks.
St. Kilda
One afternoon we took the tram to St. Kilda.
Across from Federation Square, between two tram tracks in the middle of Swanston Street, is a busy boarding platform. They even have "station" attendants announcing and coordinating trams and helping guide people to the correct car. Coming from the US with its historic austerity, especially austerity about government programs. That's one of the things we noticed about Australia - the number of people performing public jobs that in the US would be non-existent.
Like many typical males, I tend not to ask directions. So my better half approached an attendant to check if I was right about which tram to take. To my ear Ginny, after living in the states for 30 years, doesn't have a Canadian accent. But the attendant immediately picked up on it. A conversation ensued, squeezed in between his announcements and answering tourists - a couple of trams to St. Kilda passed. He had lived in Alberta Canada, where his mother still lived. He was proud to be a citizen of, and hold passports from, three countries ... Croatia (or one of those nearby countries - I can't remember which - his birth country), Canada, and now Australia. I wonder which of those countries the glass panels on the Sandbridge Bridge would have accounted him on. Gone is the world when many people ignorantly feared roaming outside of their tribe.
In St. Kilda we walked along the beach and spent some time watching the kiteboarders. We had hoped to see the small colony of Fairy Penguins on the jetty, but because the jetty was fenced off, and/or we didn't know precisely where to go, and/or we didn't stay late enough into the evening, we didn't see them.
Exhausted
We were only in Melbourne for two full days ... and did too much in much too little time. We were exhausted.
One of our difficulties in travelling is eating. We're not great foodies; we just use food as body fuel. We do like good food and delight in finding it. But it doesn't work out too well to research a list of good places - generally we can't predict where we'll be at meal time and just try to find some place nearby when we're hungry. Consequently, most of the meals we have are mediocre at best (we have to figure out a better way). But...Of all the meals we had in Australia, one of our favorites was in Melbourne. We'd been busy walking that afternoon ... it was warm and sunny so we hadn't taken jackets. Clouds came in quickly. We were in Flanders Lane, not far from our hotel when it started to rain. We noticed a place that looked nice and (a good sign) busy. The greeter had only one spot left ... a long table for about or 9 people that we could share with three others. They were at one end, we at the other, close enough that we could have talked if all had wanted, but far enough apart that it wasn't awkward ignoring each other. They were busy whining about this and that, so we enjoyed our own company. It was a great Asian-fusion food place called Supernormal.
Our biggest regret about our trip to Downunder was that we spent too little time in Melbourne. There was much more to explore in this truly world class city. And it would also have been great to have extra time to get out and explore the Great Ocean Road, to get to Phillips Island, and strangely, to get to Ballarat.
Ballarat? We don't watch much TV, but Seattle's PBS stations carry a number of Australian series which we do watch: A Pace to Call Home, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, and especially, Dr. Blake Mysteries which is set in post WWII Ballarat. And it has a strong place in Australia's history.
We were exhausted. When we got done eating at Supernormal we hurried back to our hotel through the rain, and bedraggled and wet, we got to bed for our early flight to Hobart, hoping to keep the flying petri dish's respiratory thing at bay.
Hopefully you weren't as exhausted by this too-long report as we were. Hobart, Queenstown, and Auckland are yet to come.
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