Melbourne… this is a place that most English people will know as the home of Neighbours… #…everybody needs good neighbours…# There is more to it though… honest… I’ll try to prove this…

A French girl called Maureen, who I made friends with in Sydney came down to meet up with me in Melbourne. She was supposed to have come over to Oz with one of her friends, but her friend had forgotten her passport, only realising at the airport and had to miss her flight - gutter!! This left Maureen at a loose end and wondering what to do. I had told her my plans about going to Melbourne and Uluru, so she asked if she could tag along to kill time until her friend got another flight sorted.

I spent the first day wandering along the South Bank and through the botanical gardens before (ahem!) stumbling across the city’s sporting arenas :o) I love sports stadiums and the sense of grandeur and achievement that surrounds them. There are several stadiums in close proximity in Melbourne, but the two main ones were:

1. Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) - home to international cricket matches and Aussie Rules Football
2. Rod Laver Tennis Centre - home to the Australian Open Grand Slam

The Olympic site is still celebrated in the area and there are training facilities and an aquadrome for swimming. They are also building a new Rugby stadium next door to the MCG, which looks like a rectangle of large balls moulded together!

I did the tour around the MCG and got to see behind the scenes. However, because several AFL teams use the stadium as their own ground, they don’t have strict home and away changing rooms. This means that they aren’t allowed to customise any of the spaces to help gain ownership and encourage themselves with team “charms“. This is a bit bizarre, because in most sports, having home advantage counts for quite a lot. I know that a lot of footy teams definitely hated coming to Twerton Park when Bristol Rovers (my team if you didn’t know!) played there in Bath, because the changing rooms were so basic and this worked to our advantage as we managed to get promoted… back in the heady days of 1990!! There was also a pretty cool museum at the MCG, which gave loads of history about sport in Australia and also had interactive play pens, where you could test your kicking/running/skill abilities out compared to the Aussie champs!

It seems that a city is not a true city these days without a very tall building that tourists can go up… Melbourne did not disappoint and as a true tourist, neither did I… Up I went! The building is called the Eureka Tower and has golden bees on the outside - why I don’t know, but it did!

St Kilda is a popular suburb of Melbourne, which was supposed to have nice beaches and good nightlife. Having made a trip down there to see the beach in the afternoon, I was very disappointed and decided I didn’t want to return. There were large live jellyfish being washed up onto the beach and there was also a big sewage pipe pumping what I can only describe as black sludge out straight into the docks. Urrrggh!!

After the disappointment of St Kilda I decided to try the docks in the city centre… Here I found a big plastic cow lying upside down in a tree… its something called art you see, although none of the locals I asked could explain it… and I certainly cant! Also overlooking the docks is the large AFL Etihad Stadium. I was able to walk into this freely as they were holding auditions for the TV programme “Deal, No Deal” throughout the day.

I took a walk through an area in the north of Melbourne called Fitzroy, where there are loads of very cool and funky shops and coffee houses. This area definitely has the mark of student creativity all over it and you could spend hours lost in the shops or just sipping coffee whilst people watching. There was also a lot of graffiti everywhere, although it seemed much more arty and controlled than merely being for the sake of vandalism.

On my way back to the hostel I wandered along the South Bank again, which was gearing up for the Melbourne Cup the following week and saw people dressed up as horses and prancing around - very amusing! There were also a lot of buskers along the river bank, some not so good, but others very good. I sat and listened to one chap for half an hour. He had this amazing raspy voice and was great on his guitar too… a fantastic live performer.

Melbourne is definitely the artistic city in Australia.

We hired a car for the next two days, because I wanted to get out to see the penguins at Phillip Island and drive along the Great Ocean Road to see the Twelve Apostles. Maureen and another guy called Steve were due to join the road trips. I’m not entirely sure Maureen knew what she was going to see or how much driving she was letting herself in for… I woke up the next morning to find that she had not returned after going out drinking the night before. Add to this the fact that Steve texted me to say that he was pulling out due to illness… Needless to say that Tom was not a happy bunny!! I had reconciled myself to doing that day trip alone, but about 5 minutes before I was supposed to pick the car up, Maureen rolled through the reception of the hostel still steaming drunk and declared that she would be fit to join me if I gave her 5 minutes… hmm…

Given the randomness of the situation I decided I needed to do something proactive in those 5 minutes… there was a girl sat on a couch in reception who was reading some documents and appeared to be by herself, so I got into a conversation with her and asked if she wanted to join us to make up numbers and also give me some other company, rather than just a drunk French girl for the day… fortunately she jumped at the opportunity!! Her name was Stephanie from New Brunswick, Canada and she was also 26 years old, which meant that she could share the driving with me. Somehow, what had initially appeared to be a shocker of a day had suddenly turned itself around. We went and got the car and got out on the road to Phillip Island... Maureen was asleep inside 2 minutes!! Stephanie was great company though, so at least I had someone to chat to!

Phillip Island is similar to a hybrid of the Isle of Wight and the Isle of Man, but with koalas, kangaroos and penguins! There is a place called Cows in the north, which has a beach and also a pub named “The Isle of Wight”. In the south there is a motor bike race track, where they have an annual race reminiscent of the TT races on the Isle of Man.

The penguins… the little fellas… bless ‘em… there were a good thousand of them that popped up out of the sea, and then waited for their mates, before waddling up the beach and into the undergrowth for a bit of warmth for the night. They are such interesting and funny creatures that it was truly fascinating to watch them… we were transfixed for the best part of an hour. It was a shame that we were not allowed to take photos, but also understandable as they would have been blinded and scared silly by the flashes.

Quote of the day definitely has to go to Maureen for saying (imagine a French accent and broken English) “When I die… I hope I come back as a penguin, because you are never alone. You always have friends.”… Nice touch :o)

The next day we drove the Great Ocean Road… wow… wow… wow… again another brilliant piece of nature in Australia!! Stephanie’s American friend Kerry (aka Miami Spice) joined us for this trip. Travelling is such a small world, because I recognised her from earlier on my trip and the ChopperRoo that I did up in Agnes Water. I remember her, because she was the only American and she wanted to change bikes to make sure that she had one with an American flag!

It seems that Maureen cannot stay awake in a car, as she was out like a light very quickly again. The weather wasn’t great as it was overcast, but the views were still amazing along the coast. Our first stop was at Bells Beach, supposedly a famous surf beach, although we didn’t see many surfers. It did however have black sand on it in patches, which was very striking and we got to dip our toes in the southern ocean… ah brrrrrrrr!!!

The drive then took us slightly inland and through some beautiful hills and forests before we emerged back at the coast and the 12 Apostles. Somehow, luck was on our side and the sun came out in all its glory, giving us a brilliant cascade of sunlight along the coast for the numerous photos that we took of the rocks. There are only 5 or 6 of the 12 Apostles left now, but they are still very impressive. With the sunlight came a new lease of life for Maureen… I call it the yoyo effect… some times she is very down and quite, other times she is very high and hyper… this was definitely the top of the yoyo as she had loads of energy bursting to get out after her 6 hours of sleep in the back of the car!! Her shouts of "Kangaroo, where are you?" out of the rear window, not too surprisingly didn't help entice any kangaroo to show their faces as we drove through the countryside.

On the way back we were running from a thunder storm for the first part of the drive, which Stephanie did, but it caught up with us after we had a pit stop for refreshments and facilities. So, when I took over we were in the thick of it. Torrential rain… streak and sheet lightening off the coast… windy roads… cliff drops… what a drive!! It took a lot of energy paying attention to the road, without being distracted by the oncoming vehicle lights and the awesome natural beauty of the thunderstorm. We stopped off at a lighthouse near Apollo Bay to try to get some video and photos of the lightening because it was so impressive. I will remember that drive for a long time to come!

We didn’t get back until 01:15am in the end… I was absolutely shattered after two full days of driving and slept like a baby that night… Zzzz… and quite a bit into the following day… Zzzz… That was OK though as I had given myself a day off to relax, before heading up to the Red Desert to see lots of big rocks!!

So, all in all Melbourne is an exciting city and I did quite a bit in the short time I had there… and that was without even doing the Neighbours tour! Doh!!