Melbourne! Hello! A few days earlier than planned but a big hello none the less!
Where to begin? We seemed to pack SO much into our long weekend here, it flew past but Melbourne has certainly been a mix of music, art and wonderful people starting with our Air BnB family.
We arrived early evening in Williams Landing, a small but new development a mere 40 minutes outside Melbourne CBD by train, to be greeted by our hosts entire family, closely followed by the nicest Chai tea ever and digestive biscuits – they knew the way to our hearts instantly. Their house was beautiful as well as being incredibly convenient, comfortable and stylish – it was the perfect base to sort all we needed sorting and to explore.

Friday morning, after a wonderful sleep and the usual slow wake up, we took a short 25 minute stroll to the train station and found ourselves in central Melbourne just 40. Our usual plan is find the nearest market for a coffee and make a plan to find all the free things you can do in one city, so off we went in search of Melbournes Victoria Market. Much like every big city market, it was old but a wonderful place to peruse the local fish trade and pick up a coffee whilst we took in all the smells and sights.
Next, we headed past the old Swimming Baths in search of the State Library where we viewed the Old Hall – deafeningly silent, as you’d expect, but the architecture and history was lovely to soak up as people studied intently around me.

 

Next, with little help from Google maps which seems to send us on wild goose chases around cities because it can never work out where we are or what direction we are heading in, we eventually found 2 of the commissioned graffiti lanes – Union Lane and AC/DC Lane. Both were bursting with colour and whilst some may view graffiti as vandalism, the talent shown in the lanes was incredible! To be able to create something so large and to scale with just a spray can is pretty impressive.

Next stop on our free tour of Melbourne, we headed across the river to the National Gallery of Victoria, home to the largest stain glass roof and a waterfall entrance utilising surplus rain water from the roof of the building – both equally impressive!
As the weather couldn’t make up its mind, we decided to waste a few hours, wandering the exhibits. These included both Indian and Asian heritage and artwork, European art dating back to the 1600’s and English artwork, mostly of a religious theme, from the 1700’s onwards. It all got a little samey and boring until we heard one young man trying to impress his female friend with the little known fact that Jesus was the King of the Catholics (who knew?) which certainly lightened the mood and made us chuckle.

It was pushing 4pm by this point and we had exhausted a lot of the free activities Melbourne had to offer, so we figured it was most certainly time for a beer. We headed for Southbank which looked suspiciously like a well known Southbank, London and sat down to enjoy an expensive Beer whilst people watching in the last of the afternoon sun. Whilst basking in the heat and enjoying watching the local rowing team on the river, we found out about the Night Noodle Market that runs every evening from 5pm on the banks of the river, throughout November. Just a 10 minute walk down Southbank and the promise of pork belly for Dave and Calamari for me, we were sold. We wasted no time in getting there.

It was a perfect setting for an evening of noodles, however the evening was marred by the news that whilst we enjoyed our dinner, a terrorist attack occurred just 2 streets away and some poor person lost their life. The first we heard about the incident was a text from Victoria Police asking us to avoid the area as we entered the train station to head home. The gravity of the situation became evident when we reached the safety of our Air BnB and caught up with the news. Hideous. And how terribly sad for those involved and affected.

Saturday, again, started slowly for us (I sense a theme here..) and we decided to spend the day resting, washing clothes and sorting out life admin.We ate a staple favourite of ours, cottage pie, early at 3pm before we got changed and headed into Melbourne to experience their nightlife. Whitehart was our first stop. It was a bar made out of shipping containers but was so well hidden down a side street and tucked away, you would never have known it was there! We enjoyed Beer, olives and good music before moving on to Melbournes oldest pub where we drank more Beer and set off into the night for the main event…

The first anniversary of AMBIT @ The Sub Club. An evening of heavy, filthy drum and bass (think Andy C), down a dark alleyway, through a tiny graffiti covered door and into the basement of an enormous building. A red glow and the words “You are on the right path..” Being the only indication you were, indeed, on the right path. The Sub Club was dark and grimy – the perfect place for an evening of drum and bass – but the people were, as always, super friendly, welcoming and there for a damn good time. Oddly enough, it was filled with more English people than Australian at one point, but was wonderful to meet so many characters in one place.
One of these characters was a wonderful man named Neville. A man who, over the coming days, would become a godsend and a lifesaver. We met him in the dark bowels of the chill out room, on the worlds comfiest sofas, whilst watching the most random and equally odd cartoons on a little portable television – don’t ask. It wasn’t until we had made our way to the train station and, as the sun rose, watched 2 hot air balloons rise above the city, that we would bump into him again. After an hours journey home, he saved our life for the first time – by providing us Rizla and ting for the walk home – legend. This would not be the first time that weekend he would come through with his generous nature.
We waved him and his lovely Swedish house mate off at the station, headed home and slept peacefully for the remainder of the morning.

A sunny, Sunday afternoon was the perfect time for our next musical adventure – the Jamaican Music and Food Festival. Whilst we certainly didn’t enjoy the hour and a Half it took to order our food and then watch as 5 people, all completely unaware of their roles in the kitchen, tried to fulfil the mounting orders coming through the kitchen, we certainly enjoyed the jerk pork and jerk chicken with rice when it arrived. This was closely followed by the highlight of everyones evening, including Daves – General Levy of “Wicked, wicked – Junglelist massive!” Fame. The crowd was full of mostly stoned white guys but eat atmosphere was insane and good fun to be a part of – “Incredi’, Incredi’, Incredible General…” indeed!
We had a dance and thoroughly enjoyed watching a woman in traditional Jamaican clothing, and in her 70’s, get involved in a dance off before buying some new dread beads ($10 for 4! Bargain!) before we took a slow walk back to the train station and home to bed, both absolutely shattered.

Monday it was unfortunately time to leave our lovely little Air BnB and the beautiful family who had let us stay at such short notice.
This would have been fine if Western Australia had pulled their finger out and sorted out our ID and Rego paperwork but, alas, they had not! So, what to do?? We couldn’t just sit on our Air BnB families driveway, so we made a quick dash (albeit illegally) to the local beach just 10 minutes away and messaged our dear friend Neville to ask for his advice. For the second time in 2 days, Neville came through, offering us his driveway for the night – again, Legend!! So, after a day reading at the beach, we made another quick dash 10 minutes up the road to Nevilles house (who, amusingly to us, lived on Neville Avenue!). Proving to be an absolute babe, once again, not only did we have somewhere to keep our beloved Pam safe, his Swedish house mate had offered up her bedroom for us to sleep in whilst she was on a nightshift! We couldn’t have met 2 nicer people during our time in Melbourne and after an evening of more music, more beer and decent conversation, we slept soundly before vacating the following morning and waited, waited, waited for Western Australia Transport to finally authorise our ID all whilst enjoying another free museum – the home of the Royal Australian Air Force at Point Cook. It was super interesting and we even got to watch 2 ex RAAF pilots fly in formation and perform acrobatics in 1950’s war planes as Point Cook is the only museum that regularly flies and maintains the planes from their collection. Marvellous.
Even more marvellous was the news, at 2pm, that WA Transport had FINALLY sorted our ID and we could be on our way. HOORAH!

 

Onwards, or rather backwards because we missed out a great chunk of Victoria during the mad dash to Melbourne the previous Thursday, to Grampian National Park and the Great Ocean Road…