April 15 – 21 Melbourne Australia
The 18-hours spent in transit from South Africa to Australia hit
us hard. By the time we found our apartment in the suburb of Melbourne, Maribyrong,
and got everyone settled it was 11:00PM. We slept until 11:00 AM the next day. I
cannot remember the last time I slept for 12 hours. It was 3:00 in the afternoon by the time we got everyone ready to head
out. The neighborhood was residential and within walking distance of the
“largest mall in the southern hemisphere”. We were to find out later that
Australians make many claims to having items that are the largest in the southern
hemisphere. I needed to get a sim card and get my phone working and we needed
to become familiar with what would be our neighborhood for a week. The boys noticed right away the little security, few people on the street, no homeless people, and lack of fences and guard dogs.
Feels very Canadian. It is easy for us to "live" here since so much seems familiar to home.
The following day we went for a walking tour of downtown Melbourne. On this cool day, our guide took us by the city's ever changing street art.
Confederation square is at the heart of the city. We saw the
most beautiful square in the world in Brussels. Now we have seen the ugliest
square in Melbourne.
The most attractive aspect of this otherwise ugly city square may be the people on the megatron (ha ha).
Aside from Confederation Square, the city scape of Melbourne is scenic, especially at night.
That skyline is back there somewhere.
