Melbourne | Mostly Birding

I have to admit that I wasn’t planning another post on our Australia visit earlier this year, but when I reviewed the photos of our brief visit to Melbourne before taking the flight back to SA, I decided to add just one more – I hope you will agree it is a worthwhile addition.

There’s a lot to like about Melbourne, based on our two short visits so far – in 2019 and now in 2022. It has that pleasing mix of features that sets the great cities apart from the more mundane ones – nicely positioned at the sea and straddling a large river, modern architecture contrasting with some beautiful older buildings, a great transport system (where else can you ride for free on a central city tram), some charming parks and gardens and just a feeling of all-round cleanliness and efficiency.

As with our previous visit, we decided to get to Melbourne a day before our flight back to SA to allow for some exploration. As it turned out Stephan and family accompanied us to Melbourne and we visited Sea Life Melbourne before they dropped us off late afternoon at our hotel in the city.

Sea Life Melbourne

After walking for a couple of blocks in light rain from the parking garage we were in the aquarium – along with half the population of Melbourne it seemed. The aquarium is impressive and spreads over a few levels with brightly lit tanks contrasting with the darkish interior.

Here is a selection of the images I took with my Iphone (my camera was far less effective in these lighting conditions)

King Penguin, Sealife Aquarium, Melbourne

Streets and Arcades

That left us with a full day in the centre of Melbourne, which we started with a breakfast in our hotel – Treasury on Collins, a beautifully maintained classical building with a long history as a banking institution, now serving as a boutique apartment hotel.

Later we ventured into the surrounding streets – destination the famous (among Aussies) Myer department store where we browsed the several levels (reminding me of Stuttafords from way back when in Cape Town) and ended up in the Brunetti restaurant for tea and a cake chosen from a long glass cabinet full of the biggest variety of tempting cakes that we’ve seen in a long time.

On the way back to the hotel we followed a route which took us through two of the arcades that Melbourne is known for – beautifully restored wide passages between the surrounding buildings.

Back on the streets we passed a few stately older buildings that caught our eye with their attractive facades, symmetry and scale

Back at the hotel we relaxed and psyched ourselves up for the two long flights that lay ahead the next day, via Singapore to Jo’burg

Cloud formations from 10,000 metres – taken from our seat during the flight from Melbourne to Singapore

Footnote : a special thanks to Sea Life Melbourne for including penguins in their displays – without that this post would have been devoid of any birds and I would have had to consider changing my Blog name to “HardlyAnyBirding” ….

After close to 6 weeks in Sale, Victoria, of which one week was taken up by a very pleasurable road trip exploring the Great Ocean Road, we felt ready to return home, nevertheless sad to say our goodbyes to Stephan and Liesl and Jocelyn and Christopher.

Up at 5am for final packing to catch the 6.55am train from Sale to Southern Cross station in central Melbourne – a relaxing and comfortable train in plush first class seats – this is the way to do it!

The 6,55am train arrives at Sale station in the mist

At Southern Cross we found our way to the baggage hall which we found had a facilty to store our bags for the day while we discovered some of Melbourne. This was also the moment for bureacracy to go a little mad as the baggage attendant weighed our bags before accepting them for storage (no transport involved, mind you) and finding them, to his apparent horror, to be almost one kg over their 20kg limit, insisted we remove some articles (our books did it) to reduce the weight, which he then placed on top of the bags and took them through a door into the storeroom all of 3 metres away. We did as instructed and left him muttering about the personnel at Sale station who had allowed this gross flouting of the baggage rules.

After that bizarre encounter we found a coffee shop and, suitably calmed and refreshed, we set off to find the Hop-on, Hop-off city bus terminal with the help of Google maps which even showed us which tram to take (thanks Stephan for showing me this useful feature). The tram trip was a mini-adventure in itself despite being just three stops and with some walking we found the terminal at Federation Square.

Bus terminal at Federation Square, Red Bus waiting

It’s always good to see a city at pavement level, warts and all, while walking the streets and seeing the citizens going about their normal business – we passed by the gracious St Paul’s Cathedral and the historic Flinders Street Station, both nicely preserved. The trams are an efficient way of getting around the city and as a bonus are free in the central city.

St Paul’s Cathedral
Flinders Street station

We boarded the Red Bus for the two hour round trip with 14 stops at points of interest, only disembarking at one as we still had to get ourselves out to the airport hotel that afternoon. This gave us a good overview without any real “wow” moments. The inner city as seen from the lower level of a bus looks much like most other modern cities, but once we moved further out there was enough to keep us interested …….

Melbourne University with its vast sports fields
Melbourne Star Observation Wheel in the Docklands precinct
The iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground / MCG which Aussies like to call the “G”. It draws big crowds (90 – 100,000) for some of the major sports events including that incredibly popular sport called “Footie” or Australian Rules Football.
Glimpses of Little Italy and Chinatown on the city fringes

Cityscape as we cross the river
Signage overkill ?
Melbourne Star
University grounds
Melbourne Cricket Ground

We disembarked at Fitzroy gardens and walked through lovely parkland with autumn leaves falling (do they say “fall leaves falling” in the States?) and covering the vast lawns with a multi-coloured carpet.

Fitzroy Gardens

In one section was Captain Cook’s cottage, which the blurb said is the oldest building in Australia – but there’s a catch to that – it was originally built in 1755 in Yorkshire, England by the parents of Captain James Cook and was brought to Melbourne in 1934. Apparently each brick was numbered, packed into barrels and then shipped to Australia where it was reconstructed in the gardens.

While trying to get a photo without other tourists posing in front, I was curious about the people in period dress wandering about in the small garden – they turned out to be volunteers who “add to the memorable experience” and provide period clothing for tourists to dress alike and have photos taken, at a cost of course (I must apologise at this point for not enthusing about this potential “memorable experience” which I decided to forego)

We were peckish by this time and headed to the garden cafe where we were told that lunch was “finished”, so we ended up having tea and “party pies” – tiny vegetable pies – plus a slice of banana/walnut bread, which was an odd lunch but rather nice.

Then it was time to catch the red bus again, where it had dropped us off earlier and after a short wait one appeared. It wasn’t long before we were back at Federation Square and we retraced our steps to Southern Cross station, collected our bags (and put the books back in them) and found the Skybus to take us to the airport and our hotel for the night. All that remained was the flight back to South Africa the next day. It had been a busy but worthwhile day and a good way to round off our Australian adventure. We had seen but a glimpse of Melbourne and resolved to see more of it when the opportunity arose.