12th November

During my first day here, I developed what I now realise was a very one-sided and unfair impression of the city; Tuesday I had a bad day. I phoned many many places in search of fruit picking work, all in vain, I spent way too much, and realised that once again, my bank account is down to just a couple hundred dollars, making it even more important for me to find work soon. It was 32C and I trudged around getting hotter and sweatier and dirtier and more and more fedup. It was no wonder that yesterday evening I sat on the floor and wailed "I haaaaaaaate Melbourne"!
I was cheered up though, by sitting on the comfort of my bed and composing a blog entry on my new laptop; beats being in a internet cafe.
I tend to catastrophise things quite a bit, at the best of times, and to feel as if everything is going wrong and the world is ending and that there is no way out, after every little pitfall. But after feeling really quite down about my lack of work-finding success yesterday, I did realise a couple of things today... Firstly, I have only phoned the hostels on two occasions, there is nothing to say that next time I phone they won't have had someone leave and a space for me, or the time after that or after that. I must persist with regularity for at least a week! Second, even if I can't get the harvest work in SA or Victoria, I can always try Tassie. Third, failing getting pickies work, I can just stay til April, I still have enough time to work in Melbourne or Adelaide for a couple months then spend a few more over in WA, working and traveling. If all else fails, I still have my ticket home! I am a stress-head by nature and can't do much to change that, but it's always good to recognise it at least.
So today was much better and I got to actually see some of Melbourne, and this time not through my super-thick stress-goggles. First stop, OF COURSE was Ramsay Street.. yeeaaahhh!!! Every since I was yeigh high and watching neighbours illegally when mama was out of the living room (she had a fear of the brain-rotting properties of it, can't imagine why) Ramsay Street and Erinsburgh has occupied a Nirvana-esque position in my mind. Neighbours IS Australia and is the stuff of which my childhood dreams of Down Under were made!
I rocked up at the Neighbours office, to board the bus tastefully decorated with a huge picture of the Doc, and "Neighbours Tour" in great big exciting letters on the side. Unsurprisingly (and in common with the SATC tour in New York, the group consisted of 95% girls, one of the guys on there having been dragged along by his missus.. the other, part of a couple on their honeymoon was as up for it as his wife, which I found a little bizarre. Nearly all were British, with 6aussies dispelling the myth that Australians do not watch Neighbours.. they clearly do, although they admittedly were a certain type of aussie, I think the word for it is "bogan".
On the way there, we got some background info and got to watch old episodes on a pull-down screen. Our first stop was Erinsburgh High, a real life working school where they just film the outside scenes. Then, Ramsay Street, Or Pin Oak Court, as it is officially known. It was well recognisable! Could see all the six houses they use, learnt a bit about what you have to agree to in order to be a real-life resident in the street (not changing the exterior of the house, move cars and shut blinds when they're filming, stuff like that). They had actually just finished filming as we arrived, which seemed a shame but apparently was a good thing as you can't even go up the street when they are filming.
Then we went down to Global television studios which is now used exclusively to film neighbours and as we pulled in, a VERY familiar figure in a check shirt and combats came towards the bus.. it was Doctor Karl Kennedy aka Alan Fletcher.. oooooohhhhh. I really like the doc, he is involved in a lot of publicity stuff and I had hoped it might be him we met! He was really nice and interesting and told us loads of stuff and we got to take pics with him and pics of the frontage they use for Grease Monkeys and the BricaBrac shop that Marlene used to run, and Lou's Mechanics. They apparently really use every inch of studio for a potential location, the frontage of the studio is used for the hospital, police station and prison (with appropriate signage), the side is used for those "warehouse" scences, like the illegal rave at the last season finale, the perimeter fence is used for the prison fence and round the back, sitting at the edge of the carpark, is a little bus stop where all the bus-stop scenes take place! It was all very compact and small and really clever how they manage to make a handful of settings translate into an entire world. It was awesome! When the time came for the doc to offer autographs, I unashamedly got him to sign my knickers.
Neightbours tour put me in a GOOD mood for the day and thankfully my second day in Melbourne was much improved on the first. I had one of those days that I like to have as my first day in any city, where armed with a map, I just walked and walked and walked and tried to see as much as possible. I walked for 4hours during the day, then continued the walking theme in the evening with my friend Jasmin, as it was her last night in Melbourne so we met and walked and walked some more and got to see the city by night. It well beat sitting in a nondescript hostel bar that could be anywhere!
I can see why people love Melbourne, it has some stunning and charming old buildings, some imposing, some quaint, some New York, some European and is a real eclectic mix of the olde and modern-architechture. It has some lovely parks around the edges of the centre, but I didn't like the fact that they ARE really around the edges, there is a big regular grid of streets that comprises the centre, with literally no green patches atall. On the first day, I sat and ate my packed lunch on a bench in a bus stop because there were no little greens or gardens to relax in without walking quite a way; I like my cities to have a liberal sprinkling of green right throughout, like Adelaide or Sydney or nearly every other city I have been to and liked in Australia.
Despite the lack of green, there were some lovely parts and buildings and on recommendation of a pocket-guide, I took a couple of turns right in the centre that I wouldn't have taken unless directed, and discovered myself in charming, narrow alleyways, with tables and chairs cluttering the centre of the street, lined with coffeeshops and cafes and the kind of boutiques that give out paper bags to carry their wares home in. The little area had a fantastic multicultural, wholefood and trendy buzz and I thought that "This" is what people love Melbourne for.
One critereon I use to judge cities is the number of "wow"s they elicit from my lips and I have to admit that from everything I have seen in two days, those little alleyways were my only "wow", compared to Sydney, where every other turn I took had me "ooh"ing and "aaah"ing and stopping to stare. Perhaps that would make Melbourne a better place to live for some people, I suppose when you are considering life here, ongoing satisfaction might rate more importantly than wow-factor, and certainly I cannot judge this city in just a few days. It's Yuge! Think that's the other thing that turns me off a bit, after the outback and the open road and countryside and little places like Darwin and Adelaide, Melbourne is just too big and too busy and too traffic-snarled and just too CITY.