Written 1st September 2011

Hello,

I have just had the best meal ever in Halls Gap. Cooking for myself to keep the budget down, Sausage, Mash, Carrots and Gravy… Awesome!

So I arrived in Melbourne at around 7am. Dressed in my blue Aladdin trousers from India a t-shirt and flip flops, known as Thongs down under. I was bloody freezing! If anyone thought Australia was hot, well in August its not! The first thing once I arrived in the city via a bus was to find a hostel. I spoke to the tourist info and got the names of a few hostels and then headed out into the unknown. First place I visited was the YHA, I walked in and said, 'Hello, Do you have any rooms for tonight?' The woman said back, 'You got any ID… ?' I walked out! So, next stop was Urban Central. I walked in to a great welcome and decided it was for me. The free breakfast and unlimited Pasta/Rice made it a pretty good deal I think.

Update… Last night I couldn't be bothered to write this so I left it and I am now on the bus to Adelaide…7 hours!

At breakfast I met a girl called Lizzie from Middlesbrough, she was great. She introduced me to all of her friends and then let me up to the showers so I could warm up and get changed before exploring Melbourne. A group of us decided we would walk from the hostel all the way through the city to Victoria markets. This was kind of cool but to be honest a market is a market. It was slightly better than Bolton market though. After the market we headed to Melbourne Old Jail. I was arrested, searched and locked in a cell. The 'Jail experience' was very real! We then got a brief tour before we were able to look around on our own. There was a good story about some guy called Ned Kelly but I only stayed for about 15 mins. I was freezing and needed to find some shoes! I left the guys at the Jail and set off to explore. I walked all the way though the centre of town in the search for shoes and a mobile phone SIM card. I found the SIM pretty easy as you would expect. The shoes however were a bit trickier! The average price for some middle of the road trainers is about 80 quid! Do they not know I'm a backpacker! So I put up with my freezing cold feet for the rest of the day. I walked all the way to Federation square where I had a chat to the tourist info, then walked all the way back down South bank back to the hostel. I admit I did get a little lost on the way but got their eventually. After having my tea of 'Free Pasta!' and a tomato sauce the guys and I headed out. We went to a club called Cookie which had a great roof bar! The only problem was it was freezing and $9 a pint! After only the one up there we went downstairs for a boogie… to be honest after 36 hours without sleep I was kind of flagging at this point so we headed back pretty early. It was a cool night though.

The morning after I was up relatively early and went to blitz Melbourne. I first went on a free tourist shuttle bus to the Shrine of Remembrance. This was great; it was a beautiful monument and had a great view over the whole of Melbourne. I went inside to the museum just in time for the hourly mini service, a very nice one at that. After a photo shoot on top of the monument I went across the road to the Botanic Gardens. These were fantastic! I walked around for a while following a path and then had lunch on a bench next to a lake. Jam butties! I have never eaten Jam butties in England but when you're a backpacker and the bread and jam are free they taste pretty good! I then went back to Federation square to meet up with Emily O'Brien. Emily was on the tour in Egypt who I met on the Felucca… She lives in Melbourne so I got in touch and we met for a drink. Now when in Egypt I kind of got the impression that Emily, or at least her dad, was loaded. She told me then she could get me to the top of Eureka, the tallest building in the southern hemisphere, for free. Hence the reason I wanted to meet up! True to her word after a walk and a drink we went to Eureka. She walked in said her name and all the staff jumped to attention. It turns out her dad owns the bloody building! She had her 21st birthday party in his penthouse on the top 2 floors and getting me to the attraction 3 floors from the top for free was a breeze! Her dad also owns the Irish bar, P J O'brien's, along with a whole load of other things in Melbourne! It's not what you know its who you know and I'd doing pretty well off the back of knowing people so far on my trip! Anyway, at the top there was a 30 min wait for the Edge experience so we said our goodbyes and I waited for that. The Edge consists of getting into a pod, which then slides out the side of the building and after a few sound effects makes the floor see through. It effectively is like standing on the glass square at the top of Blackpool tower only on a more impressive scale! It didn't bother me to be honest but it was a cool experience and as I was free I bought the photo! While at the top I also fulfilled another life time ambition. Only joking… I found Australia's highest post box! Anyone who knows me will know I like to stand on post-boxes at home either when intoxicated with alcohol or dressed in a costume! Well unfortunately when I found the post box, which I also presume to be the highest post box in the southern hemisphere, I neither drunk nor dressed appropriately to jump on top of it. I got a picture just for the records anyway.

After my time at the top of Eureka I headed to the Etihad stadium to watch my first Aussie rules football match, AFL. I had chosen a great game to watch as it was North Melbourne v St Kilda, local rivals who were both going for the same spot in the league with one game to go! I bought my ticket for $20 and went in to the stadium. It was very impressive. It had around 80,000 seats, a stage built within the stand with a band playing pre kick off, a whole walk around concourse from which you could stand and watch the match, along with a load of crazy fans all sat anywhere and mixed up. I sat next to a North Melbourne fan with his son and a lady who was also backing North Melbourne that I can only describe as North Melbourne's equivalent to Aunty Dot! She was a great laugh, explained all the rules to me and best of all couldn't finish her chips so guess who got them! Another freebie! So a brief run down of the rules… the pitch is round, there are 18 player on each team and 4 posts at each end. Get the ball through the middle two for 6 points and between the outer posts for 1 point. You can kick it, hit it and run forwards, backwards, sideways do anything to get the ball through the posts. What they all try and do it kick it up to the front to the forwards who if they catch it straight out the air can 'mark' it. This effectively means that all other players have to back off and let them play the ball freely. So when they 'mark' it near the goal they can have a free shot scoring. The match was great fun! It was really exciting to watch and there were lots of goals. To start with it was pretty even but then St Kilda took over and thrashed North Melbourne. Oh well… it was a great game and my new Aunty Dot made it all make sense. After the game I was walking home when I saw a North Melbourne souvenir stand. I walked up and said, 'Got any free stuff for an Englishman?' I walked away with a free DVD and cap! Result, I'm getting good at getting all the free stuff now! I walked back to my hostel where I crashed for the night.

The day after me and another lad I met called Dan, a backpacker from Norwich, hired a car for the day. The plan was to drive the Great Ocean Road. My original thoughts when planning my trip was to drive the Ocean road from Melbourne to Australia. Then I realised it was freezing, a bloody long way and going to cost a whole lot more than driving it in a day and splitting the cost. The car we got was a very nice automatic with a much bigger engine than my 1.2 Fiat Punto. We set off at around 10am and got back at about 11pm. We drove a total of 311miles! Our top speed was 109mph and I'm not disclosing who was driving! So the Great Ocean Road, we stopped at many view points, beaches and towns along the way on a fantastic sunny day. They views from the road were amazing, cliff edges with enormous waves crashing against them and massive beaches covered in surfers. Along the way we also stopped off at a animal sanctuary where we fed Kangaroo's! We also spotted loads of Koala's in the trees and managed to get very very close. Now picture this, I had been driving for a few hours and needed the loo, so I stopped and went into the bush. Mid flow I looked to my right and about a metre away from my head was a Koala holding a baby! A baby Koala! It scared my to death! Luckily it didn't do anything so all was ok, it was amazing to be that close to one though even if they don't do anything at all! We reached the 12 apostles, the most famous spot on the road about 30 mins before sunset. We waited and watched the sun go down on the amazing view. I could only find about 5 apostles… not sure what happened to the other 7! We then had a race a against light to reach another landmark, London Bridge. We got there when it was dark but we still went to have a look. You could just about make it out so I'm counting that as seeing it. We then cut through the countryside, with a detour along the way as we got lost, back to the highway which we drove all way back to Melbourne on. It was a fantastic day. We saw some post card views, fantastic beaches and drove on some incredible roads!

The day after, my last in Melbourne, I decided that I would do the rest of the tourist shuttle followed by a visit to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, The MCG. Now I'm no cricket person but the stadium tour was well worth it. Holding over 100,000 people it was a fantastic stadium to have a look round. I even stepped on the pitch! I then spent the rest of the day in Melbourne Sports Museum, a brilliant, interactive and really interesting thing to do. After a walk to federation square and a long chat with the people in the tourist info about how to get to Adelaide and what to do in between I had a plan. I set off back to my hostel and packed ready to set off the next day. I had a free BBQ tea and then had a pint of Carlton Draught, the local beer, while we did the pub quiz. It was then to bed as I was up at 7am to catch the 8.09am train to Halls Gap, The Grampians National Park.

Melbourne was a great city to start my Aussie adventure in. It had everything; Shops, limited history, sport, great skyline and river, fantastic road and brilliant stadiums. I met a good crowd in the hostel and did as much as I wanted in the four days I was there. I was off to explore the rest of Victoria and see what I could find.

Ps…. Just remembered I also visited the Crown Plaza Casino and lost $10 on blackjack and watched massive pylons shoot fireballs into the night sky along the river.

I am now half way to Adelaide on the bus. Its blue skies, still cold and I am sat on seat 31. Best of all the bus had WiFi! How cool is that so I am going to try and upload this now!

Bye for now…

Tom x