Saturday, April 23 to Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
So my last few days in Melbourne were planned to be a lot more relaxed than my first few. I have a few things to find but mostly I was doing some shopping and relaxing. To start I checked into a much nicer hotel than the first time around....The Marriott. They gave me a glass of bubbles (as in sparkling wine) while I checked in. I kind of felt like I was at home. I really enjoyed my giant king size bed, especially after all that backpacker accommodation in Tasmania.
Saturday I woke up and did a little wandering. I was looking for a particular building that Mom told me about. I tried to find it before and it turns out I had walked by it several times but it looks different than I expected it to.
This is the C42 building said to be Australia's greenest building. They collect rain water for flushing toilets and there are shutters on the outside to help regulate the temperature and reduce energy use. Not a super pretty building but it's good for the earth so I like it.
A look at those shutters. The building will look totally different with these shutters in various levels of closure depending on where the sun is.
From there I hopped on the tram to one of Melbourne's most famous suburbs.....St. Kilda. There is a beach....but the weather was not very nice so I decided I would check out some shops instead.
Looking down towards the water. See, not very nice at all.
St. Kilda is a pretty trendy area with lots of shops and restaurants and cake shops. Yes I made stops in almost all of them........and yes I bought some yummy cake. I really wish I had some pictures of the cake shops but there were so many people in the way. Yes the cakes were good....you know I sampled a few.
I made a return trip to St. Kilda later that night to do some penguin spotting. St. Kilda beach is home to a few hundred Little Penguins (also called Little Blues).....which happen to be the smallest penguins in the world and are super cute. They spend the day at sea eating and swimming around and then return to St. Kilda was the sun sets and just after dark.
The wharf at St. Kilda. It is just past that little building (which is a restaurant by the way) that you will start your penguin watching.
Looking at downtown Melbourne from the breakwater. The breakwater was built for the Olympics in 2000 for people to park their big giant boats in. Although the penguins have been here since about 1974, they moved to the breakwater in 2000 and haven't left. The breakwater itself is only partially accessible to the public. The rest is all blocked off. They say most of the older penguins live out there and force the younger ones to nest where all the people can gawk at them.
There is one of the cute little guys now. They only weigh about a kilogram (2.2 pounds) and are super little and so cute. It's hard to get pictures because you can't use your flash (it blinds the poor little guys) but there are rangers around who shine the red lights so you can see them.
Here's a little video I made of this little guy. He seemed to like all the attention. These Little Penguins are only found in the Southern Hemisphere. They can dive up to 60 metres (197 feet) and can stay under water for up to 45 seconds. They can sleep and sea and don't have to return to land every night but I'm glad this little guy chose to. He's so cute.
Sunday, April 24th, 2011
Sunday I decided to take advantage of my very comfortable king sized bed and my very large 64" television and basically stayed in bed all day long. It as super nice. I enjoyed every minute of it. Since it was Easter Sunday, I was hoping for some chocolate.....but I didn't get any. I eventually got out of bed and headed to a footy game though. That was almost equivalent to Easter chocolate.
In blue and white we have the North Melbourne Kangaroos and in the yellow and black are the Richmond Tigers. You may remember that I saw the Tigers play at the MCG a few weeks ago. This game was at Etihad Stadium which is a whole lot smaller than the MCG and it's covered.
It was a very close and exciting game (Tigers won 112 to 103) and the guy sitting next to me picked up very quickly that I didn't know the game very well so helped me out with some of the finer points. He was actually pretty impressed with what I had managed to pick up after seeing just one game.
That's the Tigers' cheer squad made up of members (I'd explain the membership system but it's as confusing of the game). I really wanted one of those giant pom-poms. It would have been a little hard to pack though.
Monday, April 25th, 2011 - ANZAC Day
Monday morning I got up very early....before the sun rise in fact, to take part in a yearly event here in Australia, an ANZAC Day Dawn ceremony. As you can guess, it starts at Dawn at the Shrine of Remembrance. It was just a short walk from my hotel and well there were a lot of people heading that same way.
The Shrine of Remembrance just barely lit up. The ceremony itself was not what I expected. I was expecting more like Remembrance Day when there are lots of speeches and a parade and that kind of thing. Turns out that stuff happens later.....but I missed it.
A few service personal lit up by the spot light in behind. The ceremony started at 0600 when an ominous sounding voice came over the PA system and started to tell stories. There were a lot of politicians and ex and current service personal but you couldn't see any of them. The entire ceremony took part in the dark lit only by the flash of cameras and eventually the sun.
This was before the ceremony started. The only light in the area at the time.
Once the ceremony ended I made my way back to the hotel walking with a few thousand other people. It really was a sight to see.
The Shrine Of Remembrance once the sun came out. All the clouds and fog made it a pretty eerie place to be.
I once again had a relaxing day at my hotel after that, waking in time to watch the ANZAC Day AFL Game on TV. I tried to get tickets but thought about it much too late. There were almost 100,000 people at the MCG to watch rivals Collingwood and Essendon play. I would compare the rivalry to that of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox or the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames. The teams hate each other, the fans hate each other and it always makes for some exciting footy.
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
Tuesday was my final day in Melbourne. And this time I meant it. I had to check out of the hotel at noon but my bus didn't leave until 2015 (8:15pm) so I had most of the day to check out a few things.
My first stop (after I did a bit of shopping that is) was at the ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art). Just a small little place that is free to visit, they have some very interesting pieces on display right now. Many of the pieces take up entire rooms.
This collection of 3 is called "More Normal" by Mark Hilton.
This one took up an entire room. The other wall (behind me) was painted similar to this one but with different colours. This is "Lanterne Rouge" by Shane Haseman.
You almost want to go kick one of those balls and see what happens......but I didn't. This is " The Person who cried a million tears" By Brendan Van Hek.
This is one of the smaller pieces on display. It is called "aquae profundo" and yes it is in a freezer. This work is credited to "Greatest Hits" (Gavin Bell, Jarrah de Kuijer and Simon McGlinn).
This was one of my favourite exhibits......ever. I kind of walked through it not sure if I was suppose to or not. Yes that is a janitor's closet but it is part of Dan Moynihan's "Warm Memorial: The Dan Moynihan Experience".
This is another view of "Warm Memorial". You can make out the janitor's closet in the corner. It was neat to walk around a corner and find this and yes you actually can walk out on the sand.
From the Art Centre, I made my way back to the Shrine of Remembrance. I figured I better check it out during the day and go inside as well. It kind of smelled like a flower shop inside from all the fresh wreaths that had been laid on ANZAC Day.
More blue sky and less fog, makes this place look a whole lot less creepy.
Inside the Shrine of Remembrance. There is a small museum with all kinds of interesting things to see. This is the Father and Son Statue that you can find in the Crypt.
Looking down from the balcony of the Shrine of Remembrance. In the foreground you can see The Eternal Flame along with the Cenotaph. The Cenotaph is 12.5 metres (41 feet) tall and is inscribed with the names of the theatres of war fought by each of the services in World War II.
I still had a lot of time left in the day before my bus left but not to worry I already had plans for the afternoon. Because ANZAC Day fell on the Easter Holiday Weekend, Tuesday was also a holiday here, which meant one thing.......afternoon footy at the MCG. So yes I headed back to the MCG to watch one more footy match. This time it was between the Geelong Cats and the Hawthorne Hawks.
That's Geelong in the blue and white. This time around I had a team to cheer for (Geelong) because that's the team my friend Paul cheers for and he told me I had to cheer for them.
The Geelong cheer squad. They had a lot to cheer about as the Cats won in come from behind fashion. Such a great game.
Pretty full stadium. Attendance was just over 79,000 people. Really crazy. What's sad is that there were a whole lot of empty seats that I'm sure people would have been happy to sit in. Memberships here mean that certain areas are reserved for members of the MCG however members don't always use them and they don't open them up to the public so they just sit empty. Too bad. They game was a sell out otherwise.
Once the game was over I went back to the hotel to grab my bags and then headed off to the bus terminal. The bus ride to Adelaide was about 10 hours. I lucked out and got the front seat (behind the driver) so I had lots of leg space. Only bad thing was the french girl sitting beside me kept falling asleep on me (I've had bad luck with french girls on buses falling asleep on me).
I arrived in Adelaide at 0600, got to my hotel at 0700, was lucky enough to be able to check into my room so I showered and promptly took a nap. When I woke up I went to check out a bit of Adelaide. But I will share those stories in another post.
Julie
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