Melbourne and Geelong

On the way from Eden to Melbourne our ship stopped for a day in Burnie, Tasmania. We blew it off!!! We’d been there before and it’s not real exciting…. A second day in Melbourne would have been preferable.

Melbourne is a different story. We love Melbourne! It’s a beautiful city, it’s easy to get from one place to another and it has an interesting history. We joined tour guide Kenneth Parker for an architectural walking tour called “Arcades and Allies”.

At about the same time that we had our Gold Rush in California, the state of Victoria, where Melbourne is located, had a gold rush. Melbourne has a wonderful natural harbor and quickly became the place where everyone landed and the capital of the state. Gold poured in, money poured in and there was a sudden boom in building. From mid-19^th century, through the early 20^th century, a huge amount of building occurred. The results are still lovely.

Banks, in particular, flourished as shown in pictures 1 and 2 show. Picture 1 is the ANZ Bank building from the outside. Picture 2 shows the interior of a former bank that is now an office building.

Melbourne is particularly known for its arcades. Pictures 3 and 4 show the floor and ceiling of one arcade. Many are Victorian and Edwardian, but we also saw some that are Art Deco. We also saw alleys that have been converted to spontaneous art galleries and sidewalk cafes. It was delightful to wander.

Picture 5 shows the beautiful. Flinders train station, which is in the heart of downtown. Diagonally across the street from the train station is the cathedral, which is not particularly memorable. What was interesting was the peek into Victorian life in Melbourne, as shown in Picture 6. To one side of the cathedral we found this sitting area for women only. Special areas in parks and theaters and other places were reserved for women, so they did not have to suffer from the amorous attentions of all those nasty men from the gold fields!

Across the street from the Cathedral is the very modern Federation Square, where we found the “art” shown in Picture 7. This was an exhibit to encourage people to recycle their mobiles.

By the way, while the weather looks gloomy on both days, it's actually haze from bush fires in other parts of Victoria. They're desperate for rain, both to help alleviate the drought and to improve the air quality.

The next day we spent in Geelong, which is a short sail across the harbor from Melbourne. It’s a near-perfect city. It’s 200,000 plus inhabitants have all the necessities right there, although they are a quick train ride from Melbourne and they’re on the ocean. What more could they want???? We met friends, who planned the day to be spent along the Great Ocean Road.

The Great Ocean Road follows the southern coast from Geelong to the west. It was built following WWI, providing employment for returning veterans. Australia suffered horribly in that war. With a total population of 5 million, they provided 300,000 soldiers and sailors to the British war effort. 60,000 were killed and 180,000 injured. Our friend, Keith, told us that his grandfather had 4 sisters who were engaged to 4 soldiers, who went away to war. None returned.

The road alternates between beautifully rugged seascapes, like the one shown in picture 8, and lovely beach villages, like Lorne, which is shown in picture 9.

When we turned inland to head back to Geelong we found a small grove of eucalyptus trees along side the road and 3 sleepy koalas. Picture 10 shows one in the typical koala position. They sleep 20 hours per day and eat eucalyptus leaves for the remaining 4 hours. Picture 11 shows one who has just woken and is taking a stretch. What a treat! Koalas are marsupials, like kangaroos and ARE NOT bears, even though they are wrongly called “koala bears”.

There are many kinds of eucalyptus trees in Australia, but koalas only eat a couple kinds.  Picture 12 shows the flowers on particular type of eucalyptus. Don’t know if that’s one of the types koalas will eat (the tree we saw them eating from had white blossoms). But the color of this type of eucalyptus was so spectacular that we thought it deserved a picture!

Returning to Geelong, the “lady” in Picture 13 greeted us. This is called a bollard and a local resident, Jan Mitchell, who has since died, created over 100 of these. They are now part of the Baywalk Bollard Trail, which depicts many of the characters who molded Geelong’s history.

It was a wonderful day with good friends, who are justifiably proud of their part of Australia. How lucky we were to have our own private guides!

On to Kangaroo Island and Adelaide.