Melbourne impressions

Reaching Melbourne

I traveled to Melbourne, Australia to arrive on the day Maria Sharapova lost to Serena Williams in the final match of Australian Open Women's Championship. This was the last straw, really.

I was flying to Melbourne for a conference, and had to set aside two additional days just for travel. I started around noon time in Amsterdam. I flew on Malaysia Airlines to Kuala Lumpur. The flight was quite okay, and the service and features on the plane was better than average. Malaysia Airlines had an in-flight entertainment system in place, which allowed me to watch as many movies as I wanted, and also allowed playing simple Atari games and watch TV series.

I stayed at Kuala Lumpur airport for about 3 hours. It looks very modern, it is spacious and has free wireless internet all over the place. I certainly took note of it, although staying at an airport for 3 hours does not really give you an idea about the country.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls...

This was the announcement the pilot made while I was starting the next leg of the journey. I would find out that this was the standard greeting in Australia.

After Kuala Lumpur, I had a direct flight to Melbourne, which took about 7 hours. The total trip, including transfers and some minor delays due to luggage delivery, took about 23 hours.
I found that a lot of my colleagues taking part at the conference spent even more than one day on the road, especiall those coming from the U.S. East cost were stuck since most airports had a lot of snow.

The airport is about 20 kilometers from the city, and a taxi drive takes less than 30 minutes to reach the center.

1 Australian dollar is about 80 U.S. cents, and 63 Euro-cents. In general prices seem to be competitive, in contrast with European countries.

I stayed at the Seasons Botanic Gardens Apartments., in the vicinity of the Royal Botanic Gardens. This is a U.S.-style suite apartment-hotel, with two towers having the apartments, each with one or more bedrooms, a spacious living room, and all the equipment you would need for a long stay. The prices are cheap compared to Europe, slightly more expensive than their U.S. counterparts.

Strolling through the city

After having a sound sleep I needed after the 23+ hour trip, I had a quick stroll through the city to find out some of the interesting places. Of course this was the day for the Mens' final on the Australian Open '07, and all the activities around were centered around this event.

The first place I saw when I walked through St. Kilda Road, a wide street leading to the city center, was the Shrine of Remembrance. This is a shrine to commemorate all the Australian soldiers lost in the various wars they have been involved. It is an impressive structure with Greek columns inside a very beautiful park.

Walking further, I crossed the bridge over the Yarra river into the city center of Melbourne. One of the important places to see here is the Federation Square. It is the center of cultural activities in Melbourne and usually very lively. In this case the activities were unavoidably about Australian Open. American Express had several booths and activities around, including the setting up of giant screens and also running interviews with some of the players.


While I was there, I saw the interview with the boys' juniors champion, an Australian kid of 16 named Brydan Klein. Apparently he is the first Australian to win this for a while (and probably the first one to win any of the Australian Open categories for a while, seeing how Lleyton Hewitt got kicked out early this year). Looks like a promising player, mate!

Since I did not know I was going to travel to Melbourne for sure, I did not attempt to find any Open tickets beforehand. Seeing that it was impossible, I at least decided to have a look at the Rod Laver Arena where the tennis games are held. Since it was early in the morning there were not many people and they were preparing for the Federer-Gonzalez final to be held early evening.

I then proceeded to the shopping district of city center. The most notable street for shopping is Bourke Street. Apart from the shops on the main street, it is advisable to check the little streets for alternative restaurants and bars, since the main street only seems to have fast food.

Later that evening, Federer decimated Gonzalez, as expected, in three sets and I had to sit through it in front of the TV. A weird feeling, knowing that with enough early information and preparation, I could have been in the Arena...

Ballarat and the Wildlife

We were invited by our hosts to visit the Ballarat Wildlife Park, which is about an hour and a half's drive from Melbourne. After a short lunch, we were able to pet a koala named Elliott and have our picture taken with it. The tour guide assigned to us gave really interesting information. I learned that koalas only eat eucalyptus leaves and they did not drink any water, getting all the necessary moisture out of the leaves. They usually spend 20+ hours sleeping, since they need all the energy to sustain their life. The birth rate is quite low and lately their population is rapidly diminishing.

Later we were able to feed kangaroos. The park is basically full of kangaroos which are freely roaming and approaching people. They eat the food off your hand if you keep your hands horizontal. Once they are full enough, they just lie down lazily.

There were also a couple of emus around. They also eat out of your hand, but with less enthusiasm.

We could not see the Tasmanian Devil, since it was his feeding time. We were also told that there was a serious sickness afflicting a lot of the devils and the only way they could stop it was to segregate the sick animals from the healthy ones. Once afflicted with this sickness, the devil has inflammations in the jaws, and not being able to feed itself, just starves to death. I also learned that the jaw of the devil can exert a pressure that is 10 times stronger than a dog.

There were also giant turtles which could live around 200 years, and these were very young, being around 70....

The next step was to see a lot of crocodiles, snakes and other creeping creatures. This was not the most interesting part of the trip.

After this sort of long tour of the park, we had some tea and had the opportunity to watch an aboriginal dance. As they explained it to us, they first performed a dance that symbolized the creation of a kangaroo, an emu and finally a warrior. Then they performed another dance which they use with children, which involves imitating some of the typical animals we could see within the wild park. Finally they asked some of us to join them for the dance, so we had some funny moments.

We finished with these dances. It was an interesting trip for me, since I saw a lot of Australia's original animals from a very short distance and even was able to pet them. Most of these animals I had seen in books when I was a child, and it was a change to see them close-up.

Australian Delights

I have tasted one of the uniquely Australian tastes, namely Vegemite. When I saw it on the breakfast table, I did not know what it was and I briefly thought it was a cheese product, mainly because the brand was a famous cream cheese brand. I found out that this is a yeast extract and you are supposed to put a very tiny amount of this on a piece of bread and spread it very thin. The taste is... very dificult to describe, but it is not very similar to anything you have tasted. Very salty and strangely tasting, it still seems to have a strange attraction. It was certainly the source of a couple of jokes for foreigners.

The Journey Back

The journey back was similar, taking about 24 hours. Normally going west should be easier, since you gain some hours. However, a full day's journey had its toll on me, and the next 2 days I was only able to go to bed early morning, since my metabolism had more or less got used to the Australian time (GMT+10).

In this trip I probably saw less than 5% of all interesting things in Australia. I hope I do not need 20 trips to complete it!