Planning a Trip to Melbourne

Naturally, in keeping with most Australian cities, Melbourne has its own Botanic Gardens - the Royal Botanic Gardens, no less. You may recall that back in Adelaide I explained how each city seems to have its own theme for their gardens - in Brisbane, you get to walk through dense woodland down by the river and feel as though you're actually getting back to nature, whereas in Adelaide the gardens are more formal. Well I think Melbourne has got the balance just right, although I would be hard pressed to choose between Brisbane and Melbourne if there was a best gardens contest. It's possible to spend an entire day in the Botanic Gardens here, and if I lived in the city I'd probably spend most of my evenings sitting at the lakeside cafes or wandering through Fern Gully - an entire section of the park which has been set aside as a tropical rainforest complete with meandering stream and the sun filtering through the branches to fall on the ground in puddles of light. The Oak Garden, a major area of the park, is a great place to see parrots wandering around - something which always catches me by surprise as I've never before seen them outside of cages in people's living rooms. Each section of the park is set apart from the others and almost enclosed in its own habitat, so you can walk about without ever feeling that you're within a formal garden unless you visit any of the conservatories or the Herb or Rose Gardens. Although I'm not a big fan of formal layouts, the Herb Garden is one of my favourite parts of the park - built around a curious globe shaped sundial, this enclosed area contains paths leading off from the centre through beds of herbs from all over the world - the mix of smells as you wander through this area is just amazing, and something which I've not encountered anywhere else before or since. The gardens are centred around a huge ornamental lake by which I sat with Tanya at the Terrace café and restaurant in 2003. The place was covered in birds of all varieties - a flock of them were crowding together on the adjoining table waiting for any opportunity for free food. Every time we turned our heads in the opposite direction, one of them would flutter over to our table, peck at our sandwich and then flutter off again before we turned back. Cockatoos wander freely around the gardens, coming right up to peck at your fingers if you bend down - despite the fact that the guidebooks speak very sternly about not feeding the birds, its not easy to deduce that nobody takes the slightest notice as the birds here are clearly very happy to be around humans. On the lake black swans glide gracefully up and down with their cygnets, a very rare sight which probably brings many tourists here on its own - again, wandering casually over to the edge of the water results in two or three coming over to see you to see if you're going to feed them. Swans, not tourists.

You can read my full travel journals at http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

On the 15th November 2007 one of Melbourne's most iconic great oak trees unexpectedly crashed down on Oak Lawn. The Lady Loch Oak, which had a canopy which spanned forty-three metres, had been planted by the wife of the governor of Victoria in 1889, exactly 118 years to the day before it fell. Oak Lawn is now without one of its favourite meeting spots and one of the oldest and most imposing attractions of the gardens. On the other hand, we can only be thankful that nobody was waiting underneath it at the time it fell.

Very European, apparently the best nightlife in Australia and I will not argue with that - it's great!
The best clubs in Melbourne:
Fusion in the Casino $20 for entry, bit pricey (also drinks) but good fun. 2 floors.
CQ $15 entry, $9 bottled beer, lots of Australians inside, difficult to get in. U have to be either girl or local or lucky to come at the right time. Worth trying though. 1-2 floors (depends if second floor is open)
Red Violin - free entry, very cheap night and great music - bit of everything - also Reggeaton (2 floors).

Great transport Melbourn has the second biggest in the world tram network which makes tcommuting way easier. Furing the night - fridays and saturdays - nightrider buses available.

for those who lke a Punt or just a day at the races - ensure you make it to the Caulfield Cup during Melbourne's Spring Carnival. My suggestion is pay for the reserved seating as you have better access to toilets and bars and avoid the drunen crush outside on the grassed area

Built in memory of those who fell during the First World War, the Great Ocean Road often gets missed out when travellers are planning their itinerary across Australia, perhaps because places such as Uluru and the Gold Coast are so much more well known and publicised. This is a shame, as the South-Western corner of the Victoria Coast from Nelson to Torquay - the surfing capital of Australia - is home to two National parks and is easily one of the world's most scenic coastal routes. Nowhere more than here is it so obvious that Australia focuses all it's energies on ecological tourism much more than building theme parks and nightlife destinations - suggest to an Australian that they should build anything near any sort of natural site and see how long it is before you find yourself hanging upside down from a lamp post. As a result of this national love for the environment, this is one place on Earth where you can still spend days without having to encounter another human being, just wandering through rainforests or visiting natural attractions - and I can't honestly think of a better reason to head for Australia. Tour guides and local information centres also appear to be overflowing with information on the history and ecology of Australia, which is refreshing to those of us who wish to learn about what we're seeing rather than just moving from place to place going "Wow" at regular intervals. Information plates can also be found sticking out of the ground at every site, not just containing a bit of information but almost the whole history of the area. In Britain it's often hard to find a shop where the salespeople know anything about any of the products they're selling, so to be able to ask a question and be given an in depth five minute explanation comes as quite a pleasant surprise. Tours of the Great Ocean Road can be booked in either direction from Adelaide or Melbourne, and can be taken either on large coaches with groups of tourists or in the form of a more cosy four wheel drive tour. In 2003, Tanya and I booked a small group tour along the road and were driven from Adelaide to Melbourne in a six seat vehicle accompanied by just one other person - if at all possible, this is the way to explore the route. We stopped at outback accommodation which consisted of not much more than two bedrooms and a kitchen, and was sited on something resembling a cattle ranch - and we had our guide's entire attention as we saw the sights of the road without having to mill about as part of a large group. Such small group tours can be booked from local Youth Hostels or by calling in at one of the roadside tour offices in cities around the country which cater for small parties. Along the way, the Great Ocean Road snakes through rainforest, past spectacular beaches and incredible rock formations - sometimes only feet from the edge of the cliff. One day, part of the cliff is going to fall away unexpectedly and take somebody with it, but that doesn't stop nature lovers flocking here to make the same road trip year after year. Careful and quiet visitors will even see Fairy Penguins and Seals basking on the beaches along the way, or perhaps even spot a whale tale rising from the waves far out to sea. The National Parks in South-West Victoria are also home to some of the last remaining colonies of the Rufous Bristlebird, an almost flightless bird which only continues to survive here because it makes it's home in the thick vegetation of the cliff tops where predators cannot reach it. Known for it's breathtaking scenery and such natural wonders as the Twelve Apostles and London Bridge, the Great Ocean Road is also a place of tall stories and legends - all of which are predictably heart warming and romantic as tales of shipwrecks and mysterious rock formations jutting from the ocean often are, but many of which have probably been altered over the years. Nevertheless, these stories create a mythology which brings visitors flocking to this part of the coast in their thousands, and anything that brings the wonders of nature to a wider audience can only be good in my eyes.

You can read my full travel journals at http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

Remember the predilection Adelaide has for strange street statues? Well, I now realise that this art form isn't restricted to South Australia - Victoria has caught the bug as well! On the corner of one street I came across a number of life-size bronze statues of stick men, arms frozen mid swing as though walking, bronze briefcases in their hands, apparently on their way to a bronze office somewhere. Just around the corner, entering the mall, there was a giant bronze purse blocking half the pavement. The really odd thing is that these eccentric additions to Australian cities really give them a sense of atmosphere and tell you that the local people know how to have fun. Our idea of modern street art back home consists of a row of toppled telephone boxes! Lets Go Australia suggests that a good place to go on a short stay in Melbourne is the Central Melbourne Arcade at the top of Swanston Street, so I went along to investigate. The place is huge - I mean seriously mammoth - probably not a touch on the sort of places I expect to encounter in the states, but nonetheless quite amazingly bloated. The really incredible thing about the Central Melbourne Arcade, however, is that it is built around another building - a lead pipe and shot factory which cannot be knocked down as it's on the protected list. The shopping complex has been built around this huge brick tower which dominates the central atrium and now serves as a rather unusual café. A huge dome covers the entire structure, and on the stroke of every hour a big stopwatch descends magically from the dome and a cast of electronic characters drop from its base to dance around and sing Waltzing Mathilda. This really is something worth seeing, even if just to reassure yourself that Australia really is as weird as you'd thought it was. In fact I enjoyed the experience so much that, when we returned here in 2003, I must've bored Tanya senseless telling her about this strange sight in the Melbourne Arcade that she absolutely must see while we were here - naturally, in accordance with sods law, every internal corridor and walkway of the arcade turned out to be covered in plasterboard when we got there as they were in the middle of renovating the place. Needless to say, the stopwatch clock was out of action and most of the shops were closed.

You can read my full travel journals at http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

Go to Imax, Pier, and Vicotria Library for free Internet of Wifi, and go out for night life, which is smooth, stilish and intelligent.

To get from the airport to the city, take the Skybus. It has a regular service to the Southern Cross (formerly Spencer Street) railway station. From where the hotel shuttles take you to your destination. The sguttle is included in the ticket price. Tickets can now be booked printed in advance on the Internet with your credit card. A return gives the best value. The TV on-board runs visitor info, which is handy if you haven't been before.
http://www.skybus.com.au/

The best city in the world.

use the public transport!!

The city of shopping, the famous cuckoo clock that plays Waltzing Matilda and Mt Dandenong which makes for a nice day trip. Don't drive unless you are very brave. The trams and traffic have an uneasy set of rules. The Melbourne Tennis Center is home to the Australian Open and of course this is the home of Aussie Rules. Lots of great Greek and Italian restaurants and a thriving metropolis of cultures.

Trams are the best way to get around Melbourne

If you're interested in film, make sure you get along to the australian film museum in Federation Square...there are great interactive pods where you can watch Australian short films for as long as you like, free of charge.