Sunday in the Park in Melbourne

And so we came to Melbourne this Sunday. Our flight from Sydney was blissfully uneventful. We left Sydney before the city came fully awake, encountered few others in the airport, but found more than the usual numbers in Melbourne for a Sunday morning when we touched down here.
The Grand Prix was concluding here today and hundreds of thousands of spectators were in town for that, so traffic getting into the city was slower than usual, partly because of so many visitors and partly because some streets were blocked off. As our flight prepared for landing, we were told that John Travolta is here for the race. Who knows—maybe we’ll see him in our hotel?
Melbourne, like Sydney, is a mix of the old and new. Older buildings and homes have been preserved and newer ones built up beside and behind them. The historic buildings here were built of bluestone rather than Sydney’s sandstone. They call this the “Garden City” and it lives up to the name with beautiful parks all around and trees that were brought from England, oaks and elms rather than the native eucalyptus, to remind the settlers here of their homeland.

We stopped in a park that includes the cottage in which Captain Cook lived in Yorkshire. It was given to the citizens of Melbourne as a gift commemorating their anniversary and brought here to be reassembled stone by stone. Other parks flow through the city and its neighborhoods, including botanic gardens and trees from one end of the city to the other. They’ve worked hard to maintain their green spaces even when drought conditions threatened their survival. The result is a beautiful living space that inspires a healthy lifestyle.
There are huge and impressive cathedrals and government buildings throughout the city. The 1956 Olympic venues here are still in use, although the swimming pool leaked and has been made into a basketball stadium instead. In addition, Rod Laver Stadium is named for the famous Aussie tennis player and is, as our guide tells it, the “greatest tennis facility in the world.”
These blokes down under tend to use superlatives a lot and, when challenged in any way, can find a way to parse their “most” and “best” so that it works. At least it works for them. We’re guessing that their isolation from the rest of the world and a certain amount of residual poor national self-esteem has them grasping eagerly for any bragging rights they can find. Truthfully, they legitimately have so much to be proud about, there’s really no need to brag.

We had lunch in the market area. There are two blocks of the old market, including restaurants, meats and vegetables, clothing and souvenirs. It’s an old-fashioned retail area, much like the Charleston market in South Carolina, only more extensive.  Here, as everywhere in the world, folks line up for sweets!
Melbourne, like Sydney, has vibrant downtown retail shopping, as well. There are many high-end boutiques, as well as the major Australian department stores. While this has given way in America to suburban malls, downtown shopping is still a part of life in Australia AND they have the suburban malls, as well.
Perhaps the fact that Australia managed to avoid the global recession for the most part keeps their retail business healthy. Their unemployment is at 5.3 percent and building is going on all over the country. Immigration from all over Asia is strong here, somewhat driven in the past decade by the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong. Housing prices have gone up because demand his risen, both for housing and consumer goods. A sign of the economy’s health is that waiters in restaurants are paid considerably better than in America, thus we are discouraged from tipping more than 10 percent for even the best service.
The river Yarra winds through the city, crossed by numerous bridges linking neighborhoods to the city center. The old docks on Phillip’s Bay have been developed into a burgeoning second city along the edges of the business district called Docklands. The concept is to emulate somewhat Baltimore’s waterfront development. As we drove through that area this evening, thousands of fans were pouring out of a stadium where they had watched an Australian rules football match. It was fun to see them wearing the two different teams’ colors, carrying flags, looking much like fans anywhere in the world.
We’re told there are four kinds of football here: Australian Rules, Rugby League, Rugby Union and Soccer. I’m not entirely sure of the differences, but apparently Australian Rules in the most exciting. We had a local football team on our flight today, returning from a match in Sydney.
In addition to all the sports above, we passed cricket pitches where matches were being played. This sport has begun to make more sense to me, but there are still mysteries and nuances that are hard to grasp. Among other strange concepts is that cricket contests can last for as long as five days! Even our guide, who played cricket as a boy, says it’s more exciting to play than to watch. Hmmm?
There are many churches in Melbourne, including both Catholic and Anglican cathedrals. It seems the Methodists and some other Protestants have formed an alliance called the Uniting Church. Again, this concept is not entirely clear to us as yet, but it’s one more way in which the Aussies go about things differently.
This evening after our tour around the city, we had a most unusual dinner aboard one of the city’s specially outfitted tram cars. The electric tram system, much like the trolley car system that Atlanta had in my childhood, runs all over Melbourne. Because the city was laid out with very wide main streets, the tram lines run through the middle of the street.

Our dinner car was one of several that have been decorated to look like the original cars of yesteryear. We were served champagne, followed by a three course meal with whatever wines and drinks, including liqueurs, that we wanted. Throughout dinner, our car passed through the city. The windows are treated so that we could see out, but those on the streets around us couldn’t see in. There were a couple of different birthday celebrations on board as this is considered a special treat by both locals and visitors alike.
We continue to be impressed with the efforts both New Zealanders and Australians are making to conserve resources. On the Qantas flight here from Sydney we were given bags in which to place items not considered recyclable and asked to give the flight attendants the items for recycle separately from these bags of “rubbish.”
Perhaps the people here are more conscious of the need to conserve because they live in a drier climate overall than we’ve known in the U.S. In some areas, Australia had not had rain in as many as 9 years until some recent deluges that have been both welcome and, at times, troublesome because of their intensity. One lake that has been dry for many years, filled up, drawing hundreds of people to see the phenomenon.
Another example of the way in which resource preservation plays out is that in some newer suburbs of Sydney people are getting two distinct types of water service. One water source coming to their homes is purified and meant to be used for cooking and drinking. A separate water supply provides recycled water for use in bathrooms and elsewhere. Since these measures have been put in place, the water usage has been cut in half.
Our hotel in Melbourne is in the center city and is quite swanky. It’s on the top floors of an office building and is quite modern with energy-saving features. The light in the bath is on a sensor, turning on and off as we enter and leave the bath. The windows are fitted with wooden shutters and sun filtering shades.

Tomorrow we have the morning free for sightseeing on our own, then we’re off to Phillip Island to see the penguins returning from the sea at twilight. It’s another one of the many first-time experiences we’re having here, so we’re not quite sure what to expect, but we are sure we’ll like it anyway. We’re beginning to understand why they say “G’day” and “no worries.” Life here has many pleasures and we’re lucky enough to being pursuing an endless array of them.

Photos by Mike Lumpkin