Melbourne October 3, 2009

In my last post I showed what we saw the Friday evening while we waited for Clarice and Jon to arrive from Sydney. On Saturday morning we started out with a nice breakfast at a small café down the street from the hotel. Since Karen and I have already been to the water front/harbor we decided to head for the central business district. We started where Karen and I had left off the night before, down by the river front.

We saw interesting building, in the day light this time, walked over bridges, saw some interesting public art and saw quite a bit of activity on the river itself.

This is a boathouse for all of the shells that we saw rowing . There must have been 15-20 crews out on the river that day.

We headed along the nice walks near the river and enjoyed seeing the interesting and sometimes strange buildings and art.

Nicw water front views of the city skyline.

We turned and headed into the heart of the city spotting wide variety of buildings. The photo above is on a lecture hall in the building a couple of photos above. The building below was right across the street, and photo below that is of one of the original hotels in the city. Like I said a really broad variety of buildings.

The building above is the central train station.

We went into one of the big old churches, with very ornate floors walls, and furnishings.

Karen saw all of the tile floor patterns as potential quilting ideas,

Some of the wood carving was intricate and well preserved.

Every so often you spot something that sort of makes you wonder, like this sign in front of a Baptist Church advertising a Ray Charles classics concert.

We found older shopping areas arcades with décor that would almost rival the church we had just visited.

Other old and colorful things

We eventually got to an open plaza area that was near an information center. Jon and I found a comfortable place to wait while Karen and Clarice went to find out what we had missed. They came back with tickets to a stage play that we were going to attend that evening.

We took a sort walk down a street in the China town district and then headed back to the hotel to change clothes, get some dinner and head to the play.

Next is the drive to the south and west to the Great Ocean Road.

Alice Springs to Melbourne Oct 2, 2009

The trip, from Alice Springs in the Outback to Melbourne on the coast, was one of significant contrasts. We started the morning in Alice Springs standing near the mighty Todd River (it’s that brown dry area with the trees growing up in it behind us).

We had spent the night in one of these cabins. By the middle of the morning we were on our way to the airport. Our Outback experience was coming to a close.

We got to Melbourne in the late afternoon, checked into the hotel and headed out for a walk, and to have dinner.

When we got to Melbourne and to the hotel downtown it was clear we were not in the outback any longer. Melbourne reminded me a bit of Chicago in scale and character. There were plenty of big public structures, elaborate transportation systems, near major water, odd public art, huge housing complexes vast pedestrian systems monumental older buildings, a river front, with a big old skyline.

We found our way to the river and figured we would be able to find a restaurant. There was a photographer there who was kind enough to shoot this “we were there” picture.

Clarice and Jon were going to meet us there later in the evening. While we were at dinner Clarice called to say that their flight had been delayed a bit because of rain. They ended getting to the Hotel about 11:00 or so. The next day we were going to take in the sites of the city.