Chapter 3 : Welcome to Melbourne

Melbourne! The state capital of Victoria, founded by an Australian with a cool name (more on that later) by dubious means (swapping some tools for Aboriginal land) and it was later put under British rule. So how did I get here?

By bus. I was on the road by 7:30pm on Tuesday and the bus was driven by a guy called Robbert. I'm not sure if he really spelt his name like that or if his badge had a typo, but I'm now thinking of calling myself Ryyan.
There was also a movie to watch, the brilliant 'Fast Five', which if you haven't seen it, features a bus crash in the opening 5 minutes. Good thing I'm not a nervous traveller.

Later we stopped at Yass, then even later we stopped at Aubury, then after a few hours of broken sleep we made it to Melbourne.

7:30am, and it was raining...

But the rain was short lived and I decided to go to the tourist info to pick up maps and things.

Those names sound familiar...

 Then the weather was brightening up, so I decided to walk to my hostel and drop my bags off as it was quite easy to find.

Yep, it's a pub with a hostel on top of it. Plus there are free breakfasts, cheap backpacker meals and free internet. What a find!
I wouldn't be able to check in until later, so I dropped off my bags and walked back towards the city.

Cool, stealth buildings!

Ooooooh, art gallery...

Of course I went into the art gallery, it's free and I had all day. So here's a load of pictures of pictures!

Oh my God, they killed that lamb... you 'baaaaa-stards'

The city of Melbourne itself is like a work of art. Each building is new and interesting (except for the old and boring ones) but the city is a planned grid, so it lacks that organic feel that comes with back alleys and years of poor planning.

Oh, remember at the start of this post I mentioned the founder? Well, his name was Bruce Wayne...

Not many places can say they were founded by Batman!

I visited Fitzroy park and the landmarks within it, like Cook's cottage and the Conservatory.

Cheese flowers?!

Cook's cottage

DUCKLINGS!

A short while later I met up with Friddi, you know, the German girl who was at the Hunter Valley and New Year. Well, she's in Melbourne for a bit too so we went to a shopping centre called Waterfront City to the north west of the city, near Victoria Harbour. It took us ages to find each other as we agreed to meet at Docklands, but our differing maps suggested that Docklands was in two different areas (turns out Docklands is just one big area)

The shopping centre is very nice and new, so new that the big wheel isn't built yet. (Apparently it was built once, but the heat warped the metal so they've had to rebuild it)

After some food it was getting kind of late and I was feeling the call of my some R&R. I returned to the hostel, checked in and met a room-mate (Shaun) before having a cheeky pint downstairs. It was then that I found out Wednesday is karaoke night! So much for an early night.

The night was a good laugh and I met a few other hostellers, now I'm going to explore the local area and maybe look at the beach. So as first impressions go, Melbourne is very nice, but maybe a bit dull. However the suburbs are probably more interesting, but I'll find out about that later.