Melbourne & Emerald

Well I managed to stuff my camera during the new year - so its been sent of for repair so it will be a while before I post any more photos (canon reckon 20 days). Since leaving Sydney I spent a week in Melbourne and visited Federation Square, the botanical gardens and Queen Victoria Markets. Federation square was interesting to see as they were building it when I was last in Australia. The botanical gardens were really good and I think edged Sydneys in the wow factor. My hostel was right beside the Queen Victoria markets which is a massive market mainly fruit, vegetable, meat & clothes; their are approximately 1100 stalls so it takes a while to get around.

My hostel was Bev & Micks backpackers and was a classy joint above a pub, however the atmosphere was really good and they had activities like quizzes, pool comps etc on every night. After a week in Melbourne I felt like a change as i'd been in city's for the past couple of months, so I have now moved to a little place called emerald which is about an hour and a half outside Melbourne.

My trip to Emerald was slightly hectic, I left the hostel and walked to Spencer st train station with my backpack in 35-40 deg heat, and was truly knackered by the time I got their (only about 2KM). ON arriving at the station I realised it was Sunday and I had actually left the previous hostel a day early! After walking to the station I thought i'd carry on regardless, I arrived at Belgrave station which is the nearest to Emerald expecting to get a bus to Emerald; unfortunately been in the middle of nowhere the buses didnt run on Sundays! Plan C was then to find some accomodation in Belgrave which again included walking round in great heat with my rucksack - with the addition of steep hills. I walked up a massive hill to get to the only B&B to find that they had closed for rennovations, at this point I decided to deviate from independent travel and hailed a taxi.

Anyway Emerald is a really nice place its a really small town - i'll have to update you later about it as i've run out of time (got to catch a train).

Cronulla & the City

After the New Years celebrations I was due to leave the original backpackers on the 2nd, therefore feeling like a change I went to Cronulla which is a beach town resort about 50 min south by train.

Their had been some race riots their a couple of weeks ago but it seemed to have calmed down and the hostel i was going to had been recommended by a few people.

The location of the hostel couldn’t have been any better, it was a 1 min walk to the town centre which was probably 2/3rds the size of Congleton. To get to the beach took about 3 minutes walk and the hostel had free surf and body boards.

I thought I’d try the body board before surfing as I’ve never done either, I managed to ride a few waves but found it rather tiring (spent a lot of times under waves not on them!).

I spent a week at the hostel but the weather was cloudy most of the week so only got to the beach 2 or 3 times.

After a week i decided to go back to the city as i was having to commute to the city in the week which meant a 5/6AM start.

I decided to go to the maze backpackers in the city which was one of my original choices for when I arrived. It is a massive hostel with 500 beds and covers an entire block.

The hostel is OK but it is missing an outdoor area and you never see the same people twice as it is so big. Everything was going OK until the second day when I got bitten by bed bugs! These little blighters come out at night and suck your blood leaving an irritating bite mark a bit like a mosquito bite.

Anyway on the plus side i went to reception and they upgraded me to a 2 bed dorm and gave me money to wash all my clothes.

Well its Sunday now and i'm about to get a bus to Melbourne, the bus leaves at 7PM tonight and arrives at 7AM in the morning. I've pre-booked in to a hostel which will hopefuilly be free of bed bugs!

New Years Eve / Day

Well New years eve has passed and what a good night it was, we started the celebrations at about 3PM at the local bar (World Bar) it was very quiet so we got seats in the outdoor area. A few schooners were drunk slowly through the afternoon until about 6PM.

We then went back to the hostel mixed up some vodka orange and headed down to Mrs Macquaries point which overlooks the harbor bridge and Opera house, two Irish sisters (Suzie & Katie) from my dorm were already their with a crowd so we met up with them. Unfortunately the spot wasn't very good as a tree obstructed half the harbour bridge so we watched the 9PM fireworks from there and decided to move on for the midnight celebrations.
We wandered down to the city where all the roads have been closed (hence photos of me standing in the road!) and walked down towards the rocks where the harbour bridge is, by luck we somehow managed to get a spot right by the water looking straight at the bridge.

It was a funny sort of 12 o'clock celebration as it struck midnight the fireworks started going off, and you sort of forgot about new years as the fireworks were so impressive! They lasted for about half an hour and the finale was really loud and colourful. I took quite a bit of video on my camera but the file sizes are too large to upload to my website at the moment and also need editing (my video taking was slightly impaired by alcohol!).

After the fireworks we wandered around the streets where their were various street parties, we ended up outside the observer hotel which had a live band going. We left at about 3:30 and wandered up to a house party near central station which seemed to take forever to get to. We had a few more beers then I went home for some much deserved sleep!

New years day was the hottest recorded day Sydney had ever had on January 1st, it was 44 deg. and felt like walking round in a sauna. This combined with a hangover meant for the whole day all I managed to achieve was:-

a) go to Joes cafe down the road for some food
b) visit the train station (also just down the road) to find out about trains to Melbourne.