Assor­ted Melbourne I

Here’s some photos from around Melbourne in Sept 2018 (yes, it has taken me that long to sort them out), they’re mostly phone photos taken as I wandered around. Melbourne is a mix of Victori­an terraces very simil­ar to those in the UK (with the addi­tion of sunporches), gleam­ing new blocks, and wild west saloon type streets like this. Pretty much every build­ing has a canopy at the front- the sun is hot in the summer, and Melbourne has a lot of rain in the winter. The main streets are all wide, with a tram­line down the middle, and then there’s a network of narrow lane­ways between the back­streets, often with inter­est­ing cafes and shops tucked down them, mean­ing it’s a very walk­able city (unlike some of the cent­ral parts of Sydney). I’ve writ­ten a zine about the trip which you can order here.

Note the pick-up or ute (short for util­ity) as they’re called in Australia. They’re every­where.

The fact that Australia is close to south east Asia means there’s a really great selec­tion of Thai, Viet­namese food etc.

There’s also quite a few of these covered arcades dotted around the city centre.

The main down­side of the wide main streets is that it takes forever to cross the road, and jaywalk­ing is illeg­al in Australia (although appar­ently they enforce it much more strongly in Sydney than Melbourne). It’s always some­thing I have to bear in mind in other coun­tries, because you can cross the road wherever/​whenever you want in the UK as long as you don’t cause an acci­dent.

Australi­an cross­ings also make a really specif­ic sound. (Now appar­ently sampled by Billie Eilish)

Melbourne is also known for coffee- you can’t turn around without seeing anoth­er cafe. Star­bucks didn’t make any head­way here

Pretty much the first thing I did after arriv­ing late the previ­ous night. Even with taking melan­ton­in bought en route in Singa­pore, I get pretty bad jetlag. I don’t think I’m cut out to be one of those people who’s constantly taking long flights, which is better for the envir­on­ment. When I’m in a place I can tough it out because I want to see things, but when I get back home I’m useless for about 2 days. I guess that will teach me to go to places like Japan or Australia that involve such long jour­neys.

Wool­worths is still going in Australia as a super­mar­ket. It was very weird to be recom­men­ded the “Wool­worths sushi counter” (it is pretty good and cheap).

I got an Australi­an sim card there to use in my phone because my operator’s Australasia roam­ing bundle was a total joke, and it came with this tool for open­ing the slot. I was very temp­ted by the Wool­worths Mobile one for my own person­al amuse­ment, but this company had a special offer that was too good to ignore.