Monday 2 September – Having escaped satisfactorily from Kangaroo Island, we now had to escape from Adelaide via a flight to Melbourne yesterday. The process of dropping the bags off was trouble-free, but on arrival at the airport security, it looked like it might take us some time.

Appearances were deceptive; the queue moved swiftly and we got through security smoothly. It helped that small liquids and phones could stay in bags and the only things that needed putting in separate trays were laptops and aerosols. Generally, I’ve been impressed with air travel within Australia.  We’ve used Qantas-based flights so far and their online check-in and at-airport bag drop processes have been well-designed and swift.

Our next flight will be Virgin Australia; I will report back on their User Experience.

The weather for the flight was largely cloudy, so there weren’t many aerial photos to be taken.  However, as we approached Melbourne, we got our first glimpse of the city

and I noticed that some areas appeared to be very densely-packed housing; so densely-packed that at first I couldn’t make out whether the objects were parked cars or houses. This, for example, is the Mt Atkinson area west of Melbourne. The houses appear to be really crammed together.

We had arranged to stay at a friend’s airbnb apartment in the Southbank area of the city, and accordingly followed instructions to pick up the keys at a local convenience store. The code number we had been told to provide proved to be “invalid”, and so there was a great deal of to-and-fro and sitting outside cafés drinking coffee whilst we waited for some kind of resolution. There had been a delay in the cleaners dropping off the keys and so we eventually got our hands on them and headed off to the apartment… where the keys we’d been given turned out to be the wrong ones.

Bugger.

To cut a long story short, we ended up staying the night in a hotel, the rather oddly-named but perfectly comfortable Mantra hotel, where we had an apartment. With milk in the fridge and Earl Grey beside the mugs. The fridge thing gave me an idea, so I went out to get some gin and tonic, which was available in a very convenient local grocery store. And so passed our first night in Melbourne.

A word about the weather, here: we had been booked on a “moonlight kayak tour” on the Yarra River which runs through the city. However, as the exceedingly lumpy but nicely-handled landing at Melbourne showed, it was very windy, and we’d received a message apologising for cancelling the kayak tour. As it happened, given the difficulty with the keys, it was just as well.

Yesterday’s kayak tour was supposed to be our first real glimpse of Melbourne, but the weather put the kybosh on that. We had a three-hour small group walking tour of the “Lanes and Arcades” of Melbourne booked for today, so this was now our chance to get a flavour of the place.  We headed to the meeting point in Federation Square,

where it was reasonably easy to find our guide, Isabel, who was wearing a very distinctive yellow beret. Imagine our surprise, however, when the other members of the “small group” turned out to be Stephanie and Garret, an American couple who had been, alongside the Great Danes, our companions on our Kangaroo Island tour! Life is enhanced by such coincidences.

We actually passed some interesting sights en route to the start of our tour;

Federation Square is just by St. Paul’s Cathedral

and Flinders Street Station, which is an impressive building (more pictures of it later).

There had apparently been a move to replace the clocks in the picture above with something more modern and, well, operational, but the outcry ensured that the classic clocks remain there above the station entrance.

As in Adelaide, there are many handsome buildings in Melbourne, although everything is more densely-packed and the high-rises rise higher and overwhelm the smaller, older buildings more.

Above is the old GPO building, now owned by H&M. Alongside it is a very narrow alley

which even though it’s had eateries added along its length, shows the scrapes of the old horse-drawn carriages along the side and the warnings about the devil motor car.

What has been done well is to keep the facades or exteriors of some of the more notable buildings, such as the old post office building above, and also to keep as much of the interior as makes sense.

Here’s another example.

A mall off to the side of The Block, a very handsome arcade,

features some great mosaic work

and is generally very photogenic.

It features the oldest tea rooms in Melbourne, called The Tea Room 1892. I wonder how old it is, really?

The Block is also home to L’Occitane, which has a wonderful hand-painted ceiling.

Another very handsome arcade is the Royal Arcade.

Isabel also showed us into the Manchester Unity Building, which has a sumptuous interior

and surroundings

including Melbourne’s first-ever escalator, originally installed in 1932 to much excitement and lining up for a ride.

We had a very engaging chocolate tasting in The Block, at a specialist boutique called Mörk (Swedish for “Dark” – the operation has a Swedish connection in its ownership)

which, apart from very delicious hot chocolate drinks, offers some unusual variations on chocolate flavours.

As well as the handsome buildings, many of which could do with a bit of a tidy-up,

Isabel showed us some of the street art. We saw one or two larger installations

and there are many more of these around the city; but we didn’t have and won’t have time to explore these. What we saw was much smaller-scale and very much less formal.

It’s difficult to distinguish between what’s art and what’s graffiti, which is why I say it’s informal – we even saw a couple of guys adding their last touches to something or other. One of the best-known streets for art is Hosier Lane, which is either a riot of colour or a complete mess, depending on your point of view.

I’m sorry I couldn’t do more justice to Hosier Lane, but it was hurling down with rain at this point, making photographic essay work somewhat unrewarding.

A side note: we returned here later at night, having met a friend for cocktails, and walked through an after-dark Melbourne to get back to the apartment.  As we walked down Hosier Lane, we were passed by a van with a pressure washing trailer.  We chatted to the two guys operating it, and they had been given the job of removing some of the graffiti towards the bottom of the street. The plan was to paint it over with black, and their view was that it would last maybe a couple of hours before someone started daubing again.

STOP PRESS

The black area is still there. We discovered this on the way to meeting other friends for lunch. We found some more street art en route, and so the complete set of photos of it is on Flickr.

We also saw a couple of inexplicable installations on Russell Street

and some nice brass work in the paving outside city hall.

The after-dark walk enabled a different perspective on Melbourne.  Flinders Street Station’s impressive building

is quite something else when lit up.

Federation Square

and the view over the Yarra

also look very different after sunset, as does the Arts Centre.

Sadly, we’re not likely to get more time to explore Melbourne; I feel we haven’t been able to spend long enough here to get to grips with the place at all. But it has been interesting to see what we have seen, despite some very poor weather. Tomorrow we have an all-day outing, and the day after we have a lunch date with friends, and who knows what state we’ll be in after that. I will, of course, report back, and I hope you’ll visit these pages again to find out how everything unfolded.