Tag Archives: Architecture

Melbourne – Modern and Historic, Handsome and Scruffy

2 Replies

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;

Striking building exterior

Melbourne Arts Centre

View across the Yarra

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.

Blue cheese Caramelised Yuzu, apparently

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.

Caught them at it!

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.

 

Wandering around Adelaide

6 Replies

Thursday 29 August 2024 – We’ve been in Adelaide now for two and a half days, having arrived off the Ghan on Tuesday morning. The train was a great experience, on several levels – relief at being able to cope in a small cabin, excellent sights and scenes on our excursions and great food and service from the crew, who all worked really hard to make sure that people enjoyed themselves as much as they could.

So, as we pulled into Adelaide at around midday, we said our farewells to various people that we’d met and talked to on the train, disembarked and linked up with our (very chatty) driver, Alan, as we waited for the suitcases to arrive.  When they did arrive, there was the usual feeding frenzy as people lunged for their bags,

but we got ours quite quickly, and Alan ferried us to our hotel,

where thankfully there was a room ready for us. And I have to say how much I enjoyed having lots of space once more; we had a substantial and very well-organised room on the 18th floor. It even had kettle and milk and so we were able to have a Nice Cup Of Tea as we pondered what to do with ourselves during our time in Adelaide; we actually had nothing formally organised and so had the rest of the day and two more full days at our disposal.

So we went for a lot of walks. Obviously.

Over the last two-and-a-half days, we’ve covered about 30km as we explored the city and the various aspects that interested us. I could bombard you with the photos we’ve taken, but that would make for an exceedingly long post, so I’ll summarise here and point you at albums on Flickr should you wish to see a greater range of photos. Basically, though, we’ve really enjoyed our time here – Adelaide is a lovely city to walk around.

One of the attractive things about it is the old, colonial-style architecture, with elaborate ironwork decorating many buildings. There are also many impressive edifices squeezed (rather like London) between more modern skyscrapers. Here’s a taster.

You can see a whole lot more of the photos in this Flickr Album, which covers the main part of the city.  North Adelaide features a couple of streets with several notable buildings in them, and we made this the special destination of one walk, which yielded several more photos of this traditional architecture.

We came across a lot of murals as we walked around.

More of these can be found here on Flickr.

One particular installation is worth picking out, though, something just behind our hotel.  It looked like just this wall above a mural

but closer examination showed that it had model vehicles of all types stuck to it

in their thousands!

Yet again – Why? Who?? How???

There were lots of other things to be enjoyed as we walked around – the Central Markets, some other street art installations, the interior of the Catholic Cathedral, the Botanic Gardens and more.

The laughing chap above is one of Australia’s greatest comedians, Roy Rene, later known as Mo, some of whose catchphrases entered Australian vernacular: “Don’t come the raw prawn with me” is one of the best known. The Australian entertainment industry’s annual award for excellence in live performance is named the “Mo Award” after him.

The Palm House in the Botanic Garden is a restored Victorian glasshouse imported from Bremen in Germany in 1875; it arrived prefabricated but almost all the glass was smashed in transit and so new glass had to be fitted in situ!

The Queen Victoria waterlily, a native of the Amazon, is the second largest of all waterlilies and has huge leaves – these in the Botanic Garden were easily 1 metre in diameter and it can grow much bigger.

We found some amusing uses of the language.

There’s lots more photos here on Flickr.

We had more amusement looking out for the name of Polites. I first saw this word writ large on the outside of a building near our hotel

and wondered what it meant.  It turns out to be the name of one Constantine Polites, a Greek man who grew up in poverty but worked his way up into being a major property tycoon in the city; every building he bought in the Central Business District (CBD) featured his name. Some still feature it and we had fun looking out for them – Toujours Le Polites!

Near the Botanic Gardens is the Botanic Park, and Jane had read that it might be possible to see flying foxes – fruit bats – there.  So we included this as we walked back from North Adelaide. And, indeed, you can see some fruit bats there.

Lots of them.

No really, lots.

Apparently this colony migrated from Eastern Australia as its food source dried up there and found its way into Botanic Park. There are between 20 and 40,000 of them to be seen! We spent a good few minutes watching them as they flew about

and I took some video of them as they squabbled among themselves about the best place to hang about.

The last thing we did was to catch the Adelaide tram down to the seaside suburb of Glenelg. (We nearly didn’t catch the tram because at the first stop we awaited one I’d failed to notice that there was no weekday service.) It was mentioned as being worth a visit, and so we walked around it, obviously; but we were out of season, and so it wasn’t really at its best. It has a smart town hall

but the beach is a bit weedy by the jetty (well, we think it’s seagrass, actually, which is a good thing if somewhat fragrant)

and is still a work in progress elsewhere.

It’s very clearly a seaside-y sort of place

which seems to be waiting for the season to get under way.  There are some cute touches

some posher bits, such as the Marina Pier,

and, clearly, a heavy investment in Norfolk Island Pine trees,

but it was pretty quiet. I can imagine it’s more lively once spring moves towards summer.

So that is Adelaide in a nutshell. We’ve really enjoyed walking around and taking it in, and it’s been really nice to be able to decompress in comfort after the cultural and touristic overload of the Kimberley and the Ghan.

Tomorrow we’re back on the Relentless Tourism Treadmill as we head to Kangaroo Island, and I’ll try to keep these pages updated as we dive back into the maelstrom of our great Australian Adventure.

 

 

East to Andasibe

8 Replies

Thursday 6 June 2024 – The room that we had this time at the Hotel Relais des Plateaux was directly above the one we’d had on our first visit. It was very similar in size and organisation, however, the bed seemed a great deal less comfortable; but at least we had a chance for more sleep than on our first visit.

After breakfast, we met our driver from last night again. He had brought Kenny, our guide, with him, and I think we’re going to get on well with both of them. Kenny speaks excellent English and has a wealth of knowledge about local matters, including the correct way to spell our driver’s name, which is Haja (with a silent H).

As soon as we got under way, it was clear that it would not be long before our brains were full, as Kenny started explaining things. Some Madagascan history: it used to be split into several separate kingdoms which were perpetually at war with each other until the chap who ruled over what is now Antananarivo used 1,000 soldiers to establish some order and himself as overall ruler – thereby providing the name an (to) tanana (place, city) arivo (1000): the place of a thousand. Some politics: the island became independent from France in 1960; it has six regions, each split into multiple communities; it has a president, a prime minister, a house of representatives and a senate, along similar lines to the French model. He pointed out various plants and trees; told us about many of the places around us, whose names we haven’t a chance of remembering; some useful Malagasy words – excuse me, thank you, goodbye – which we also have no chance of remembering; and all in all it became clear that he is going to do a great job.

The first thing we had to do was to get through Antananarivo.  Given that Madagascar has a population approximately half of that of Great Britain, spread over two and a half times the land mass, and given that the population of Antananarivo is less than a third of that of London, you’d expect that to be an easy job.  You’d be wrong. The traffic was ludicrously heavy, and it took us the best part of an hour before we were free of the capital.  However, we learned a few things as we ground our way slowly along.

As well as the colourful and traditional buildings in many of the streets, there are quite a few funky modern buildings.

There are old cars being used as taxis (this is a Renault 4); heaven knows how they keep them going.

Unless you’re bang in the centre, there will always be rice paddies to be seen.

There’s a sort of “mobile phone taxi” service; if your mobile phone has run out of credit, you can pay for just a few minutes to make your calls.

The influence of France is still very clear.

The entrepreneurial spirit is strong, whether in formal market stalls

or chancing it in the traffic jams.

Madagascar imports fuel wholesale

and appears to operate an informal retail operation on the side.

The outskirts of Tana have many scenes of very colourful (and probably quite ramshackle) buildings,

and as you get further out of the city, the roads can turn feral.

I suspect that the road surface suffers badly because the road we were on, National Route 2, which leads eastwards to Andasibe, also continues on the the island’s main port, Toamasina; hence there’s a very significant amount of very heavy lorry traffic in both directions.

There is actually a railway connecting the two

along which freight is also run.

Kenny explained that some 80% of Malagasy people are farmers, tilling the fields both for subsistence and for selling.  Rice is the main crop, and the people consume it in huge quantities, but there’s still enough left over to export.  However, farming is not a full-time occupation year round, so many farmers have sidelines. One such is using the clay on their land to make bricks; ovens dotted our route, but we couldn’t get a satisfactory picture, sadly.  What we could get photos of, though was another major activity, which is quarrying granite.

Quarrying, with a little washing being done on the side

This activity is responsible for some of the gashes in the landscape we could see on the flight down from Maroantsetra.  There are other gashes, too

and the impression we got from Kenny is that this is erosion which has deforestation as its root cause. It will be interesting to revisit those photos from our plane journeys, when we have time, to see how much more of the story this extra understanding reveals.

We also noted the dreaded eucalyptus trees, which so dominated parts of our travels in Spain: however here these seem to be non-commercial plantings representing another land owner’s side hustle, as they can be harvested quickly and the timber either used to make charcoal (much used in rural areas for fuel) or used for building work.

Going from the city of Antananarivo through the countryside to Andasibe also revealed a change in architectural styles.  For example, this house shows a typical Tana style,

brick built, with sloping roofing and balconies.  Our route took us out into the country, where clay and mud become a significant building material, based around timber frames and with thatched roofs

and then as we approached Andasibe, into rainforest country, wood becomes the principal building material.

We went through Moramanga, which is a substantial – and busy – town,

which is where we first came across cycle rickshaws as a mode of transport. You don’t see these in Tana because it’s too hilly.  In the UK, these are used only for ripping off carrying tourists, but  here they are a common mode of transport.  It’s ubiquitous, but not quite public transport.  This comes in the form of minibuses; different coloured minivans cover different destinations, but a common theme appears to be the bus conductor, who ushers people on and off and collects payment, quite often whilst hanging off the back of the bus.

What else did we see?  Piglets;

Traffic management for roadworks (known as “go go girls”, apparently);

the rather ritzy railway station at Andasibe, from the days when the railway carried passengers

and which is theoretically going to be used for passenger transport at some stage in the future, but which has done service as a hotel in the past, with lodgings opposite it;

and a slightly weird version of milk for your coffee, which we took at a slightly weird lunch stop at Pizzeria Diary, just outside Moramanga.  (Diary in Malagasy means something completely different from its English sense; I’ll try to find out what for you.)  We had tourist stuff (pizza for me, and tilapia & vegetables for Jane – whilst Haja and Kenny went off to a different part of the place (a staff canteen or something, we posit) and had pork, rice and beans, a traditional Malagasy meal which we would much have preferred to eat. After the meal we ordered coffee with milk, and this is what we got.

This was (sweetened) condensed milk; adding it to coffee made it sweet enough for me to drink, but it had a weird, gloopy consistency.

Quite soon after lunch we arrived at our accommodation for the next three nights, the very swish Mantadia Lodge. To get there, we went through Andasibe village and I hope we get a chance to wander round with a camera, because I think it’s really quite photogenic.

I suppose because we’d “wasted” most of the day getting to the lodge, Kenny had organised a night walk for us which was to happen before dinner (don’t forget that darkness falls with a crash here at about 6pm); this made dinner rather later than we would have liked, but actually I guess there was no other way to organise it, and it gave us a couple of hours off during the afternoon to draw breath.

The walk was at the VOIMMA Community Reserve, a wildlife reserve managed by the local community, just a ten minute drive away, and we were led by a guide called Abraham.  The route was through rainforest, but the conditions were dry, which made everything more pleasant for us.  There are prepared trails through the park, which gives it a more manicured feel than we experienced at Masoala, but there was a profusion of magnificent tree ferns, which we hope to go back and look at in more detail and daylight over the next couple of days.

We didn’t see any lemurs during the walk (barring the glint of a mouse lemur’s eyes at a considerable distance) but there were other creatures to admire.

Parson’s Chameleon, male
Elephant Ear Chameleon (female, possibly pregnant)
Baby Parson’s Chameleon
Stub-tailed Chameleon
Dark Newtonia
Tree Frog

Finally, Jane found another chameleon just outside our room at the lodge.

We eventually established that this is a male Elephant Ear Chameleon.

Dinner at the lodge completed the day, which, despite being spent almost entirely on the drive, was content-rich and quite satisfying.  The morrow’s plan is for a longer walk around the Mantadia National Park, which is primary rain forest and brings the prospect of some more varieties of wildlife.  Today was a lemur-less day; what will tomorrow bring?