sunny Melbourne!

Melbourne was a place I knew I would love before I even arrived. As you may know I’m a rather stubborn person, so when every Australian I knew told me that I must go to Melbourne, I was tempted to bite off my nose to spite my face and steer clear! But as has often been the case...


on my travels, fate intervened and as good as booked the flights for me: my very good friend Dave Boothroyd, a slightly eccentric Melbournian with whom I shared many a morning cuppa back at work in London, was coming home for a visit. That was it – within hours my flights and accommodation were booked. Yvonne and I had been talking about going down for a weekend, and due to work commitments she could literally come only for one night. So on Thursday morning I caught my (naturally delayed) Tiger Airways flight from Gold Coast airport. Tiger is Australia’s answer to Ryanair, so I took the delay in my stride and by 3pm was sitting in a Melbourne park, beer in hand, with Dave! We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening reminiscing and catching up on 8 months of news. It was great to hear how everyone back at Henderson is doing – but also made me realise that I made the right decision to leave to follow my dream (not that I ever doubted if for a second… even if I do sometimes wish I weren’t so poor)!

On Friday morning I better acquainted myself with the city, and then met my friends Kayte and Amy for coffee and cupcakes. I’d met Kayte in Africa and Amy in Sydney on NYE and thanks to these shared experiences it was like seeing old friends. With the girls as my guides I gave in to the hype and went shopping (Melbourne is famed for its amazing shopping). On my travels I have had to be very disciplined about buying things – partly because I need my money to live, but also because each time I buy something I have to throw something else away to fit it in my rucksack (only 50 litres). After 8 months without a pair of trainers, I bought myself a pair of converse and some jeans and immediately felt a lot more like my old self! Later in the evening I had a great night out with Dave and Bondy, another friend from London, ending up in the Crown casino - Australia’s biggest and brashest – where I watched Japanese tourists casually toss hundreds of dollars away on the roulette tables. Crazy.

Saturday brought one of the most exciting things to happen to Melbourne in a good few years – something you may even have seen on the news. Yvonne had flown down to join me, and we were sitting at a pavement café having lunch. It was a sunny day, and quite muggy. All of a sudden the sky clouded over and huge hail stones pelted down onto our heads and plates (luckily I had a hat on)! We sheltered in the doorway, then seeing it wasn’t going to clear any time soon we took refuge inside with a bottle of wine to wait out the storm. We had a great vantage point of the street as it turned into a river, and soaked up the electric atmosphere created by the storm and shared by the whole city. Hours later we decided to brave the walk back to our hostel on the city’s major Flinders Street, which was flooded – people were up to their knees in water! Lots of shops and bars were closed the rest of that evening and the next day too.

On Saturday night Yvonne and I put our gladrags on and explored some really funky hidden away gems of bars. Then on Sunday we took a tram out to the lovely suburb of St. Kilda on the coast. There we had yet more coffee and shopping – just what Melbourne was made for. On Sunday evening we went to the airport and queued outside in the torrential rain only to be told that they had shut the airport…we were standing next to some Brits in the line, and the old war spirit kicked in. They started popping champagne and downing coke bottles full of Jack Daniels! Happily ours was one of a few flights that did eventually take off that night, and we arrived home for a couple of hours sleep – I was rostered on to work at the coffee shop at 6am!