Melbourne

Both of us have friends living in or around Melbourne at the moment, who we wanted to see. However, the day before we left England Arthur got an e-mail from his Melbourne friend, to say that he was going to be in Europe for a few days and did Arthur fancy going out for a beer? That really is Sod's Law in action, but we did manage to connect with my friend, Bee.

Our hotel was in the middle of a pedestrian shopping mall so the taxi couldn't take us right to the door. It wasn't as salubrious as the hotels in Singapore, but then, hotels in Singapore generally are of an extremely high standard. To get to our room it was necessary to take two lifts and walk through the breakfast room which resembled a staff canteen more than a restaurant. Although breakfast was included, it was a cold buffet which as far as Arthur is concerned, doesn't count as breakfast. I guessed we'd be eating breakfast out.

When we got to the room he complained he could smell a dead rat and actually went around the room looking for one. I did notice a faint smell, but I would have said it was a drain problem rather than a dead rat. There was no deceased rat anywhere in the room, I'm glad to say, so it probably was just the drains.

We didn't spend long in the room because my friend Bee had called me to say that she was sitting on a bench outside the hotel, so we just dumped our stuff and went to meet her. She'd been showing her artwork in an exhibition and was loaded down with things she was taking home. We found a Chinese restaurant that Bee liked and had a lovely meal and a catch up.

Me and Bee

Day 11: 19 November:  Melbourne

Day at leisure in Melbourne. Started with breakfast in a little café beside the hotel and then a trip to the shops to find a charging adapter. Arthur had assumed that, because Australia was originally British, it would, like Singapore, use UK style sockets - but it doesn't. That wasn't a problem in Perth because Paddy and Teresa had one we could use, but now we were on our own and needed to find one. Luckily we did, otherwise we would have to spend three and a half weeks without our phones, ipad, ipod, laptop, kindles and cameras. That would have been a disaster.

We basically had just one day to spend in Melbourne. We had been told the immigration museum was good so we went there and learned all about the history of immigration to Australia. 

Some sort of recruitment drive?

We had lunch in an Italian place on Federation Square. There is a very large screen there which was quite dominating. Great for events, but on this day it was broadcasting the speeches from some tedious political conference. However, once that had finished, we found it was broadcasting a live feed from the square so we had a bit of fun trying to spot ourselves on it.

Federation Square, Melbourne

Can you spot us on the big screen?

Getting arrested

After lunch we followed up on another recommendation we'd been given - the old Melbourne prison, the one in which Ned Kelly was held. There were two parts to this, firstly the prison museum in which you can learn about the various prisoners that had been executed there - exhibits in each cell told their stories, next to a display case containing their death mask. Kind of gruesome. 

You could learn about how they hanged people - also quite gruesome, and about the lives of female prisoners, who were mostly in there for baby farming, which seemed to mean they were the child minders from hell. 

Plenty of scope for ghost stories here.

The second part was called the Watch-House Experience, which was a tour of the old police cells, and in which you got "arrested". Everyone taking the tour had to line up against the wall, men on one side and women on the other while being lectured by an "officer" (tour guide). 

Some people were given cards with scenarios on them to give an idea of the kind of things people got arrested for. Arthur was one of these people, his story was he'd been arrested for assault! 

Then in groups of six we were put into cells and the lights turned off for five minutes or so, before they let us all out and let us look around the exercise yard and at the padded cell and take our own mugshots.

Prisoner Cell Block H

Melbourne Jail

Having escaped from jail (no need to contact Prisoners Abroad on this occasion) we walked to Lygon Street where there is a considerable choice of places to eat, and we chose an Italian place. We came across a bar called the Charles Dickens which was done out like an English pub and had a glass of wine.

That, sadly, was all we had time to do in Melbourne. 

Day 11: 20 November:  Melbourne - Auckland

Another stupid o'clock start to catch a plane. Very friendly taxi driver who was from the Balkans although the combination of the East European and Aussie accents made him sound South African. Had a nice chat with him although it was a bit disconcerting when he had to stop the car twice on the hard shoulder because there was something wrong with it. It was booked in for a service later that morning - but for now we hoped it would keep going for long enough to get us to the airport in time! Thankfully, it did.