The Thoe family's time in Australia is really starting to get limited. So, Sean and I decided to take another holiday to see more of this wonderful country before we leave it. Sean travels often to Melbourne for work, but the kids and I had not been there yet. Sean had to go to Melbourne for another work trip from November 10th to the 15th, so we planned a trip around that time. The first part of the trip would allow the kids and I some time to enjoy Melbourne for part of the week while Sean was working. Then, when his week was done, we were to take a week long road trip along the Great Ocean Road, spend some time on Phillip Island, and finally drive up the coast back to Sydney.
The whole plan started off with Sean driving down to Melbourne on Sunday, November 9th, so he would be there bright and early Monday morning to start the work week. He said the drive took about 9 1/2 hours with very limited stops along the way. I can guarantee that did not involve speeding since there are a LOT of average speed cameras on the highways between Sydney and Melbourne. He got to Melbourne safe and sound and we have not since received one of those expensive little tickets in the mail, so all was good.
The only thing that did not go as planned was that I got a horrible earache on Saturday night before Sean left the next morning. I am not aware of any clinics that are open on Sunday in Sydney, so I had to wait until Monday to see a doctor. I was up for part of Sunday night with ear pain and felt pretty ill on Monday. I was very thankful to see the doctor on Monday and get medicine. I had to spend Monday and Tuesday recuperating, so I was glad that I had already done most of the packing for the trip and had sent the luggage down with Sean in the car. Plus, Monday and Tuesday were nasty, wet days in Sydney. They were good days to nap and rest up.
On Wednesday, the kids and I flew down to Melbourne to meet up with Sean. The weather was finally getting better in Sydney that day, but we flew right back into the cold rain in Melbourne. I didn't think too much about that on Wednesday though. I was just happy to be reunited with Sean and to begin our holiday. I was also relieved to get off the plane in Melbourne with my eardrum intact. (The doctor said I had a pretty nasty infection and my ear was not fully healed yet.) The down side was that Aubrey had a little incident on the plane. She started coughing right before the plane landed, it triggered her gag reflex, and she threw up. Of course, we couldn't get up at that point of the flight, so we had to deal with it the best we could until the plane had landed and most of the passengers gotten off. Ugh. As I have said before, traveling with children is never boring!
We got into Melbourne a bit too early for Sean to pick us up as he was still working. The kids and I hopped on the Skybus at the airport and it took us into the city to the Southern Cross Railway Station. Sean was then off of work and could come meet us. Even though it was cold, wet, and we were tired from traveling, it was great to see Sean and there was a Starbucks coffee there at the station. I'm not saying that I necessarily prefer the taste of Starbucks coffee to Australian coffee, but it always is a treat because it is a taste I attribute to "home". At this particular time it really hit the spot. To top it all off, it was all decked out for Christmas complete with Christmas music playing. Despite all the difficulties of the past few days, all seemed right in the world at that moment as the family was reunited and I was sipping my caramel macchiato.
We couldn't stay at Starbucks all evening though. We went back to the hotel that Sean stays at when he is working in Melbourne, the Stamford Plaza Hotel. It is located on Collins Street right in the middle of downtown Melbourne. It was a great location from which to explore the city. On our first night we went to the James Squire Brewhouse at the Portland Hotel. It was a rather pricey meal, especially when our 8 year old son wanted to order a steak. It was a good night for a hearty meal though. It carried on the good feeling we had since getting into Melbourne. We then went back to the hotel and crashed. The entire family was asleep by 9:00 that night.
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| Collins Street |
Sean was also tired that night in Melbourne due to the plan he had worked out to park our car in the Melbourne CBD for the week. He could have chosen the easy method of letting the car be valet parked at our hotel. The problem with that was that it would have cost $47/day. Instead, he had worked out a plan where he parked the car at a nearby shopping center overnight for $12. However, it had to be taken out of the parking garage by 6:00 a.m. every morning. He then drove it around the block and took it back to the same parking garage where he would park it for $15 for the day. So, in order to save us $20/day in parking fees, he had been getting up at 5:30 every morning to walk a couple of blocks to the shopping center and move the car. Then, we couldn't take the car back out of the garage until 3:00 p.m. every afternoon or we were going to have to pay an hourly rate of $8/hour from 6 a.m. to whenever we got the car. It was so inconvenient, but it did save us $120 over the course of our time in Melbourne.
Everyone woke up at the crack of dawn on Thursday after going to bed so early. Well, I guess Sean had to get up early anyway, but at least he felt well rested at 5:30 a.m. He got to spend a little time with us on that day. We left the hotel once we were ready and began walking around in the Melbourne CBD. Melbourne has a reputation for having a more "European" feel than Sydney does. Part of the reason that Melbourne has gotten this reputation is because it has a huge art scene and is known for all of its public art displays. The architecture was also very interesting. The best way I can describe it is Victorian meets New Age. We began the day by checking out the Visitor's Centre, Flinders Street Station, and Federation Square.
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| Federation Square |
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| Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Federation Square with one of the newer trams in front of it. |
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| Flinders Street Station |
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| Clock tower of Flinders Street Station |
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| Building across the street from Flinders Street Station; we particularly liked it since we had just visited Cascade Brewery the previous month. |
It was a windy, cloudy day with rain on and off. The temperature wasn't too bad; it was around 17 degrees Celsius (62 degrees Fahrenheit), but the wind was relentless. I was getting really chilled just walking around. We decided to catch a tram to Prahran (located near the hospital at which Sean works in Melbourne - Alfred Medical Center).
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| The tram we took to Prahran |
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| The kids and I on the tram |
We walked around that area for a bit, grabbed lunch, and then caught a tram back into CBD. There was more walking to be done though. We walked from the CBD, over the Yarra River, and into Southbank to check out Crown casino. Crown casino was very impressive. It definitely has the feel of a large Las Vegas casino.
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| The bridge over the Yarra River |
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| The kids posing in front of sculptures in Southbank along the Yarra River |
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| Gayip is one of the 10 sculptures of "The Travelers" that symbolize different periods of Australian migration. It depicts the Aboriginal symbol of a ceremonial meeting of different Aboriginal clans. |
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| Somehow we did not get any photos of Crown Casino itself, but Sean took this awesome photo of a light display inside it. |
By this point, I was absolutely frozen from being in the cold wind all day and my ear was beginning to ache again. Sean needed to get some work done anyway. So, Sean went off to do some work while the kids and I went back to the hotel for a nap/downtime. I guess I should say, I was the one that took the nap and the kids read and played on their devices. Sean came back to the hotel at dinnertime and we went to eat at Wagamama Japanese Restaurant on Flinders Lane. Melbourne is well known for having loads of cool restaurants/cafes down all these small lanes located between the main roads of the city. Wagamama is an international chain restaurant, but this was the first time we had ever eaten at a Japanese restaurant that was more of a noodle bar than a steakhouse or sushi restaurant. We all loved it!
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| Yum!! |
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| Example of one of the lanes with restaurants/cafes all up and down it |
We went over to the Collins Place shopping centre and picked up our car after dinner. We drove down to St. Kilda along the shore and then back through South Melbourne. There were some night markets going on in South Melbourne that were tempting to stop at. It was getting pretty late for the kids though, so we just headed back to our hotel to call it a night.
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| Collins Place all decorated for Christmas |
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| Aubrey and Carter in front of the Christmas tree in Collins Place shopping centre |
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| St. Kilda beach |
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| We happened to be there just as the the Spirit of Tasmania was leaving Melbourne. It is a ferry that travels overnight to Devonport, Tasmania. Many people take it so that they do not have to fly to Tasmania. Plus, you can also pay to have your vehicle on board to save on a car hire in Tasmania. We had discussed doing this at one time, but in the end, we had decided just to fly down and rent a car when we toured Tassie. |
Sean had to go into work on Friday morning and I slept late, until almost 9:00. I was hoping for a lazy morning and I wasn't too anxious to get out walking on the streets again since it was predicted to be another chilly, wet day. However, I could tell as soon as I opened my eyes that the kids had way too much energy to be stuck in a hotel room and they were dying to get out and get going. The payoff for me to get out of the hotel room was to find some coffee. We randomly stopped at a small cafe on Flinders Lane, Dukes Coffee Roasters. Like most cafes on the lane, it was very small and low key. I realized that I had gotten really lucky once I had taken one sip of my coffee. It was the best coffee I have ever tasted. It was caramelly, nutty, heavenly goodness in a cup. It was exactly what I needed to get a bit of energy that morning.
The kids and I decided to take the City Circle tram. It was pretty crowded because it is a free tram. I wanted to take it so that we could chill out while hopefully getting a nice tour of the city. It took even longer than I was expecting and the kids were tired of it by the time we had circled the city. I thought I should treat them to a nice lunch to make up for it. So, we ended up at McDonalds. Sean was able to come meet us for lunch and then hang out with us for the afternoon. We picked up our walking tour from the previous day and continued to see more areas of the CBD. My favorite was Hosier Ln with tons of graffiti street art. I read some news articles about it afterwards that discussed some of the art pieces that have been here over the years and how the artwork is constantly being updated and changed.
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| Even the rubbish bins were decorated! |
The kids loved the Myers department store Christmas windows at the Bourke Street Mall. The Christmas windows displayed different scenes to tell the story of the Gingerbread Man.
We walked through Chinatown on the way back to the hotel. It was very interesting.
Some other random photos we took around Melbourne.....
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| RMIT university building on the north side of the CBD |
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| Love the Victorian clock towers! |
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| The Spring umbrella art display at the Australia on Collins shopping centre |
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| This statue is titled "The Three Business Men Who Brought Their Own Lunch; Batman, Swanston, and Hoddle" and is a gift from the small island nation of Nauru. (Batman, Swanston, and Hoddle were the names of the three men that designed the layout of Melbourne CBD.) |
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| They are a little freaky when looked at closely!! |
It was then finally time that we could pick up the car without paying the expensive hourly rate. We drove through South Melbourne back to St. Kilda for dinner because we had loved the area so much the previous evening. We had some pizza at an interesting little Italian restaurant called Itali.co. The weather still would not cooperate with us to get out and really enjoy St. Kilda though. The wind along the coast was absolutely unreal; it felt like it was trying to beat us up! We finally had to admit defeat and went back to the hotel.
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| We were driving around South Melbourne when we saw this building. It was the scene of an Australian reality tv show, The Block. Before the show, the building had been a worn out hotel. During the show, five teams each remodeled a unit, which comprised one story of the building. Then, whichever team sold their unit for most amount of profit over the reserve won the show. This was Sean's favorite Aussie tv show, so he was very excited when we randomly found the building. |
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| Another public art display in a shopping centre in St. Kilda |
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| Cool mural in the same shopping centre |
Saturday morning we were very ready to get out of the city of Melbourne. The city has such a cool vibe, but I had not been feeling well the entire time we were there and the weather had been miserable. The streets and lanes were very interesting with lots of graphic art and the architecture was absolutely amazing. However, something about it was making me feel kind of claustrophobic. I would probably have had a completely different attitude if it had been nice, sunny weather and I had been feeling better.
Even though we were anxious to get out of the city, we wanted to rest up a little before the next leg of our trip. So, we slept in a bit and it took awhile to get put together and checked out of the hotel. And, of course, I had to get coffee for Sean and myself at Duke Coffee Roasters again. That took a little maneuvering since driving around on all those little streets and lanes in the city with trams running down the middle of the larger streets, is not the easiest thing in the world. Sean finally had to do his first "hook" turn. I'm not even sure where to begin to explain THAT. When Sean took a drink of his coffee though, he understood perfectly why I had insisted on going to that particular place for coffee. :-)
Okay, I will explain a hook turn because I can't leave you hanging like that. First of all, remember that you drive on the left side of the road here. Ok, then, imagine you have to turn right from the far left lane across traffic on a red light. Supposedly it has something to do with avoiding the trams running through the center of the streets. However, I totally do not get it. Luckily, Sean did understand it, and he successfully navigated us through the city.
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| An errand we had to do before leaving the city; post letters to Santa!! We found this mail box walking around the city on the previous day and the kids were very excited to write letters to post to the big guy. |
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| Carter was very willing to write a letter even though he "figured out" a few things about Santa last year. |
Anyway, we finally cleared the Melbourne city limits around 11:00 am. At last, the weather was starting to clear up a little bit. It was around the same temperature outside, but it had lost the bone chilling wind and there were more peeks from the sun through the clouds. We all started to breathe a little easier once we got out of the chaos of the city.
We drove about an hour and a half to Ballarat, Victoria, to visit Sovereign Hill gold mine. Sovereign Hill is a town set in the 1850's, which was at the beginning of the gold rush in the Australian state of Victoria. The kids had such a great time here and they talked about it for days afterwards. It was one of their favorite activities during the entire holiday. They watched $130,000 worth of gold heated up and poured out to make a real gold bar. They dipped their own candles. They even tried their hand at panning gold, but they both decided that it was much too hard of work for what you got out of it.
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| The red pin is the town of Ballarat. |
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| Some of the living quarters in the town |
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| Sean and I jokingly wanted to yell, "The Red Coats are coming! The Red Coats are coming!" |
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| The Blacksmith |
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| Carter posing in front of main street |
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| There were some different nationalities represented in the town. Some Americans came down for the gold rush. There was also a Chinese section of the town. |
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| The gold smelter pouring out the pure gold into a bar |
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| Look who gets to hold the gold bar! The smelter is watching Carter very closely though.... |
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| Learning how to pan for gold |
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| Aubrey was feeling disheartened after not striking it rich. |
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| The Chinese section of the town |
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| We found a tent with an American flag in it from the 1850's. |
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| I'm in front of a cottage of one of the more "well to do" Soverign Hill inhabitants. It had beautiful English style gardens all around it. |
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| Carter and Aubrey dipping their candles |
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| Here they are with the finished products! |
We had a 2 hour drive after we left Sovereign Hill. We were headed
to Warrnambool to stop over for the night.
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| Ballarat is in the top right hand corner of the map. We drove on a lot of small roads to cut across to Warrambool. |
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