It is said that Melbourne is the most English / European of Australian cities, and I have to say that staying in the Richmond on the east side of the city reminded me of a hip suburb of London, but with better restaurants. St Kilda, the beach suburb which I cycled to one afternoon, was a little like Blackpool, with its ageing theme park and long open beaches, though there are less sail boats in Blackpool if memory serves me right.
On arriving at Ceri and Dani's place yesterday, I was greeted by a growling Jack Russell called Louie. I responded by making smooching sounds and holding my hand out to his nose. Therein he is my little excitable and somewhat acrobatic little friend. For the whole of my stay, on weekdays when Ceri and Dani had left for work, he would sneak into my bedroom and crawl into bed with me. Not content just to be on the bed, he would dig himself under the duvet, curling himself up against me.
One of my main activities while I am in Melbourne is to take Louie out to the local parks to frantically chase and then be chased by other dogs, no matter what the size. He had nothing to fear from the big dogs as there was no way they could catch him. I did see him matched for pace by a whippet greyhound once, but thankfully it was quite a wimpish one, and it had to be rescued and comforted by its owner.
My other main activity was sampling the local cider with Ceri in a number of the cities bars, though mainly the one around the corner from the house.
Early on in my stay, I found myself on a rally in favour of legalising gay marriage, complete with a broad shouldered miming Lady GaGa impersonator and a shouty student union leader to get the crowd warmed up for the march through the city streets.
Lady GaGa is someone who has only really become famous during my travels, so I am not familiar with her music, but the impersonator is not even miming to one of her songs, but to a speech she recorded in favour of gay rights. And he was miming like he didn't know the words. It was deeply bizarre, and possibly the worst drag act I've ever seen, though there is no shortage of competition for that coveted post.
Having told Ceri about the tale of the kangaroo tail, which was our meal on one of the first nights the UK to Oz group was in Australia, she tells me that Aussies use better cuts of kangaroo meat to feed their dogs. However, I am determined to sample a proper kangaroo steak, so Ceri cooked one for me one night. I have to say that I enjoyed it even more than the Wagyu steak (also known as Kobe beef, the beer fed cattle) that we had in one of Richmond's restaurants, though she would probably disagree with my assessment.
One of the highlights of my stay was going with Ceri and Dani to a house auction, where the house is sold to the highest bidder on the street outside the property. In England, only houses that have been repossessed tend to get auctioned, so they are usually at the lower end of the property ladder. Here though the opposite applies and it is the properties in the most desirable locations that tend to get auctioned. And Melbourne is about as expensive as Sydney nowadays. This house, a small two bedroomed property with a tiny seating area outside the back, looks like an ageing pre-fab home from the outside, though comfortable enough inside. Ceri and Dani think it needs a new kitchen and they don't bid, though there is no shortage of bidders in the crowd. It sells for A$690k (about £425k).
Another highlight is a visit to the MCG, a stadium famous around the cricket playing world which also has a museum of sport. However, the museum is as much about Aussie Rules Football (AFL) as it is about cricket, though the cricket part of it does have the ball that was used in the original Ashes test match.
It also has a 3D cinematic tribute to the career of Shane Warne presented by...Shane Warne. Great cricketer though he was, such a semi-permanent display is surely only fit for those that are at least nearly dead. Especially if the person concerned is still prone to getting headlines on the wrong side of the newspaper in reports that involve xxxx-ing out several words of text messages that he's sent. I shouldn't have been surprised though, as the outside of the stadium is circled by statues of several Aussie cricketers and AFL players of the not too distant past (and Don Bradman, perhaps the only one whose tribute was not erected with undue haste)..
The stadium is quite imposing though, with a capacity of 100k, and the tour takes us around the dressing rooms, the team pavilions, the training facilities, and around various halls and rooms reserved for club members. They are able to play both AFL and cricket on the ground because the cricket strip is in a tray and can be removed for the AFL games.
I enjoyed my time in Melbourne, though it was a relatively uneventful few weeks compared to the previous nine months. Staying with my friends, and Melbourne having a familiar ambience, it's almost like a very long weekend at home. But I need to figure out how I am going to get home from here.
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