What's that kid on the left doing? I don't remember being able to do that to myself when I was that age. Anyway, we left New Zealand yesterday morning at ungodly-o'clock, and four hours later we were coming in to land at Melbourne! We're staying with my Dad who I haven't seen in almost six years, and since he's lived in Melbourne for the last three years he's playing tour guide for us (makes a nice change :) Yesterday we had a fairly quiet day doing lunch, checking out a couple low-key beaches in Dad's area, and stopping into several parks for my three-year-old half sister hehe. Her name is Jemma, and I've never mentioned her before because I've never met her before, so there you go. Cute huh?! Mind you, so I was at that age, I think.

We spent today checking out central Melbourne, starting with Flinders Street Station which is the central railway station of the suburban network and is quite an impressive sight covering two city blocks. Melbourne is Australia's second-largest city (behind Sydney) and the capital of the south-eastern state of Victoria. Melbourne is considered Australia's cultural capital, with Victorian-era architecture, extensive shopping, museums, galleries, theatres, and large parks and gardens.

Melbourne is home to just over four million (the same population as the whole of New Zealand), and has one of the most diverse populations in Australia. For example, Melbourne has the world's third-largest Greek-speaking population after Greece's two largest cities, and the Vietnamese surname Nguyen is the second most common in Melbourne's phone book hahaha! The city also features substantial Indian, Sri Lankan, and Malaysian-born communities. That dude on the right is playing a didgeridoo, and if you have no idea what that is then read this and watch this :)

The Melbourne General Post Office (a former post office) - good example of that Victorian architecture.

I couldn't seem to get it into my head that it wasn't Saturday today. Days of the week mean very little while you're travelling like this, and Kristina and I often go for days at a time not knowing exactly what day it is. Anyway, seeing suits and ties during lunch at this city park seemed to do the trick.

Queen Victoria Market, the largest open air market in the Southern Hemisphere at around seven hectares. This thing has been here since 1878, and sells an array of typical market crap including some Australian-specific goodies. Out back is the food market - chaos during lunch but bloody good! The smell of meat when you walk in here is intoxicating - I don't know how vegetarians do it!

From Queen Vic Market we tram'd it down to the Docklands area, filled with shops, bars, and restaurants, and apparently the lynchpin of Melbourne's urban planning vision for the next fifty years. The old shipping yards and industrial neighbourhood just west of the CBD is being developed into a lively residential, commercial and entertainment district that hopes to refocus Melbourne's attention to the waterfront. Also here are a large number of outlet stores, overlooked by the busted Southern Star observation wheel. It opened in December 2008 and was expected to attract 1.5 million visitors annually and be a cash cow for the new surrounding businesses. Instead it closed the following month due to structural defects after Melbourne went through a major heat wave hehe. Reconstruction only began again 12 months ago. So much for that.

Melbournites (or whatever you call them) are absolutely sports-mad! This here is the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) - the tenth-largest stadium in the world, the largest in Australia, the largest for playing cricket, and holds the world record for the highest light towers at any sporting venue - phew! It's part of the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Precinct, a series of sports stadiums and venues all plonked together just 3km easy of the city. It is considered to be Australia's "premier sports precinct", and regularly hosts some of the biggest domestic and international sporting events (including the Olympic and Commonwealth Games in the past). Also included is Rod Laver Arena - home of the Australian Tennis Open.

The Melbourne metropolis is located on a large natural bay known as Port Phillip, with the city centre positioned at the estuary of this - the Yarra River (at the northern-most point of the bay).

On the other side there is the suburb of Southbank, formerly an industrial area and part of South Melbourne but now a densely populated district of high rise apartment and office buildings, and one of the primary business centres in Greater Melbourne.

We wandered over for a closer look just as storm clouds were brewing behind up. Melbourne really is a four-seasons-in-one-day kind of place.

We ventured into the Crown Casino for drinks and dinner, and to look at the poor bastards who spend much of their day glued to the pokies. And that was that for our day in Melbourne city!

Today we all headed down to the suburb of St Kilda, southeast of the city centre along Port Phillip. This is St Kilda Beach, Melbourne's most famous beach.

This guy died last week, but the tides haven't managed to pull him out to sea yet.

Meanwhile Jemma took to the sand and got covered in it, which really impressed my father hehe.

Further along the beach there was a bit of beach volleyball going on, being played by women in skimpy clothing.

Santa was eventually arrested for sexual misconduct ;)

Oh wait he wasn't dead.

Back in the day St Kilda was Melbourne's red-light district, but in recent years the district has experienced rapid gentrification pushing many lower socioeconomic groups out to other areas.

And there's a toilet here.

This freaky bastard is the entrance to the iconic Luna Park, a historic amusement park opened in December 1912.

It's hardly Disneyland, but it's something, and in its heyday would've been awesome.

This is part of the Scenic Railway, the oldest continuously-operated roller coaster in the world. It doesn't move too fast and there aren't any loops but hey - 100 years ago this would have been some scary shit!

Even this carousel dates back to 1913, and was restored in 2000.

These mirrors were our favourite though hehe.

From St Kilda we headed further along the Port Phillip coast to Sandringham, one of Melbourne's more prestigious bayside suburbs and a popular location for beachgoers.

We wandered along a popular coastal track and took a few embarrassing family portraits. Tomorrow we're all heading a couple hundred kilometres southwest out of Melbourne to Apollo Bay for a few days, a small coastal town along the stunning Great Ocean Road.

On the road again, this time southwest out of Melbourne along Australia's southern coast. To break up the trip we stopped off at this lighthouse, and got our second parking fine in 24 hours hahaha! We got through the whole of New Zealand without any fines at all; fourth day in Australia and we've had two!

Probably the first of many large and grotesque insects we'll come across.

The Great Ocean Road - 243 kilometres of awesome! This stretch of road along the south-eastern coast of Australia is the world's largest war memorial, dedicated to the casualties of World War I. The road winds through varying terrain alongside the coast, traversing rainforests and beaches and cliffs, and provides access to several prominent landmarks (one of which we'll be checking out tomorrow).

We stopped in the coastal town of Lorne for lunch, but not before the obligatory park stop for Jemma hehe.

That's disgusting!

More sights along the stunning Great Ocean Road; on this trip we're barely scratching the surface of it.

Probably the first of many large, colourful, and bloody loud birds we'll come across.

So one minute we're on the coast, and the next we're heading high up through the stunning inland hills and into the wop-wops (or the "podunks" if you're American).

And just like in New Zealand, we get held up by sheep hahaha! This went on for about five minutes before we eventually got past the dumb bastards - video here.

We eventually made it here - our accommodation for the next couple nights near the coastal town of Apollo Bay. Nice! No neighbours...

...and a spa pool which looks over...

...this awesome view across the hills and way down to the coast of to the right there. Not bad, not bad :)

I could never get sick of breakfast in these surrounds!

Today we got back on the Great Ocean Road and continued west. It doesn't quite beat New Zealand's State Highway 94 to Milford Sound but this is one bloody nice road! While the section we did yesterday was mostly coastal, today it was mostly inland and full of hilly and winding roads - my favourite!

Just one of the many random lookout points along the way. There are also several walking trails heading off in all directions if that's yo' thang.

Main stop of the day and one of the main attractions of the Great Ocean Road (besides the road itself): The Twelve Apostles! These impressive limestone stacks (the tallest of which is 45 metres high) were formed by erosion, as is fairly evident from the shot below-left of the receding coastline. The stacks themselves are susceptible to further erosion from the crashing ocean waves. On 3 July 2005, a 50 metre tall stack collapsed, leaving that pile of rubble in the foreground of the shot above-left. While there may have been twelve in the past, today there are just eight left.

Back in Apollo Bay, down on the coast from our accommodation.

Later on in the evening we got a random visit from this bunch of cockatoos. Those in captivity are quite the little talkers ("Hello", "Hello", "Dickhead", etc) but we didn't get much chat out of these wild ones. They seemed fairly tame so I assume they call in regularly and get fed by other folk renting this house we're staying in. We found some old bread and watched them chow down before firing up the BBQ and chowing down ourselves!

We left Apollo Bay this afternoon after a morning at the beach, and decided to take the inland route (as opposed to the coastal Great Ocean Road route) back towards Melbourne. The shot on the left was taken at a random roadside lookout, and just as we were about to head off again a big dump truck zoomed past us. The roads were very hilly and Dad, in his car in front of us, was trying to get past this truck but with no luck. Some time thereafter, with us all still stuck behind this truck, there was a fucking almighty BOOM from the truck which then vanished in a plume of dust! My immediate thought was the truck had hit something, but it quickly became apparent it had blown a tyre. Thick chunks of tread were thrown all over the road in front of us, including one massive piece which Dad had to swerve sharply to avoid. The truck pulled over and so did we to have a closer look. The fully-laden truck had one of its eight rear tyres in pieces hehe, and the mud guard was also blown to pieces. Anyway, the driver didn't need our help so we continued on.

Some thirty minutes later Dad suddenly pulled off the road in front of us. His water temperature gauge had max'd out and water was spewing out somewhere from his radiator. Although we couldn't find any obvious damage, we reckon a chunk of that truck's blown tyre has struck something it shouldn't have and this was the result. Using water from our drink bottles we limped to the nearest gas station to refill the radiator, and then limped to the shot on the right - the beachfront of Geelong. The port city of Geelong is 75 kilometres southwest of Melbourne, is full of Aussie yobbos, but has a pretty impressive beach area.

After a few more family portraits we called it a day and limped back to Dad's house. And with that ends what has been an awesome time in and around Melbourne! Tomorrow morning we jump on yet another plane, this time bound for Sydney, and this time staying with my Aunt :)