Winter Escape 2012: Melbourne, Australia

As we drove to Melbourne, we had many flashbacks of other places in America and Canada. After a while, you get a sense that many landscapes resemble each other and we quickly resorted to claiming that this is similar to..... and so forth. This becomes quite a fascinating discovery.

We arrived on time for a quick dinner and Tim getting ready to fly back to Sydney for the Royal Australian Navy Conference. He left early the next day to attend this conference. He was gone for two days and one night.

Melbourne State Parliament

While Tim was away, I joined my friends, Muriel and Rom, who were holidaying in Melbourne at the same time. We explored Melbourne using the trams. It is a cosmopolitan city with its variety of restaurants, shops and office towers. We took the circle city tram with a tour guide explaining the highlights of the city.

We stopped at Parliament Building. This was the first Parliament in Australia until a federation of states was formed in 1927. It was then that the Capital City of Canberra was created with its Federal Parliament building in Canberra. The Melbourne Parliament then became the State Parliament.

Australian Centre for Moving Images 

Other highlights included the ACMI--the Australian Centre for Moving Images. This is a modern architectural designed building. See the picture above. Behind this impressive structure is a gigantic Cricket Stadium. Australians love their cricket just as the North Americans love their baseball. We strolled along the Docklands, which is very similar to many other docklands in other parts of the world.



On our first night in Melbourne, Muriel arranged for us to visit Ellen and Jeff--Ellen being a high school classmate of ours. Ellen invited us to a barbeque where we met other folks from Nairobi. The food, wine and the conversations will be with us in good memory of our time in Melbourne.

Bridge towards South Wharf

When Tim returned, we had one day together in Melbourne and I gladly repeated visiting the highlights of Melbourne. We walked around Federation Square which is the main intersection of the city. We did the complete circle city tour, with a stop over at the Parliament building. We walked around the South Wharf. The picture on the right illustrates the bridge towards the South Wharf. You can see the Convention Centre to the right. Later, we boarded a tram to St. Kilda's Beach. This beach looks out onto the Strait and beyond that is the Tasmanian Sea.

Melbourne is an exciting city. We could have spent more time here. After three days, we continued our road trip towards Adelaide.