Melbourne, Australia

Cities can have multiple personalities. They can be a hot spot for a night out, a great place to raise a family, a fantastic romantic getaway, or the kind of place where you really just want to stay indoors and go straight from the office to the hotel because fortunately, you don’t live there, and you are only travelling there for work. But I digress. I could put a variety of lenses on my experience on Melbourne, but I will focus on Melbourne as a tourist destination.

My primary reason for venturing to Melbourne from New Zealand was to visit my friend Kylie, who has just moved back after 3.5 years in London. I slowly readjusted to city life, donning more makeup and straight hair styles progressively throughout the week. I also started to stockpile impressions of a city that I have been hearing about for several years from friends who call it home.


Geographically, Melbourne sits on Port Phillip Bay in the state of Victoria. Amusingly, the motto on Victoria license plates keeps changing. It used to be “The Garden State“ (no relation to New Jersey), then it was “On the Move” (often in italics) and now it’s “The Place to Be”. Anyway, the mouth of Philip Bay on the Southern Sea is quite narrow, but then opens up to a large circular shape with the Bellarine Peninsula to the west, the Mornington Peninsula to the East, and Melbourne City dead centre, as far from the channel as you can get.

In 10 days, I covered a lot of ground, seeing outer suburbs, the Great Ocean Road, the Yarra Valley for wine tasting, Geelong and nearby beach towns, and downtown Melbourne, known as the CBD (Central Business District). Kylie and I were staying in her rented flat in St. Kilda, a popular neighbourhood about 6km or a 25 minute tram ride east from city centre. St. Kilda is right on the beach, and the flat is around the corner from popular Acland Street, lined with cafes, bars and local shops. If I had to compare it to a San Francisco area, I would say St. Kilda may be Haight meets Noe Valley, with a waterfront boardwalk like Crissy Field.

St. Kilda beach

City Centre is very walkable, right on the Yarra River, and has tons of great alleys chock full of cafes and bars. It’s clean, attractive and accessible, and recent efforts (Federation Square, the Eureka Tower, development in the Docklands) give it an up-to-date feel without overshadowing some of the more European style buildings. There are a plethora of ways to get into and around the city, including trams, buses and trains, but most people seem to have a car as either a backup or to get around on the weekends.


I went into the City on a few occasions - for dinner and theatre, to wander around amongst the buildings, to see Australian art at the National Gallery, to peer down from the 40-something floor of the Rialto tower, and to go out for Friday night drinks with various friends of Kylie’s. I also spent a lot of time in St. Kilda, doing local errands, walking on the waterfront, laying out at the beach, using the Internet café, etc. I definitely know my way around the Carlisle/Barkley/Acland triangle!

Farther afield from Melbourne, Kylie and I went wine tasting in the Yarra Valley on Saturday afternoon. For those of you getting coverage of the bushfires, they are generally at bay but are still affecting some cities and communities. We saw the aftermath on Saturday when we drove past scorched fields and hillsides. Wineries were open for business though, so we spent the afternoon tasting at Yering Station and De Bortoli. There are tons of vineyards packed into a relatively small area in the Yarra Valley, and there are also a sizable number of vineyards outside of Geelong (75km west of Melbourne) and on the Mornington Peninsula.

On Sunday, we drove out to see the Twelve Apostles, natural limestone formations along the coast near Port Campbell. It took us about 6 hours to drive out there, including time to stop for lunch, and about 3 hours to drive back on the internal fast roads, but the trip was definitely worth it. The Great Ocean Road was reminiscent to some parts of Highway 1 in California, and the Twelve Apostles were beautiful. (We couldn't see all 12, and they aren't all in a photographable row, except maybe from the air. Here are a few of them).


Now that I am back in New Zealand my daily activity funds will go towards kayaking and hiking instead of towards pedicures and cocktails, and I am back to basic meals at hostels instead of nice home-cooked meals with Kylie or meals out at cafes. Oh well, 3 more weeks of “roughing it” in New Zealand amongst beautiful scenery and then I am back to civilisation in California for a month!