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My first trip to Melbourne.
By MattLlow | October 30, 2007
I was lucky enough to stay rent free in Port Melbourne with a couple of friends which is only 15mins by tram into the city center and a 10mins walk to the beach. Arrive back from our trip down the great ocean road we headed to straight out to check out the much talked about Melbourne bar scene. First stop Eurotrash, a strange bar with defaced manikins and other erotic memorabilia some quick food in China town before hitting ‘Section 8′. Possibly one of the coolest and most definitely the most unique bars I’ve ever been to. It takes it name from the US Military term given to soldiers who are discharged for being mentally insane…. Think Klinger from Mash - and insane is a very good description. The bar itself is set in an old parking lot with no roof and only a wire fence to separate it from the street, drinks are severed from a converted shipping container placed at the side and all the furniture is made of stuck together beer crates. Section 8 defines Melbourne; cool and hip but yet totally unpretentious!!!!!
Saturday I took a day to wonder by myself and explore the city. My only real itinerary was to visit Lululemon which is a yoga store from Canada I had heard loads about and for once actually stock cloths for men. This unwittingly took me to the heart of Prahran district on the corner of Greville and Chapel Street which is the best shopping area I’ve been to in years. Full of individual shops selling everything but the mass produced I ended up buying more in one day than I had done in a whole year in Sydney.
Another night out and a day spent St Kilda where I tried to dust off my old but not yet completely forgotten salsa not really a good venue for tennis but easy to get in! Skills!
Australian Open
I’d timed my trip so that I could go to the Australian open. I’ve been fortunate through my life that I’ve regularly gone to Wimbledon either getting my tickets through the tennis club or work and I was extremely excited to attend another Grand Slam. Commentators on Wimbledon often seem to coerce the player into telling viewers how special the tournament is - comments that I’ve been largely skeptical about. Comparison therefore was on my mind is Wimbledon really the best in the world… as for the pros and cons for the tournaments they are remarkably good parallel of the two countries.
- Pros on OZ: Tickets are easy to come by: we bought our ground passes the day before queuing for approximately 1 min and if I had been more organized we could have bought tickets to Rod Laver arena a few weeks before:
- Cons on Wimbledon: You need to be either very rich or very lucky or well connected or stand queue for 6+hours.
- Pros on Wimbledon: It is undoubtedly steeped in history and tradition. You drink Pimms eat strawberries. It is the of quintessential example English etiquette, you gasp at good shots and applaud well. Only in Australia would you find a betting shop at the tennis play. The crowd knows when hush and when to laugh.
- Cons on OZ: You drink VB (beer) and eat burgers. You shout ‘Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie Oi Oi Oi’ (a chant I dislike so much it would be worthy of its own blog) wear football and ruby shirts you cheer at double faults and talk while play is in progress.
- Pros on OZ: Even with our ground entry pass we could go in every arena except Rod Laver
- Cons on Wimbledon: with a ground pass you can really only get into court 2 and 3 if you’re prepared to queue for a long time.
- Pros on OZ: The weather was fantastic (not always the case in Melbourne but still less chance of rain)
- Cons on Wimbledon: I’d like to know the average days for uninterrupted play per tournament but I’m sure it’s not high.
On a more disturbing thing to blog: the day that I attended there was actually a riot/fight between Serbian and Croatian fans with 150 of them being ejected from the grounds… this is simply not tennis and while we may have our problems in the UK it is such a good example of the way people cling to there parent heritage OZ. I’ve been constantly amazed with people in this country who have been born and bread in Australia but yet consider themselves to be the nationality of their parents. Yugoslavia may have never been a happy union but it really strikes me as ironic that the people will fight at tennis tournament on the basis of where there parents are from but yet when they left their country they would have been fellow country men?
Anyway from the above I think it’s clear to see that I prefer the experience of Wimbledon… It is elitist and that is perhaps not the best thing for the average tennis fan but the day there is even as much as a scuffle around centre court I will eat my straw panama hat!!!
So Melbourne really does have it all. Great bars and restaurants, fantastic shopping, top sporting events and the people are much friendlier than Sydney. ‘What if’ ‘Did I make the right decision’ absolutely!!!!!!! I’m not too sure Sydney is the best at anything but life and living in cities is about balance and Sydney has the balance of a trapeze artist walking a rope in gale I thought she looked and played better than Kirilenko but the media isn’t in love with her and she lost 3-6,6-3, 6-1 force wind. I’m loving life in Sydney and hopefully will do so for the foreseeable future!
Topics: Travelers Stories |
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