Greetings from my latest adventure Down Under! That’s right, not only am I visiting the next country on my list, Australia (just in case you didn’t figure that out), but I’m also adding another continent to my tally. So let’s dive right in, since that’s pretty much what I had to do. After flying twentyish hours across the Pacific, my flight arrived into Melbourne at 8am. Which meant I had to try and stay awake all day so I could beat the jet lag and get on schedule. I took my time with my usual arrival tasks, getting some cash, getting a sim card for the phone, navigating the bus and Melbourne’s AWESOME tram system into the city, checking into my hostel, and then stumbling around the city for my first afternoon here.

The Royal Exhibition Building (seen above) was off limits for an international garden show, but right next to it was the Melbourne Museum. I figured that would be an easy way to spend this first sleepy day.

They had a pretty impressive collection of dinosaur fossils, including a full Tarbosaurus skeleton. I was introduced to Tarbosaurus when I visited it’s homeland in Mongolia a couple of years ago.

Half of the museum was dedicated to natural history and the the other half was about aboriginal culture. I come here not really knowing anything about the native people here, but I’m really looking forward to learning more. I do know this now, they made pretty awesome kangaroo tooth necklaces.

After stumbling around a bit and getting a bite to eat, I made my way back to the hostel around 530pm and promptly fell asleep… for about 15 hours! Operation: Survive Day One… complete.

For those of you not in the know, the band AC/DC is one of the best bands of all time and no derogatory statements about them will be tolerated by the staff here at Holy Crap Adventures. They’re also from Australia and they have a whole street, well more of an alley, named after them. It’s filled with graffiti and a few tributes to the guys.

Australia had it’s own gold rush in the 19th century. In fact, a lot of Australias population comes from all the people that came here hoping to get rich in some way. That gold rush didn’t last very long, but it brought a tremendous amount of wealth to the country and evidence of that wealth can still be seen in a lot of the architecture around Melbourne. For example, the Treasury Building (seen below) was built specifically to hold the massive amount of gold that was being mined during that time.

Melbourne is the capitol of Victoria, one of Australia’s six states, and it’s Parliament Building is very impressive. In addition to being the capitol of Victoria, it also served as the first seat of Australia’s federal government from the country’s founding in 1901 until 1927.

I made it just in time to get a free tour of the Parliament Building. The most impressive part was the main lobby with the giant statue of Queen Victoria, but I enjoyed hearing about the history of the place as well. There’s close to ten million dollars worth of gold plating on the walls of this place. Get elected, and start scraping those walls!

Melbourne’s Town Hall is another example of the gold rush times. Queen Elizabeth had tea here in the 1950’s, the Beatles were introduced to Australia on that balcony in front, and now there’s a comedy club on the ground floor (???).

The story of Gog and Magog is a confusing one. They’re associated with the end of times in the Bible, they’re good friends with Satan, they’re the eventual destroyers of Israel in the Quran, they were kidnapped by Trojans when they fought the Britons and made to serve as porters, now they’re the traditional guardians of London. Like I said, confusing. Anyway, these two have been keeping time here in Melbourne since 1892 and they’re a famous local landmark.

The Flinders St train station was Melbourne’s first train station in 1910. You can’t get inside unless you have a ticket to somewhere, but the outside is really beautiful and this is arguably the epicenter of Melbourne.

Right across the street is the late 19th century St. Paul’s Cathedral. Melbourne is proving to be a really interesting and pleasant city. The downtown area is always bustling, there’s lots of cool places to eat, especially in Chinatown right in the middle, and the free trams going in every direction make it super easy to get around. I’m liking it so far.

Australia’s main purpose started out as a penal colony. Apparently, England had an overabundance of criminals, so they got the bright idea to send them here by the tens of thousands. Later, as the gold rush was attracting all those people trying to get rich, there ended up being a lot of unsavory characters here. And with the lack of resources to support all those people, there were also a lot of homeless vagrants, which at the time was illegal. It wasn’t at all difficult to get yourself thrown in jail in 19th century Australia. One of the most notorious prisons just happens to be right in the center of the city, Melbourne Gaol.

Melbourne Gaol was built in 1841 and housed some of Victoria’s worst criminals until 1924. It also hanged 133 of them from the gallows at the end of the cell block. Several of the death masks of the condemned are on display, including that of Ned Kelly, probably Australia’s most famous criminal. More on him in a minute.

I went into the State Library for only one reason, but it was actually really beautiful inside. There was also a small art museum inside… bonus!

The real reason I went inside the State Library was to see Ned Kelly’s armor. Him and his gang constructed these suits of armor for themselves to wear in all the gun battles they were in. This one is Ned’s. He was injured even with this heavy thing on in his last shootout with the police. He also ended up killing one of them, which is what got him the death penalty at the ripe old age of twenty five.

On the south side of town I stepped into the National Gallery. There was a lot of amazing classical art in there as well as a huge Asian art section. Interestingly, the population here in Melbourne seems to be about half Australian and half Asian. Anyway, the most famous painting in the place is this one depicting the battle of Quatre Bras in 1815. It was a very decisive battle that led to Napoleon’s eventual defeat at Waterloo two days later.

Further on, I found a somewhat dilapidated monument to Queen Victoria, the state’s namesake. Also nearby was Melbourne’s massive monument to all of Victoria’s war heroes, the Shrine of Remembrance.

The balcony on top of the Shrine of Remembrance provided a pretty tremendous view of the city.

While I was at the Melbourne Gaol, I saw a sign for another of Victoria’s decommissioned prisons, Pentridge. This one’s a bit further north in the burbs, but I figured, why not? There was a few different tours available, so I opted for the maximum security block. This place was originally built in 1851 and was a working facility up until 1997.

Today you can tour some of the old prison blocks or get some shopping done at the posh shopping mall that now exists right in the middle of the old yard. You can see part of the mall next to one of the old guard towers in the pic below. In the other pic, I’m not sure if that’s an apartment building or a hotel, but it’s quite a contrast!

No city would be complete without some kind of observation platform on top of the highest skyscraper, so I found Melbourne’s Skydeck on the 88th floor of the Eureka Tower. There were some great views of downtown and down the Yarra River to the Bass Strait.

As far as observation decks go though, this had to be one of the worst designed ones in the world. It was either added as an afterthought, or somewhere in town there’s an architect that should be locked up in one of those prisons I visited. Almost all of the windows were tinted really dark blue and the room casted all sorts of inconvenient reflexions and glares all over the place. It made it really difficult to take pictures, but I managed to get a few.

I’m finally feeling like I’m in the zone now. After the Skydeck, I walked down the street and picked up my rental car, my ride for the next few weeks. Time for a day trip down to Phillip Island to visit some koalas.

The Koala Conservation Reserve acts as a kind of local rescue for these cute little marsupials. I’ve seen koalas in zoos before, but seeing them this close and in their natural habitat was an amazing experience.

There are a couple of families in pseudo enclosures that you can view from an elevated boardwalk, but I also saw a couple of wild ones on the short hike around the park. I’m going to be seeing a lot of animals on this trip that I’ve never seen before and I can’t wait!

As I was walking around looking up into the trees, I looked down once and randomly spotted a swamp wallaby nearby. So I started looking on the ground too and there were wallabies all over the place. Awesome! In total I probably saw roughly a dozen koalas and a dozen or so wallabies today.

Before heading out, I walked around the two enclosures really quick to see if anything had changed (koalas aren’t super active and sleep about twenty hours a day) and this guy decided to come hang out on the railing. Talk about close encounters! This Australian adventure is definitely off to a good start!

The next morning it was time to head off to my next stop. Before leaving Melbourne for good, though, I took a slight detour to Yarra Bend Park. There are some beautiful trails along the river and a massive colony of grey headed flying foxes just happens to call this place home. These two below were having a pretty intense fight. Apparently, it’s the start of the mating season and all the males are a bit combative.

According to the signage, the colony is between 3000-15000 strong. That’s a pretty big range, but either way that’s a lot! They were everywhere on both sides of the river. It was quite a sight. I even managed to get a shot of one flying by… sort of.

After that it was back in my little MG for some long driving to the next stop. I’m just getting started. More in the next post…