Peckish Travels

Bob and I took our first journey into Melbourne proper for a booked 1 hour tour of the Victoria State Library. We wanted to see the library, but it also gave us a chance to compare the various public transportation options from where we are staying.

We ended up taking the tram in and the train/bus combo back. The tram is easiest in the sense that you just have the one mode of transportation, but it doesn’t go any faster than normal traffic, and it makes a lot of stops. It was a 10 minute walk to catch the tram and then another 50 or 55 minutes on the tram, and then a 15 minute walk to the library.

On the way back, we caught the train at a station directly across from the library. We unknowingly caught a limited express train, so that was a bit stressful as we didn’t know if it would stop at the station we needed or not. Happily, it did, and that was only a 25 minute ride. We then walked out of the train station directly into the bus bays to catch the 733 bus back to the house. The bus came right after we got there, and that was a stress free 15 minute ride to our stop. It seemed much more efficient, and we’ll likely opt for that for any future trips into the city center.

Per the guide, the library started with a collection of 3,846 books. It now has over 2,000,000 items. It is Australia’s oldest public library and one of the first free libraries in the world. It has an extensive collection of materials dedicated to the history, study, and practice of chess and and bridge, and many people come to the library to play chess, both inside and outside.

The library was established in 1854, and the original portion of the building would have just been the central section without the portico.

The Victoria State Library provides 2 public tours a day. We did today’s afternoon tour. Our guide seemed new and was a quiet talker. By the end, we were sure we would have seen more on our own, but we did learn some interesting information.

Today, we did a portion of the Gardiners Trail to the south of where we entered onto the trail. Maybe because it is Sunday here, we saw a number of people out walking their dogs (both on and off lead) on the first section of the trail. Today’s walk took us along Gardiners Creek, some wetlands, past a university, as well as residential and commercial areas, all while providing some art and a bit more history about the area.

Based on the Heritage Trail signs located along the path, we learned that John Gardiner, for whom the trail is named, immigrated to Australia with his family from Ireland in 1822. They originally settled in Tasmania before moving to the mainland following a drought. He became a prominent citizen in Melbourne and owned some of the land along which the trail lies. Interestingly, he later moved to England while his wife and sons remained in Australia.

In a quest to hit a number of neighborhood walking trails, Bob and I headed out about midday today to walk the northern section of the 20k Gardiners Creek Trail. We aim to attempt the southern (longer) portion tomorrow or next week. This is a paved, accessible trail through lovely parkland along Gardiners Creek in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.

The section we were on today also went along the Box Hill Golf Course and provided an Art Walk of sorts, as it gave some information on the art camps and artists that used to work in the area. From the signs posted, we learned about 3 local artists, Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin, and Louis Abrahams, that established an art camp in 1885 on a local farm that is now occupied by the Box Hill Golf Course to encourage open-air painting as was popular in Europe at the time.

We walked an out and back route from the house, but on the way back we veered off to check out Artists’ Park since it seemed to fit with the theme of the day. The only art we saw at the small neighborhood park was incorporated into the play area.

Bob and I have noticed on Google Maps that there are a number of local parks with walking paths in our ‘hood. We decided to check one of these out today and then end at the nearby shopping center to do a bigger shop than we had done the other day.

We did the Wirundjeri Walk that has a wetland and lovely green park spaces. We came back on a trail through Eley Park. Our walkabout had us go through parts of Blackburn, Whitehorse, Eley, before returning to “our” Burwood neighborhood.

The shopping center has a Woolworths (the big grocery store), a cinema, a bulk foods store, an Asian grocery, a liquor store, and a couple beauty salons and small restaurants. It’s quite handy — about a 5 minute walk from the house.

Yesterday we traveled by tram from our stay at The Element Hotel in Richmond to our house sit in Burwood, both suburbs of Melbourne. We walked about 10 mins from the tram stop and were warmly greeted by our homeowner.

We chatted and then went over her welcome guide and all the information it contained. Her 11 year old granddaughter was emceeing and playing in a violin recital, so she attended while we started to get to know “our” new pets, Jaffa, the dog, and the two cats, young Crumble, and the older, largest cat we’ve sat for, Minty.

Jaffa loves to cuddle and makes little snorting noises when he sleeps. Minty seems pretty chill but will cuddle as well. Crumble is a sweet cuddler as well but also loves to explore and play. He will keep us amused and on our toes while we’re here.

Today, after seeing our homeowner off, we caught up on work, laundry, and did a small grocery shop. Tomorrow, we’ll have our daily routine established and will start seeing what we can see in the area and in downtown Melbourne.

The reason for our trip to Australia is almost here. We meet the homeowner and the pets tomorrow afternoon and assume caring responsibilities on Wednesday morning. Because we don’t like to tempt fate, we usually try to get as close to the housesit as possible the night before just to make sure there aren’t any travel hiccups.

This morning we left the hotel in Canberra a little before 11:00 am. We traveled by Uber to the airport, where we sadly learned that no check-in was possible until 90 minutes before the flight. We had a little over an hour wait to check-in. After that, things went smoothly, and we continued our journey to tonight’s hotel in Melbourne via plane, bus, and then tram. Bob researched all the details, so it made for an easy commute.

I had a lovely run on a quiet Sunday morning in Canberra before we went down for our free hotel breakfast. Then we headed out to explore some of the free museums and government buildings, which we only looked at from across the river yesterday. It has been a mostly overcast day with highs in the upper 50s.

Our first stop was the National Library of Australia, which was about a 40 minute walk from our hotel. On the way we passed the Civic Library, which wasn’t open, as well as some other municipal and territorial government buildings.

The National Library of Australia is one of many free national buildings in what’s referred to as the Parliamentary Zone. Only the ground floor was open to the public, although we were there too early to get in the Reading Room. However, we still got to explore their current exhibit from which we learned quite a bit about Australian history.

The following are some of the important dates in the formation of Australia and its government that we learned from the library’s exhibit. 1768 — James Cook’s Endeavor voyage charts the eastern seaboard of Australia. 1788 — Sydney was formed as a penal colony. 1804 — Hobart formed, also as a penal colony. 1828 — Western Australia provincial government formed followed by South Australia in 1836 and Victoria in 1851. 1901 — Australia becomes a federation after application to and approval by Queen Victoria.

After leaving the library, we headed towards Parliament House. On the way, we passed the Old Parliament Building which has been converted into The Museum of Australian Democracy. Parliament met in Melbourne from the federation’s establishment in 1901 through May of 1927.

The Parliament House opened in 1988. It is one of the largest buildings in the southern hemisphere, 300 meters by 300 meters and has 4,500 rooms. Australia has had 31 Prime Ministers since 1901, one of which has been female, so ahead of the US in that department.

From the Parliament Building, we headed to the National Portrait Gallery, which not surprising, didn’t have many portraits of people we knew.

Heading back into town, we walked along the waterfront where there are a number of flags displayed as well as an Australian of the Year Walk that honors Australians in different categories.

Yesterday, Bob and I spent much of the day on planes flying (and losing a couple hours) from Perth to Canberra via Melbourne. We are pretty proud of the fact that we left Perth having spent no money on food or drink due to the free breakfasts and canapé spread in the evenings for Marriott Bonvoy Club members.

We arrived at the Midnight Hotel, another Marriott hotel, in Canberra, the capital of Australia at about 7:00 last night via cab from the airport. Our visit to Canberra brings us to the Australian Capital Territory, which means we have at some point briefly visited each of the 6 states — New South Wales (Sydney), Queensland (Brisbane), South Australia (Adelaide and Barossa Valley), Tasmania (multiple towns), Victoria (Melbourne), Western Australia (Perth), and 1 of its 2 territories. We have not yet visited the Northern Territory.

Canberra has a population of approximately 450,000, which makes it Australia’s largest inland city. We had a good walkabout today to get an initial overview of some of its most prominent sites. We hope to explore some of those further tomorrow.

First, we headed to the Australian War Memorial, which seems to be in the midst of a pretty comprehensive renovation. To be honest, we weren’t as interested in the memorial as accessing the trails behind to climb Mount Ainslie for the overlook, but we did look at some of the sculptures on the grounds.

The trail to the top of Mount Ainslie begins behind the War Memorial and is 1.8 miles with a 525 foot elevation gain.

After descending the mountain, we walked along the ANZAC Parade to view some of the memorials that line both sides of the road. ANZAC stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp.

Finally, we made our way down to the lovely trail along the Molonglo River, which was quite active on a Saturday, to get a little closer view of some of the national museums located there.

Today was a gorgeous, sunny, too many photos kind of day. The best kind of day to have! We walked the amazing 6.5 mile trail around the Swan River but also added on a walk onto Heirisson Island to look for kangaroos and a walk up to Kings Park to see some of the beautiful, large park and enjoy some great views of the city. We just kept saying how beautiful everything was. Feeling very blessed.

We started our first full day in Perth with separate activities. I worked out in the hotel’s impressive gym, and Bob went walking down by the waterfront (the Swan River) to see what he could see in the dark.

We enjoyed a great (and free!) hot and cold spread for breakfast before venturing out for mostly indoor activities due to the forecasted rain. We walked through Murray Street Mall to get to Perth Station, the main train/tram station for the city center. Yesterday, we took the tram from the airport into the city and got off at Mciver station. Bob wanted to see this station as we could catch our tram here back to the airport on Friday. We were assisted by a rail official who had lots of helpful information. We have been very impressed with the customer service here.

Next, it was on to the Perth Cultural Centre. The Centre is composed of six institutions, 1) the State Theatre Centre of Western Australia (WA), 2) Art Gallery of WA, 3) WA Museum of Boola Badip, 4) State Library of WA, 5) The Blue Room Theatre, and 6) Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. We focused on the library and art gallery.

The WA State Library was a bit of disappointment. Architecturally, it wasn’t very interesting, and it only had a small exhibit called Stuff that showed the range of items that the library collects, seemingly a bit of everything. The library did have a good film playing that talked about their work as well.

The Art Gallery of WA was a popular place today. There must have been at least 5 school groups there while we were there. We were most impressed with the current exhibit, that featured a number of big heads, the exhibit by Year 12 high school students, and the views from the top of the building.