Melbourne: Wine World

Our trip to Melbourne was finished off with a trip to the Yarra Valley, Victoria's oldest wine region known for chardonnays and pinot noirs. As excellent as the tram system is for public transport, they certainly make it a lot harder to get out of the city in a car. Adelle took on the task and we wound our way to the brand new super highway that's under construction! Only a small piece is complete and open to cars. It's the middle bit of what will eventually connect Melbourne with the land southeast of the city. After an hour of long waits behind trams with the Rice-a-Roni song stuck in my head, the highway ride was thrilling... even if we reached the end after 10 minutes.

The end of the highway landed us squarely in the Land of Worlds. The "World" phenomenon isn't specific to Melbourne. The Sydney Solar System is the proud home of Trophy World, Eating World and Aquarium World, amoung other worlds. In the Melbourne Solar System, I used a state-of-the-art super telescope to snag images of Flooring World and Weather World. There was one place with a name long enough to make up a world, but it seems scientists had not yet made that call.

There are not many better ways to relax than a weekend away in a wine region. We did a tasting at Rochford before heading into Healeville town to relax at the Healesville Hotel, enjoy a couple of glasses of wine, and eat a tasty meal. We put ourselves up in local motel that had a separate door for delivering food or bodies.

Awakened by the lorrikeets, gallahs and cockatoos, we were off again on Sunday. Two more wineries, a pop into a dairy farm and delivery to the airport, via St Kilda East.

Lots of photos!

Cirque su Soleil - Varekai

Cirque du Soliel's Varekai has been making its way around the world for the past year or so. If you are not familiar with Cirque du Soleil, they come up with a different show every couple of years and travel to select cities around the world, setting up a matrix of enormous circus tents. The visual result is something you would expect to see if you could travel back to the time of P.T. Barnum, but it's more likely that these structures only existed in children's books and the ever-aggrandising memories of childhood experiences.

Stepping into the main tent is like stepping into Dr. Who's police box, thanks to some incredible stage design. The back of the stage seemed to go on into the distance in an increasingly thick forest of tall reeds. Some of the performers slithered around the bases while overs scurried up to the tops. Still others made their way into the crowd or scaled the catwalks above. The music and lighting during these times made it feel as if the audience were on the edge of an exotic wilderness, and this overwhelming experience somehow pulled the viewers into the performance.

Varekai has a frame of a plot that loosely ties together the clowning, acrobatics and stunts of the show. I think the details of the plot come down to interpretation, but I don't think that the focus. The aerial stunts were performed without nets, but one had two spotters below... who, I guess, were supposed to catch the four acrobats all at once should they happen to fall. Drum roll please! Personally I preferred the acrobatics the most. They did a great job combining classic routines with a new twist. In one bit, an acrobat was pulled up high in a net. He would drop in and out of it, twisting, pulling and spinning himself and at times barely clinging the net. In another act, cirque du soleilites (cirqians du soleil?) spun fellow performers by their buttocks, with their feet. Given that center of gravity, I can't figure how they could do it. The old-fashioned clowning was amusing, but I thought it was too much of a break in the consistency of the show. There were also jugglers, contortionists and more.

This performance was astounding. I would gladly go see it again, but unfortunately it has already played in Sydney and the United States. If you have a chance to see it, don't miss the opportunity.

Melbourne: Farewell Trams

Friday was my last day on my Pat Malone in Melbourne. Dana went off to work and I checked out out of the hotel before starting my third day of wandering. By this third day my shoulders and back were as sore as my feet: I carried my laptop on my back each day so that I could write and check my email during breaks from walking.

After a bit of rambling I boarded a tram and set off for the suburb of Richmond. I was headed for a particular pub so that I could enjoy a nice lunch, a couple of pots and a new neighborhood. The tram network in Melbourne is fantastic. They run all over the city and well into the suburbs. One of the odd things about them is that pedestrians board them in the middle of the street, and as the tram approaches, it sandwiches them against a metal fence, on the other side of which cars whiz past. Melburnians seem to have it down, but I would imagine this would result in lots of lawsuits in the States. So I hopped on the 48 on Flinders Street, heading east. I knew I had to get out on the corner of Bridge and River, and the woman next to me kindly told me when we got to Bridge Street. I jumped off and onto the sunny sidewalk to get my bearings. In one direction was a street with a long line of storefronts, so I figured that had to be the way. It didn't take me long to realise that I got off at the beginning of Bridge Street, on which the tram continues for quite some time before it gets to River Street. After a 35 minute walk through the town I arrived at River Street. It was a pleasant walk and the result of a happy accident.

The Royston Hotel is a local's pub, but it has good character, a great beer selection and the largest plate of fish and chips I have ever seen. I enjoyed two hours of tucking into my fish, sipping my pots of Hargreaves Hill, Red Hill and Red Duck, and listening in on conversations. My favourite was between a customer and a bartender:
"Just a Jack & Coke, thanks. [pause] Be as generous with the Jack as you like."
"Be as generous with the tip as you like, thanks."
"I always am."

Soon I was back in Federation Square and starting another podcast, this one was "Eat, Drink Melbourne". This was a real find on Adelle's part. If you get to Melbourne, download some podtours, put them on your iPod and start walking. Aside from the stage whispered "Stephanie Alexander" over the sound of something being deep-fried, this tour was as good as the first. The sound of being close to splattering oil isn't pleasant. Neither is the sound of being close to a stage whisper. But the tour was great. It took me through some new streets and alleyways while giving some anecdotes and historical facts. It also led me down Melbourne's other major graffiti alley, Centre Place, just off a main coffee strip. I tried to keep with the food theme and focussed on pigeons feeding in the dumpsters while other tourists snapped photos around me. I wouldn't be surprised if I see a photo someone took of me leaning on an overstuffed dumpster, my camera a half a meter from the pigeons and my elbow a half a meter into the bin.

Friday night was Dana's farewell, so I joined her in her office after the farewell speeches had been given, the tears had dried and they were all playing a bizarre version of Pictionary with Play-Doh. Try competing in this game with a bunch of designers and communications experts. Afterwards we all went to an opium den for drinks and snacks. There was no opium, but I forget the name of the place and it looks like what I imagine an opium den would look like. Except the word "den" makes me think there should have been a TV and a La-Z-Boy, which there wasn't. The revelry continued on to some pizza and a heated discussion at Adelle's over who should sleep on the inflatable bed. A great third night.

All photos from Melbourne day 3 here.

Melbourne: What's Up With The Pots?

This, my second day in Melbourne on this trip, consisted largely of viewing moving images. I blindly stepped into the Australian Centre for Moving Image and found three free and very interesting exhibits, of course!

The first was on the history of video games. Glass containers had old computers, such as the Commodore 64, and other artifacts, such as the old cassette-loading game. A small room had about a dozen running computers, which you could play! It was a great reminder of how frustrating those old joysticks were. I had Way of the Exploding Fist when I was young, but I couldn't get my karate guy to face the opponent before getting knocked out.

There were also a bunch of mini-pod-rooms in which you could sit and select a short film from a screen and then take it in. I watched about ten of them, some very good and each of them interesting, before heading downstairs to the avant-garde video exhibit. There were pieces by younger artists as well as bits by Jean Luc Godard and Chris Marker, both still alive and kicking in France.

Don't judge me for this next part, please. My feet were tired and I wanted to watch this movie while it was still on the big screen. Plus Dana didn't want to see it and I was by myself. So I went to watch 300. My thoughts:

• The good guys throw less-than-perfect babies onto a pile of dead babies.
• Victor Hugo had something to do with the original script, and he reprised the principle character of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, which was played by Gollum of Lord of the Rings.
• The king's name sounds like a type of skin rash.
• Xenophobia is alive and well.
• I'm proud of Glenn's theatrical debut.
  

To mill over the great many theological, philosophical and phisosophical questions raised in 300, I popped into James Squire Brewhouse for a pot of Speculator Ale. One (of the many) thing(s) that cracks me up about Melburnians is their preference for "pots" of beer. A pot, called a "middy" in New South Wales, is a half pint. Victorians nearly always drink pots because they say that pints get warm too quickly. First of all, I've never met someone from Victoria, nay Australia, whose beer got warm before they finished it, no matter what the size. Secondly, Australians are always going on about how cold Melbourne is... but this is the one place where they insist that their beers get warm to quickly. Go figure.

Dana, Adelle and I went to Cookie on Swanston Street for drinks and dinner. Cookie has a fantastic beer selection, and I took in some Emerson's, New Zealand's finest, while I still could. Fellow BeerAdvocates Brendan and Stephan joined us. The food was equally as enjoyable, and we managed to get some shots of "Three Businessmen Who Brought Their Own Lunch" on the corner of Swanston & Hoddle. Melbourne has some interesting art scattered about the city.

All photos here.

Melbourne: Graffiti, Podcasts & A Giant Squid

Dana's company was celebrating its 20th birthday, and they had organised drinks, food and a show for staff, clients, and partners of staff & clients. This meant a trip down to headquarters in the capitol of Victoria for me and Dana, as well as seats at Cirque du Soleil's Varekai! I'll leave Cirque du Soleil for another blog entry. It deserves it.

This trip to Melbourne was the fourth for me, and probably the 14th for Dana. This was really the first time Dana and I had Melbourne to ourselves. Dana was at work on the first day, but I took advantage of the time by myself by walking until my feet bled, thanks to a disease-ridden podcast walking tour and moseying through a bizarre museum.

Dana's friend Adelle gave me a few podcast tours of Melbourne that she had downloaded from the ABC.
"What's a podcast?" you ask.
"It's a fancy-pants, new-fangled thing-a-ma-jig that you can put onto your mp3 player and listen to," is my semi-accurate reply that gets the idea across.

I hiked up to Federation Square and started there. The theme was sickness and death, and the first thing I learned was that Federation Square used to be a morgue. This was a convenient location since they were often pulling bodies out of the Yarra River right there. The podcast was certainly macabre, but the stories gave a great sense of history and place. They ranged from a tale about the body of a 17 year old girl found floating in a trunk in the Yarra to graffiti in Hosier Lane.

The tour took me to Lygon Street in Carlton, where I heard stories about the mafia activity there before I settled into a nice seafood pasta dish. The street is lined with Italian restaurants for blocks. I chose my restaurant solely on which one had the most entertaining barker to watch while I ate. With slicked back hair and oversized dark sunglasses, my salesman of choice enthusiastically promised each passer-by that he would take care of them, sometimes leading them over to my table to show them how good my plate looked. Perfect pick!

The tour was also perfect because it left me just blocks from the Melbourne museum. Museums in Australia are second to none. Except maybe the Louvre. And MoMA. The bottom line is that any museum in Australia is going to be entertaining. If you travel to Oz, keep this in mind, and don't skip any museum you may happen by, even if it's a museum dedicated to dunnys. In fact, the more bizarre the subject matter, the more entertained you are going to be. I'm confident that Australians could create a museum dedicated to chalk that would please kids and parents alike. The secret here, I figure, is that Australians understand their place in history, and they are aware that there are many houses of historical significance across Europe and Asia, so they have to take some chances to sell tickets. Almost without exception, these chances pay off. I don't mean to insinuate that the contents of these museums would not stand on their own. I assume that as much attention is paid to who they place as curators and in positions of acquisition. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, for example, has never disappointed me, and artifacts of historical significance to both Australia and the world are easy to find in the War Museum and National Museum of Australia in Canberra. But they'll put these artifacts in a swinging room with live birds and interactive walls if it works.

Back to the Melbourne Museum. I really wanted to see Phar Lap, the Kiwi horse that was born in New Zealand, trained in Australia and murdered in the United States. That last bit was suspected for decades and confirmed just last year. It seems some jealous American punters fed him arsenic during his first trip across the Pacific. The massive horse was quickly stuffed, and his heart preserved and sent back to New Zealand. See what I mean? Other notable exhibits:

• An interactive model of what's below the streets of Melbourne. The diorama spoke volumes, but combination screen/map that gave you a first-person point of view of the travels of poo from your toilet in Melbourne to the ocean and, apparently, seagulls spoke libraries.
• Australian life. This included a modern kitchen, with a fridge and counter, etc. This part will be especially popular with the Martians when they're finally willing to fork over the 6 dollar admission fee. There was also a small wooden room filled with false pen & pencil graffiti, explaining that kids like to write their names on desks. Example of common lunch boxes were on display and the speakers played clips of children singing about diarrhea and Batman smelling. As I listened I realised that I still remember the words to those songs. That will be a treat come the next karaoke night. Of course, this exhibit would not be complete without a real Hills Hoist. Australians are damned proud of that clothesline.
• Fish of the deep. There were some freaky specimens in this exhibit, especially the 10 foot long giant squid.
• Aboriginal history. Many museums in Australia have a large focus on the treatment of the first Australians. No matter how many you have seen, you learn more at the next one you see.

That brought me to the end of my first day in Melbourne. Melbin. Photos here.