Melbourne Central Business District across the Yarra River
Melbourne has a very good public transit system. At least what we experienced of it today was excellent. We took a bus from here to the central buisness district and wharf area which only cost $6.90 each for an all day pass. In the downtown area itself there is a tourist shuttle bus with commentary that is free, and a loop tram that goes around the central area, also free.
We took the bus this morning, and spent the day doing some city sightseeing. We first stopped in the Southbank area at the Arts Centre. Here there was an exhibit called “Rock Girls” which displayed memorabilia about some of Australia’s popular female musicians. We also stopped at the “Makers market” to view some of the displayed arts and crafts there. Next we went across the street to the Queen Victoria Gardens. There are not too many flowers there as the roses are now mostly finished. We ate our lunch there, and just as we finished it sprinkled rain, but not for long.
We were going to take the tourist shuttle bus, but it was so crowded that instead we spent about an hour in the National Gallery of Victoria. We toured through one floor quickly. Enid found the display of ceramics particularly interesting. They have a large collection of Minton, Lalique, Worcester, and other manufacturers. As well there was a good collection of silver and silverplate.
We then did take the tourist shuttle trip. If we’d have known they had a big Chinatown parade today (as it’s Chinese New Year) we’d have got off at Chinatown; however, we didn’t find that out until we got back and watched the news tonight. Instead we got off at the very large Victoria market. There are a very large number of stalls there selling everything from expensive jewellery to really cheap tee shirts and jewellery knockoffs. We only covered perhaps a third of the market, and didn’t get to the vegetable part at all before we had to get back on the bus.
There was the Melbourne Boat and Leisure show on at Docklands. We didn’t know that when we went, or we’d have taken a couple of extra million dollars out of the ATM to buy a yacht or two! They did have several very expensive yachts and other sailboats there, as well as smaller boats and sea-doos.
We took the free tram service back to the information booth to see if we could get a better city map for our route to the ferry terminal tomorrow. Since it is right downtown we want to make sure we know how to get there as it will be Monday morning and lots of traffic. They didn’t have a good map, but did photocopy some from a book and pasted them together for us. After that we walked back to Queen street and caught the regular bus back to our caravan park.
Tonight after supper the park manager knocked on our door and wondered why we had booked twice for tonight. I told them when we registered yesterday that we had two separate reservations, but apparently someone forgot to cancel one from their computer. They were wondering how they would have two different David Dice’s registered today. I did ask what the best way to get to the ferry was, and the manager told me that they had a map printed in the office for that purpose. It’s a different route than the one the information centre gave us, and probably easier as it involves mostly the freeway, so is the route we’ll be taking tomorrow.