MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

About an hour after getting my bag from the carousel I was in downtown Melbourne. The Central Business District felt very different from that of Sydney, even though both have many high-rises. The bus driver helpfully dropped me off just down the street from the Hotel Victoria, even though it wasn’t actually part of his route. I checked in and was presented with small container of milk for my Inn-room coffee the next morning. I found this curious, but it turns out to be a local custom to give hotel guests actual milk instead of powdered or chemically stable “cream”.

To be honest, I am writing this section and the rest of this journal several months after the fact because I got burned out on writing it and, as I mentioned, the exotic part of the trip was mostly over. I’ll skim through the highlights from here on, but without the excruciating detail of my journals written while on the trip itself.

While in Sydney I asked many people about Melbourne and everyone agreed the difference was much more than just the more extreme weather down south. I spent three days in Melbourne sampling all of the typical sights during the day and sampling from various pubs and bars at night. I was actually a bit surprised how different the two cities are. Sydney is sprawling and clean, sort of like a futuristic Los Angeles if they somehow got rid of most of the blight and then put a bay in the center of it. Melbourne is much more like San Francisco without all the hills. Evidently Melbourne is the center of the creative community and is known for its fabulous restaurant scene.

Locals kept pointing out that Melbourne is known for “Four seasons in one day” or something like that, but I found mild and stable autumn temperatures. I was rather disappointed by the bars in Sydney, just as I am by the ones in Los Angeles, but the bars in Melbourne were not disappointing. I walked all over the CBD as well as the neighboring artsy areas and even the cool beach of St. Kilda. For some reason the nightlife seemed very authentic rather than corporate. The beer was just as terrible as everywhere else in Australia (or the US), but the bars all seemed older, smaller, and cooler.

One of the first things I did my first morning was walk up to some big outdoor market that permanently occupies a large area on the northern rim of downtown. The food halls were interesting, but in general the market reminded me of dozens of similar places I am used to in the States. If I had been interested in shopping for something, anything, it might be different, but these were just normal consumer items and normal clothes.

I took advantage of the fact that the streetcars are free in the center of town. One of them basically circles the perimeter of the CBD with a tape-recorded commentary pointing out the various sites. I used this as a hop-on/hop-off trolley to take me to the edge I wanted to see more of where I would keep walking further out. The artsy neighborhood just east of the CBD is particularly appealing. It reminds me a lot of the Melrose Avenue neighborhood where I used to live in Hollywood before it got super trendy and then became a dirty and newly desolate victim of its own success. I’m pretty sure that if I was going to live in Australia anywhere it would be in this part of Melbourne.

The next day I took a different trolley out to St. Kilda for a look around. Once again I found a really nice and artsy neighborhood, but what was unusual about this one is that it’s a beach community. I can’t think of any other like it in the world that fits both those categories so nicely. It might have to do with the volatile weather that keeps the sunbathing down to probably 4 months a year. In Sydney it seems like Bondi Beach is a useful beach 8 or 9 months a year so it has a distinctly surf-oriented culture and feel.

There is an old-school style amusement park in St. Kilda, but it seemed closed for the season. The evil clown mouth that serves as the entrance is a worthwhile sight even in the off-season, and so are the piers, but before long I was looking for the trolley back into town. Just before I boarded I noticed a hotel/bar (which is really just a nightclub) across the street called The Esplanade so I went in for a small beer at this historic spot. It’s a really nice place and it’s especially strange because it is like New York’s CBGBs, but with a beautiful ocean view.

My plan was to rent a car and drive back to Sydney over the course of days. I found an incredible deal on the website of a local outfit called Red Spot Car Rentals. I guess their fleet is needed back in Sydney as the one-way rental was almost free. For $AU15 (less than $12) per day I reserved a convertible with unlimited mileage and four days to get back to Sydney. Unfortunately, the website was wrong and I got an e-mail two days before pickup that said they don’t actually have convertibles. The weather wasn’t really convertible weather anyway, so it was probably a blessing actually, and the compact car they gave me instead got much better gas mileage.

After three days and nights in Melbourne I checked out of the hotel and took a short walk down the street to the CBD location of Red Spot. I was really looking forward to driving around for a few days and having all the freedom on the trip that you get with a car, but the thing I wasn’t really looking forward to was the terrifying prospect of driving on the left. This, I must say, was the first time I was faced with this. I have been to England and Japan and a few other places where they drive on the wrong side, but I never even considered driving there. I’m an excellent driver who can perform complicated traffic maneuvers with no conscious thought at all, and I think this might actually make driving on the other side more difficult. For the first time since my 16th birthday I actually had to think about what I was doing, and the feeling is similar to that first-ever driving experience.

Keys in hand I found my car in the small underground lot, threw my backpack in the trunk and opened the door to jump in, on the wrong side, of course. It took me more than a day of getting in and getting out before I actually first went in the right direction. After adjusting the mirrors and seat, I was ready to hit the road. Fortunately it was a Saturday so the traffic was minimal, but I was still as tense as I possibly could be. I asked the guy for his advice on how to get onto the main highway going south most efficiently and the directions sounded simple enough. Make a right out of the lot and then the first left, go down to the third big street, turn right and then stay in the left lane, he said.

Unfortunately, Melbourne has two streets with each name, one being the real one and then a smaller version called “Little (street name)” in between. I wish I had paid closer attention to that fact while I was walking around. I first saw the name of the street I wanted and made the right turn across traffic, only to be on the “Little” street. Accidents occur when a person panics and makes a sudden and surprising turn oftentimes and that was one thing I wanted to avoid. I had to make the next left onto another main street so I could make a right turn onto the one I wanted. Sadly, that next right turn eluded me and I was on my way out of town in the wrong direction, with only the most basic of maps to guide me.