Flight and Contemplation

Again, we’re just amazed at the Qantas service. This is a short flight – 435 miles, about an hour and a half. They came by with “morning tea” – a piece of fruitcake (yup, that’s what it was!) and coffee or tea. There were complimentary headsets and TV screens; mostly it was the morning news, but still – it was way more than you get from US Airways any more. Arrived at Sydney’s airport, the car was waiting and off we went to our hotel.

The flight over had an amazing sight – the huge bush fires that have resulted in 170+ deaths as of tonight – you could see the smoke and the orange tinge that was undoubtedly from the flames. It went a full 20 minutes into the flight.

The news coverage here is pretty remarkable; it’s hard to imagine that type of devastation on that scale. Whole families, who had been told to shelter in their houses as there was no reason to leave, have burned to death. The count is now expected to top 300 people died.

Alternatively, many of those that have tried to run have been overtaken by the fires and burned in their cars. The ones who have survived as the fire overtakes them seem to be the ones that bonded together in public buildings like city halls or fire stations and such. Even then, they’ve sometimes not made it and many had no protection whatsoever as their fire services (many volunteers – remember this is a fairly rural area) had already been sent other places to fight the fires.

Out of Melbourne

Well, time to move on. We’d made peace with the fact that we were going to miss out on some of what Australia has to offer – specifically we wouldn’t see the Great Barrier Reef or the rainforest. Thus, probably not a live Koala outside of a zoo or preserve, either. Such is life.

This morning we were up early and our ride was there right at 7:30 as promised. Security was a breeze, although there was a slight hangup on our ticket changes. The lady at the desk we were sent to (Dorothy, with Qantas) was excellent – so pleasant and nice, like everyone with that airline has been.

We got through security and grabbed some breakfast – typical airport food, except with better coffee. We noticed that there are whole FLOCKS of sparrows in the Melbourne airport – they’ve apparently scoped out where the food is and how to survive there, because they were pretty aggressive about attacking the plates and wrappers left behind. They kept sitting on the table next to us looking over, like they were going, “You gonna finish that? ‘Cause I want it if you ain’t”.

We noticed that there were the little bird spikes over the arrival departure screens. They didn’t work entirely, though, because the birds had done a bit of their own paint job on the backsides. There’s a computer maintenance issue that normally isn’t considered, I’d bet!

This is the only Kangaroo we’ve seen in a while. It’s not a bad one, though.

Whew....Now In Sydney

Details later...but we arrived in Sydney. Got to our hotel. It sucked. I straight away (don't I sound aussie) got on the internet and found a new hotel. We then schlepped our bags the 10 minute to the Marriott. We are on the 26th floor......and voila.....right out our window is the opera house. More later.....gotta go wipe the sweat off. Draggin 50 lb bags along the sidewalk makes middle aged men sweat significantly.

The first pic is from the window of the hotel we rejected. The 2nd pic (the better one) is of the opera house from our current hotel....the Marriott.

Bye Bye Melbourne

It's 7:12 am on Tuesday morning. We are leaving for the airport at 7:30 am. Flight to Sydney is 10:00 am. More from the land of the Opera House. Latta.

St. Patrick's Cathedral

We went looking for St. Patrick’s Cathedral on our last day in Melbourne. This is as impressive as any of the churches in Rome. Maybe not as old, but seems as BIG. Inside is beautiful, with all kinds of alcoves and spaces off the main sanctuary.

I tried to take a video; someone was playing this enormous pipe organ and I thought there might be some good snippets. Then after a bit I realized that it wasn’t Gregorian chant, but was instead simply someone tuning the organ. Thus, the same note over and over and over. Doesn’t make for especially good audio or video though, and EB took some great pics anyhow.

Collins Street

As much as Fitzroy is Haight-Ashbury, Collins street is 5th Avenue in NYC. Big high end shops, lots of suits. When we were on the historic trolley in the heat, it talked about an opal display at a museum. After the third time of trying to find it we finally gave up – it always turned out to be some type of storefront that was just selling schlock. It happened to be lunchtime when we were going through there – lots of suits – so we didn’t stop for anything but headed on back to the hotel for an afternoon nap.

It’s very cool and windy here today – almost like spring – as hot as it was Saturday, it’s equally as cool today and hoodies are necessary to ward off the chill. Between that and the wind, there’s not a lot of outdoor dining going on!

Fitzroy

We went to the Fitzroy district this morning (on Brunswick Street). Like San Francisco, there are very distinctive neighborhoods in Melbourne, and each one is a bit different. I can see how you would easily spend several weeks here and not be able to have a good feel for the City.

Fitzroy is the funky part of town – it feels a great deal like the Haight-Ashbury part of San Francisco in that there are lots and lots and LOTS of little offbeat shops. I don’t think we saw anything that was part of a chain while we were there.

Our contribution to the economy was made at the Atomica Coffeehouse. Very old building that obviously has been a coffeehouse for a long time. Regulars (? Apparently) were somewhat comfortable going behind the counter to get or leave things. Our contribution to the local economy consisted of two coffees and two muffins. Then we caught the trolley back toward downtown.