Melborne: 7 March - 12 March

I flew from Sydney to Melbourne on a short hour and a half flight. I was really looking forward to staying in "Marvelous Melbourne" as it is the second largest city of Australia and is supposed to be in a very competitive psyche with her older and larger sister city of Sydney.

Melbourne is much cooler than Sydney. During the day it is quite warm if the sun is out but on the day of my arrival, it was overcast and quite chilly. Now this weather and plant life reminds me a lot of the San Francisco Bay Area minus the mountains and many hills we have there. Melbourne and the surrounding area just seems quite flat and spread out with farming plots. Actually, i visited a small local exihit on the history of Melbourne and the lady said that Melbourne has the third most extensive suburban sprawl behind Mexico City and Los Angeles. I'm not sure of that but she is a local so she may know more than me. I just would not expect that from a city of only 3.5 million as compared to the many larger cities like NYC, London, Tokoyo, for example.


Well, being the architect nerd i am, really my only reason for coming to Melbourne was to see Federation Square. And it was so worth it. This is basically a media complex and exhibition space with a couple bars and restaurants and then there is a large open plaza in the center with a huge LCD screen continually playing film shorts. Embarrassingly, though, i actually don't recall the architects who designed this but i know they are awesome. This photo is actually not even the that telling of the entire space but it gives a good view of the outside.



The other great reason to visit Melbourne is to take the trip down to Phillip Island to see the Penguin Parade. This was a day tour where we stopped at a winery to get a little buzz going on, then to an Australian animals [no]petting zoo (man, i'm so bored of looking at captive koalas and kangaroos), a stop for some pretty good pizza, and then to Phillip Island. At least at the petting zoo i did get to finally see live Tasmanian Devils. This is a photo of me at Woolamai Beach. I think it is on the east side of the island.




These are refered to as The Nobbies at the western end of Phillip Island. Very nice but very windy and chilly.


The Penguin Parade happens close to here. Basically, we waited until after dusk to watch all these little penguins emerge from the ocean in the dozens at a time onto the beach. They would wait to make sure things were safe and then wobble up the beach into the beach dunes and grasses to burrow and mate. The penguins were so cute. I expected them to be larger, though. These ones were about the size of the seagulls on the beach.


I've been in Melbourne now for 5 nights and i still haven't come to find why it is so marvelous. It does have a fresher spirit and a younger population than Sydney, i guess, as it has many newer modern buildings with bouts of experimentalism and flamboyance.