My husband taught my son to sing "I come from a land downunder"
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
I visited Melbourne in July last year so this is basically a review of what I saw and what I thought about it.
Firstly my husband, son and I all went to Melbourne Australia last year to visit family, namely my husbands grandmother and grandfather, who emigrated out to Australia from Wales many many years ago.
The airport ---------------
I actually loved Melbourne airport, you walk down from the plane to emigration (you fill in your visa on the plane) a very nice aussie checks your passport and documents and sends you down the ramp to collect your luggage, you then walk through customs out to the main termial and the exit.
The traffic -------------
What you have to understand about Melbourne is that it's nothing like England, these people live beside highways that are basically four lanes or more. For every right turn on these roads, you have an undertaking lane so that the traffic doesn't get backed up behind the stupid git who wants to turn right at rush hour (not a bad idea). And if you want to go into the centre of Melbourne (where the airport is) you have to pay (like london congestion charge).
The Shops ---------------
I love Melbourne shopping, firstly because you can shop anytime, for example, I am all ready at 11pm on a thursday night to get into my PJ's when Auntie Di (also a welsh come aussie) knocks on the door and asks if Nan and I are ready to go to K-Mart for the sales, into the car we pile and we don't return until 2:30am laden with shopping bags. Also the parking spaces at the shopping malls are huge, no backing into a space drawn round a mini out there people, possibly an army tank was used to measure the space needed for a car to park. The shopping malls over in Melbourne normally have at least 3 floors, and Knox City happens to be my favourite because they not only have a kids play area at the far end (which is free!) but you can take a car shaped trolley to walk around the whole shopping centre with, which keeps the kids entertained. This is also free but you have to hand your driving licence over to customer services in exchange for a token to get the trolley out. they then return your licence when you return the token. Everything is extremely cheap in Australia, and Melbourne love to have sales, I kitted out our boy for the next 3 years whilst we were over there and I didn't pay more than 7 dollars for trousers (about 2.50) which were all billabong and Mango (aussie designer).
The Great Ocean Road --------------------------------
Now after about a week, hubby and I got a bit bored with the shopping (I know a GIRL being bored with SHOPPING!) and we hired a car for a week and set off down the ocean road, we visited the 12 apostles (12 naturally formed pillars in the ocean carved by the sea) there were only 5 left when we visited, which was a few days before one collapsed. This was absolutely awesome, If you don't see beauty in naturally carved objects it's not worth stopping, but for those of you that do, take a good quality camera with decent film, the colours in the rock were amazing, and with the power of the blue sea, the pictures we took were gorgeous.
We also stopped at a water hole that had been carved out by the sea, you could walk down these stairs to a platform to watch the water rushing in from the sea and flowing through the rock to the waterhole. This again was an amazing look at the power of nature.
Macdonalds -----------------
sorry everyone, but maccy D's has to be mentioned. Macdonalds originally comes from Australia so I am told, and unlike the food served over here, Australian Macdonalds is delicious. The Macdonalds over there has the taste of extremely decent meat, and is basically the same price in dollars as it is in pounds. Australian Macdonalds had the milkshake on its menu before britain and even these were delicious in a way that needs to be experienced to be understood. Now I do like macdonalds over here, and do visit occasionally, but Aussie Maccy D's is in a completely different class.
Mount Dandenong -------------------------
We actually visited Mount Dandenong on a cloudy day, so didn't get to see the amazing views that are boasted about on a clear day, we could still see the outline of the city and it was beautiful, but I recommend visiting in summer when the sky is clouless to fully apreciate the view. There is a cafe on the mountain which serves tea, coffee, hot chocolate and a variety of cakes and sandwiches along with various touristy items. Very nice food and drink but quite pricey when compared with other australian cafes (cheap to us though) There are also little walkways behind the cafe with little bridges over streams in a lovely cultivated garden.
Phillip Island ------------------
Penguin island is exactly as it sounds, an island of penguins. These little bundles of fluff hide in holes in the hill side or underneath the man made walkways during the day. We were extremely lucky in that there was a mother with her babies underneath the walkway across from us and we got some lovely photo's of them. There is a cafe and a memorabilia shop here which is always worth a look.
Ramsey Street ---------------------
Yes my family and I were extremely touristy and went to Ramsey Street where they film Neighbours, we stood outside Harold Bishops house and posed, what is a trip to Melbourne without a bit of star spotting, (though we never actually got to see any of the cast because when they are filming, security block off the street!!! Though it was still quite cool to see the houses (though we did feel a bit self concious and ran up to the house, took the photo and scuttled back to the car before anyone saw us).
Parrots ----------
Now nan decided that we had to see the parrots that live in the trees in the forest. as you all know Melbourne is well known for its forest fires, and it was quite eerie driving through the forest to the nature reserve where the parrots lived and being surrounded by charred wood, (the fire had moved so fast that the trees still stood as they were but were completely black) Anyway the Parrots - we pulled into the clearing where cars could be parked and got out. Nan got some bird seed and put it in her hand, the next thing we knew we were surrounded by red parrots, they landed on our heads, arms, anywhere they could reach. They ate the seeds from our hands. We were even privaliged enough to see on eof the rare green parrots in the forest and 3 cockatoos.
The animal Sanctuary ----------------------------
This was an amazing experience for our son Jake, we went to an animal sanctuary to see the kangaroos (you can't go to aus and not see kangaroos). Well as you know over here everything is caged and roped off, not in aus. Firstly after you have paid, you walk through cage after cage of every type of bird imaginable, after the birds, you come to a walkway with a low rope on each side, on the other side of the rope are little joeys (baby kangaroos) now this is the part of the trip that made my sons day. One of the joeys hopped over to us , came under the rope and allowed us to stroke him. They are totally unafraid of humans and extremely soft to touch. After the kangaroos we saw wallabies (again we got to stroke) and all sorts of other animals, then finally at the end of the zoo, just before the exit, we found the Koala bears, we stood and waited until the sanctuary worker came out, who then told us all about Koala's their diet etc.
My Opinion On Melbourne -----------------------------------
Melbourne is one of my favourite places to visit, and if I had the money I would emigrate there as it is a fabulous city. It is extremely clean, with nice people (who insist on calling us Poms) and a decent way of life. There are plenty of things to see and the Great Ocean road (which I didn't do justice to in this review) is well worth seeing. Everything is cheap over there (but you will still need alot of money as its hard not to buy all the bargains), and their food is good quality (check out subways over there aswell, you have a choice of 8 different types of roll along with many different fillings to choose from). For Me, my husband and my son to get to Australia cost us 2200.00 for 3 weeks for our flights (we stayed with family). You can fly with a stop at various different countries that will depend on which airline you fly with.
British airways Singapore Airlines Quantas Malaysian Airlines Emirates
we flew with Emirates who were not the cheapest, but we had a very enjoyable flight, and had tv's built into the back of each chair with a variety of different programmes in different languages. I would certainly recommend visiting Melbourne as it is a once in a lifetime experience, but please remember that you will be travelling for over 24 hours to get their from Britain.
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