Melbourne & The Great Ocean Road

Last weekend I took an amazing 4-day trip to Melbourne. Melbourne is Australia’s second-largest city and is located on the southern coast in Victoria. It is known for some of the country’s best art, music, food, fashion, and coffee.

My roommate and I booked a hostel for the weekend and there were also four other girls (2 girls from U of I and 2 of their friends) going to Melbourne that same weekend- we were all on the same flight there but stayed in different hostels since ours was full when they tried to book it. So, the 6 of us flew out of Brisbane Thursday evening and arrived in Melbourne at about 10:00 that night. We all got a huge kick our of the fact that they didn’t ask for our IDs once at the airport, only asked for our boarding passes once when we were entering the gate, and did not have the crazy liquid restrictions. It made getting through security and to our gate almost too easy, I guess that’s what the olden days were like in the states, which I must have been too young to remember.

Our hostel was located in St. Kilda, which is the city’s most famous seaside suburb. By the time we got to St. Kilda it was close to 11pm and we were starving. We stopped at a street side Italian restaurant and ordered the most delicious pasta I have had since I’ve been in Australia.

This was very exciting for us since we have been very frugal with food since we’ve been here- I pack my lunch everyday when I go to campus so I don’t have to spend money on food and we cook dinner at the apartment every night. Having delcious food (especially Italian, my favorite) was a great treat to start the weekend off.

We then wandered over to our hostel, where the adventure really began. Our hostel was full of young backpackers (every traveler here is called a “backpacker”) and 20-something year olds from all over the world who are on one-year work and holiday visas and have been “living” at this hostel for months. As soon as we enter our 6 person room, it is obvious that our roommates had been living there a while...We got a huge kick out of this, amazed that people could live in these conditions for so long, and thankful that we were only there temporarily and had a nice apartment waiting for us back in Brisbane at the end of the weekend.Throughout the weekend we spent some time talking with our roommates, who were from Belgium, Canada, and Germany.

They were all in their mid 20s, traveling all over the country for about a year, spending a few months at a time in different cities, working random bartending and restaurant jobs. This really opened our eyes to the amount of people who are traveling all over the country, living out of hostels and working random jobs, and started us thinking about the possibility of being one of them after we graduate next year.The next morning we woke up early and I had my first taste of delicious Melbourne coffee, which was the best coffee I have had in my life. We headed to the Queen Victoria Market, one of the largest open-air markets in the southern hemisphere. The market has been around for over 125 years and has everything from fresh fruits and vegetables to handmade shoes and jewelry. We spent hours there, browsing around for souvenirs and gifts.

Since it was a Friday morning it wasn’t too crowded and we were able to take our time browsing through and stopping wherever we wanted. We spent the rest of the day wandering around the city. We stopped for a delicious lunch at a street-side café and people-watched for a while.

It felt very liberating being able to walk wherever we felt like around the city, no matter what street we turned down we found beautiful sites, interesting people to watch, and cute stores to stop in. That night we ate dinner at a BBQ that our hostel hosted on the rooftop of our building. We met some friendly and interesting people, who we ended up going out with to a bar that night for a few hours. We called it a pretty early night since we had to get up very early the next morning for our Great Ocean Road Tour.

The Great Ocean Road is the country’s most famous stretch of road, running for about 150 miles along the beautiful coast.

We were picked up by our small tour bus (15ish people) at 7am and began the drive. We drove on the Princess Highway to the city of Geelong, through Torquay, the famous Bells Beach Surf, and then on to the Great Ocean Road.

Along the Road we made many stops- at lookout points and also spots where we could actually walk down to the sand and water.

We also made a stop at the Split Point lighthouse, which was very beautiful and also apparently the filming location of some old famous TV show about a single dad raising his kids in a lighthouse..?

We also stopped for a picnic lunch where we saw Koalas sleeping in the trees. We then took a short hike through the rainforest, with the biggest trees I have ever seen in my life. We headed back down the road and made a long stop at the famous rock formation known as the Twelve Apostles.I realize that wasn’t a great description of the tour, it was honestly indescribable so hopefully the pictures will speak for themselves- they were some of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. It was definitely a day that I will remember for the rest of my life, it was worth every penny and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

The next day was Sunday and we woke up early, sat down at an adorable café for breakfast, and then headed to Brunswick Street. Brunswick Street is on the border of the Central Business District and is full of quirky boutiques, bars and cafes.

After only a little bit of walking around it began to rain, so we escaped into a coffee shop where we were able to relax a little while reading the paper and catching up on earthquake news in Japan. Since we have limited internet and basically no TV here, it is very easy to get disconnected from the outside world, so being forced to sit down for a bit and read the paper was nice.

On Monday we were able so spend the beginning of a beautiful bay in St. Kilda before our afternoon flight.

We relaxed on the pier for a bit, and then rented bikes for about an hour and rode around the area. We even made it to the Botanic Gardens, which were relaxing and beautiful.

After my first big trip since I have been in Australia, I am even more confident in the fact that this country is the most amazing place on earth. I have been enjoying Brisbane so much that I guess I kind of figured that there was no way that I could feel the same way about Melbourne. I was extremely impressed with the beauty, character, and excitement of the city and I would definitely love to go back there one day. That day probably wont come for a while though, so in the mean time I am heading about an hour away from Brisbane to Stradbroke Island in Moreton Bay this weekend on a field trip withone of my classes and I’m sure that will be a memorable experience that I can tell you all about as well.