Chillin' in Melbourne

The Melbourne Skyline
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Arrived into Melbourne late yesterday after driving up from Apollo Bay on the Great Ocean Road via Geelong. Stayed around 20km outside the city at a place called Deep Creek Reserve – we thought that this was a better option that trying to drive into the city!

Caught a bus the next morning for the city centre. First point of call was the Tourist Information Office based at Federation Square just off Flinders Street. We picked up a handful of leaflets and headed for the Neighbours Tour Office (with a huffing and puffing Lee tagging along behind). Took us ages to walk there as Flinders St is a very long street. Once we arrived at the office we were told that they were fully booked for 3 days – arhh, big disappointment!

Ned Kelly's Death Mask
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From here we took the City Circle Tram which is free and takes a route around the perimeter of the city centre. They run really frequently and have a running commentary on the various sights you can visit.

Decided to head for the Old Melbourne Gaol (pronounced Jail) for a visit. The gaol is now a museum after housing some of Australia's most notorious criminals over the years. This was the place where Ned Kelly was hung on 11^th November 1880 when he was 28 years old. The place also has a spooky array of 'death masks' which as the name suggests are casts taken from criminal's faces after they have died. These were made as the authorities were investigating a connection between the shape of criminals skulls etc to see if this explained the reason for their crimes. It was soon proven that the skulls of both law-abiding people and criminals were the same.

Melbourne Gaol
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From here we walked to Queen Victoria Market on Queen Street which is a huge undercover market selling everything from food to clothes. The food was all in departments with tons of butchers, green grocers, delis etc. Really impressive selection and if you go later in the day they offer big discounts on their fresh produce. We bought some huge pieces of porterhouse streak for a steal.

Our little camper van was due a service today so we took our little 'Toots' down to the garage on the outskirts of Melbourne and headed by foot into the City. We needed Toots looked at as we had a huge thunderstorm with torrential rain last night and she started taking in water – all over me!

The Spot Where Ned Was Hung
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After some lunch we took a walk around the shopping areas of Melbourne and generally browsed to kill some time before we could pick up Toots.

We called the garage just before 4pm and were told that we could collect the van tomorrow. We don't think so! Where would we sleep tonight? Headed to the Autobarn Office, who we hired the van through, and they decided to swap the van for us to a newer (non leaky) one so we spent the next 20mins frantically swapping all of our clothes and junk from one camper to the other – stressed or what! So its goodbye Toots and hello George!