We arrived in Melbourne at around midnight, very tired and slightly hungover from our gin chugging in Cairns airport. Getting into the city was relatively easy. We initially played with the idea of getting a cab but, upon checking Uber and finding a $165 bill waiting for us, decided to reevaluate. The Skybus is a great alternative, especially as Melbourne airport is not serviced by any railways. The bus costs about $20 each and drops you right in the centre of town. We then hopped onto a 24 hour tram which wizzed us out to St. Kilda’s and to our hostel.
By the time we arrived we were deliriously tired and desperate for our beds. We crawled into the top bunks of our completely full dorms and passed out almost instantly. When I awoke the next morning, I found Martin gone. This wasn’t entirely unusual as he definitely needs a lot less sleep than me and he is what is know as ‘a morning person’ *shivers*. I assumed that he had gone for a run and enjoyed a leisurely morning in bed scrolling through social media.
It was quite a wonderful surprise to receive a message summoning me to the kitchen area where Martin was waiting for me with an amazing breakfast. He had stopped off at Woolworths after his run and picked up a feast of avocado, smoked salmon, granary bread and real butter. Drool worthy. This delicious breakfast originally distracted me from the absolute state of the hostel. Unfortunately this didn’t last for long. As my appetite was slowly quenched i started to look around. This hostel could best be described as ‘tired’ and realistically should be described as ‘a sh*thole’.
After our lovely breakfast, and struggling to wash up around everyone else’s dirty washing, which apparently nobody ever felt the need to clear up (sorry, i really hated this hostel, you are gonna hear/read quite a lot on this topic throughout this blog), I tried to have a shower. I say tried because the bathroom had recently been ‘cleaned’. This presumably meant to whichever teenager had been given free board and a mop that was on cleaning duty that morning that you just slosh raw bleach over every surface and generally just run a mop over it, sink and all. There was hair and bleach everywhere, and no hooks to hang your clothes on. Sorry. I’ll stop with the hostel bashing… for now.
We were due to meet our friend Matt in town in the afternoon for a few drinks and a catch-up on life in Australia. That meant that we had about 2 hours to kill. We jumped back on the tram into town and made for the Christmas market at Federation square. Christmas in the summer is still so f*cking weird. This market wasn’t quite what we were used to; it was half traditional Christmas market, half celebration of African culture. The mix made for an interesting experience but it worked and we thoroughly enjoyed exploring the little corner of the city.
We wandered on to find some of Melbourne’s famous graffiti streets. In order to discourage random graffiti and tagging around the city, there are several streets where graffiti is actively encouraged, with artists practically lining up to get the chance to show of their skills. Some of the graffiti was incredible and it shows just how talented some of the artists were that the street was lined with tourists and locals alike.
We started to make our way down to the river to meet Matt. The river is a very trendy area with lots of bars and lots of posers. Knowing what we did about Matt we were half surprised by how hipster the setting was but it was a very cool bar nonetheless so we started our search. Worried we would miss him as he had become a super hipster since moving to Aus, we walked the entire length of the bar (we were also looking for seats, fruitlessly might I add). When we found him, it was clear that he hadn’t changed a bit. He did seem far more relaxed and happy than we had probably ever seen him at home but that was probably due to the lovely hot country and the Saturday vibes.
We spent the entire afternoon drinking schooners and catching up on our prospective fortunes. Obviously Martin and I weren’t looking our best, as evidenced by Matt’s obvious disdain for our new looks (mainly Martin’s hair and beard). In our defence, we hadn’t realised we were going to such a fancy place. Schooners (about 3/5 of a pint) were pricey and setting us back by about $30 a round, we couldn’t believe how expensive stuff could be here. We finished off the evening with a Bunderberg and coke each, as recommended by Matt. Bunderberg, or Bundies as they are sometimes lovingly called, is a rum which can only be described as dirty. Its grim, its strong and its an acquired taste (we had not yet acquired it). Matt left us to go off to a birthday party and we stumbled over to the Southbank in search of junk food.
Martin had arranged for us to meet another member of the IRSE (Institute of Railway Signalling Engineers) for a coffee on Sunday morning to have a chat about life and work in Melbourne and try to get to the bottom of the difference between signalling in the UK and Aus. He took us to a lovely cafe on the docks, which are very reminiscent of London’s Docklands rejuvenation over the last 20 years. Whilst sipping $12 coffees in painfully hipster surroundings, we learnt all about life and work in Melbourne. The rail work is predominantly ‘light rail’ (trams) but there are some big boy trains running around too.
Pes took us on a little tour of the city to show us all the hidden nooks and crannies where we could get some great photos, food, and even ice cream served by robots. We ended our day with him in the Information Centre for the major rail project that is happening in Melbourne at the moment. Apparently Melbourne’s population is projected to grow by ~100% by the year 2050 and the government are preempting this by getting all major infrastructure projects underway now. One thing we really like about Australia is the amount of information available to the public about these major projects. Both here and in Brisbane they have set up these interactive information centres with people from the projects placed in them so the major stakeholders (the public) can be kept informed and up to date. I can’t help but feel that this approach would be useful in the UK, maybe people would be less angry at Crossrail being so delayed if they were allowed to understand more about just what is involved in such a major undertaking.
Our time with Pes was over, he had been an excellent host but, being Sunday, he had some family obligations to fulfil. Before he left us he showed us to an amazing all your can eat vegetarian Indian restaurant where a plate of 3 curries, rice and naan would set us back a measly $7.50 each. We absolutely devoured our food, 2 portions worth whilst we digested what we had learned that day.
Being absolutely shattered by this point (read: hungover) we decided to do the most lazy touristy thing in Melbourne. The free city tourism tram. This is a little old school looking tram which takes you around the free loop of the city and shows you all the major sights with a cute little commentary. We rode round the whole city, trying not to nap, and taking in the history. We eventually jumped off at the Parliament building and spent a few minutes gormlessly watching a few couples having their wedding photos taken on the steps. (This would become a theme of our trip, watching and photobombing other peoples wedding photos.)
PHOTO FROM PARLIAMENT
Thoroughly exhausted from our day of doing very little, we decided to head back to the hostel. We had seen a sign advertising free pizza and, given our tiny budget, we didn’t want to miss out. We set up shop in the dining area, grabbed a beer each and tried not to be too disgusted by the sticky floor and table. At around 5 to 7 the room suddenly got very loud and, looking up, we saw what seemed to be the entire cast and crew of The Avengers gathered in the smallish room. Suddenly, the doors burst open and boxes of Dominoes pizza were chucked on to every table. We instinctively grabbed a slice each of the closest pizza (meat feast, luckily not ham and pineapple because I would have flipped) and then ducked as other hungry scrounges dived over our heads to get to the delicious, free cheesey dough circles (don’t worry, you can use this description if you like, no need to credit me).
Having devoured our free portions, I headed upstairs to use our dorms private bathroom, after 2 flights of stairs i discovered, to my bemusement, that our toilet had been placed out of order. Not knowing where the nearest bathroom was, I popped down to reception for a chat. I was told by an 18 year old who sounded pretty proud of himself that he had put our toilet out of order because it was leaking. “Okay…. where can i got to the toilet then?” I asked, “oh, are there no other toilets on your floor?” Was the reply I received from the person who supposedly works there.
By this point I was getting pretty wound up, we had paid a not insubstantial amount for a dorm with a private bathroom and now i was being left to search the hostel for a place to pee because the staff apparently didn’t realise that a consequence of closing off a bathroom would be the necessity to find a replacement. Add this to the absolute state of the place, the food all over the bedroom floor that would inevitably lead to mice, the bathrooms with no hooks for hanging towels whilst showering, the 2am wake-up call by drunken fools that turned the light on and then fell asleep without turning it off again, the staff that considered cleaning to be sloshing bleach everywhere and the friendly, smiling, useless idiot I was currently dealing with, all combined with my groggy head from the hangover and i snapped.
Well…
We snapped in the most British way possible. With a strongly worded email to head office and a scathing review on Google.
Satisfied with our display of discontent and pretty desperately tired, we headed off to bed. In the morning we woke up to a direct email from the manager of the hostel asking us to come to the office, and a toilet full of piss where several people had used it in the night but, out of respect for the Out Of Order sign, had declined to flush. The smell was far from lush.
We skulked downstairs and ate a quick breakfast whilst we contemplated whether or not we wanted to actually go to the office, now the anger had worn off and we had had a decent nights sleep, we were feeling far less righteous and far more like we had been summoned to see the headmistress. We waited outside of the office for a few minutes and conferred on what we were going to say. (During this time we also encountered the hostel dog who, although adorable, was a serious biter.) We decided that we would take a gentle approach, compliment the dog, say we understood it was tough etc and try not to rock the boat any further. This tactic, of course, went out of the window almost as soon as the manager started speaking due to the fact that her first sentence was “the building is not dirty, it’s just old.”
I was dumbfounded. I had to stop her there. What was worse was that she was a Brit! She genuinely will have spent time in 400 year old buildings that sparkle with perfection and she had the cheek to tell us this rodent infested, barely 100 year old dust pot wasn’t actually dirty!! I had woken up to a piss soaked bathroom and a crumb ridden floor. I was having none of it. After swiftly cutting her off and informing her in far less eloquent words than this that she would not be pulling the wool over our eyes, we were not naive 18 year old backpackers after all. At first she looked shocked, and then defeated. She genuinely asked us what we would do in this situation and honestly, we couldn’t come up with a good answer beyond drastically lower the price so it suits the style, or close the hostel for good.
By the end of the conversation we were back on good terms, it was nice to have some honesty, and even nicer to be upgraded to a private room for the last night of our stay. To add to the kindness, she even refunded us our previous night, something we did not expect and were honestly so grateful for. We took our review down from Google and sent an email back to head office to explain that our complaint had been resolved and then we headed out to the beach for the day.
But first; Dumpling break.
St. Kilda’s beach is Melbourne’s main beach and welcomes visitors from far and wide. We headed down to the shore not expecting much, it was a very windy day and we were feeling kinda lazy. Once we got to the seafront, we walked down the jetty out to sea to take in some of the views. Little did we realise that, in the rocks at the end of the jetty, were a colony of tiny penguins! Usually they spend all day out at sea fishing and hunting but, on this particular occasion, there were a couple who had decided to spend the day as lazily as we felt. They were SO CUTE! Trying to crowd them too much I snapped a few shots and sat to watch as they preened themselves.
Our next stop was Brighton Beach. We honestly did this mostly for the ‘Gram. It was a leisurely 2 hour walk from St. Kilda’s to Brighton (including ice cream stops of course), the whole way along the coast. The reward for our efforts was pretty great, the beach huts there are all painted in spectacular colours and designs and we took our time posing in front of the beach huts.
On a tip-off from our friend, Lydia, who we would be staying with in Sydney, we headed back into town for some dinner. A few buses and trams later, we found ourselves in an even more painfully hipster part of the city than the Southbank. If the Southbank was Shoreditch, we had just landed in Dalston or Hackney Downs. We got a bit lost trying to find our ultimate destination but discovered some absolute gems on the way. We were kind of gutted that we were only learning about this part of the city now. At last we spotted the massively wide Australian trains perched precariously on top of an 8 storey building. We had found what we were looking for, every train nerd/foodies dream: Easey’s.
We have a bit of a wait to be able to eat upstairs in the actual train so we settled down with a pint and had a browse of the menu. Every single dish was capable of clogging your arteries and causing you to die of a delicious, fried food induced heart attack. We absolutely could not wait to get stuck in. When we finally got upstairs (the trains were on the roof of an 8 storey building as I have mentioned) out of breath and starving, we were shown to a table right by the bar, clearly they know us too well. We ordered some disgustingly delicious looking burgers and a side of chips topped with Mac and Cheese, of course.
Being the train nerds that we are, we couldn’t help popping out to the balcony to assess the locos we were sat in from a different angle whilst we waited for our food to arrive. We were pretty shocked (and kind of impressed) by the fact that they had actually lifted the ENTIRE TRAIN including the rails to the top of this ridiculously tall, and apparently hugely weight bearing building. For context, the wheels, the bogey and the rails are all hugely heavy, being made from thick, solid chunks of iron and definitely not necessary to achieve the aesthetic that this bar were going for, usually you would just take the actual train carriage, a nice, light, hollow bit of metal and this would achieve the desired result. These guys went all out and we are genuinely not sure if its through dedication to the ‘bit’ or they just genuinely didn’t realise you could take the wheels off….
After our massive feed, and train nerd tendencies fulfilled for another day, we began the epically long train journey back to our hostel to enjoy our hard earned private room.
Our next day we didn’t really have any plans. We had a train booked in the evening for our journey to Sydney (twice the price of a flight but we figured that, as we would save on a night’s accommodation and travel to and from the airport, we pretty still managed to save a few bucks) but nothing planned for the day time. We had a few errands to run and i desperately needed to stock up on some new clothes, and to scratch the shopping itch that had been building since I had arrived in a country with H&M. By this point a good portion of my clothes had either fallen apart or were just falling off me from the weight I had lost (its amazing what not being able to afford to eat or drink will do to ones metabolism). We explored some more of the city, had an amazing ramen for lunch and then I set Martin down in a coffee shop and popped off to the shops. I have a new found love and appreciation for Target now and i spent way more than was reasonable for someone with zero income.
For the last couple of hours before our train we decided to head to the station to charge up all our goods. We had read online that the trains have no plug sockets and, being 11 hours long, we needed to stock up on juice. Sadly, in the entirety of Melbourne Station, there is not a single public plug socket to be found. There are 3 that you can pay $12 for 30 minutes for but this was absolutely not an option for us. We wandered into every single restaurant and supermarket on the hunt with no joy. Eventually we branched out and found a coffee shop which had 3 sockets, and sat inappropriately close to some other people in order to use them for the last 40 minutes we had. Given the amount of tech we have been lugging around with us, this did not come anywhere close to being enough but it would have to do. I ran off to get some ‘supplies’ for the train, which we learned 5 minutes after I got back that we would not be allowed to consume, and then we were ready to board.
The majority of the journey was uneventful so i won’t bore you with the details. Instead I will finish this post with a quick highlights reel of the journey:
- A man who did not know how to work his Bluetooth headphones and so played his music blaringly loud for a full 25 minutes whilst looking confusedly at his phone, presumably seeing it was on top volume and therefore not understanding why it was so quiet inside the buds.
- The same man repeatedly restarting the same song for a further 5 minutes as if this would solve the problem
- The business woman next to us who nearly wet herself laughing at this poor fool
- The family in front of us who had apparently not even heard of headphones and who watched the weirdest TV
- Bushfire smoke
- Lots and lots of bushfire smoke