My Trip To Australia, New Zealand and Asia

Saw the Wallabies

Location: Melbourne
Weather: Raining still

Saw 4 members of the Wallabies (the Australian Rugby team) in Federation Square and got their autographs! dunno who they were though...they were there to advertise their next match...which I decided to go and see...the Wallabies vs Scotland at the Telstra Dome! how quality, eh! probably my two least favourite sporting nations possible! Yes, yes, one of those amateur contests really, way, way out of the league of a match that would involve the far superior and World Cup Winners - England!. 20-17! 20-17! 20-17! RAA RAA RAA! (to any Australians about)
Anyways it was quite enjoyable to watch and it wasn't a bad match, although Scotland just had no answer to the Aussie defence. They need some serious work on their tactics, which seemed well out of date to me. The 35-15 scoreline doesn't illustrate how well Scotland played.

By JamesReed on 14.06.04 @ 11:23 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]

Went to Melbourne Museum, Some Rugby and errmm...

Location: Melbourne
Weather: Raining

Well after several days of getting up very late and doing nothing much except eat, I decided to try something positive and visited the Melbourne Museum - just about the only thing I haven't seen in Melbourne yet. It was pretty good, they had the original Neighbours kitchen from Jim Robinson's house!
Also a big blue whale skeleton, hundreds of stuffed animals/birds and the oldest computer in Australia!

Other than that I haven't done anything much, except buy the Da Vinci Code, have the odd late night at the hostel and errm consider finding a job.

By JamesReed on 11.06.04 @ 11:09 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]

Saw the Olympic Flame

Location: Melbourne
Weather: still holding out

On Saturday we saw the Olympic Flame being carried through the streets and down the river by the Olympic rowing team and the lighting of caldron in Federation Square. Also saw Elfie(famous Greek Aussie chat-show host) and Cathy Freeman there! Almost made up for not going to the Athens Olympics...NOT!

Then went to see an AFL game - the Richmond Tigers vs the North Melbourne Kangaroos at the Telstra Dome. The Tigers played well until half-time when they totally folded and the Kangaroos thrashed them scoring more than twice as many goals - 154:80. Lots of lively shouting and stuff though.

Stayed in the Melbourne suburb of Rosanna over the weekend at Dan and Jezza's place - friends of Sue and Jason. Ben and I hanged out around Rosanna a bit, saw an amateur game AFL game and went to a party at Dan's sister's house. Then on Monday Ben had to go back to England - - oh well it was a good time while it lasted! Sue,Jason and me went to the airport to see him off - as we left Jason spotted Zeljko Kalac - the Australian football team's goal keeper and got his photo!

By JamesReed on 06.06.04 @ 06:17 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]

Great Ocean Road

Location: Melbourne
Weather: Wow there's a bit of sun now

After staying a night in the All Nations Backpackers - not a bad place - except for the dim light in the room, we rented a car for 2 days and embarked on a drive down the famous Great Ocean Road.
Got to Geelong first and stopped to buy some food. Most co-incidentally we noticed there was a sign in the mall that some true superstars - the Aussie equivalent to Boyzone - Human Nature - were appearing there. So we hanged around and got their autograph! My signed copy of Lonely Planet Australia is now priceless! and so what if we were the only adult males in the queue!

Moving on from Geelong we stayed the night in a caravan park and had some very good fish n'chips in Torquay - a surf capital apparently. The waves at night and in the morning, along with the surfers did look pretty amazing.

Next day we continued our road trip. All the way Past Anglesea to Lorne, where we stopped for lunch then on to Apollo Bay. As well as taking in the quite incredible surf and coastline, we also visited a couple of lighthouses - Airseys Inlet and Cape Otway.

Leaving the coastline we then travelled through the winding, hilly roads and very pleasant English and New Zealand style countryside to eventually get to the Gibson Steps.
And finally our main destination - the Twelve Apostles - several rock towers sitting the sea! we got there just as the sun was going down so it was a pretty good view.

As it was dark by now we just headed to Port Campbell, then back along the A1 and then the M1 back to Melbourne. OK, so I did about 12 hours driving that day, but it didn't seem like it!


By JamesReed on 05.06.04 @ 06:13 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]

Back to Albury - first work for how long...

Location: Melbourne
Weather: Still not raining

After taking the 12 hour train trip from Byron to Sydney and staying a night there we headed back to Albury to meet up with Sue and Jason again. Got there just in time for Ben's birthday on the 30th, well actually on the 30th. Went out on the town a couple of nights running.
Also did my first bit of "work" for a while - I updated the webpage of Albury Backpackers for Dave - the owner and he gave me a free night's accomodation, a t-shirt and bought me lunch!

We then headed to Melbourne central.

By JamesReed on 02.06.04 @ 06:01 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]