Melbourne, Australia, Australia

This last week involved a few more sightseeing trips around Melbourne that I hadn’t gotten to yet. I was planning on having a job by this point, but it turns out that jobs (mainly testing contracts) are not as easy to find in Melbourne as I anticipated. Although there are some contracts available that would suit me perfectly, most companies will not hire anyone on my working holiday visa. It’s pretty annoying because I’ve paid for this visa with the thought that I would be able to get a contract to experience the working environment in Oz, but it looks like that won’t happen.

I figured that since I am here and not working, I might as well get out and see some sights. I headed over to the Botanic Gardens, which are absolutely massive! I made my way over to the ANZAC (Australia-New Zealand Army Corps) Shrine of Remebrance. This is a pretty good size building in the middle of the park with an eternal flame and other ways to remember the lives lost for the freedom of Australia.

A few days later, the weather was finally nice enough to go on the Yarra river cruise that I’ve been wanting to go on for ages. Unfortunately, the cruise didn’t live up to the hype in my head. We first went down the west side of the river, where it was only industrial buildings and freight ships. I thought we were going to continue further down the river to see something else, but no, that was it. We turned back and went up the east side of the river and surprisingly, there wasn’t much to see up that way either. We passed the Botanic Gardens and the pretty impressive looking AAMI Arena. We got up to Herring Island, which is peppered with some statues and other artsy things, but we weren’t able to take a walk around. We turned right back around and returned to the dock to finish our trip. I’m glad we got tickets two-for-one because it wouldn’t have been worth $29 each, but for $15, it wasn’t a bad way to spend an afternoon.

A few days later we had another nice day in Melbourne and Lisa and I decided to check out the Melbourne zoo. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise that this was the beginning of school holidays, which meant there were 3,426,391 kids there. It was first noticeable on the tram ride up to the zoo, which was full of kids, and then we saw the mile-long queue to get in, and that cemented that today wasn’t going to be as relaxing as I was hoping.

The crowds weren’t really as bad as I thought they were going to be though. There were a few points where I thought I was going to go postal, but for the main part it was okay. We got to see a lot of native animals to Australia, and some that I’d never seen before. The platypus was a very cool thing to see, but the people at the exhibit were far too annoying to stick around for long. The highlight of the day was getting to see the baby elephants playing in the pool with their parents and the trainers. This turned out to be a really good day and well worth the money spent to get in.

Now I think I have to really concentrate on getting a temp job, because I have done pretty much everything I want to do in Melbourne, and I have a lot of free time before I move on to Asia. Something will have to keep me busy!