Kiwi Roaming

January in Melbourne has been fun. We’ve spent the majority of our time on domestic duties, cooking, cleaning, feeding our beautiful baby and local shopping etc etc. But we’ve also spent some time out and about too by walking or the train or occasionally renting a car. I will write a blog about the Australian Open Tennis which we have really enjoyed as well.

Northern Victoria visiting – Steve’s sister farm is north of Shepparton in Northern Victoria, they could see the wild fires about 10km away from their house earlier in the month and were preparing to evacuate when firefighters got them under control (to give you an idea of where they are located). It’s very isolated and dry (oh so dry) up there but beautiful at the same time.

We hired a car to drive up the Hume Highway for a visit. The roads are straight with hardly any bends or turns, Steve would joke when we were coming up to a bend that I needed to mentally prepare myself for turning the steering wheel slightly – that said there are pot holes to avoid constantly along the 110km speed limit roads.

It was 35 degrees in the shade the day we were there when Melbourne was 23 and we understand this kind of difference in temperature is fairly normal. We stopped in Shepparton for supplies, it’s a very spread out town with new subdivisions on all sides, lots and lots of schools and a cycle path that runs alongside the highway into town. Then spent a lovely day learning about how challenging it is to grow vegetables, crops and run stock in this kind of heat. Interesting countryside with all of the challenges Australia brings – snakes, spiders, water limitations, birds and other insects.

New Metro stations – public transport in Victoria is free in January during the weekends while they onboard new metro stations into the model, there are 5 in all and they have created a station passport so people can get stamps when they visit one. Steve and I wanted to go walking in Albert Park and see the F1 track so we took the train and changed to Adern Station (short walk) to take the new metro to Anzac beside the park. The queues for passport stamps at Adern and Anzac must have been an hour long. The stations themselves are pretty similar to the new Elizabeth Line stations in London, massive, wide platforms, lots of space to wait for your train and great looking facilities.

Albert Park is massive and right there in the heart of Melbourne, we’ve walked along sides before but not into the park. It was windy that day – like Wellington wind – and 30+ degrees so not ideal but the wind took the heat out of the sun so not too unpleasant. We walked around the pond (lake) to the F1 circuit and walked down pitlane, around some of the track but found the tarmac just too hot so wandered alongside the many many cricket ovals instead in the shade before finding a pub near a tram stop. Lovely day out.

Street Art – one of the best things about Melbourne is the ever changing street art. We love the wee laneways with designer graffiti, the random murals on the sides of buildings, garages and walls. There is also graffiti galore to see while on the train with the whole train corridor painted it seems. We met Ben for lunch one day and checked out some laneways in the City including ACDC lane.