Bearbrass, Australia’s favourite city

Melbourne was founded in 1835, 47 years after the European settlement of Australia and was originally called Bearbrass. It was renamed Melbourne in 1837 in honour of William Lamb, 2nd viscount Melbourne and the United Kingdoms Prime Minister. During the gold rush in the 1850’s, it was transformed into one of the world’s largest and wealthiest cities. They must have found the gold then. Melbourne is the capitol of Victoria.

Before the European settlers, the area was occupied by three tribes, Wurundjeri, Boonwurrung and Wathaurong who had settled here up to 40,000 years earlier. Following the gold rush the population increased massively because of migration, mainly from Ireland and China whilst the indigenous population collapsed from about 20,000 to less than 800 mainly due to the introduction of smallpox. By the 1880’s Melbourne became the richest city in the world and the second largest, next to London in the British Empire. By the 1990’s Melbourne was in freefall when the Australian economic depression culminated in 1993 with the Australian banking crisis. Not much change there then, with all this boom and bust the world over. Sydney overtook Melbourne in the 1930’s in size but Melbourne built the biggest tram network in the world.

The Australian Dollar is the currency all over Australia and when I bought mine it was probably the lowest exchange rate in history at 1.78AUD per pound. When I first joined the exchange website you got 2.31 per pound which soon became 2 to 1 and it hasn’t stopped dropping since. I guess it won’t be long before it overtakes the US Dollar.

There is a large China Town in Melbourne where the main industry is, yes you guessed it, food.

We set off from the Parrot at about 8pm in a regular taxi with a meter; very cheap, only 72000Rupias (£4.60). Maybe we should have taken more taxis? It went fairly smoothly at the airport except that we had to pay another 150,000 Rupias each to leave the country; what a rip off, $US50 on the way in and £20 on the way out. I had only just drawn out half a million Rupias at the airport and now only had 200,000 left. As we were walking through into the final check where the gates and duty free areas are, we were offered to go into an executive lounge for our gate. They wanted 100,000 Rupias each but said that all your drinks and food was free; also you didn’t have to go into the gate until they were actually boarding which cuts out about 45 minutes. I had exactly the money they wanted for the two of us and thought, how much could you buy for 200,000 Rupias in an international airport? I’m really pleased that we went for it as it was so much better than sitting in the normal areas and Claire could drink wine to her hearts content; I did have a couple of beers myself. You could help yourself to peanuts, cookies, mini burgers, fried rice and noodles etc. to your hearts content. I think we got our £12.70’s worth.

We got very little sleep and found the skybus easily into Melbourne then transferred to the train station where I got a ticket to Berwick where we were met by Jeremy, a white chef with dreadlocks and is lodging in Arlene’s house. He was very nice and explained the way back to the house as we went and where places of interest were. We got back, unpacked and had a cup of coffee. Jeremy explained to me how to fill the car up with petrol and gas as it was empty in both. The car has been converted to run on LPG so there is a separate filler cap next to the original one. When it was time for Jeremy to go into Berwick to start his days work as a chef, we gave him a lift in so he could come wit us to the petrol station and be with me when I filled up for the first time. No problems, we dropped him off and drove off to look for lunch. We ate at Moods which was very nice, with huge portions but seemed to me very expensive; I hope there are some cheaper places around otherwise we wont get out much. We even found an Aldi and Woolworth’s where we stocked up with supplies and headed off home. I couldn’t get my new satnav to work but Claire, somehow remembered roughly where we lived and we found it eventually. I opened the remote garage door and drove in, stopped the engine and examined the damned satnav. Pressed two buttons and it said,” You have reached your destination” in a very annoying Australian accent.