Victoria and beyond

You will recall that we were headed for Melbourne. Here we were to stay with Barbara's ex-University flat-mate Heather. Heather, husband Alex and fifteen month old son Euan were all at a party in Geelong with some friends, watching the big Aussie Rules football final, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (even though Melbourne dropped out of the competition early on, and the final was between Sydney and Western Australia. Don't ask me about sport - it's not my thing at all). The upshot of this was that we didn't need to be at their place until after eight in the evening, and we did need to get ourselves some food before we turned up.

Something that I had forgotten, even though I've been here before, is that Australia is very big. It takes a long, long time to drive between the various cities. From Penola, we headed East to Hamilton, where we stopped for a leg stretch, then on to Ballarat, where we had another quick look around. Most of Ballarat seemed to be closed, no doubt because everyone was watching the footy.

OK, I lied a bit about the sport thing. But only a bit. Aussie rules (or no rules) football, was apparently devised as an off-season training regime for cricket players. If that's the case, then they used to make them harder in those days. It's played on a pitch the same size as a cricket oval, which is to say big. The ball is the same shape as a rugby ball, which is to say not round, and you can't run more than a few paces with it before either having to bounce it on the ground, kick it or pass it to someone else. Even passing the ball is unusual. You don't throw it like a Christian, but hold it in the palm of one hand and hit it sharply with the other, knocking it sharply away - sometimes surprisingly long distances. To cap it all, they don't have netted goals, like football, or tall posts with a single crossbar like rugby. Instead at each end of the oval they have four posts - two shortish ones on the outside and two long ones in the middle. Don't ask me why, it's just the way they decided to do things. And the weekend we approached Melbourne was the Christmas and Easter of the Aussie rules football church rolled into one. So it was surprising we saw anyone at all.

So on to Melbourne. Heather and Alex (pre-Euan) used to live on the edge of the city centre - we visited them about eighteen months ago when Barbara was travelling around Oz on a scholarship (looking at sheep). Back then, Heather was a round thing unable to drink, and so available to drive the rest of us to wineries, breweries and other alcoholic destinations (happy days). This time I had to do the driving.

For lack of any better inspiration, we went to Brunswick Street, just around the corner from where they used to live, parked the car and strolled around places we had visited just eighteen months earlier, but which felt like they were childhood memories, each confirmed or denied with a sort of wondrous excitement (well, maybe not). All the cafes and bars were showing the footie, and every so often a loud roar or groan would echo up and down the street. When I first came to Aberdeen - many, many years ago - it was close to the city's Pittodrie football stadium that I chose to live. Not for any love of the so called 'beautiful' game, I hasten to add. More for its proximity to lecture halls and pubs. I still recall being woken on Saturday afternoons, sore of head and usually alone, by the roar of jubilant Aberdonians celebrating their wins (it was a long, long time ago). Aberdeen had nothing on Melbourne. The noise was probably audible back in Adelaide.

It soon dawned on us that Melbourne was both full of Aussie rules football supporters hogging all the seats and waitresses in all the bars, restaurants and cafes, and also an hour's drive from our eventual destination. Heather and Alex actually bought their new house out in the Dandenong ranges whilst we were with them the last time; now they had moved. Belgrave is a good Melbourne suburb, but like most of the city it is a fair sprawl away from the centre. We had directions to the house, but experience told me that getting there in daylight would be the best idea. Once we had located it, we could find food in the hinterland, where the game played by blokes with odd-shaped balls was less of a distraction. So we headed out of town and into the hills.

Melbourne goes on and on. It's quite a big city - several millions, though not in the same league as Bangkok - but it spreads itself around Port Philip Bay and out towards the surrounding hills like some vast, malignant fungus. Australians view the world slightly different from the British, but there are suburbs of Melbourne that claim to be cities in their own right. Driving out to the East it just seems to go on an on. Eventually though you get to the hills and the houses at least start to be in decent sized plots rather than cheek by jowl.

We found the house, up an indecently steep hill and surrounded by eucalyptus forest (stringy-bark trees, apparently). As expected, our hosts were still out, so we bravely walked into the town in search of victuals. Unsure of what was what, we dithered awhile outside several possible eateries before noticing a sign advertising Micawbers Tavern, just a short walk out of town. OK, so an English, even Olde-English theme pub should be anathema. I should run screaming from the sign, let alone the pub itself. But we were tired, hungry, thirsty and the only other decent watering hole in town was busy sound-checking the local talent spot evening. We decided to go with the predictable and headed out of the streetlamp lit civilisation into the darkness.

A short walk turned into a much longer walk than anticipated, tripping over roots and other more slippery unidentified things in the darkness. Some enterprising transport engineer had decided that the walkway (I won't dignify it with the word 'pavement') would be safer away from the road, dipping and climbing in parallel rollercoaster until finally giving up the ghost some distance from our destination. We braved the hurtling traffic and made it to the pub eventually. Inside they were busy sound-checking the local talent spot evening, and someone had booked the entire restaurant for a party. It didn't look good.

The pub was a celebration of all that is England. Or more accurately all that was England a hundred and fifty years ago. Perhaps the only redeeming feature of the place was that it sold beer in good old-fashioned pints. None of these confusing pots or schooners here. And eventually we managed to persuade them to let us eat in the bar. When the food came, it was in quantities far beyond the dreams of gluttony (and well beyond even my ability to overindulge). I did my best, but even with elasticated trousers I was never going to finish it all. Barbara didn't even try.

Supper over, and the first in an endless stream of bathroom mirror hopefuls beginning the inevitable torture of the classics, we faced the walk back to Heather's place. Having made the outward trip in the dark, the first part was not too strenuous. The hill, however, was something else. I'm quite fit (though not as fit as I was). I climbed Ben Klibreck not that long ago. But even I was sweating hoggedly by the time we had reached the halfway point. Barbara was looking slightly green, though that might have been the street lights. Eventually we made it to the house and stood, gasping, at the door, trying to catch our breath and stop sweating before announcing our arrival. Heather, however, had heard our approach and opened the door to our gasping. At least she had the decency to be impressed - she and Alex had long since given up climbing the hill and taken to driving whenever they needed to go to town, despite it being only half a mile away.

We spent two whole days with Heather and Euan, one with Alex (he had to go to Queensland for a conference - ah, the sciencey types - and left at four o'clock on the Monday morning). I won't bore you with most of the details but we were introduced to some of the local wildlife. One of the things I love about Australia is that, where in Wales (and the rest of the UK) we have crows and magpies, sparrows and pigeons, out here they have Parakeets, Rosellas, Crested Doves, Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and Kookaburras. They have a few ravens, but even the crows (or crow equivalents) are black and white and far more interesting than our roadkill scavengers. The pigeons have these natty little Superman quiffs that make them look just dandy.

I got very excited about seeing a Kookaburra sitting (in an old gum tree) on the side of the road just outside Penola, but Alex was unmoved by such ornithology. Taking a genuine locally-produced beef snag (sausage) he led me out into the garden. Almost before we had stepped outside, a Kookaburra had flown in from the surrounding forest. When Alex started squeezing beef patty from the snag, the bird flew down towards us, landing on the barbecue lid and taking the proffered meet before flying off to the play-swing. Here it battered its prize in its beak on the metal strut a couple of times, as if it were a wichiti grub needing killed, then swallowed it down before flying back for more. By this time a couple of its friends had come to join the party and we spent a happy ten minutes feeding the beasts until the snag was finished.

Later that evening, as we sat about talking toot and drinking martinis, there was a terrible rattling and banging on the roof. Another trip outside revealed several Possums helping themselves to the rotten fruit Heather had put into bird feeders in the garden. I was only disappointed not to see Wombats and Kangaroo. On the other hand, when the Kookaburras started up their laughing at about five in the morning, I wasn't quite so enchanted.

Next time: Why Canberra?

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