Especially For You

What a stadium!

Good bye Melbourne and thanks for having me!

After 8 days in this amazing city it is time for me to head on, after all how pointless would travelling be if I never travelled. I am catching a 12 hour overnight coach ride up to see my cousin and her family in Batemans Bay, south of Sydney.

Melbourne is a bloody wicked city, there is so much to do here, yet it is SO expensive. It is by far the most expensive city that I have been to on my travels yet. The budget (like England vs Norway in 1981) has taken one HELL of a beating.

Having said all of that I have had such a good time. Melbourne is the first place (apart from Texas - but that is taken as read) that I will definitely be back during my life time. The reason for this is that my life will never be complete until I see England play Australia in the Ashes at the MCG.

The 'long room' at the MCG. They admit they copied the
idea from Lords!

So why do I love the MCG so much? Well I 'did' the MCG tour and visited the national museum of sport. Excellent! The MCG tour was really good as it focused a lot on cricket. I got a chance to walk on the hallowed turf of the MCG, saw where the players sit when a game is on, saw where the Aussies cry in the changing rooms when they have lost the Ashes and looked around a lot of the 'members only' areas of the ground. We were shown around by one of the members of the MCG. Was really informative. I also visited the National Museum of Sport as part of my ticket price. That too, was great. They had a really big section on the Olympics as well as a the Cricket hall of fame. I saw loads there too, but they didn't allow photography which was a little bit of a shame. Still I got to see Don Bradmans green baggy hat (if you know about cricket, you know that this is a pretty cool thing to see).

Staged photo? Don't be silly.

One of my days here I walked down to the river-front and to the exhibition center. There was a 'games-master' computer games show on. Naturally I had to go in to have a look around as it was advertised as having over 150+ playable games - my kind of show! What a joke! It is the school holidays here an as such all there were was kids running around playing on games and not appreciating them. I know I sound like a old man, but until a kid can tell my who the best character was to use on multi-player Goldeneye then you have no right to annoy me at a computer games show. Which conveniently brings me on to my next subject. I don't know who decided what should and should not be included in the show but they obviously had lost their presence of mind when given that job. It is commonly regarded that Goldeneye on the N64 changed the face of modern gaming and specifically the multi-player aspect of gaming - SO WHY WAS IT NOT ON DISPLAY AT THE SHOW! There was no Doom, no Quake - it was a joke. Too expensive and piss poor games. I did watch a documentary on Monkey Island and Sim City, so wasn't a whole day wasted!

Yes she is short, Yes she is a minor celebrity
but she defo wanted me!

From one geeky thing to another (although even most geeks might consider what I did next sad). I went on the official Neighbours tour. It was a lot of fun actually. The tour guide was a crazy Irish-man who really didn't take the show seriously (how can you really?). We were told that as we entered the fictional Melbourne suburb of Erinsborough that we didn't have to worry. Because if the coach crashes then only one of us would be in intensive care - and that would only be for two weeks. Nothing ever bad really happens in Erinsborough. As it was school holidays we went on the sets as well, which was a added bonus - finally the school holidays work in my favour over here. I met the actress who played Libby Kennedy. She was shorter than I remember when I used to watch it. It was obvious that she is just living on the fame of her part in the soap, but hey, good luck to her. She told a few stories that she had probably told millions of times before and then went on her merry way. I was the only guy there that hadn't been dragged along by a wife/girlfriend but it meant that I had a lot of eye candy to stare at for the day. Fun Filled Fact for you all . . . . . Erinsborough is a anagram of Or Neighbours, you learn something new everyday!

That's my Melbourne adventure over. It has been a blast, I loved Aussie rules football, was amazed by the MCG, met a (minor) celebrity, Spent a shed-load of money and realised that Aussies don't know the first thing about computer games.

Off to chill out at Batemans Bay now, until our paths cross again.

T
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