Finally made it

It seems some time ago that Dan Carnegie ridiculously offered to take me to the airport at four thirty in the morning last Thursday. After 36 hours traveling, I managed to arrive at the apartment in Melbourne. In the meantime, I had spent an interesting night staying in the Sydney airport with an American professor and a gentleman from Iraq. Suffice it to say I was a little fatigued upon arriving at the apartment 7:30 Saturday morning. Obviously it was wonderful to see Abigail as well. For those of you who have travelled with Abigail, you will know she prefers to explore a city on foot. You can imagine my excitement when she announced our plans for that morning which included a walk to the local market. The market was much like the St. Lawrence market and the walk did me good after being inert for most of the trip over here. The weather was warm and what else could be better? To make a long story short, I was running on fumes, however we continued to go for walks and I was trying my best to stay awake until 8 p.m. or so to get on Oz time. When going for walks with Abigail, I have learned to fear 5 words, those being: "it's closer than it looks". To her many things must look as though they are in Tibet. I stuck to my guns and limited the walk to 80 km or so. I was asleep by 6:30.

Sunday saw us with grounds passes for the Australian Open tennis finals which featured an Aussie, Lleyton Hewitt. They atmosphere was exciting and we grabbed a couple of seats in the shade and settled in for 8 hours of tennis. One thing about the Aussies; when it comes to sporting facilities they don't go cut-rate. Rod Laver Arena is in a cluster of stadia that includes the Vodafone arena and the fabled Melbourne Cricket Ground where they play cricket (duh) and Aussie rules football. The MCG is quite simply the largest sporting facility I have ever laid eyes on, and I am hoping to arrange to go on a tour later in this stay. Despite Hewitt losing to the Russian, Marat Safin, we went home happy with the experience and with our eyes opened to a cross section to the Australian people. The tournament was full of a variety of age groups and every one got along exteremely well, even those few Safin supporters. It was interesting to watch the 20something Aussie girls who despite being almost universally overweight, insisted on dressing like prostitutes. I know what you are thinking, but at least I don't dress like a hooker.

When Abigail went to the University on Monday, it gave me the opportunity to explore the city on foot at a more leisurely pace. I found it amazing that Melbourne is a city almost as clean as Toronto despite having virtually no garbage cans on the street. There was a cricket oval every 500 metres or so, but no garbage cans. This is a curious country. At any rate I found the local golf course and made plans to play on Tuesday. The course is an 8 minute walk from the apartment and I set out Tuesday with my clubs on my back, anxious to get at it. On the way I had to cross an exteremly busy road which I tried to do by jay walking rather than walking the extra 150 metres to the traffic light. It then struck me how ridiculous it was not to walk the extra distance considering I was about to walk 6000 metres around the course. The irony of a guy named "Beagle" winning a Darwin award did not escape me and I did not want future generations to have to bear that burden. The course was acceptable...certainly better than Cedar Brae or Credit Valley, but not as good as Lakeview. At any rate, the fee was only $23 Australian and this in a country where a 500 ml. diet coke costs almost $3. I played alone and went home happy and prepared to play the following day. WRONG.

Wednesday in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia was the coldest, wettest February day in recorded history. Seriously. It rained non-stop for 36 hours (again, seriously). Top that with gale force winds and you see where I'm going with this. Naturally I went out looking to purchase a bicycle. Not suprisingly I was the bike shop's only customer that day. As a result I was given an additional discount. I'm not sure if it was because the guy had a soft spot for the mentally deranged, or if he simply had to feed his family that day, but at any rate, I got a really good deal. I left a deposit and told the shopkeeper I would be back the next day to pick it up. As I was not far from the university, I went over and picked up Abigail and made our way home on the tram along with several millions of other soaking Melbourners. Not the best time I have ever had in a foreign country. We are off to the Mornington Peninsula today to see the penguin population there, so I will cut this short(er), and pick up after we get back from this trip and Tasmania next week.