Meeting Melbourne Wednesday 2/13/08

Melbourne is a terrific city. It is a dazzle of sculptured art, tree lined streets and bustling bodies at every hour. Sitting in the middle of town in our 1-bedroom hotel suite with maid service and restaurant food, we know we don’t have to deal with the traffic nightmares and the day-to-day travails of the normal Joeys and Sheilas so it may be artificial, but compared to other places we have been, this ranks right up there.

We are glued to the TV this morning as PM Kevin Rudd delivers the "apology" to the stolen generation of Aboriginals. There are 20,000 folks outside in Canberra and thousands more in Sydney and here in Melbourne who are watching on huge screen TVs in public squares. We saw a movie several years back called "Rabbit Proof Fence" which depicted the "taking" of aboriginal children by well meaning Christian folks who place the kids in Christian schools never to see their families again, all with the approval and assistance of the Aussie government. This is the official day of reckoning and while there is some dissent, there are a lot of tears and smiles all around.

We wander out and check emails at the library while Mary signs up for her Victorian state library card so we can use their wi-fi later. She now has library cards in Ireland and Australia, but not in the US. We grab the free circular tram down to the docks where all of the gazillion dollar boats and sparkly high-rise apartments look over the water and back at the city. This is also the home of Telstra Stadium, a nifty little 70,000 seat retractable roof affair used primarily by the footies (Australian rules football). We have lunch at "Berth" on the docks (Mary the smoked salmon focaccia and John the steak focaccia) and then wander down the waterfront to the curve in the harbor and bend back towards town.

The tram picks us up to haul us across town to Olympic park and government offices. We hop out by the treasury and walk about a half hour through multiple parks to the stadium complex. Now keep track; the Melbourne Cricket Grounds is a multi-purpose stadium seating 105,000; The Olympic Stadium is the official 1956 multi-use stadium seating 50,000 (about to be torn down as another is under construction now); Vodafone Arena, a retractable roof operation that seats 30,000 and is used for basketball, tennis, cycling, and other events; Lexus Arena, formerly used for basketball and now basically a practice facility for various teams; Rod Laver Arena, a retractable roof 20,000 state of the art concert facility that is also used for the Aussie open; and that is attached to Margaret Court Stadium and several other tennis stadiums that each seat about 6,000. Did we mention Telstra on the other side of town? We take about a 45-minute tour of the tennis facilities—very interesting.

It is another 45-minute walk back to our hotel along the Yarra river and the rowing crews are out in full force. We re-enter town center at Federation Square which is sort of the town gathering place. That’s where everyone was this morning for the "Apology" and they claim 2000 events a year (6 per day?). We wander around a bit and are amazed that every corner and most medians have a chunk of some type of sculpture. The sidewalks are very wide and all planted with substantial shade trees that give the city a feeling of a smaller neighborhood. Trees in many medians add to the effect.

We get to the hotel a little after 4:00 and grab the laptop to try the new library connection (our hotel offers wi-fi for its guests for $27.50 per day—thieves). We are able to get one post onto the blog but without a picture or formatting and are unable to download emails. Our library connection as it turns out is only for access but no file sharing is allowed. So much for that.
Neither are very hungry when we think we should be eating so we are looking for something light. After walking around for almost an hour looking at every menu we decide that there are 1000 restaurants within a mile of us and we can’t find a thing to eat. We don’t have this problem in Pine River. We stick our heads into a little Italian joint that is packed and the host says he can squeeze us in. We get a table for four and we can see he is disappointed in losing the other two possible sources of revenue, an attitude we appreciate. We have a couple small pastas (Mary, spaghetti with Moreton bugs ((little lobsters)) and John a Papardelle with venison, onions and tomatoes) and a green bean salad and we help our waiter’s revenue with a pinot noir.

We each read in bed for three minutes before falling asleep.

Today’s local headline: Australia Says Sorry The Age