`Twas a gorgeous Australia Labor Day Monday and all through East Melbourne, not a creature was stirring, not even .... a possum? Fearing heavy traffic returning to the city from a long weekend if we ventured into the hills for a bushwalk, we decided to do another city walking tour from one of our guide books. This walk covered a few of the gardens along with a large number of landmark homes and buildings on the east side of Melbourne. From this trek, we learned a few things:
1) East Melbourne is the quiet side of town. Despite being home to plentiful unique, gorgeous, and historic row homes and residential buildings with close proximity to the city, sporting venues, parks, etc., Laura and I might has well have been wandering through a ghost town. There was a decent amount of activity in the city for a holiday, but we wandered this bordering suburb eerily alone.
2) A historic walking tour is much more interesting if you bring along the details of said history. The genius amongst us thought it was a brilliant idea to make a copy of the walking tour map thus eliminating the awful inconvenience of lugging a guide book around town all day (for the record, the guide book is the size of a stack of post cards, not a 5lb bag of sugar). This same genius failed to make a copy of the details behind the 21 historic landmarks we were to encounter on the walking tour. It is, in fact, boring to look at a historic home that looks like every other nearby home not knowing what makes it historic. I have since resigned my genius status currently residing at numbskull. Some may argue nothing's changed.
3) The local drug emporium may not have been so difficult to locate back in the day. Not partaking in substances of an illegal nature ourselves, it has been a curiosity how people who do, find methods of attainment in a new locale. There are rumors that you can obtain a banned substance from a nearby Charcoal Chicken restaurant if you order in a certain way. There are no indications that the authorities suspicions have been raised by patrons laying down a grand for a take-out chicken order. How do people figure this stuff out? It will remain a curiosity for me, but we stumbled on a not so subtle dealing place on our walking tour. "Casa de Juana" seemed like an odd name for a residence to me and I was already suspicious. Then I noted the neighboring residence to it's left and ... come on!
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| House on Left "Casa de Maria". House on Right "Casa de Juana" |
Try telling me there's not a tunnel to Mexico or Columbia in their basements. I suspect they worked for Company Caine and named their daughters Metham and Phetamine. Seriously?
4) The Moomba Festival is on Labor Day and we are disappointed we missed it. It's going on the calendar for next year. As we walked ... alone ... we could here cheers erupting from a crowd somewhere in the city intermittently. Turns out it was the annual Moomba Festival which combines an apparently Chinese-inspired parade and a water skiing tournament on the Yarra. The parade would have provided great humor in merely trying to determine how it relates to Australian Labor Day, Melbourne, and a water skiing event. And anybody bold enough to get in the Yarra deserves praise no matter the skiing performance that follows. It is a disgustingly foul river that news and radio hosts repeatedly remind locals to not swim in.
Here's some pictures from the walk:
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| Nocturnal. Didn't see any on this day. |
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| Huge palm near Parliament |
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| Tree-lined park path |
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| Random JFK Memorial. |
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| Part of the JFK Memorial. |
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| Creepy carved "Fairy Tree" |
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| Church turned residence. |
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This home is on the historic walk. Apparently because
all of the iron work looks like a wedding cake. (?) |
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