Digger Posted June 27, 2017 Share Posted June 27, 2017 I thought I may as well do brief summary and type it once so I can use it in other places and not have to keep saying the same things over & over. An early start saw us board a a train at our local Railway Station and you can assume that it wasn't warm at 0630 on a Winters morning. Our lovely country train was warm and as always travelling on it is always a pleasure. We arrived at Flinders Street station in Melbourne at 1030 hours and had time to kill as we weren't meeting our boys until 1300 to travel to the MCG for the footy match. Now Melbourne has a reputation as being a bleak sort of place in Winter and with a forecast of 14 C we weren't expecting it to be tropical! Deciding to fill in time at the National Gallery Victoria which was less than a kilometre from the station on St Kilda Road. This is the precinct for all sorts of arts, drama, opera, orchestral, the lot and it is an attractive area and very cosmopolitan. It struck me what a friendly city Melbourne is as there were people everywhere chatting and laughing and generally enjoying their Saturday morning. When we got to the gallery, a favourite place of ours we were struck by the crowds! Approaching the Van Gough exhibition for ticket sales we found a queue about 80 metres long and that's only what was visible and in addition to that there was a queue of at leat 50 metres on the other side for people with tickets to actually enter. They were only allowing equal numbers in as were coming out! Bugger that I'm not queuing for anything like that...I don't want to see anything that badly so we jumped out of the queue. It was pleasant sitting in a forecourt cafe having a sandwich and drink while the world went by. There were buskers playing and we found a spot where the watery sun was very enjoyable. The trams were busy on St Kilda Road and they are iconic parts of this lovely city. Next we grabbed a taxi and headed for our hotel at Jolimont opposite all the sporting venues. We had a "studio apartment" and that turned out to be a very small motel styled room which for $200 a night seemed like a rip-off, however we were where we needed to be, in sight of the MCG! Arrangements were made with our sons who were travelling by car fro=m the southern suburbs and their intention was to drop Greg of at the hotel to guide us up the the MCG and to meet Chris and the family there so he could show us up to the private corporate box so kindly provided by our friend and property developer Bill. These sons are just so thoughtful and determined that we would have a great day that I feel we are very a lucky mum & dad! The game had just started when we arrived and we soon found a comfortable chair and drank in the atmosphere and excitement of Footy at the "G" on a winter's day in Melbourne. Now our friend Bill had provided catering and there was a nice lady there serving all manner of food and drinks and so we couldn't have really asked for more! Here's some pics of both directions from where we were sitting. The ground I think holds about 90,000 people but this being a minor game we estimate a crowd of about 30,000 only The MCG Chris reckons is almost 180 metres long and to be honest I couldn't tell where the ball was at the other end. It was just too far away! However when it was down our end it was exciting and it seemed strange to me that we were seeing our layers right in front of us live having seen them for so many years on TV. It was a great atmosphere, well except for the noisy buggers near us that were chanting for Port Adelaide!! A volume control for them would have been nice~ Our team Collingwood was totally out-classed and we lost by 30 points! We had a magnificent day though and never having been to the MCG, it is an experience I will never forget! A night in the hotel, brekky at Southbank by the Yarra River the next morning and then a train trip home saw the end of an interesting weekend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dub-T-123 Posted June 27, 2017 Share Posted June 27, 2017 Good read! I had a similar experience at a game. I've been watching Lakers games my whole life and got free front row tickets to one of Kobe's last games. It was surreal watching them play so close, and then they got their asses whooped (in typical fashion). Oh well, lets hope things start shaping up. Cheers matey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retired Posted June 27, 2017 Share Posted June 27, 2017 That's what I've been wanting to see. Those big skyscrapers in the city. Now I know Australia doesn't look like Walk about Creek in Hollywood's version of Crocadile Dundee. Lol looks like a great time there Rob. The stadium is large too so Melbourne is bigger then I thought. Yeah, lots of people visit Nebraska and come to Omaha & Lincoln and are impressed it's not just cornfields. There's actually 2 big cities there. Thanks for the pics Mate, very nice indeed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
'Scales Posted June 27, 2017 Share Posted June 27, 2017 Saying "Collingwood was outclassed" is like saying "the sky is up". It's funny Retired but I'm often surprised at how small the populations are in the US cities which I imagined to be much larger. Sydney and Melbourne (5 million and 4.5m pop) would be very large cities by US or European standards and even Brisbane and Perth (each over 2m) and Adelaide (over 1m) would rank fairly high in a US list by population apart from NYC and LA. (Then again we don't have all that many other cities who even have 100,000 - probably only a dozen or so) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digger Posted June 27, 2017 Author Share Posted June 27, 2017 That's what I've been wanting to see. Those big skyscrapers in the city. Now I know Australia doesn't look like Walk about Creek in Hollywood's version of Crocadile Dundee. Lol looks like a great time there Rob. The stadium is large too so Melbourne is bigger then I thought. Yeah, lots of people visit Nebraska and come to Omaha & Lincoln and are impressed it's not just cornfields. There's actually 2 big cities there. Thanks for the pics Mate, very nice indeed. Here's a few pics of Melbourne and some around Victoria for you mate. http://au.pinterest.com/seeaustralia/melbourne-victoria/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deeman Posted June 27, 2017 Share Posted June 27, 2017 Did u see some good marks? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pippy Posted June 27, 2017 Share Posted June 27, 2017 Enjoyable story, Digger! ...It struck me what a friendly city Melbourne is as there were people everywhere chatting and laughing and generally enjoying their Saturday morning... I've heard from quite a few friends that Melbourne is a very attractive, pleasant place to be. One even went so far as to say that if he was to live anywhere other that Edinburgh he'd choose Melbourne - and this is from a guy who is very widely-travelled indeed. Pip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digger Posted June 27, 2017 Author Share Posted June 27, 2017 Did u see some good marks? Yes I did thanks, but unfortunately they were from the opposition team...Grin~ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digger Posted June 27, 2017 Author Share Posted June 27, 2017 Enjoyable story, Digger! I've heard from quite a few friends that Melbourne is a very attractive, pleasant place to be. One even went so far as to say that if he was to live anywhere other that Edinburgh he'd choose Melbourne - and this is from a guy who is very widely-travelled indeed. Pip. I've been to Edinburgh but not spent enough time there to really get to know it unfortunately but my impressions are that it is a nice place. I've spent a lot of time working in Melbourne and going there for various reasons over the length of my life and whilst I have no desire to live in or near any city, Melbourne would be my choice. Sydney is a spectacular place too but it's a bit too busy for me to want to live there! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retired Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 1498544858[/url]' post='1864718']Here's a few pics of Melbourne and some around Victoria for you mate. http://au.pinterest....ourne-victoria/ I would love to visit as I've never been out of the U.S. There's lots of countries I'd love to see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.