Week 43: Melbourne Baby!

So the beginning of the week once again left me studying all day Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday evening we had our first touch footy (rugby) game. It was a tentative first game with us all learning the ins and outs of all of the rules like the dummy rule (yeah right!). But alas in the first few minutes I managed to find a gap in the opposing teams defence and got the legs motoring to score our first try. After the game we headed to our sponsor (The Bally Hotel) for some dinner and I managed to consume a bowl of chips after a very late lunch. I made it back to KB just in time to watch Game of Thrones down in the basement.

Wednesday daytime I spend studying before heading down to town and the beach. It has definitely cooled off temperature wise but the water was still relatively warm. In the evening I popped over to some pre-drinks before heading out on the party bus. It was good fun but I didn’t feel too bright in the morning. I even managed to have a nap Thursday arvo, after getting some work done. By this time I packed up my bits and bobs ready for my trip to Melbourne. Leaving at 5pm I got the bus then train then a flight down to Melbourne. I am still amazed how easy domestic flights are! I arrived with no problems and was picked up by a friend at the airport. By this time it was time to get some shut eye.

Friday rolled around and we were up at 6am for a day trip along the Great Ocean Road. After some debacle with my friends tickets we were all split up on different buses for the day. We covered almost 500km in the day, and stopped off at numerous beaches and tourist spots along the way. The highlights were definitely the 12 apostle, it was pretty great getting to see some good old Limestone cliff getting annihilated by the Ocean (Durdle Door eat your heart out!). Another highlight was seeing some wild koalas and getting landed on by some little colourful parrots. Near the end of the day we stopped off at Loch Ard Gorge, which was a stunning enclosed bay sunk into the limestone. We also stopped off to see London Bridge, which used to be a double arc but fell through in 1990 leaving a stack with an arch in, some bagpipe players rocked up as we were leaving… very odd. The journey back was long and the rest of the evening spent relaxing!

After a good night’s sleep I made my first real trip into Melbourne. I walked down to Flinders Street, popped into St Paul’s Cathedral and Hoosier Lane which is a few back alleys full of graffiti. I then met up with a friend and we had a lovely breakfast sat in a café on Degraves Lane. After this we popped over the river to the National Gallery in the drizzley rain. By this time we were getting pretty tired so decided to go to a pub which donates all profits to charity and had a lovely fruit smoothie in their cosey pub. Next we stopped off in a few shops before heading up to the National Museum. Being a concession we got free entry and had a great time looking at a range of exhibits. A few hours later we emerged ready for dinner so met our hosts at an Italian and devoured some pizzas for dinner. By this time we headed back and gathered our belonging for the trip back to Sydney. Excluding a slight flight delay and a mad dash between trains at Wolli Creek we got back all safe and sound by 00.30. Long day!

Sunday came around and I had a very lazy morning and first half of the arvo. We went out and had a little touch footy training session which was good fun, im starting to get the hang of it. I then decided to go for another 5km run… it was pretty tough but got my average below 5mins per km (by 1 second). Tonight will be pretty chilled I assume before another busy week of study.