Melbourne

We flew into Melbourne to spend a relaxing week with Steve's family. Steve's aunt, Marlene, lives in Melbourne and Steve's mum Heather and her husband Willie had flown out from England so that we could have a family reunion.

The last time that we saw Heather and Willie was in London at a farewell party the day before we flew to Lima. Strangely it seemed entirely normal to meet up with them in the St Kilda area of Melbourne (which is quite similar to Clapham where we live in London except beside the sea and nicer) and go out for a coffee.

A lot of our journey so far has been spent either in the countryside, in small towns or in mega cities with unbreathable air. So in some ways arriving in Melbourne with its trams and water features and parks and works of modern architecture felt like a return to civilisation.

In the centre of Melbourne is a new development called Federation square. It's a mixture of different styles with four different types of facade one of which is multi colored. In fact, it almost looks as though four different architects came up with ideas for the square and unable to agree they decided to do them all at once. Everyone seems to have a different viewpoint about the square. I thought it looked like a giant funfair while Steve was staggered by the complexity, likely cost and the fact the client had agreed to it at all.

Across the river from Federation square is an area that reminded us very much of the south bank of the Thames in London. Melbourne's main art gallery and opera house are located there as is an unusual looking bridge. Walking down along the river side there are cafes and fountains and it all seems highly cultured until you arrive at huge temple to capitalism in the form of a mega casino, shopping and entertainment complex.

After betting 2.5 dollars at roulette and losing, I resisted the urge to gamble away all our travel money and went for a stroll around the casino with Steve. The casino was enormous, far larger than any other I have been in and absolutely packed with people. Most of them were playing away on coin machines with blank expressions on their faces. Although it was a nice sunny day outside in Melbourne there was no natural daylight in the casino so it could have been the middle of the night. Quite a scary place really.

Heather has some newly wed friends from Bombay who live in the Docklands area of Melbourne. Docklands is a newly developed area of Melbourne with sky scrapers and trendy restaurants. We went round to have dinner with them in their highrise appartment. Apparently in Bombay the tradition is that you drink and talk until about midnight and then have dinner before going home. It was great fun but we all ended up horribly drunk through four hours of drinking on empty stomachs and suffered for it in the morning!

On Easter Sunday we had dinner at Marlene's house in the Melbourne suburbs. Marlene and her husband Richard might have emigrated to Australia from India in the 1960s but Marlene can still cook excellent Indian food. We even got given an Easter egg each to take away!

Easter Monday was our first wedding anniversary. As we aren't planning any time in the Australian bush, to see animals the hard way, we decided to celebrate by going to a wildlife sanctury with Heather and Willie where we saw all the Kanagaroos, Wallabies, Tamsanian Devils and Koala bears that anybody could possibly hope for. We also checked out of our grotty hostel and moved into a nice hotel room instead!

While in Melbourne we tried out a couple of different places and have decided that the Australian backpacker scene definately isn't for us. Actually it's probably not for anyone with normal hearing who doesn't fancy drinking themselves into unconciousness every night. Unless of course your idea of fun is lying awake at night scratching your bed bug bites while listening to very drunk people singing, or you appreciate mould growing in a bathroom!

This morning we said goodbye to Heather and Willie at the airport and are now in Sydney where we are staying in a hotel in the red light district, Kings Cross. The sun is shining and it seems pretty lively with lots of bars, restaurants and some dodgy looking 'gentlemen's clubs'.