Melbourne Day 3 - City Centre

Our second full day in Australia was spent in the centre of Melbourne city. I discovered that big Luke has a handy train station just down the road from his house – so instead of having to drive into the city we caught a train from Melton Station through to Southern Cross station.

Southern Cross turned out to be a large train station with over 10 platforms and it reminded me of some of the large train stations in London, and far bigger than anything we have in Auckland.

From here we found a train to Flinders street – a station just a bit further along into the middle of Melbourne and across from Federation Square.

First up we headed up the road to the tourist information centre to get a map, a process Julianne and I did when we were travelling through Europe, it’s much easier with a physical map to get around and orient yourself.

Our first tourist stop was Parliament House, the centre of Victorian State politics where we went on a free tour into the Lower and Upper houses for the state of Victoria in Australia.

They have the same green colour in the Lower House and same red colour in the Upper House as in the United Kingdom Parliament and which is used in all commonwealth countries that I have visited so far. The Parliament House building was built in 1858 during the height of the Victorian gold rush so is an impressive building with gold everywhere, for example the Upper House has 6 million dollars worth of gold decoration.

From Parliament House we walked down to Fitzroy Garden’s for a nice picnic lunch before visiting Cooks Cottage, a strange tourist attraction – the oldest house in Australia and it’s not even Australian.

It’s the house where Captain James Cook parent’s lived in after they retired in North Yorkshire in the UK. The cottage was shipped over brick by brick on the 100th anniversary of the colonisation of Australia by Europeans in the 1930’s by Australian Russell Grimwade after buying the property for 800 pounds, the highest local UK bid was 300 pounds – he clearly wanted this building.

I enjoyed walking through this really old cottage, it remaindered me of my regular holiday’s in the UK visiting all the historical sites – something I really like doing and can’t do in New Zealand.

Cooks Cottage is not that large so it didn’t take that long before we headed up a path to the Fairy Tree. This is an old tree from which aboriginal’s had cut out bark sometime in the past to make one of their canoe’s. So there is a canoe shaped hole in the tree and in 1934 during Victoria's Centenary Year a Miss Cohn used the natural shapes of the tree to paint in a range of Australia animals combined with fairies with this great saying "I have carved in a tree in the Fitzroy Gardens for you, and the fairies, but mostly for the fairies and those who believe in them, for they will understand how necessary it is to have a fairy sanctuary - a place that is sacred and safe as a home should be to all living creatures." The Fairy Tree is clearly a success after all these years as this turned out to be the one of the favorite sites we visited for young six year old Luke.

After the popular Fairy Tree we headed up and had a look through St Patrick’s.

St Patrick’s is an impressive and large Cathedral for the Catholic faith, and very peaceful inside.

We then walked up to the State Library of Victoria, which was not too far but the boys were getting quite tired at this point and the walk took quite a while.

A rare book from the 1400’s that still has its’s original cover

The State Library has a free display of historical books which I really enjoyed, including a tax receipt 4000 years old, medieval manuscripts and early printed books, books on different religions, King Arthur books, child books and many others.

The legal statutes of England from 1300 (including the Magna Carta)

One of my favorite books was the drawing of St Paul’s massive Cathedral in London which was drawn just before the Great Fire of 1666 and destroyed it. This drawing shows how the original Cathedral was in the form of a traditional square looking English looking church (just like St Patrick’s above) compared to the very different dome St Paul’s in London which exists today.

The original St Paul’s cathedral in London

Arabic grammar book used in the Islamic religion

We had to get back to Luke’s house by 5.30pm as I had an old school friend coming over, so we left the State Library and rushed down to the train station via a tram. We ended up on a train arriving back at Luke’s house at 5.35pm, just as my good friend Shane Wade arrived.

I have not seen Shane for many a year and it was a great evening catching up with someone who was one of my best friend’s from school, many things have happened to both of us over the years.

Plus it was also great to introduce Shane to my family.

It’s been a great but long day seeing historical places topped off with a fantastic visit from Shane.

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Melbourne Day 3 - City Centre