Lovely Melbourne, utes and crosswalks

This week has been mainly consumed with trying to set up an apartment.

As the "free fridge" thing fell through, we had to go out an buy a fridge. They don't leave a lot of space in apartments for fridges...our fridge is only 55cm wide (that's less than 2 feet!). There is a surprising demand for fridges in this city, though I suppose not really a shock given that apartments don't come with refrigerators.

We forked over a significant amount of money for a comfortable bed...we reasoned that, since we will spend about 1/3 of our time here sleeping, we should at least get a comfy bed. Then we found this amazing place that sells furniture that is nicer than stuff from IKEA, but cheaper. So, we are all outfitted for furniture and appliances and now just need odds and sods.

That done, we did spend Wednesday this week touring the city. Of course, we probably saw more by pounding the streets on our own for the last couple of weeks, but we wanted someone to point out the interesting sights and not just the furniture and appliance stores.

Melbourne has to be one of the most public-friendly cities in the world. They run a free tram that circles the city-center. There is ongoing, recorded commentary, but it's difficult to hear over the din of locals who use the tram as regular transport.
There is also a free shuttle bus that goes around some of the highlights of the city, harbour, river and a few parks. The driver gives commentary. You can hop off and on at any point of interest, but it is a bit slow to use to get between points. Great, though, for seeing points of interest. We have found some great parks that we want to visit.


There are parks everywhere (well, almost green...it's pretty dry here these days). In almost every park is a city-run bar-b-que where they supply the gas. This Tuesday evening we attended a bar-b-que hosted by Greg and Marya for the fellows at Greg's hospital. Everyone brought salads and meat and appetizers, and Greg and Paul bar-b-qued while I ran got to play with some of the kids. It was great fun, and we could hardly believe that we just had to show up at the park and use their grills and tables. It was great! On top of that, this city has true public restrooms. On major streets and in parks there are green boxes in which there are flush toilets, and there is always toilet paper.

The city is quite clean, aside form the graffiti that lines all of the train (above ground subway) routes. The city also has the best public transit system I've ever experienced in Europe or North America. Trains form the back-bone. Trams connect major streets, and then there are buses running on all of the small streets. Even Paul has been happy with it, and he is not a fan of public transit.

What we are both still trying to get used to is crossing the street. Cars drive on the left-hand side of the road. So, we are still working on looking right first, and then left. We've both just started looking both ways all the time to make sure that we don't miss the mac truck barrelling towards us. It is always interesting getting a tram, because it takes a certain degree of mental gymnastics to work out from which side it will come and where we have to stand to catch it.

One thing that we have noticed in our walks is that cars here are mainly similar to those in North America (a surprising number of Fords), except for the utes. This is pronouced you-ts, as opposed to oo-ts. These are kind of like the Australian equivalent to a pick-up truck, except that they are supposed to be a combination of a muscle car and a truck. If you search "ute" on google, you get a North American native tribe, and you get the Australian vehicle. They are pretty funny looking, and they are everywhere!



Tomorrow we move in to our new place! We should be getting the fridge and microwave and bed delivered, and will spend part of the day on a shopping spree at Target, where we are hoping to get cheap towels, sheets and dishes! We'll miss the company of the Moore family here, and the big beautiful house with air conditioning, but are looking forward to having our own space. I'm particularly looking forward to unpacking my suitcase!!!