By the numbers
11.12 kms
14850 steps
1 shopping centre
The very first job I had to do this morning was to have a chat with Jetstar about being reimbursed for my taxi ride into Melbourne. I had a nice chat with the person on the other end and after half hour I was told I would get refunded on my $75 after the skybus had stopped running for the night due to the epic delays in getting into the city. It wasn’t meant to be raining today, but it was when I walked out to get breakfast and the rain would stick around until later in the day when there would be blue sky.
Once I finished dealing with Jetstar, I was heading to the Melbourne General Cemetery where, I was meeting up with a good friend when they turned up. I was trying to figure out which tram to take as I wasn’t really sure. I ended up with the Brunswick tram that took me to the Melbourne museum. Using Google maps, I knew I was going to catch the right one to get close to my final destination. I had trouble standing on the tram as I was partly in the middle, which is the stretchy part that moved around corners. Once I figured out what to do I was alright. When I got off the tram, I headed towards the cemetery via some of the back streets. I ended up going through the high rise housing estates that had appeared on the news. There were community centres near the ones I passed like English classes and sewing classes going on. I thought these were interesting. Along the way I found it strange that a roundabout had traffic lights near the cemetery, but I did get distracted by Queens college as the building looked different, almost like it was exclusive. Before heading to the cemetery, I was looking for a coffee shop that I had actually walked past that was sitting behind the Pilgrim Theological collage. No idea what that was about, but there was a coffee shop and I got a coffee.
Directly across the road was the entrance to the Melbourne General cemetery, where there are notable graves that include a politician who had been present during the Eureka Stockade and a monument to Bourke and Wills who died during an exploration trip. I was meeting a good friend Margie, who was going with me to have a look around the cemetery. While waiting I went for a short wander out to see the Bourke and Wills monument, which was massive. I had been to the cemetery many years before and it was nice to have come back even if the weather wasn’t that great. When Margie arrived we went into the cemetery office as she was looking for family and there was an unmarked grave she wanted the location of. The best part of the cemetery wander was we were in the car especially when it started raining. One of the graves we couldn’t find early on, but it had only been because we had a famous writer on one side that distracted us funnily enough. Marcus Clarke who was apparently a prolific writer in the 1800s. We ended up walking the entire section only to realise why we hadn’t found the grave. We drove around to look for the unmarked grave while finding several other people including the grandparents of Mary Mackillop who is a saint in the literal sense. We ended up in a work area for the cemetery and we were speculating that the grave we were looking for was under a pile of timber. I went wandering while Margie checked her reference points. She had summoned a worker who had helped and soon found the timber theory was correct. I think I got to see more of the cemetery than I usually do since we were driving, but I didn’t take as many photos.
We headed out of the city and I was happy for that as I don’t often get a speedy trip through the city unless we are on a tour of sorts. We had to head out to Oakleigh a little place outside of the city and then to Chadstone shopping centre, which I had not visited before. It is alot bigger than Tweed City that I am used to and I am pretty sure Robina as well. They tried to make the roof into an art type feature. They do have a Legoland, though I did not enter that as I didn’t even know it existed. We got some food as it was late afternoon and I was pretty hungry. While we didn’t stay long, I got a lap around the shopping centre on the way out to appreciate how big the place really was. I was dropped off at the train station to head back into the city, which was funny as it was doing the city loop with the last station being Flinders street. When I got out of Southern Cross and it had gotten pretty big, I went looking around at the shops to see what food they had. I got a ¼ hot chook from Coles before heading back to the room as it was the end of the day. I was strangely worn out though I have had a huge couple of days.
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