Elizabeth January 29th, 2008
Part of my 101 Things in 1001 Days challenge.
My friend Sally stayed with us over the long weekend, after a week with her family at the Australian Open. We had an absolute blast putting together Tim’s first Australia Day (pictures to follow), and hanging out on Sunday while we recovered.
Monday was a public holiday here, and she had to be on a plane at 3pm. Since I felt like a terrible host for not showing her more of the sights, we resolved to get up early and find a boat that would take us for a ride along the Yarra.
We got into the city in the morning, and bought tickets for a 1 hour trip on Melbourne River Cruises. It was only taking us to Docklands and back, but since we didn’t have too much time to spare we were pretty happy with it. However, it turned out that something was wrong with our boat so we ended up being upgraded to the cruise that took us all the way to Williamstown and back!
Tim & Sally on the ferry
Once we left the CBD area of the river it got very industrial, very quickly. Docklands looks like a bit of a wasteland from the water, although I can see that it will eventually become a really trendy place to live (perhaps like Teneriffe in Brisbane). We were also told that a themepark is planned for the area (Movieland, I think?) and also saw the beginnings of the new 120m Ferris wheel that’s being built.
Aside from that, our view mostly consisted of shipping containers, shipping container cranes, huge fuel liners (each of them with “No Smoking” signs in letters 5 metres high) and local bogans fishing from the rocks. We also went under a bunch of really low bridges, which I imagine is impossible to do at high tide.
Passing underneath one of the low bridges that crosses the Yarra
Beginnings of the new Southern Star Observation Wheel which, at 120m high, will be similar to the London Eye.
Shipping containers, and the cranes that unload them at a rate of 90 seconds per container
Bolte Bridge
Melbourne skyline from Williamstown
I could post another 50 photos from the cruise, but the ones I’ve picked give a pretty good cross-section of what we saw. Well, except for the bloated dead body that was covered with a sheet on the riverbank, and being guarded by a police officer (I don’t think it was just coincidence that the Westgate Bridge was only 20m from where the body lay). Very sad, but it was good to see that the adults on board kept the kids from noticing that anything was wrong.
When we got back to Southgate we had to say goodbye to Sally, who was catching the Skybus out to the airport. Tim and I grabbed some lunch at the Casino, but our day didn’t end there! More about that to follow in a separate post.
Big thanks to Sally for suggesting that we “try to cross something off that list today”, and for making this all happen!
