Settlin' in

Who in their right mind gets up at four in the morning?

Me.

It can’t be helped, honest.

This is what jetlag is all about.

I thought it was just going to be dehydration and something like a huge hangover. I’ve had both and dealt with them. Being wide awake and extremely mindful of others in the house at four in the morning is not nice. Especially if they have to get up for, and go and do a days work.

Creeping about like a hallucinating burglar, is just marginally better than lying wide awake in bed with the rhythmic snorting from a foot away! At least I don’t snore when I’m awake!

So, the sun came up but it was hard to see, because of the low clouds. It was a dreary sort of start to the day but we’d no plans made so no problem.

After faffing about, and getting Trev out to work we decided to go downtown Melbourne.

Melbourne is a great place. It’s home to five million souls, very few of them indigenous and not many more true Australians.
There must be a powerful lot of empty houses in China and all around the far east. This is a true quote from Charles De Gaulle
"China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese".
This is a true quote from Nick Pearce
"Australia is a bigger country inhabited by many more Chinese"
There’s a severe housing shortage in Oz. What does that tell you. The government are letting two thousand foreigners in each month, to stay. And that’s just in Melbourne. Friggin crazy.

We boarded the train, an excellant way to see any city, with no clear plan in mind except to go for a coffee in one of the famous lanes.

Most of the major cities here were founded on the backs of Penal Colonies. This caused the towns of that time to be sort of thrown together, mixed up. Not Melbourne though. It is built in a grid system, every area clearly defined.

There are many beautiful sights to see here. Some of the prettiest have only two legs and there are loads of them. This is a city of beautiful people. It’s also a city of diverse cultures and traditions. There are more Chinese here than in Belfast.

We got on one of the free trams that take visitors all round the city. There are buses that do this as well. Free transport for the visiting masses. Can you imagine this in Belfast? Every wee gobsh1te and his uncle would be on them constantly. Talking of which. Belfast, out as far as House of sport, Forestside, and Glengormley would sit neatly in the Central Business District.

After about half an hour cruising round the town we came across the Dockside area. In a former life, sailing must have featured in my life. Dearies. I’m always drawn to water, even if there has to be whiskey in it. We jumped off the tram and went for lunch in a theme bar right at the end of the part of the area that features many fine looking restaurants. This wee bar had a micro brewery on the premises, producing some excellent ales. M had risotto, excellent and Nicola and I munched our way through brilliant fish and chips. The fish was fried in goujon style and the chips or some at least had some of the very light beer batter on them. Fair dinkum mate. See, the language is creeping in already!

We continued to look around Melbourne, and slowly pointed ourselves in the direction of Nicola’s house.

Getting home much later Trev volunteered his services as senior barby technician. A role he slid into very well. I have to be kind here as we’re going to need his services quite often. It was delicious!

The temperature climbed to 23°. A link to our temperatures can be found here.

The sun had scorched our tired bodies, the heat had stolen our energy. The voyeurism in us had taken our imagination and threw it to the wind. In other words we were knackered and Mr Bed was calling. Still we forced ourselves to stay awake, even it was only to watch the cricket. Have I told you Trevor is rather fond of the game? It was really hard to stay awake much past ten at night, but not odd, considering the time we were getting out of bed at!