Day 4 in Melbourne

Mar 23, 2010 by Joel

Today I had a little more planned, however did deviate from the plan a little. What I had planned for the day was more like what took just the morning. So I had to improvise a little in the Afternoon but that was not a problem.

It was a late start today as the first thing on the plan was the MCG Tour and Sports Museum, this did not open until about 10am though. So this allowed a little bit of a sleep in compared to yesterday. So about 9am I headed off towards the MCG taking the option of walking, as it was a overcast morning and was not to hot. It is only about a 30 min walk from the hotel. I made it there by 10, with getting a Muffin and a Hot Chocolate on the way.

The next tour was starting at 10.15. So I made a point to be there. It was a good tour, going almost to the top of the stadium, right down to the edge of the ground. At the moment they are just between codes with the last cricket match late last week, and the first game of AFL for the season on Thursday night. The center pitch had been taken up and they were preparing this area to put down the grass pitch for the AFL. Once you are inside you realize just how big it is, if the size from the outside did not prove this for you. However I doubt that wherever you are sitting you would not have a good view of the game.

After the tour, which took us through many of the member area’s as well, as the media area’s. I went through the Australian Sports Museum, which included the Melbourne Cricket Club’s Gallery as well. While I am not that overly interested in sport it was still something good to see. Because of the amount of information that you could easily miss, they also give everyone going through a audio commentary device, which you can select the number of the item you want to hear about while you are looking at it. Another feature is the hologram of Shane Warne talking about some things, and another one of an AFL player. Unfortunately however the use of camera’s was not allowed in the museum.

Once I was finished at the MCG, i headed for Fitzroy Gardens, and Cooks Cottage. While it is not very big it was interesting just to see how smaller of a space they used to live in. You can see by the photo’s below just how small some rooms were, and apparently Captain Cook’s parents lived in this cottage with nine children. You would be hard pressed to even call it a 2 bedroom house.

The next visit I made was to have a look at parliament house, it seems I actually did not go far enough though, as the building i thought was parliament house, was actually the old parliament house, and what it now the city museum. (maybe i should have gone inside). The actual Parliament house is further up the street. By this time i was getting pretty hungry and had actually (or thought) I had completed everything I had set out to do today, so i headed back to the hotel, to figure on a plan for the afternoon and got a snack for lunch on the way back.

The plan became hop on the free round city tourist tram, and get off around where Queen Victoria Markets is. The planning was not perfect again though as they close at 3pm, and were well in the swing of packing up when I got there. So I did a little more walking and come across quite a large shopping center I had not come across before. Inside was quite a large brick building, with a fairly high stack that went right up into a massive what looked to be 3 or 4 story glass dome.

Finally about 4 I headed back to the hotel, and went for a walk down to the Immigration Museum, which is only about a block from where I am staying, and had originally planned to go there in the morning. However had the time to spare. While I went there, I did not find it overly interesting, they have a fairly sparse display in comparison to many Museum’s I have seen, and think they could have done a lot more with the space they have. Again a majority of the display’s could not be photographed.

Today is a little less of a photograph day, although I did get some good photo’s at both the MCG and Cooks Cottage, as well as another find in the Fitzroy Garden’s you will see in a Photo below. But this about sums up the day, and leaves me with a problem of what to do in the morning, I am sure to figure something out. Also I have a tour booked for the afternoon which actually leaves the city of Melbourne which will I am sure allow me to get a whole lot more photo’s.