I bought a bike yesterday! Lou (Laurie’s daughter—my future cross-OZ travel-companion) is leaving for Canada on a working-holiday-visa in 6 weeks for a year and, is selling “all” her belongings—gee, sounds awfully familiar!!! (this is how the whole universe balances itself out!! Some come here, some go there!). so today, I went on the Capital City Trail ride…about a 4 hour ride due to all the photo stops and the number of times that I got lost because this trail is not as obviously marked as my book claims (Bike Rides Around Melbourne). It was a fabulous way to see many of the city-limit neighborhoods—as a well a great way to spend the day outdoors on a particularly beautiful (winter) day!!! I am sooo stoked about spending the next 5 days on a bike and really becoming familiarized with all the nooks and crannies!

Some of Melbourne houses are definitely interesting in their architecture styles. I sure wanted to ask someone about it today…but didn’t get a chance to talk to anyone as I was on a bit of a “sun” schedule and without any real notions of “how” much time it was actually going to take me:

Melbourne has some fascinating, eye-catching modern designs throughout the city—it almost reminds me of parts of Japan. During my ride today, at first, I couldn’t even break a sweat because I was pulling out my camera at every corner of the street—as I got to see so many parts that I had not yet explored. This footpath was of particular interest with its visually twisting and turning cobweb-like dome:


This is (again) the entire skyline of downtown Melbourne from St Kilda. And though the water is not readily visible when you are right in the middle of the city, if you go just 5 miles south of the center-city, there is quite a nice bay that you can hang out at, with beaches, parks, docking areas, appearing to be a very “desirable” residential/backpacking area (with the European folks)…

And finally, this is some strange art sculpture—for some reason, I keep thinking that it is some spoof on the koalas that perch themselves in such trees for 15-20% of their lives. But that is just “my” interpretation…

Next question: cows????—why does everyone want to put cow-sculptures everywhere in the world???

More...more...more to come!!! Never ends?!

I finally bought myself a greyhound bus ticket today all the way up to Cairns (for a whoppin' A$270--holy shit?! that's cheap for a trip covering over 2000km)!--it's a hop-on, hop-off ticket valid for the next 45 days. First stop: Sydney--and then slowly but surely up the East Coast until I reach Cairns (then turn around and back down to Rockhampton)--plans are still very vague at this point!