Melbourne, Australia - No Worries Mate!

Melbourne, Australia Slide Show

Going through the airport, we were preparing for our routine of retrieving our luggage, going through customs, finding a place to stay and trying to understand another language. We were tired and our bodies and heads were dragging when we heard across the way, "No worries, mate!" Immediately, smiles came to our face. Hey, he was speaking English and he was happily greeting us upon our arrival! Not counting South Africa, which has 123 official languages (give or take a few), Australia was the first country that we visited where English is the main language.
Actually, the airport employee was speaking Australian, which we learned quite a lot about traveling in Cambodia and Vietnam with our fellow Aussie travelers. We found out that a "TimTam" is a chocolate biscuit that you drink tea through, a "mossie" is a mosquito, a "tinny" is a small can of beer, "footy" is Australian Rules Football, "salties" are salt-water crocodiles, "freshies" are fresh water crocodiles, "schoolies" are high school kids on spring break, a "jumper" or a "cardy" is a sweater, "g'day" means good morning or good afternoon or good night depending on the time of day, "tinny in a stubby" is a can of beer in a cooler, "loo" is a bathroom, and many others that I can't remember off the top of my head. Our pronunciation lesson continued with city names as Melbourne is pronounced "Melbin" and Cairns is pronounced "Cans". The best that I can tell is that the "r" is not pronounced in a word, but is added in a word that does not contain an "r", such as the name Donna is pronounced "Donnar".
Speaking of Donnar, I mean Donna, we met her on our Intrepid tour through Cambodia and Vietnam. Like most Australians that we have met along the way, it was easy to quickly develop a friendship with her and she was nice enough to have the three of us stay at her home in Melbourne. She lives within walking distance to downtown and most of the major sights. We spent the days walking and biking around the beautiful city of Melbourne and the evenings staying up late with Donna and her friend Chris, eating and drinking like only Australians can do. On one of those nights, we met up with another Intrepid traveler, Dave for dinner. Before entering Australia, I had lost 6.8 kilos, but I assume that I will leave Australia over my starting weight.
Even though Melbourne is a big city, it feels like a small city. People stop you on the street asking if you need help and restaurants take charges off your bill if they feel that they didn't provide good enough service. Twice we had this happen when we didn't have an issue at all with the service. Anything they did take off our bill was appreciated though since we were still adjusting to the significantly higher prices of a developed country after recently spending time and money in India and Southeast Asia.
Besides being friendly, the people of Melbourne are sports fanatics. You don't walk very far before walking by another sports stadium. They have 2 major stadiums that they use for Australian Rules Football, cricket, soccer, and rugby and are building another one. The Australian Open is held at Rod Laver Stadium and Noah and I even came across a 6-plex of baseball fields. Well, we didn't exactly come across the baseball fields. Actually we took an hour train ride followed by a 15 minute taxi ride to a baseball warehouse where we purchased a baseball bat and a dozen balls and then walked to the fields. It didn't bother us that there were 40 mph winds blowing us around. We were playing baseball on a baseball field! On our last night in Melbourne, we even got to see Collingwood thrash Essendon 106 - 62 in the semi-finals of the Australian Rules Football NAB Cup.
The winds weren't all that blew through Melbourne. Just north of Melbourne, the forest fires were still blazing away when we arrived. The state of Victoria was in a 5 year drought, which was not helping the fire situation. That's okay, we took care of that. It rained for the first 4-1/2 days of our 5 day stay, at least temporarily putting an end to the drought and the fires. There was a front page picture of a fireman dancing in the rain and puddles. Whatever we can do to help.
The cloud and rain didn't help our photography, but if you would like to see our Melbourne, Australia slide show, click on the following link ==> Melbourne, Australia Slide Show