A St Kilda Walkabout

Saturday last week was spent playing football with other travelers, organised by some guys in our hostel. Turnout was insane- 35 Brits met outside our hostel, from where we all marched to a local park, split into three teams, and played 11 a side. There were Aussies in the park all playing ultimate Frisbee. We laughed at them at first,playing their ‘games’ but then realized its actually a really demanding sport. The nature of the game requiring you as a team to move a frisbee down the field to score a touchdown(whilst only being able to make 2 steps when in possesion) requires insane levels of fitness. The whole team seems to be sprinting the whole time, and it looks far more exhausting than footie.

The week was again spent looking for jobs. Robert had a trial at The Meat and Wine company on Tuesday, but didn’t get the job as they seemed to expect him to know stuff, like table numbers from a sheet instantly- I have a trial there this Wednesday. It seems they have people on trial constantly as they can pay you less than the minimum wage doing that. I was rejected from a different restaurant on Monday by the floor manager even though the owner was keen.

We also got ourselves signed up for an agency called Octopus which does waiting and bar work at events. The interview was crazy, run by a woman who has serious issues, and takes questions like they are insults. A bloke asked a general enquiry about the company, and she ranted at him in front of everyone about how he was totally unprofessional and rude to ask the question. Nuts. Robert also signed up to an agency which specialises in waiting at Jewish events and so had to learn some yiddish as a requirement. He has loads of work on Sundays and often it is at private houses, I havnt applied though.

Australia seems to be in love with rules and regs, which is surprising as fosters adverts(my perception of Australia pre arrival) don’t suggest this. To work in a bar or as a waiter serving alcohol you need a certificate to say you can basically pull pints- this costs £50, and isn’t applicable nationwide- so if you go from one state to another you need a separate certificate. To touch food you need a qualification- even if all your jobs is just to wash fruit. Even labouring requires you to have a days training(though most employers seem loose with this). I guess things are like America where people sue over anything. I actually chatted to an Aussie about this stuff, and yeah apparently if you’re a bar tender, serve a person alcohol in your bar from which they get drunk and they leave and kill someone, you as the bar tender(and the bar) are liable because you served them the booze. Ridiculous!- personal responsibility anyone? 

Anyway today Rob has a job with Octopus so I went for a walk round St Kilda to take some pics(just for this blog!) and get some food.

The area of St Kilda runs at a relaxed pace, trams potter up and down the main streets whilst people lounge around on the lawns and beaches soaking up the sun.

St Kilda Beach with the CBD in the Background

St Kilda Beach

I took photos of Acland street, which is one of St Kildas well known streets. It contains a range of cake houses similar to those found in Germany (like a Konditorei) where you can choose from a range of amazing homemade cakes to have with your coffee(for which Melbourne is famous). In addition there are bars/ restaurants all of which spill onto the street. The street also has numerous specialist clothes shops and fashion boutiques. At night various nightclubs illuminate the street and 200m away is St Kilda beach. This is all 5 mins walk from the hostel.

Pictures of Acland Street

 

 

 

Konditorei style cafe

This melowly,  is strangley in contrast to what Australians have said about themselves. They believe Brits are lazy, and percieve themselves as driven and hard working- some seem a bit snappy and on edge however im not convinced of this image yet!

The Australian high street is old school. You go into one shop to buy your shoes, another for your jeans and a third for your T-shirts. If you want meat, go to a butcher, vegetables a greengrocer and bread a baker. The supermarket is just used to top everything up. The supermarkets here are physically smaller than England(in contrast to pretty much everything else, i.e. the equivilant of a ‘b-road’ turns out to be a 5 lane superhighway), with the nation way less addicted to chains and names. This lack of bulk purchase does mean its far more expensive for food and clothes here, though the quality of clothes are better.

St Kilda Road- doesnt look this big on the map!

The country has dashes of Americana about it, with the cars, roads and buildings easily placable in the US:

Theatre near the hostel and the Town hall- both look American, the latter so much so it is nicknamed the mini- Whitehouse

 We went out last night with some people from the hostel to a nearby hostel called base with the idea of going to a club. However Shep got kicked out for being to drunk so we ended up back at our hostel as clubs wouldn’t have accepted us. Most other nights we sit in the bar, have some drinks and play some pool. Im gonna try and get a job with some lads from the hostel at a call centre selling electricity. It sounds bad, but the pay is immense ($100 per day ie £65 flat rate plus $35 bonus for each sale). One of the blokes made 8 sales in one day and so earned £250-mental.

So we are still in the hostel for the next week, with rates cheap at this time (December is when they skyrocket) but jobs need to be nailed before we can start commiting to a house.

I will describe Melbourne more once I get my camera into the CBD because the centre is simply stunning.

The First Week

My head in the sand mentality towards organising this trip, meant that my final days in England were rushed and chaotic- transferring and exchanging currency, stocking up on anti-malarials (for which a trip to the doctor was needed) and buying clothes- all jumbled in with hastily organised visits to see friends and relatives, who will not be seen for very many months.

The 23hr flight to Melbourne (12 hours to a moist and foggy Hong Kong followed 40 minutes later by 10 hours to Melbourne) was fairly uneventful, though onboard movies and drinks, reluctantly provided by flight attendants, helped shorten the time before our arrival into the big new city. 

Hong Kong airport(renamed Hong Pong)

 

The next few days were mainly spent tackling jet lag(some may just say sleeping). However we did manage to get out and see some of the surrounding area. Our hostel is based in the funky St Kilda region of the city, an area known for its large backpacker and student (sniff) populations. A stroll down any of the main streets will reveal a sprawl of outdoor seating areas belonging to the numerous bars, cafes and restaurants, however these seem mainly filled with the locals and older tourists from beachside hotels. The young people tend to stay in hostel bars, as the atmosphere and prices are better there (though even then a beer will set you back a whopping £6), or they buy alcohol from a liquor store, and in the evenings gather on the nearby beach. Since arriving the weather has been mainly sunny with temperatures of 20-35 degrees with the odd patches of rain- much better than England!     

The first nights were spent in the bar, playing pool and chatting to other travellers. The majority are here hoping to get some work and stay in the city for a few months. Some, like Rob and I, are doing it for the experience of living abroad whilst others are here for a new start. We have met a group of young northerners who are fed up of living working as night porters in Southport. There is also a 33 year old bloke called Rob who has spent the last 8 months living above a bar in Cambodia and drifting around South Asia, who left the UK bored of the 9-5 office grind, and settling down of his peers into matrimony. The hostel is fantastic in all the ways a mother would want- secure, clean, tidy and with good facilities.

 

This  week has been dominated by job hunting. We have both had some limited success. I was interviewed for a bar vacancy at a 5* hotel on thursday though my lack of wine knowledge meant I wasn’t successful. To be honest though I’m English and have been a student for three years- do they think during those student years I would have had the money or inclination to know the difference between one bottle of plonk and another?!.

Rob had had an interview for a catering firm, which plus an offer from a cafe working part time.  Other than that, and the millions of ‘jobs’ offered, claiming you can earn up to $3000pw just by drinking beer/taking customers milk and bread orders/insertanyccraphere, things have been relatively quiet. House hunting has been kept on the backburner and so we have booked out another week in the hostel.

Yesterday we went to see a mate called Fran who we travelled to India with back in July 07. Fran is studying at Melbourne Uni for a year. We travelled across town to the Uni, which has tried(fairly successfully) to imitate the Oxbridge look with old looking quads and pristine lawns before heading on to the Italian quarter of the city for some quality Italian food. Following this Fran(who incidentally is Uruguayan), took us to the home of some Chilean friends of his where we had some drink, before heading out to some bars. The area is the equivalent of Camden, a bit alternative, and apparently controlled by a local Mafioso (is that word right?) though at least the Aussies here seem to drink Pints (they all generally drink half pints of beer- or pots as they call them- how lame!).

Tomorrow we are off to play a football match organised by some backpackers.

Also here is a rough outline of the trip:

4^th November 2010- Flight from London Heathrow to Melbourne 

4^th November 2010- 4^th April 2011:

Life Abroad- Working and Living in Melbourne Australia

4^th March-4^th April-Traveling up the East Coast of Australia from Melbourne to Cairns Via Road/Rail

4^th April- 3rd May- Fly to New Zealand and travel round the country using Kiwi bus tours for a month- return to Australia

4^th May- Flight from Cairns to Singapore

5^th-8^th May- Time Spent in Singapore

8^th May- 16^th May- Malaysia

16^th May- 28^th May- Thailand

29^th May- 18^th June – Bike round Cambodia

19^th June-26^th June- Laos

26^th June-10^th July- Vietnam

10^th July- 31^st July- China

1^st August-7^th August –South Korea

7^th- 14^th August- Japan

14^th August- Flight from Tokyo to London

View Travels 2010/2011 in a larger map