Thanks to some advice that a friend gave us, my wife and I took our bicycles down to Melbourne last week. We stayed at the Victoria Hotel which is right in the middle of downtown Melbourne next to the town hall. Melbourne (as I’ve mentioned before) is a very cycle friendly place. One morning we cycled down to St.Kilda, which was only about a 15 to 20 minute cycle away, to have breakfast.

St.Kilda has a bit of a mixed reputation amongst the locals. It’s seen as a bit of a tourist destination that is full of poseurs.  Sure enough, St. Kilda has it’s quota of guys making a big display of riding their bikes with arms folded but it’s nowhere near as painful as Venice Beach in Los Angeles which has to be the wanker capitol of the world.

In St. Kilda we enjoyed Acland Street with is lovely old world cake shops; St. Kilda Pier and the ride back to downtown via Kerferd Street which has some very lovely old houses from the Victorian era

 through the Federation style

and then onto the late Art Nouveau period.

When I was in New Orleans many years ago I thought that too much fuss was made over the few old buildings they had there with “iron lace”. If you like that sort of thing, Australia has much, much more of it in Sydney and Melbourne.

If I were to compare Sydney and Melbourne to people, I’d say that Sydney is one of those naturally beautiful but vacuous people who just sits there expecting everyone to adore them just for how they look and Melbourne is one of those plain looking people, who has been forced to develop an interesting personality to attract people.
 
I not only live in Sydney, I love Sydney, but I also have to say that during my recent visit to Melbourne, I was left with the feeling that Sydney is somewhat lacking.  Sydney just seems to be relying on its natural beauty, which comes from being located on a spectacular harbour.  Although Sydney has the world-famous Opera house, and the clunky Sydney Harbour Bridge, it’s not a particularly nice city, to walk around.  Once one gets away from the harbour, most of Sydney is merely functional rather than beautiful. 
 
There have been articles in the Sydney Morning Herald describing a recent visit by a Danish urban planner, Jan Gehl and his comments about Sydney. Gehl was quoted as saying that Sydney “is a doughnut, because it has nothing in the centre.” I couldn’t agree more.
 
Melbourne on the other hand has instituted changes suggested by Prof  Gehl after studies his team conducted in 1994 and 2004, that have completely transformed that city into a much more liveable place. 
 
Melbourne has many kilometres of cycleways that encourage people to get exercise, and reduce the amount of cars on the road.  There is also much more public art in Melbourne.  I really enjoyed seeing Duncan Stemler’s “Blowhole”,

a 15 metre (50ft) high wind powered sculpture set in a children’s playground, and John Kelly’s joyously quirky  “Cow up a tree”, not only put a smile on my face, it brightened up the rest of my day.

As a matter of fact, many public structures in Melbourne exhibit beauty in their design, more than mere functionality.

When I told my friend that I was going to Melbourne, she recommended that my wife and I take our bicycles.  Luckily, I took that advice and spent a few days cycling around Melbourne’s beautiful art filled streets.  We’ll be going back to Melbourne again, we loved the place.

As for Sydney… get your act together, Melbourne’s kicking our collective butts!

I went cycling with my friend Paul and his trusty birdy at Olympic park in Homebush last Thursday. 

 The beautiful thing about cycling at Homebush is that there are not only 35kms (just under 22 miles) of very nice cycle paths and restaurants; there is the spectacle of the stadium itself.

 Due to an advertising deal Stadium Australia has acquired the name “Telstra Stadium”.

 Most people I know here in Sydney just call it the Olympic Stadium.

During the Olympics two local comedians (Roy and HG) ran an hilarious TV show called “The Dream” at the end of the day, commenting on the day’s events. Roy and HG with the help of cartoonist Paul Newell had come up with an alternative to the “official Olympic Games mascots”, called “Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat”.

 Fatso was much more popular with most Sydney-siders than the bland official mascots and there is a likeness of him on top of a pole near the stadium.

Before the Sydney Olympics (best Olympics ever, don’tcha know?) in 2000, the Homebush Bay area was basically a toxic dump marshland that had been polluted for the past 100 years by various heavy industries.  Much of the site had to have the topsoil removed and it was going to be completely built over. Near the centre of the Olympic site is an old unused brick pit that had been used as a location for the third “Mad Max” movie “Beyond Thunderdome“. It turns out that the water filled brick pit was the habitat of an endangered species of frog, known as the Green and Golden Bell Frog (Litoria aurea). The presence of the rare frog led to the brick pit being preserved as a habitat for the frogs.  Now the brickpit isn’t the prettiest thing to have in the middle of an Olympic park so some money was thrown it’s way and an amazing ring walk was built in the middle of it.

The ring walk, designed by Durbach Block Architects,  is 550m (1800ft) in circumference and 18.5m (60ft) above the ground. The Ring Walk is truly a fantastic solution to preserving habitat whilst still allowing people to enjoy public space. It’s nice to see that our government is starting to realize that cities need to be “livable”. The whole Homebush Bay area is covered with cycling paths and I go cycling at there quite often with my wife, and friend Paul. The brickpit is one my favourite places in the whole of the Olympic park.

 My friend Paul is an aficionadao of technology (otherwise known as “shiny kit syndrome”) and as such he has the latest bright and shiny things, such as a beautifully made folding German bicycle called a “Birdy”.  Everytime I struggle to get my and my wife’s bike in and out of our car I’m jealous of how easily Paul assembles and disassembles his. All very civilised.

On a technical note the photos were taken with another of Paul’s shiny things, an I-mate JAMin telephone. Whilst the telephone doesn’t take as good photos as my camera, it had the advantage of being with us, as opposed to my camera, which was sitting at home.