Saint Kilda's Boomerang

6 November 2009

Day three in Melbourne, and after a semi-scenic tram trip into town from the Big 4 Campground we're staying at in the not so scenic northern suburbs, we started out at Queen Victoria Market. This is the 19th century city market, now nicely gentrified and full of middle class people paying way too much for some gorgeous cheese, meat, and various deli -type hings from all the places Melbournians are from. Greece, Italy, Scotland, wherever the borek lady is from. Panini, sausages, pies, loads of glorious cheese (including those made by Corrie and her family), beers and wines. All delicious and good fun.

Next the city museum, for a bit of social history interspersed with some random 19th century costume (mostly mislabeled) and the origins of Melbourne. Early Australia isn't something I know much about (I realize it may come as a shock, but yes Virginia, there are things I don't yet know). Really must do some reading when we get home. Would like someone to buy me a new book just out called '1788,' about the first fleet. There is an older one of the same title. I don't want that one.

Out to Saint Kilda for the afternoon; this is a posh little wannabe-hippie enclave on the tram lines, but down on the water of Port Phillip. There's an old fashioned amusement park supposedly modeled on Coney Island and with requisite evil clown entry thing that I have no doubt generations of Melbourne children have been traumatized by. God, people, clowns are at best pathetic and at worst purely evil. Why does society allow them to exist?

Back into town for some quality free wifi in the amazingly and slightly frightening modernist dream that is Federation Square. The buildings are cool but the free and fast internet is what makes it. Drinking beer in a square cafe in the sunset, posting blogs, and all is well in Melbourne.

Post-Melbourne, we're off up to the Grampians. I may have already mentioned the sheer entertainment value to be had just from Australian place names, but I'll do it again anyway. “Ooh, a mountain range/town you say? I know, let's call it the same as the ones at home/after some woman I met once!” Hence the plethora of towns called things like Agnes, Alexandra, Alice, Alma, Anna and Augusta (just the As), and hence also the Grampian mountains.

Victoria's Grampians are strange and beautiful. They rise abruptly from a very flat plain, are dramatic and intense, and then just vanish again. We stayed the night in Hall's Gap. Thriving metropolis of 300 people but home to 6000+ tourist beds (this is a very popular place for activities like walking and hiking and other useless things.) We did drive up to Mackenzie Falls, home to the ballsiest kangaroos ever who don't run away even if you call them mean names from 3 feet away. The campground we opted for turned out to be amazing—next to a huge meadow with a single deer grazing, surrounded by a whole herd of kangaroos who came out to loiter at dusk. There must have been at least 12 or 15. A flock of emus wandering around...AND they gave us a discount for having a Wicked van (I suspect the pity factor) so this eden cost all of $18. If ever you find yourself in Hall's Gap, Victoria, Australia, do call in to the Takaru caravan park.

Next morning and up to Brambuk, a cultural center owned and run by the local Aboriginal people, and presenting their version of that whole genocide thing. Also they give white people boomerang lessons. It was really quite worthwhile and although the building is supposed to represent a cockatoo (spirit ancestor of the local people), I don't see it myself. But a fascinating place. The English justified colonizing the continent based on the legal argument of terra nuliensis (sp?)--meaning no one else lived here, so they could do as they liked. This was obviously completely illegal even by their own rules, as they knew there were aboriginals here. The Grampians in particular had been managed by native people using fire to burn off scrub and create pastures, the better to hunt the 'roos. The English, seeing this, decided that God obviously put picturesque open fields here for white people, and made themselves at home. Colonialism rocked.