Spaceship Blog Two
- by chrismoore
FUN IN AND AROUND MELBOURNE
We rose early the morning after picking up the van and checked out of our hostel, The St Kilda Beach House, by 10AM. We had enjoyed a few beers in Melbourne the night before and so were all feeling pretty rough. We drove into the centre of the city and found a nice place to park that wasn’t too expensive and it was pretty close to Federation Square, a place that is well worth checking out if you are in Melbourne.
We had a final walk around the city and picked up a spot of breakfast. We then had a Boost. Boost is an Aussie smoothie bar that sells thick fruit smoothies that are out of this world! And great if you’ve had a beer or two the night before. Every traveller to Australia has to try one. I plan on trying every smoothie on the menu by the time I leave. We then made our way to the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
The MCG tour starts with a walk around the lower tiers of the stadium and an impressive look up at this magnificent ground. Your guide will then tell you some of the amazing facts and statistics about the MCG. The record attendance is 121,000 people and to achieve this, some spectators had to sit on the roof. They obviously didn’t feel the same way about heights as I do. We then walked on down to the pitch and got to walk on the famous surface. We then walked around the rest of the ground getting a look at the media centre, the players box and the Members Only areas. Capped off by a look at the whole ground from the highest row of seats in the stadium. The tour was fantastic and if you would like to hear more about it check out the full blog by clicking HERE!
After completing our tour we set off towards Weribee in search of a place to cook our first meal using our Spaceship cooker. We found a nice place to sleep that had a bench nearby to cook on. On the menu was a beef stew. We had an amazing meal and with all the utensils, cooking and washing up is surprisingly easy. We have also found that even with all our bags, the three of us and our two surf boards, there is ample space. We are forced to keep things neat, tidy and ordered, which I like. We now have a pretty good system in order for keeping the van looking ship shape! That night we watched the sun set and then settled in for our first nights sleep in the van.
We made the bed and hopped in. Now we are a group of three pretty large guys and so we expected it to be pretty cramped. We crammed in together and it was pretty uncomfortable being so close to one another, but it is doable. It was hot and sweaty and we didn’t sleep very well. Even though we had very little sleep we woke up very early, 6AM, and were in very good spirits. This was because it was the morning of our Aerochute!
The Aerochute is essentially a three wheeled, metal frame buggy, with two side–by-side seats and a 500cc engine powering a massive propeller. Behind the Aerochute there is a parachute attached by a series of strings. We drove to the base and arrived at 6:20 AM as the sun was rising. On this open baron land we flew around in the Aerochute for around 30 minutes. During this 30 minutes we flew around, spotting Kangaroos, flying next to a herd of cows and I even got to take control of the craft. It was agreat activity and for further information you should check out the blog on the activity by clicking HERE!
After the Aerochute was over we drove twenty minutes south to Geelong and picked up some supplies from the supermarket. We then drove for about 30 minutes at a nice slow and relaxing pace to the surf town of Torquay and the beginning of the Great Ocean Road.
Check out the next installment of our Spaceship adventure by clicking on this link!
March 12th, 2009 at 2:02 am
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