24 September 2013 - Sundowner Rockbank Caravan Park, Rockbank, Victoria

Travelling into Melbourne on the train from the west is an adventure all of its own. The Sunshine railway station is undergoing major renovations and the whole area is a complex building site. We managed to find our way through to the car parking area we used last time we frequented the rail from here, and although we found only a corner to be available for use, it seems that the construction has frightened off most of the old regulars so we have had our pick of parking spots.

The trains come through every twenty minutes, the same time it takes to travel through to Flinders once you are on board. Great crowds of Sunshine’s population press toward the carriages when the doors open; mainly new Australians, black and brown, intelligent slanty eyes, tall ebony beauties, shrouded Muslims, smartly dressed little Asian girls, and nearly all clutching their electronic communication devices. We stand out like sore toes; pasty white, casually dressed and devoid of iGadgets. The carriages fill at each subsequent stop, and then start to empty out once the train reaches Melbourne Central, Parliament and finally Flinders. And then we all pour out, heading up the elevators, across the station foyer, pouring into the Ladies, queues out the door, a busy little Indian cleaner working so hard to keep on top of the demand. The Myki ticket system is still fairly new and the electronic readers are not as sensitive as those in other cities; sometimes it takes a moment or three to check that we have tagged off.

We were a little later travelling in today and did have seats. I had also remembered to bring some reading matter so we looked more the part of city commuters than yesterday. On arrival in the city we crossed to the adjacent Federation Square which was full of people, mainly families, or rather mothers and holidaying children. The AFL Final is to be held here in Melbourne at the end of this week, the same day we sail for Tasmania, and today, and probably every day this week, there are AFL related activities to fuel the Footy Fever. Dozens of stalls were set up for kids to kick a ball through a hole and score an AFL ball for themselves. We joined a crowd standing about a comic street entertainer, who had roped in several bystanders to assist. He was good but we moved off before he wound up with his pleas for money.

A perplexed visitor to Ian Potter Centre

We walked down to the Yarra River and wandered along the River Terrace where there were even more footy themed fun activities for kids. It was soon midday, so we returned to a corner of Federation Square from where we could see the stage. Before long a compare came on, introduced us to three AFL players who seemed to be well known, and then told us how  the big game would be compared simultaneously online in ten foreign languages, and three of those commentators were brought onto stage, offering their take on a film clip we were shown. The Punjabi speaker gave a wonderful show, the Frenchman not quite so screamingly funny but the Cantonese speaker 
finished her spiel in a way that only a hysterically excited young woman can. It would be worth logging on and watching the game on Saturday just for the joy of hearing the first quarter commentated in Punjabi, the second in Cantonese, the third in perhaps Greek and the last perhaps in Spanish? What a comedy that would be!

Entertained and fed, we headed off into the nearby Ian Potter Centre; NGV Australia, the art gallery exclusively dedicated to Australian art. We were just in time to join another free tour, tigers for punishment that we are, this one a focus tour on Aboriginal art. Today’s guide was interesting and while we have attempted to understand this art all around the country, she offered more again, and when one brings all the threads together, I do think I have grasped it all now, or at least as much as an inartistic Kiwi can.

We spent a further hour or so wandering around the rest of the gallery, seeing much for the second time, and new ones either forgotten from the last time or recently brought up out of storage.

It was soon time to join the commuting crowds again and head home. The steps of Flinders Station in the afternoon is always littered with white students; tattooed, pierced and often in fancy dress. Today was not too different except there seemed a surplus of those wearing panda suits or perhaps a new style of sleep suit, the kind I have seen on our grandchildren when they were tots. A strange lot; I think I prefer the dusky lot of the morning train.

It has been another day of art and culture, the sun has shone and we have spent another awesome day in lovely Melbourne.

Busy Flinders Station