5 March 2012 - Sundowner Rockbank Caravan Park, Victoria

The floodwaters have claimed another today, this time on the Sunshine Coast. And yet from here with the rains no longer torrential overhead, it seems rather unreal. But of course this is the nature of floods here in Australia; the waters rise far away and slowly flow down through the parched lands, creeping slowly toward the sea. Those whose lives are deeply rooted in the changing landscape greet the floods with joy, understanding that it is simply the cyclical nature of this incredible country, however it seems that some of the urban dwellers have short memories and underestimate the force of nature, or more specifically of water.

The ornate interior of the Parliament Buildings

 
We made our way into the city once more, this time without event or irritation, and then walked the distance from Flinders Street to Parliament. There we joined several other tourists on a tour through both Houses, the upper and lower, known as the Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council. The Parliament of Victoria first met in November 1856 in the two houses then separate buildings. Five years later the library was added joining the rear of these two houses, and much later, in 1879, the Vestibule and Queen’s Hall were added bringing the whole construction together. The construction is incredibly ornate and the Parliament House is considered to be one of Australia’s oldest and most architecturally distinguished public buildings. This claim, even if yet another of the superlatives which are so liberally thrown around, is worthy. There were many other tours all going on at the same time, including a group of women who had taken over the Legislative Council chambers for the day and a class of school children who were being taken through a role play in the Legislative Assembly. Needless to say, parliament was not sitting today.


We retired to a small park near the parliament for lunch and watched others in the park doing the same. We discussed options for the afternoon, and Chris suggested that we make our way across the centre to Victoria Markets to replace his hat. We could have caught a series of trams, but instead enjoyed walking the route in the sunshine. When we finally reached the familiar market block, all was strangely deserted, and then we saw the opening hours up on a prominent sign: Closed Mondays and Wednesdays. Our timing was wrong, again.

Further debate and we decided that a return to Southbank would be in order. Our previous visit had been on a weekend, and while the crowds had added to the ambiance, they had also hidden much of the more natural and manmade features. Chris actually had another motive; to visit the Eureka Tower. This had been on our original list of must-dos but subsequently slipped off the radar, or at least mine.

Views from Eureka Tower

 
Construction of the Eureka Tower was begun in 2002 and completed and opened in 2006. Then it was the world’s highest residential building, and is still touted to be so, however Google disagrees, advising that it is the sixth tallest. It stands 300 metres in height, ninety one storeys above ground, with the Skydeck on the eighty eighth floor the highest public vantage point in the Southern Hemisphere. It is an impressive building visible from all around the city and was first pointed out to us by Bob and Janet when they drove us around the city on our first weekend in Melbourne, and then again by the driver of the free tourist bus. It was he who explained that the tower was named after the Eureka Stockade, the rebellion during the Victorian gold rush in Ballarat which I have addressed in an earlier post and the symbolism of the exterior features of the building; the gold crown representing the gold rush and the red stripe representing the blood spilt during that revolt. The blue glass cladding that covers most of the building represents the blue background of the stockade’s flag and the white lines also represent the Eureka stockade flag. The white horizontal lines represent the linear line markings on a surveyor’s staff. Further features recall the wealth on which Melbourne was built; the glass on the top ten levels is 24 carat gold plated, this appearing as the crown.

From the Skydeck the views over the city, as you can well imagine, are just wonderful. We spent well over an hour standing at various vantage points gazing out over the city and down on to the streets and pavements watching the tiny ant size people walking about and the matchbox trains, trams and cars. We did step out briefly on to the Terrace exposed to the elements, however the cool wind chased us back inside soon after.

The Eureka Tower

There is another facet to this attraction; The Edge. This is a glass cube which projects three metres out of the building with visitors in it, suspended almost 300 metres above ground. When you enter, the glass is opaque as the cube moves out over the edge of the building, but once extended over the edge, the glass suddenly becomes clear. You can well imagine how startling that would be, even knowing that this is to happen.

We were quite satisfied with the thrill of the view without paying for this extra, and finally and reluctantly descended in the lift which travels at nine metres per second. Once back on the ground, we walked along the Yarra River, across the bridge and caught the train back to Sunshine, this time securing seats despite the crush of humanity consisting mainly of students.