Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009, Melbourne Volksmarch
Bob: Our goal for the day was to do the Melbourne city Volksmarch, and after breakfast we joined the route where it passed a block away from our hotel. The directions guided us through a series of arcades that penetrated straight back into the commercial blocks. They were very pretty, and I'm quite sure that if we didn't have the Volksmarch directions we would not have chanced upon them. |
Monika: Today we decided to do the Melbourne Volksmarch. We could pick up the loop just a block from our hotel. The CBD of Melbourne is basically a grid. However, within this grid there are many alleys and, maybe unique to Melbourne, many arcades, that is roofed passages, sometimes straight and sometimes with turns. All the passages have small boutiques and many of the alleys have outdoor cafes. The Volksmarch guided us through several of these arcades, many with beautiful ceiling decorations. We finally ended up at the beginning of Chinatown, where we walked along the main thoroughfare. Although there were Asian restaurants on both sides of the street, it was still early, so none of the shops were open, thus saving us from ourselves. |
Bob: Continuing around the inner loop of the city, we explored all the nooks and crannies including the Chinatown area, the Parliament Building, and a Catholic cathedral before entering an extensive set of gardens. The gardens were beautifully landscaped and cared for, and it was just a shame that we could not see them on a sunny day. |
Monika: Once we got past the downtown area, we walked past the Victoria Parliament and St. Patrick's Cathedral, the catholic cathedral of Melbourne. From there we toured one of the many beautiful parks of Melbourne. Besides green lawns and large trees, this park boasted a Dolphin fountain. Although the water was not turned on, we were intrigued by the dolphin statues cavorting on the stones. |
Bob: In the gardens we were surprised to find a cute little miniature-scale set of buildings recreating a rural English town. The whole set of exquisitely crafted buildings had been donated by the city of Lamberth in England as a thank you to the citizens of Australia for helping them with food aid after World War II. Toward the end of our garden tour we saw the cottage where Captain Cook had been raised and decided to pay the entrance fee and tour it for a while. Cook is critical to the history of Australia as his three voyages of discovery charted large parts of the continent and ultimately led to the English settlements that began soon after the Revolutionary War in the U.S. ended. He was quite a guy but we won't know a lot of the details because his widow burned all his letters shortly before his death, an action directly duplicating Martha Washington's decision to burn all of George Washington's letters to her after he died. In both cases the women protected their privacy at the expense of historical knowledge of their husbands, an act that seems selfish although also understandable to me. |
Monika: A little further on was a miniature Tudor village, given to Melbourne by an English village grateful for the food sent after WWII. And the piece de resistance of the park was Captain James Cook's cottage, transported from England plank by plank (brick by brick?) and reassembled in Melbourne. It was a small two story cottage and layed out with furniture from the times of Cook. |
Bob: As our walk route returned within two blocks of our hotel room, we detoured back there for lunch and then continued on with the second big loop of the walk, one that led us across the Yarra River and onto the parkland beyond. |
Monika: We came back into the downtown area and since we were only a block from our hotel and Bob had left his camera behind since he thought it would rain, we went back to the hotel. We stopped at the Subway next door and brought back a sandwich since it was nearly lunch time Thus fortified we continued the Volksmarch with cameras. We went crossing the Yarra river to the south side. Here again there were several parks with statues of famous men, those who were famous because of an accident of birth, like Edward VII, and those that were famous because of the lives they led, like Edward 'Weary' Dunlop, a doctor who sacrificed much during WWII after being taken prisoner by the Japanese. He helped his fellow prisoners survive the POW camp, but after the war he strove for reconciliation with his erstwhile enemies. His life sounded truly remarkable. |
Bob: Our first major stop was the ANZAC Memorial, an impressive monument shaped roughly like a pyramid that commemorates the servicemen and women of WWI, WWII and all the other conflicts Australians have served in across the decades since. The flags of both Australia and New Zealand as well as various branches of the armed forces decorate the hallways around the shrine, and books of remembrance have the hand-written names of all the WWI and WWII veterans. While we were there they held a brief service in the big, vaulted shrine inside, which we attended. While a docent explained the memorial, a computer-guided light duplicated the track that the sun takes every November 11 at 11:00 a.m. while the Australian version of "Taps" was played in the background. . At that time, a sunbeam from two carefully aligned holes in the ceiling glides over the memorial stone on the floor that says, "No Greater Love Hath Man", and precisely at 11:00 a.m. it illuminates the word "Love" Very moving. |
Monika: On the high ground was the Shrine of Remembrance that the people of Melbourne built to commemorate the war dead of the first world war. Since the Australians could not easily visit the graves of their loved ones all over Europe, they built the memorial. It is an impressive structure. In the bottom is a museum, on the next floor the crypt, and finally the sanctuary. The sanctuary is a square open space supported by columns of marble with a pyramid like roof, that has a hole on one side. In the middle of the sanctuary is a simple plaque with the words "No greater love has man" set into the ground. On the 11th of November at 11:11 (the day and time the armistice ended WW I) the sun shines through the hole directly onto the word "love" on the plaque. This ceremony of light happens once a year on armistice day. However, they give us visitors a chance to get a small feeling of what it is like, by telling us the story and then quietly moving a light across the stone. It was really very moving. This memorial is also known as the ANZAC memorial, ANZAC standing for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. |
Bob: From the ANZAC memorial we crossed over into the Royal Botanical Gardens. Wandering happily among the luxurious spread of trees, bushes, flowers and ferns, we suddenly heard the distinct call of the bell birds, which we recognized from our drive into the Blue Mountains with Neville and Lyn. I desperately wanted to see one, and since this was Australia I just asked the next passerby about where I would have the best chance to see them. She thought about it a minute and then said that the problem was the bell birds tend to perch in the top branches of the trees. She advised me to take the trail leading between two parts of a large pond because the height of the trees was quite low in that area and the birds perforce had to come down to more observable levels. Doing as we were told, we were rewarded with a few close up views of them, and some of their comical antics. While eating they behaved rather like small macaws or parrots in the way they would hang upside down on branches to get at the fruit or nuts. So if you want to see bell birds, take some of the paths in the Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne! |
Monika: From the top of the Shrine of Remembrance we had a great view of the Melbourne skyline; beyond it was the Royal Botanical Garden and our walk led us all through it. There we again heard the Bell Minor birds whose song is a single note clear like a bell. We really wanted to see these birds and asked a passerby who directed us to a path between two small lakes saying that there we would have the best chance of seeing them. And after we had waited patiently and listened to their songs we finally saw one flying into a tree with only a few leaves so Bob could get some nice pictures. |
Bob: Walking back along the Yarra River, we took pictures of the Melbourne skyline reflected in the water, and stopped off for a big, stuffed baked potato at a food court on the riverbank across from the Flinders Railroad Station. Very tasty. Altering our route back to our hotel a bit, we stopped off at a souvenir store and bought three reproductions of aboriginal art that had been painted on black cloth. I hoped to get them back home safely where I could frame them and hang them on the wall. We were rather weary after returning to our room, so we put up our feet and vegetated by reading romance novels for the rest of the evening. |
Monika: After the Botanical Garden our path went down to the Yarra River and along it to the new entertainment and shopping center on the south side of the river across from Flinders Street Station. This was the end of the Volksmarch and we both were happy to return to the hotel and stretch out on our bed. |
| Index |
| Prolog | Map of Australian Walkabout | Epilog |
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