We made our flight from Christchurch to Melbourne on March 5 with no problems. We were a little bit worried about going through customs because we had heard of how strict they are with visitors. You can’t enter Australia without a ticket out, so when we booked our original NZ tickets back in September, our travel agent had made up a mock itinerary showing that we were leaving out of Darwin on April 3. The other thing that had us really worried about Australian customs was a tv show that we had watched religiously while in NZ, called “Border Security”. It is all about Australian customs and shows various real-life scenarios in the Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney airports. So, after throwing out all of my notes showing our possible Australia travel plans, we arrived at customs with our Australian Visitors Visas in hand. On our way down the ramp there is a huge sign posted “Channel 7 is here today filming “Border Security”. Please advise one of the television crew members if you do not wish to be filmed”. I thought surely this was a sign…and not a good one. We approached the customs agent to have him ask which medication we were declaring (we had checked off this box because we had a bag full of anti-malarials for SEA). To our surprise, he replied with “Good on ya mate” and sent us on our way. He didn’t even ask for the visitors’ visas which kind ticked me off because it was an extra $40 that we could have spent on something else! (Amazing how your perception changes when you travel, eh?). Ah well, we got through with no problems and once again, my worrying was all for nothing.
We booked into the YHA for three nights in the heart of Melbourne. It’s a big city (bigger than we anticipated) with a population of 3 million. It had forecasted rain for the whole weekend, which wasn’t a big surprise to us seeing as the bad weather is apparently following us around. However, we woke up on Saturday morning to heat, sunshine and blue skies! We spent the morning and early part of the afternoon wandering around, going to the Queen Victoria Market (where they have everything from a full cow to cosmetics to Asics running sneakers) and took the free city tram around the inner city. We did some more walking and were headed back towards the hostel to check into our other room (had to move rooms after our first night). We contemplated going to the waterfront first but decided against it and would go out later to see some more sights. Well, those plans quickly changed.
Not five minutes after we got back to the YHA, we heard what sounded like gun shots out the window. We jumped up to find golf ball sized hail pelting down and blanketing the streets faster than we could realize what was going on. After a couple of minutes of hail, the rain started coming down by the buckets and the wind went crazy. We watched in amazement from our window as it quickly turned to chaos. The streets started flooding and cars were quickly submerged. Garbage bins and other random items were floating by in the streets and people were up to almost their hips in dirty water. Everyone in the hostel was running around taking pictures, as this was extremely unusual for Melbourne. We did manage to get some entertainment out of it when a guy outside pulled out his boogie board to use in the street!
We planned on waiting it out and going out to see for ourselves what had happened, but when we got downstairs we couldn’t go anywhere. The bottom floor of the hostel was flooded! Not to mention, the bar that is attached to it that serves $5 pizza and beer. After talking to others who were out and during the storm, we realized that there was some major destruction and that we were really lucky to have opted to go to the waterfront later. The roof of the casino, the mall, and the grocery store had all collapsed (no injuries that we’ve heard of) and the harbor bridge was flooded at both ends. So, here we sit in a beautiful city in our hostel playing more Crazy Eights and bracing for another monster storm today! My biggest question is where are all of the spiders and snakes gone with this flooding? Yikes!
After speaking to a British guy about his Australian adventures, we now know that maybe the weather isn’t following us, but them. He’s been here for a month and was stuck near Sydney in a campervan due to flooding and washed out roads, then a small tsunami hit, and now this in Melbourne! Poor guy.
We are hoping we can head out later today and do some more sightseeing. We have a rental car booked for tomorrow morning when we take off for the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide for 6 days. Stay tuned…
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