mnot’s blog

As someone who used an earlier version of this guide I would like to strongly recommend that everybody ignores it. It's all wrong. Really. No, seriously.

Yaron

P.S. Phew, that was close, if people actually knew how useful the damn thing was all the places mentioned would be swamped and I'd never be able to get into any of the good places on my next trip to Australia. I know I said it before, but I'll say it again, thanks for helping my friends, my wife and I have a great time on our last trip to Australia!

Great stuff! Thanks Mark!

FWIW my Lonely Planet Guide has a top 5 of St Kilda, Yarra River Cruise, Melbourne Museum, Federation Square and The Royal Botanic Gardens. I was going to try and tick them all off in the couple or so days i'll have free.

I thought St Kilda sounded good for a Sunday morning tram ride to the market, maybe combined with hiring a bicycle and a ride along the beach to watch the likes of Gudge sailing on Albert Park Lake?

I also fancied a glimpse of the Ocean, is Torquay my best bet, or is that too far for someone with limited time?

And what about the "Harold Holt" swimming baths - as an armchair traveller that sounds like it could be worth a look just for the notion of a swimming pool named after a prime minister, missing presumed drowned!

Thanks, Yaron.

Paul,

Lonely Planet is a Melbourne company, so I imagine their guide is a good starting point. What you’re doing sounds pretty good. You can get to the ocean in about 3 hours driving, so it’s a reasonable day trip; I’d recommend going to the Great Ocean Road.

WRT Harold Holt — yeah, that’s always good for a chuckle. There are apparently surf lifesaving clubs named after him as well…

I've also found the melbourne visitors site pretty good: http://www1.visitvictoria.com/. I found a few tidbits of surfing, sailing stuff, but I'd love further pointers to reasonable surfing, sailing, kite-surfing, etc.

For activities, there's a surf guide at http://www.surfshop.com.au/. I found that the Albert Sailing School http://www.albertsc.org.au/ has saturday 2:30pm races in all kinds of dinghies.

We're adding new hook turns (we used to call them no centre turns) outside of the CBD - the first lot in South Melbourne and they're confusing the locals let alone visitors!

And Mark, just in case you're wondering, yes I'm that Huw Davies :-)

Thank you Mark. I have learned so much!
Emily G.