Letterboxes, a didgeridoo and some sound advice.

I am awoken in the middle of the night by a flash of light and a rumble that seems to shake the room. I turn over and find it hard to tell whether it or not it is raining outside. There seems to be a thin veil of water in the air. I wait, lying still, staring out the window. Just as I decide to go back to sleep it happens again, and once more nature awes me more that anything made by man.

The sky is filled with searching tendrils that spread and split and reach downwards. One touches ground and a tunnel is created between the sky and the top of a building not a kilometer away. The huge discharge that follows turns the channel to electric blue plasma and the surrounded air is instantly heated and it explodes. A beam of light that stretches beyond the peak of my vision lights up the world. Thunder cracks through the sky, harsh and deafening. Followed by a rumble that slowly tails off to nothing.

Of course it all happens too fast for me to see in such detail. I just see a column of bright white, jagged streamers extending out of it across the night. I am reminded of a video I showed Amy a few days ago, lightning in slow motion. Wait for the return stroke from ground to sky.

I see a lot from my window. Hot air balloons, helicopters. The setting sun, locked between two buildings. A fireworks display reflected in the façade of the Eureka tower. It shimmers with gold and blue, the fireworks rippling across the panes like water. The effect is that of phosphorescence, of running your hands over the surface of a night time sea, leaving a trail of bioluminescent plankton sparking in your wake.

The reason for all this, and the reason I have not written in a while, is that I spent over a week pretty much confined to my flat. I have not had the chance to do much of import.

I got a temporary job delivering leaflets on waste disposal from the council. It was to last two to three weeks, which was perfect for me as that would take me to the end of my time in Melbourne. I thoroughly enjoyed the work. It was well paid (over $20 an hour!) and I got to spend my days wandering through affluent tree-lined suburbs listening to my music. The weather was nice and I like to be outside and moving.

I developed an interesting relationship with Australian letter-boxes and now consider myself somewhat of an expert on the topic. To start with each house has either two or three. One with a thin rectangular slit for letters, one circular one for newspapers and sometimes one large one for parcels. Handily for me here they are not on the front door of a house but on the fence or wall abutting the pavement. And many of them do not even have flaps that you need to lift, all in all this results in very quick and efficient leaflet delivery, you barely need to slow down.

And where in all this did you utilise your Masters in Mathematics I hear you cry? Well you should have seen the paths I took. Every morning before work was spent calculating the shortest path I could take that day. Rarely was a pavement trodden twice. I could almost feel my Game Theory lecturer smiling down at me.

Back to the letter boxes, they can very odd here. If the house is fenced the most common type is a wooden box nailed to the back of the fence, a slit between two of the slats for you to put letters in. With walls it is a different story. Some have letter boxes built into their gate posts, which seems like a good idea to me, but some seem to simply have holes somewhere in the wall. A brick has been removed and the postman just pushes the letters through to lie in the garden. If it rains or it's windy well that's just your bad luck. I know this is Australia but even that seems like a step too far.

The other thing is the junk mail stickers. About 90% of the letter boxes have dire warnings that they do not accept junk mail. It seems the council issues every house a sticker. I know what I was doing didn't count as it was the council that asked me to deliver the leaflets but that didn't stop me acting shifty whenever a resident saw me shoving a leaflet into their wall. Some people seemed to take the junk mail thing a lot more seriously than others. Most just had the stickers. Some had little handwritten signs or plastic or enamel plaques. I even saw one house with a large brass sign nailed over the front of its letter box. True they won't get any junk mail, but I feel like the plan may backfire.

One handy thing about the signs is often the letter boxes can be hard to find, especially when they are just a small white wooden box attached half way down the back of a white wooden fence. When this is the case the residents kindly but a 'no leafleting' sign in front of the box so all us leafleters know where to go. I also had to deliver to all the shops I passed, which was a much slower process because all the shopkeepers would talk to me. They were all very friendly though and most of them were very pleased to get the information I was giving them. I did feel a bit awkward giving a waste disposal service leaflet to the funeral directors though. And I avoided the colonic irrigation centre altogether.

Anyway enough on letter boxes. After a few days of this I managed to damage the peroneal tendon in my left foot. I am unsure how it happened, I am not exactly unused to walking all day for days (weeks) at a time, but I went to the trauma centre in the local hospital and they told me I had to rest until it was better. At three days they said. I couldn't walk in anything that put pressure on the outside of my foot. So shoes were out.

I spent about a week inside, venturing out very occasionally and cautiously in flip flops, the only thing that seemed to work at all. I had to give up the job and was pretty worried about not being able to go travelling, the date was fast approaching. In the last few days though there has been a great improvement and I am now back in shoes and able to see the city.

I visit the shrine of rememberence by the botanic gardens. Inside it feels like an ancient pyramid, tomb like. The walls are lined with books listing the names of all 89,100 Australians who served in WW1. From the roof of the shrine views to the centre of Melbourne unfold before me and I can see my building, hunched squat near the soaring golden topped Eureka Tower.

As I return through the centre of the shrine I encounter a tour group. They are gathered in a circle and a lone bugle echoes hauntingly through the stone corridors. I pause and join them for a moment, thinking on the horrors of war, and how lucky my generation is to have avoided them thus far.

I visit a few art galleries. The wonderful National Gallery of Victoria contains not only centuries of both European and Asian art but also some marvellous installations and sculptures. In the entrance hall of the gallery I find a taxidermied deer. I think it is a sculpture made entirely of glass and only realise it is real upon reading the information sign. The artist has covered the deer in crystal spheres of varying sizes until not a piece of fur is left exposed. Behind it is situated a glass wall with water cascading down it.

At first I think the deer looks a bit tacky but it does not take me long to change my mind. When examined closely I can see see the fur, or antlers, or hooves, magnified in the glass balls. I can see every hair, the variety of colour and the texture of the skin. The waterfall ripples and reflects throughout it. It really is quite beautiful, although I doubt my photos will do it any justice.

In the next room there is a great open space and in the centre a wide shallow pool. A hundred white porcelain bowls float on a sea of tourmaline blue. They languidly drifted back and forth, gently bumping off each other as they do. A chiming fills the air, as of bells. At times it seems slightly discordant and yet at times in perfect harmony. People sit around it in silence, pondering as the echoes reverberate to the ceiling and back.

I go to an art exhibition on people recovering from severe road trauma. Many of the artists have experienced things I cannot begin to comprehend, art is but one of the paths to recovery. People left unable to talk or unable to move. People alone, the one they truly loved gone forever. A lot of the art I do not really like but it does not seem to matter, the stories behind the pieces are no less poignant. Some I think are truly great. One is accompanied my a heart-rending poem and I find myself wiping my eyes.

I discover a shopping centre built around a 50 meter high shot tower. It was built in 1881 and was used to produce lead shot by dropping molten lead down its centre. In here I find a hairdresser from Bonnybridge, Scotland to cut my hair. Afterwards she directs me to a place where I can find Irn Bru. I have never been happier. I swag around town, can in hand, feeling like a king.

On Sunday me and Amy leave Melbourne. Her for good, me for a while. We have a camper van and are going on a roadtrip west. Then we are flying to Cairns in the north east and working or way south to Sydney. After Sydney we have five weeks in New Zealand, we already have various Lord of the Rings themed Facebook statuses planned so get ready.

I cannot wait to get on the road, to meet new people and to see new places. Melbourne has been great, and I am sure I will be back. This would be a great place to live. But I came to Australia to travel and to see the world. And now I can walk again there's nothing to stop me.

As I write this Laura Marling sings at me. 'Where can I go?' she says. Well Laura, anywhere. You can go anywhere you want.

I will leave you with a few final photos and comments on life around Melbourne that I haven't managed to fit into any of my previous posts. They really are quite odd here.

Yes, that is indeed a man playing an electric didgeridoo on the street while his friend sways and dances nearby. There was definitely acid involved.

A late night ice cream parlour that looked more like some sort of experimental lab. Tubes poured out liquid nitrogen and fog floated through the air. I had leek and honey ice cream. It was the most bizarre thing I had ever tasted. It was amazing.

Me and Aine had dinner sharing a table with two delightful Malaysian girls, one of them produces a Hello Kitty polaroid camera (classic Asians) and kindly used her last piece of film on this photo for us.

Don't even get me started on this. They seem to think that Cheddar cheese is called Tasty cheese.

My hometown on a street sign! There's also a statue of the Marquis of Linlithgow nearby. I think that was who it was...

Walking around Melbourne I see so much that appeals to me. There is so much variety here in both architecture and people. I get a feeling similar to that of Edinburgh in the festival. Where people can walk about wearing whatever they want, doing whatever they want, and no one seems to care. A business man in a suit skateboards past me on his way to work. A well dressed man does the same, shopping bags in each hand, followed by his four children all atop mini scooters.

There is such a relaxed vibe here, perhaps too relaxed to be maintained for long. But for now it feels just right. On election day as we walked the streets, telling people to vote green, we saw large sign urging people into action. Encouraging them to exercise the power of democracy while still holding true to the most basic of Australian values.

“DON'T VOTE SOBER”

Nighttime... Daytime!

I love walking through cities when it's dark. They take on a whole new aspect, a new personality, and often you are the only one there to enjoy it. Edinburgh I always found to be particularly beautiful on clear nights. Melbourne is no different.

The buildings shine through the dark like beacons, sending streams of white or green into the sky, a welcome to any who might be watching. The spire of the National Gallery of Victoria glows. A silver spear crested with an azure blaze. And nearby the trees are lit with a haunting blue. Bare winter branches silhouetted through the park, a view into the fey. We walk home from the pub one night and look up to see something wonderful and bizarre taking place in the skies above us.

The metal and glass tower block beside us is topped by a deep blue lights. The lamps themselves are out of our view yet the sky is filled with glowing streaks that dart around the building. They look like spaceships coming and going from a great dock, suspended in the void. I realise they are gulls. Hundreds upon hundreds of gulls far above, flying to and from the rooftop. Their white underbellies and wings shine bright blue in the power of the light beneath them. Around the periphery the tower seems to be encrusted with searing gems. Burning sapphires that dislodge and arc out into the pitch like shooting stars. The gulls are too far away to see clearly but I can't think what else it could be. A vision through to the future? Or to a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.

A car stops beside us and the occupants all excitedly stretch out the windows to try and capture the scene in a photograph. Their attempts seem as fruitless as my own. We move on and see in the distance the same sight repeated. This time it is fine white dots arcing and wheeling around a thin glistening spire that rises into the skies above a soaring building. The spire is lit from below with a beam of white. As high as it reaches, far beyond the tip of the spire, we can see movement. They look like moths. Thousands of moths jealously guarding their precious light source. What appeals about these two buildings in particular I have no idea. There are many others nearby but all are bare save for these. Perhaps it is two opposing tribes in a vehement war and these are their strongholds. Or perhaps not.

I am also introduced to Melbourne night life (this only took about fifteen hours to happen). The gay scene as it turns out is pretty active. This makes a change from Edinburgh with one gay club that is 'straight' on a Wednesday. Here we have performers! There are people doing acrobatics in rings in the air. Troupes of dancers who are definitely not women. And better, troupes of dancers who definitely are men. On later nights we explore the bars and pubs (more bars than pubs here) and I find there is a wide variety. Most with broad vistas across the city from rooftops or from by the river. On Friday night we are having a pint by the water when they set off fireworks from the far shore, a weekly occurrence apparently. The sun sets behind the bridge, lighting the entire sky with a creamy orange. Then a few hours later the sky is lit again with bursts of colours, ending in a resplendent display of gold that seems to fill the night.

Amy and I no longer close our blinds when we go to sleep. We would rather watch the city. We lie in bed and stare out the window at the sky-scrapers stretching above us, among them the Eureka Tower, highest viewing platform in the southern hemisphere. In the morning Amy goes to work and I do the same thing again with the sunrise. After she comes back we go for a swim in the pool and wonder what we did to deserve all this. So much for backpacking.

We rent a room from a very nice Italian guy while he is back home for a couple of months. The flat is immaculate and ideally located with two great flatmates. We manage to bargain him down so we are paying no more than if we were in a hostel. We view the flat the day I arrive (Amy is far too organised for her own good) and get a pretty extensive talk on the house rules, essentially they boil down to 'be tidy'. Then he proceeds to embark upon explanations of various hypothetical situations and how he would act in each case. This ends with the crumble story.

He explains to us that if we make any crumbles we should tidy them away. Or indeed if we find any crumbles we should tidy them away. He goes on to say that it doesn't matter who makes the crumbles, we should put them away if we find them. He would put away our crumbles if we'd left them out so likewise we should put away our flatmates' crumbles if they accidentally leave them. Now the whole way through I am completely convinced think that he is indeed talking about crumbles, as in the pudding. I assume he is using a crumble as an example of any foodstuff that we may have made and left out. I consider it exceedingly odd but go along with it anyway. Thankfully I managed to avoid any eye-contact with him (or Amy) and therefore withhold my laughter. We leave and Amy explains the situation. It turns out he was talking about crumbs. We decide to make him a crumble for his return. And put it away.

So what am I doing with my day times? Apart from applying for jobs. I explore, I wander, I take part in a clinical trial. We have a couple of friends that have done them in the past. They are testing how a new malaria drug interacts with a pre-existing malaria drug, I only have to take the pre-existing one then let them monitor how quickly my body processes it, couldn't be easier. I have a highly productive day in the hospital. I spend the entire time writing and get paid for the whole thing (a lifetime goal achieved and I don't want to hear anyone say different). Plus I get to wear this awesome thing in my arm.

Me and a friend look around the State Library of Victoria. It is a beautifully grand building with a huge terraced reading dome that can hold a million books. We get chatting to a woman who is setting up a tour and let her use us to practise on. She takes us around their various exhibitions, the first being on Ned Kelly and Sir Redmond Barry. Redmond Barry is famous for being the man who sentenced Kelly to death although this was by no means his only notable act. He did a great deal for the city of Melbourne in his life, including setting up the library we are in (and donating his own vast collection of books to it), the University of Melbourne and the Sunbury Industrial School. I get the impression that the Library is trying to paint Sir Barry in as good a light as possible. It is as if they are trying to make up for his part in Ned Kelly's death who is viewed here in a similar way to Robin Hood back home. She even tells us, very reticently might I add, that there are some less positive aspects to Redmund's story but she is not allowed to tell them to the public. We get out of her that he had known affairs but she will say no more.

She tells us an interesting story regarding the man's death. When he sentenced Kelly Sir Barry said the customary 'May God have mercy on your soul'. Ned responded to this with 'I will go a little further than that, and say I will see you there when I go'. Twelve days later Barry died of congestion in the lungs.

We are taken to a wonderful collection about the development of books. Our guide shows us both the largest and smallest books in the library. I get particularly diverted by the display on Tolkien.

We leave the library and explore some of the more famous graffiti alleys in Melbourne. Recently one of them was painted entirely blue by one of the artists. There was a public outcry to this as he had painted over many existing works. He pointed out at by the next day the alley would be filled again, and he was right. Personally I enjoy the bright blue. It shines out from between the new graffiti, helping it stand out, and paves the ground under my feet.

Now I am alone in the botanic gardens. It is the afternoon and they are gorgeous. The sun is shining and Goldfrapp sings me songs of summer. 'July-ly-ly'. I guess here it would be a song of winter. I discovered the Oak Collection and almost die. It is too exciting. There are so many Oak trees here that I had never seen before, Daimyo Oak, Swamp White Oak, Algerian Oak and amongst them some I hadn't even heard. I can't wait for late spring and see them in all their leaved glory. The song builds to a psychedelic crescendo reminiscent of some of Beatles later work and I take a seat in the sun.

A dragonfly sails past me. Black swans, Australian ravens and moorhens are all I can identify from here as far as bird life is concerned. I need the help of my brother (or a bird book, ideally both) to continue much further, all the animals are different here! The moorhen's haunting call echoes across the water. The gardens are beautiful, lush and full of life. The Eureka tower can be seen far in the distance stretching above the trees towards the sun. I am take all this time I have to work as much as I can. For those of you who don't know I am in the process of writing a book, and sitting here surrounded by nature seems the perfect place to do it. Although this blog is getting in the way.

'Spring' is officially here now. I put that in quotation marks because anyone with any sense would call this summer. It is twenty-six degrees and the trousers are well and truly packed away. I am even wearing a tank top. Sun's out guns out.

'Sonnentanz' or 'Sun don't shine' is the song of the moment, it is by an Austrian electro duo called Klangkarussell. To me it sums up that feeling of basking under a hazy summer sun and the long warm night that follows. Plus who doesn't love a bit of house... Amy and I listen to it this every day, we even dance through the entire thing over Skype to a friend back home.

Your love is mine, but the sun don't shine,

the sun don't shine, without you,

without you.

Well that's definitely not true. But it's a nice sentiment. I wonder whether I will make it through the summer alive if it is this temperature already. Thankfully I arrived here already prepared with a tan (from Scotland, who knew) or else I probably could have burned today. I will miss Autumn I suppose, for its beauty. But instead I will get spring again and that has always been my favourite. And I've never been one to complain over too much sun. Not enough sun, now there's a problem. Enjoy the winter.