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”