travelling to Melbourne, Australia

[ankur prabhu]

Hi,

I am travelling to Melbourne, Australia most likely in next week. Please suggest me some 'reasonable' places to live nearby 'St Kilda Rd' or any place which is well connected to it by public transport (train, tram or bus etc).

Thanks.

[ankur prabhu]

Also do suggest me anything which can help me during my stay there - it's for about 3 months.

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Define "reasonable". Since I grew up here in Melbourne, I would be quite happy with nearly any apartment in St Kilda or Elsternwick or Beaumaris ... But I do not have a clue about your needs / wants. Coming from India, you might find prices expensive. Are you looking for a single bedroom apartment for only yourself, or a house with yard for your kids to play in?

Don't get suckered into a "great place by the beach". Yes, they are fantastic, but given that you will be here for the winter months, you are unlikely to do anything other than walk along the beach - and even that will get old really quickly when the winds are blowing from the Antarctic.

Trams and trains are reasonable here, although there have been a couple of problems on the trains this last week - just luck of the draw. If you are going to be centered around St Kilda and/or St Kilda Road, you probably want to look at staying somewhere on one of the tram routes, as using trains will probably result in you changing onto a tram at some point anyway.

How do you feel about house-sitting (possibly with pets)? Free accommodation for a couple of months.

[ankur prabhu]

Andrew Monkhouse wrote:Define "reasonable". Since I grew up here in Melbourne, I would be quite happy with nearly any apartment in St Kilda or Elsternwick or Beaumaris ... But I do not have a clue about your needs / wants. Coming from India, you might find prices expensive. Are you looking for a single bedroom apartment for only yourself, or a house with yard for your kids to play in?

Don't get suckered into a "great place by the beach". Yes, they are fantastic, but given that you will be here for the winter months, you are unlikely to do anything other than walk along the beach - and even that will get old really quickly when the winds are blowing from the Antarctic.

Trams and trains are reasonable here, although there have been a couple of problems on the trains this last week - just luck of the draw. If you are going to be centered around St Kilda and/or St Kilda Road, you probably want to look at staying somewhere on one of the tram routes, as using trains will probably result in you changing onto a tram at some point anyway.

How do you feel about house-sitting (possibly with pets)? Free accommodation for a couple of months.

Thanks Andrew. I meant 'value for money' or 'not so costly'. Sorry for not being clear.
I am alone so a single bedroom apartment would be fine.
The site you mentioned is nice but being non-native the chances of getting 'sits' are less, IMO. Let me know your views.

Also, what are the activities I can do there? what places are 'must visit'? any other information would be useful too.

Thanks.

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Hmmm, St Kilda itself is a little pricey - it is a very "fashionable" place to go to - the other major area that is "fashionable" is Lygon St.

If you are don't mind the travel time, Caulfield will be much cheaper, and probably half an hour by tram to get to St Kilda Rd. Trams will be crowded during peak hours though.

being non-native the chances of getting 'sits' are less, IMO. Let me know your views.

Actually I suspect that it will be about 50/50. While I am sure that there are people who would want a local person to sit for them, I also suspect that they are realistic about their chances of getting someone local for a short term only - most places only want a sitter for 2 or 3 months, and most people willing to sit for those periods of time are not going to be locals.

Also, what are the activities I can do there? what places are 'must visit'?

Most people will tell you to go and see the fairy penguins down at Phillip Island. There are tours run out of Melbourne every day of the week - pick up in the morning, stop off at the Koala reserves during the day, get dinner, then go and see the penguins come in. There are (from memory) around 300 families of Penguins down at Phillip Island. However make sure you rug up - this time of year it will be really cold down there (around 2 degrees, with a wind-chill taking it down to around -5). If you get taken to Seal Rocks (same general area) then see if you can get behind the shop area - sometimes they allow it, sometimes they don't. If they do allow it, you can get really close to the penguins that are being taken care of there.

Melbourne Zoo is one of the nicer zoos I have been to around the world, and you can do all the touristy things like get your photo taken holding a koala. You can get there by tram - come up to the city, then take #19 (from memory) to the zoo - it always used to be announced (and it was very obvious that you were going through parklands then going past a zoo).

Healesville Sanctuary is supposedly nicer, and you can see Platypus in their natural surroundings. But I have no idea how to get there using public transport. If you have a car it will probably take 3/4 of an hour to drive out there.

If you like playing golf, you could try playing at Anglesea golf course. There are better courses, but it has an interesting hazard - there are usually a family of kangaroos on the course.

The Great Ocean Road leads from a little bit past Geelong down towards Apollo Bay. There are many beautiful structures to see, including the Twelve Apostles and London Bridge. But again, a car is needed.

Normally I would recommend getting up into any of the bush areas around here, but with bushfires in the very recent past, you will see a lot of blackened areas - not a good idea.

[ankur prabhu]

Firstly, thanks a ton for your time.

I have some clarity now. I am looking for a studio kind of apartment (a single room with basic kitchen setup) somewhere between 1000 to 1100 AUD per month and as near to Docklands as possible (Kilda Road and Docklands are same area, I suppose). Which area, hotel/service apartment I should look for? Any reference site would also help.

The things-to-do list is not very clear to me now but I'll search your texts on google to get more information on that.

Thanks again.

[Andrew Monkhouse]

ankur prabhu wrote:(Kilda Road and Docklands are same area, I suppose).

St (Saint) Kilda Rd is about 5km from the Docklands area area at it's closest point, and heads away south from that point. So forget my earlier recommendation about Caulfield - that is even further south. What's worse is that the trams on St Kilda Rd are heading north-south, and Docklands is off to the west. So you would have to change trams somewhere in the city to get across to Docklands.

Unfortunately I know nothing about accommodation in or near Docklands - I don't think I even heard of the area until a month or so ago. (Ah - just looked it up on WikiPedia, and I see why: redevelopment did not start until 1996, and I had moved away from Melbourne by then). On a positive note it is one of the newest development areas in Melbourne, and it is easy to get from there into the city. On the negative side it is still very new, so there is a lot of development going on.

Since I do not know the area, I don't really have any recommendations on accommodation around there - sorry. I guess I would be tempted to look at accommodation in West Melbourne, North Melbourne, or Kensington, since they have traditionally been reasonably priced, whereas from what I can see of the Docklands project, they are targeting people who have a high disposable income. From what I have seen just doing a very quick search, you are unlikely to get anything in Docklands for under $1500 / month, whereas Kensington starts at around $1200 a month, and North Melbourne can get as low as $1000 a month. Kensington is a nicer area, but it is further afield as well - maybe a whole 10 minutes on the train!

[ankur prabhu]

Some updates…

I landed up around 3 weeks ago and loving the place so far.

Initially I stayed in South Yarra and used to catch train from South Yarra station to Southern Cross Road station. Docklands is near to Southern Cross station or rather Southern Cross station is the train station for Docklands area.

Now I am staying in St Kilda Rd, and go to Docklands via Fadration Square (Flinder Street station) by trams (1st tram - St Kilda Rd to Fadration Square, 2nd tram - Fadration Square to Docklands).

I have been to MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) and Great Ocean Road. Great Ocean Road was simply superb trip I have ever been to.

Penguin Parade, Melbourne Aquarium, Free city tour by Tourist bus, Victoria Market are in the list.

Looks like I am writing blog. ;)

Give me suggestions what I shouldn’t miss here. I have 1 more moth here approximately.

[ankur prabhu]

And yeah, Happy Weekend

[Andrew Monkhouse]

If you would like to try and solve a mystery, then you might enjoy watching the movie Picnic at Hanging Rock (or read the book it is based on). Just about any DVD/Video rental place in Australia will have a copy. There is a solution to the mystery, and the author said that Peter Weir (the director of the film) was the first person to come to her with the solution. There is actually a book that contains another 12 plausible solutions to the mystery.

Anyway the reason for mentioning the film - you can go up to Hanging Rock quite easily from Melbourne - it is about an hour by car. It can be spooky even if you don't know of the book/film. But if you see them first, it can be even spookier.

I mentioned before Healesville Sanctuary and the Melbourne Zoo. Both well worth visiting.

If you like the snow, you can go up to Mt Hotham. There is even a bus service from Melbourne to Mt Hotham if you don't want to drive or fly. I saw in the paper the other day that they opened early due to the heavy snows they have already had.