Melbourne sights: Gold and GOR

Since I last updated, I’ve completed my 3-tour package. The first was Phillip Island and the little penguins. Here were the other two.

Sovereign Hill and the Gold Museum

Sovereign Hill reminded me of Barkerville (with the gold panning), and the Burnaby Village Museum (old blacksmith shops, etc).

We went down into the mines and were shown a video representation of Chinese miners back in the day.

One thing that amazed and still amazes me about Melbourne is the amount of history and influence Chinese people had/have in Melbourne – Chinese miners at Sovereign Hill, records of Chinese prisoners, half of the National Gallery of Victoria devoted to Asian artwork, airport signs in Chinese.

Then there was The Great Ocean Road (GOR).

Great Ocean Road and the Twelve Apostles

The Great Ocean Road was built to commemorate soldiers who died in World War I.

Coming back was a long journey because the tour bus broke down (or in the verge of doing so, so we didn’t risk it). We hung around Apollo Bay during its closing hours and had dinner.

I had a friendly conversation with a family from Guangzhou- dad, mom and their daughter. Their daughter was an international student in Melbourne. We talked about living expenses and ended up agreeing that we felt* that a small proportion of wealthy Chinese people have been contributing to the increase in real estate pricing, and that this increase is making it difficult for the low-, mid- class, young people to buy homes in Australia. Seems it’s not just Vancouver being affected by it. [*edit: My initial intention is to point out that our subjective views are observed in both sides of the world. In no way is this supposed to be accusational or factual. I apologize for my poor wording.]

Updates on work and living

I started work a week ago and it’s been nice. People are nice, but as usual, I’m very slow-to-warm. Today, I sat with the designers during lunch and they were a fun bunch. One of them went to a Michael Bublé concert recently.

Living – I found a roommate/flatmate! We have much in common: both studied psychology, both been to Africa (she’s born there), both vegetarians.
Tiff