Day 2 - Afternoon

With my morning errands mostly out of the way, I took to the streets and walked around aimlessly for hours. I can’t say that on paper it was a terribly riveting experience, but it helped me get a good sense for Melbourne’s downtown core.

Melbourne, like any well-planned large city, has many parks in its downtown area. I was quiet impressed with these parks – they were all quite large, had nice pathways and beautiful plant-life. I enjoyed taking in these parks as a break to the hustle and bustle of the city, just beyond its borders. They were very calming and it surprised me how relaxed I felt as I left these parks. I wasn’t overly-anxious walking around downtown Melbourne by any means, but the city indeed has a way of increasing one’s latent stress levels – especially if it’s your first day here – without you even really being aware of it. The parks were particularly novel as most of the trees and other flora were all quite new to me. They weren’t all spectacular sights to behold, but you could certainly tell you were somewhere that had a very different climate.
I noticed that the architecture one finds downtown is also quite impressive. A real mix of building styles from different time-periods can be found side-by-side resulting in a very unique downtown landscape.

I was approached by a gentleman who inquired if I wanted to take a free tour of the city. He had clearly spotted me with my map and camera in hand and he pointed to the stop nearby. A tour seemed like a good idea and by this point my legs needed a rest. The bus arrived and the large group that had gathered clamored inside. Leg-room was far from generous and I had to take up an entire row to myself so that I could spread my legs and fit in the chair. The tour was fine – it drove by a number of sights I decided I would try to find later and visit. The map they provided was more detailed than any other one I had and was probably the most useful part of the tour. An hour later I disembarked, famished.

In Melbourne you will find an array of people from a multitude of different cultures. The prospects for good eats were high. I was incredibly hungry by this point and quite weak as a result – my drive for adventure was entirely depleted. I spotted a McDonalds right away and made my way in. I thought to myself that I should be sampling some of the other interesting cuisine this city was sure to offer, but I had an entire five months to sample to my heart’s content and right now I didn’t particularly care. I knew I was going to come here at least one during my trip to see how a familiar chain conducted business on the other side of the world, I decided to make this that time – I just needed something to fill me up.

McDonald’s business model is interesting in that they attempt to create a familiar experience in their restaurants, both in food and feel, regardless of where you are in the world. This was somewhat true here. Every country has its own special menu – Australia’s appeared to entail the liberal use of avocado on a number of their hamburgers. Not particularly swayed by this option (I had had a bad avocado experience in grade 3) I opted for the stand-by burger: the Big Mac. The first thing I noticed was that you were given a choice of sizes for your meal. Whereas in Canada you get a standard size unless you ask to ‘super-size’, in Australia you had to state your preferred size ranging from small to large. I requested a ‘medium’ sized-meal and sat down. Immediately, I was struck by how small everything appeared. My fries came in a small box we didn’t have in Canada and my drink was equally ungenerous. I decided they were doing me a favour and tried not to feel ripped off. In addition to being smaller tha what I would have gotten in Canada, it was a good dollar more expensive as well. I was amused to see that Australia’s ‘small” was indeed quite small. Canadian McDonalds had done away with truly ‘small’ cups many years ago. Medium was the new small and the then large became the new medium. The Australians were clearly sufficiently far from the United States so as not to be as influenced as Canada by their over-consumption. Again, a good thing – but I couldn’t help slightly gypped as I quickly finished off my late lunch.

Truth be told, a major reason I had decided to come to McDonalds was their advertisement of internet. I again pulled out my laptop and attempted to log onto the internet. No luck – same deal as Starbucks. I was beginning to get annoyed with all the false advertisement around internet availability.

I sauntered around the streets of downtown Melbourne for a time more before deciding to return back to the apartment. I successfully located the correct tram and boarded. I had a general idea where I needed to get off. Luckily, right near my stop, was a cemetery of behemoth proportions. This thing is really big – frickin’ massive. Like really, it’s incredibly large. I knew I needed to get off at the stop just past the end of this thing.

I met Gail back at the apartment. She was off to Paynesville, a small town three hours east of Melbourne where she has another home and spends her time when business didn’t bring her to the city. I was left to my own devices for the rest of the evening. I made a quick trip to the nearby general store and picked up some provisions. Pasta, sauce and a loaf of bread cost me $12.00. Buying anything in this city really hurt the wallet, but $12.00 for pasta, bread and sauce? Come on. I certainly wasn’t going to return here unless I absolutely needed to. I popped into the liquor store right next door and selected a bottle of cheap white wine for $13.00. The wine was going to cost me more than my other supplies, which would last me a few days – but somehow I didn’t feel ripped off buying the wine – funny how that works. I returned home and whipped up a quick meal. I watched some TV as I ate and experienced for the first time Australian programming. Up first was Two and a Half Men followed by CSI: New York. Hardly the cultural experience I was expecting.

I generally dislike commercials, but the Australian variants were at least somewhat amusing to listen to. I couldn’t believe my bad luck, when, out of nowhere, I heard the familiar and greatly disliked jingle of the “Brand-Power” commercial. Unbelievable! Nothing could have prepared me for this grave disappointment. Over the summer, my co-worker Richard and I would mock the commercial and its unmistakable theme-tune which was essentially unchanged for broadcast on the radio. These commercials ‘randomly’ select products you’d find in the super-market and do a little spiel on them, touting their greatness. It’s supposedly not related to any of the producers of the products. I suppose they thought that the third-party nature of “Brand-Power” earned it credibility and legitimacy that a company couldn’t get by advertising its own products. I wasn’t convinced though. I was quite certain “Brand-Power” was owned by some large food/consumer-good corporation that also owned the companies of the products it advertised. At any rate, the jingle was annoying and I had to laugh when I saw the Australian variant which appeared exactly the same, save for local actors.

The most interesting Australian fact that day was learned through a story told by Gail about a woman named Lindy Chamberlain and her daughter, Azaria. In August of 1980, Lindy, her husband Michael and their three children went on a camping trip to Ayer’s Rock (now Uluru). On the night of August 17, their daughter, Azaria, went missing. Lindy claims that she saw a dingo emerging from their tent with Azaria. A large search ensued but all that was found were the bloody remains of Azaria’s clothes. Lindy was charged with murder, despite her claims of the dingo having taken her child. The police allegedly found some of Azaria’s blood in their car. Lindy was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In 1986, a bloodied jacket was found in a concealed location right next to a dingo lair. Tests confirmed that it was Azaria’s. Shortly after the discovery, the government ordered Lindy’s release – the jacket seemed to corroborate with Lindy’s earlier story. Her charges were overturned and she apparently received a complete exoneration. The case would go down in Australian history as a massive miscarriage of justice.

Anyway, this is the story behind the often quoted saying “A Dingo Ate my Baby!” People didn’t believe it could actually happen – but it did and it landed an innocent woman in jail.