Getting my feet on the ground

After checking in to my hostel, I headed out into the city again. There was so much I wanted to do and see that I had trouble deciding where to begin. So I decided to think it over while sampling some local beers. I had noticed a pub earlier in the day with a cool name.

494. The Edinburgh Castle

Those of you who have read my stories about San Francisco might remember that there was an Edinburgh Castle there as well, and that I visited it a couple of times. This pub was in central Sydney on the corner of Pitt Street and Bathurst street. It was just about lunch time, so there was a half decent crowd, most of whom, rather than having lunch, were watching the horse racing on tv. One of the great things in Australia, is that a lot of pubs have a bookie in them. And I don’t mean next door, I mean right in the middle of the pub. The set up for this is usually a couple of flat screen tv’s with the sports action on them, and underneath them is a machine about the size of a cigarette machine. It has a touch screen and will let you select your horse, dog or team that you think will win, score first or whatever you want to bet on. You put your money in and you will get a receipt, just like you would at a normal bookie shop. If you win (and I stress IF) you put your receipt back in the machine and it will print out a voucher that you can hand in at the bar, where you will get paid in cash. Excellent system, in my humble opinion. I ordered a pint of Rechs lager, a local beer with a surfer on the pump handle, and was then told that they only served beer in schooners. This was something that I would encounter rather often in Sydney. A schooner is a strange size of beer vessel that is more or less halfway between a pot(halfpint) and a pint. The theory behind it is that is gets so warm in Australia that your beer would get luke warm before you are able to finish your pint. Either way, I got a schooner of lager and it was really nice. Due to the long bus trip and the fact that I had just had something like breakfast an hour or so earlier, I had a bag of Twisties to keep the local produce trip going. Twisties are cheesy corn snacks that are really nice with beer. I eat them regularly here in Dublin when they are available in the pub. None of the punters in the pub won anything in the horse racing even though the races follow each other even faster than they do here in Ireland.

Edinburgh Castle Pub

Cool fountain

Wanting to get a feel for the city, I made my way out after one beer, in order to do some walking around and to get the hang of the lay out of the city. Having walked around the central streets for a bit, and marvelled at the monorail that runs around central Sydney, I decided on a stop at

495. The Bavarian Beer Cafe.

It seems to be all the rage lately, to open Bavarian style beer gartens and kellers all over the world. Sometimes this works quite well and sometimes this does not work at all. The usual problem in these cases is that they make it to nice and neat. I encountered this problem in a beer keller in Glasgow last year, which had the basic ingredients for a nice beerhall, but they fucked it up by adding atmosphere lighting, ambient background music and a designer bar. A similar problem occurs here in Sydney- the place is polished to the nines, has brand new oak tables and stools and staff in outfits that you would expect to encounter on Wall Street. If you are reading this, beerhall designers of the world, here’s a tip: If you want to create a genuine Bavarian beer hall atmosphere, you need only 3 things: Beer, an old table and wooden bench to sit on and traditional German music on the stereo. Forget about polished tables, mood lighting, designer menus, staff that know 23 ways to make a Martini and, god forbid, ‘Ladies beer’. Just give me a beer and a bowl of peanuts and I’m perfectly happy. Oh yeah, and while you’re at it, if you work this way, you also don’t need to charge me 10 dollars for a beer.

Having left the Bavarian Beer cafe behind me, I checked my map to see where I would go next. I then realised that I was within reasonable walking distance of Sydney Opera House. Even though I had wanted to put off visiting the Opera House for some more time, I knew that I would not be able to do this. If you are near such an iconic site, it is impossible to walk away. The same thing happened when I was first in New York. I had the idea of visiting the Statue of Liberty somewhere midway through my stay, but after resisting temptation for a day, I was on the ferry to Liberty Island at 8 am on Monday morning. Here in Sydney, on the other side of the world, I simply could not resist. I walked to Circular Key and once I turned the corner and saw the Opera House, I got the same freeze frame experience I had when I first stood next to the Statue of Liberty. I stood frozen for 5 minutes, just looking at the building and taking in the beauty of Sydney harbour. It’s hard to explain what goes through you. You think it won’t be a big thing because you have seen it 5 million times on tv, in the papers and on post cards. But once you are actually standing next to it, it completely silences you.

Sydney Opera House

What wasn’t silent, was the National Rugby League fan event that was about to start on the square in front of the Opera House. It was Friday and the NRL final would be played in Sydney on Sunday. Like in Melbourne on the day before the AFL final, the fans were out in force to make a big party of it and here, like in Melbourne, the fans were out in force to have a great outdoor party as a prelude to the big game. A big stage had been erected in front of the Opera House and bands were playing throughout the afternoon. Fireworks went off at regular intervals, both teams arrived in Sydney harbour on boats and the fans were having a ball. And a couple of beers, so I joined in the fun.

NRL Fan Day

496. The Opera Bar.

I’m not entirely sure where this bar started and where it ends, because it is situated under a sort of swerving arch that goes nearly all the way to the steps leading up to the Opera house. For the rugby fan event, mobile bars had been set up along the waterfront and this all added to a great atmosphere. I ordered a Pure Blonde, a nice, easy-to-drink beer that I had a couple of times in Melbourne as well. I sat down on a stone bench looking out over the harbour and realised that I would happily sit there for the next 10 years. This was ofcourse the result of a largely sleep deprived overnight bus trip, the perpetual sunshine and the fact that I had been drinking since breakfast time, but for a couple of minutes that was really how I felt. I had another beer, talked for a bit with a middle aged Australian couple who were very interested in what I was doing in Sydney and if I liked Australia and then I had to drag my self away from the sunset in the Harbour because I had another place to go to.

497. The Australian Hotel

Is basically around the corner from the Opera House, but due to the large lay out of Sydney harbour it took me some 15 minutes to get there. Didn’t matter, the reward at the end was worth the walk, including the steep steps I had to climb to get there. The Australian Hotel prides itself on selling every brand of beer that is brewed in Australia. According to the menu, they serve 104 different beers, about 20 of them on draft. Like in Jack’s Bar in San Francisco, where they serve 86 beers on draft, I felt like a kid in a candy store. I spent a couple of minutes monitoring the taps and the fridges and decided to order a Vale Ale. It was very nice and I really liked this pub. I hung around for another beer and decided to go back to my hostel to put together my plan for the night.

The Australian Hotel

When I got back to the hostel, there was a bit of a dull atmosphere going on. In fact, the whole 2 days I spent at the hostel were quite dull. It looked as if the people staying there had no intent of partying or going out. They just sat in the lobby watching tv. I had picked up a 6pack of Victoria Bitter on the way home, had 2 cans and decided that I had enough of this place. So I put my remaining 4 cans in the fridge and headed back towards China town. After walking around for a bit to scout if there were any good pubs there, I came across a pub that would become one of my hangouts in Sydney.

498. Scruffy Murphy’s

Is a big chaotic Irish pub, spanning 2 floors and a casino. It is loud, crowded and there is something on every night. When I stumbled in there on Thursday night at around 10, I walked into the middle of a trivia quiz, presented by an Englishman called Andy the Pom. I ordered a Guinness, which was very modestly priced at $6,- for a pint (and I mean a real imperial pint) and played a couple of rounds in the quiz by marking my answers on the back of a beer coaster. It turned out that I had a score of 18 out of 20 for the 2 rounds that I paid attention to and ordered another Guinness. As I always like to know what is open when and where, I asked the girl behind the bar what time the pub would be closing. She gave me the answer every enthousiastic drinker wants to hear:

We Don’t.

I asked her again, just to make sure that I had heard it right and she again confirmed that the pub never closed and was open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Oh Heaven. Sydney again scored several additional points on the ‘Kick Ass City’ score sheet. Having a pub down the street from your accomodation(and the accomodation that I would be moving to the next day) that is open 24 hours a day sort of takes the pressure off the planning side of things; when all else fails, you can simply go there, no matter what time it is. With this important issue sorted, I set about celebrating and continued drinking Guinness deep into the night. I also spent some time in the casino and even won some money. Ofcourse, I immediately returned my winnings to the bar and I don’t remember getting home.

The planning for the next day: King’s Cross.

Scruffy Murphy's

To Sydney

As I had booked an overnight bus to Sydney, I had plenty of time left in Melbourne to take a final tour of interesting places. The only problem was that I was experiencing what I would call a ‘bad stomach day’. This happens about once a year and the last one had been in San Francisco the previous year. It basically means that I have a sort of hangover, but rather than in my head, it’s my stomach that causes the problem; I can’t eat anything without getting sick and the only thing that my stomach will accept is water. I realised that it was one of those days when I had a donut for breakfast and couldn’t even finish it. Consequently, I took it easy the whole day and made for the bus station well in time for the bus.

At the Greyhound station, I walked up to the bay where my bus was supposed to leave and found that it was not there yet. After waiting for about 10 minutes, I decided to go for a walk and headed for the exit again, lugging both my back packs along. It was near the lockers that I met a girl who saw my bags and asked if I wanted to use her locker. She told me that she was taking the bus to Brisbane and it was about to leave and she thought it a waste of money to leave her locker unused with 20 hours of usage still left. We went over to her locker and she pulled out 4 huge bags and a suitcase. When I asked her why she was carying so much stuff around, I got an unsuspected answer: She was moving to Brisbane.

The concept of using an inter-state Greyhoundbus to move house was new to me, and to be honest, I must say I thought it was a brilliant idea. In a country as small as Holland, you can easily rent a van or car for a day and move all your stuff to the other side of the country and be back in your place of origin to return your van in time for dinner. A friend of mine moved from Enschede, on the German border, to Rotterdam, near the coast in the South West of the country, a couple of years ago and managed to clear his entire relocation within one working day. In a country as huge as Australia, this is impossible. The bustrip to Brisbane would take approximately 20 hours, which means that if you rented a van in Sydney, loaded it up first thing in the morning and then headed for Brisbane, it would still take you an entire day to get to Brisbane. You would arrive in Sydney exhausted from the long drive, even with driving duties shared between 2 or 3 drivers and then would still have to unload the van, get a night’s rest and then drive the thing back to Sydney. In total this would be a 3 day operation even in the most positive planning, and not even taking into account time spent in traffic jams, on rest breaks and for meals. The cost would be considerable. By moving to Brisbane on a bus, you can do the whole thing in one day. You don’t have to ensure the bus is returned to it’s origin, you don’t have to worry about fuel costs, getting a group of drivers together or other logistic problems. Just buy a ticket, which would probably cost somewhere around $80,- and get on the bus. Greyhound buses don’t have a maximum luggage allowance, provided that you don’t claim the entire cargo deck for yourself. Good planning, I must say. I said goodbye to the girl (I never got here name) put my back pack in the locker and tried to kill the remaining half hour by walking around, buying a bottle of water for the trip and generally feeling wrecked.

Greyhound bus to Sydney

Half an hour later, we boarded our bus. I won’t bore you any further with the details of the overnight bus trip because basically, there wasn’t much to tell you about. I got on the bus in Melbourne when it was starting to get dark and I got off in Sydney 13 hours later at around breakfast time. I spent most of the route between Melbourne and Canberra sleeping, which was made possible by a half empty bus, giving me a double seat to lay down in. In Canberra the bus was filled to the final seat, which meant the end of my luxury sleeping arrangement and spending the final 4 hours in a limbo between being asleep and being awake.

We got to Sydney Airport at around 8.30 in the morning. After unloading some people there, we made for the city centre and, while I was waking up, I saw something that made me realise I was still dreaming. On the intersection just outside the airport, one of the busiest parts on the Australian road system, a guy was pushing an airport luggage trolley with 3 or 4 bags and a surfboard on it, while riding a skateboard. Yes, you’ve read that correctly, he was driving a skateboard through a six lane traffic intersection in the morning rush hour. I cleared the sleep out of my eyes, just to make sure that he was really there, and found, to my surprise that he really was and that I had not been dreaming. Welcome to Sydney.

The bus dropped us off at Central Station and my first hostel was a 5 minute walk from there. I say my first hostel, because I had actually booked a different one from the Sunday on, because I was not exactly sure when I would be arriving in Sydney. When I decided to arrive on the Friday, I found that the hostel I had booked already, would only take booking for a minimum of 3 nights and as I only needed to, I booked 2 night in a place called the BIG hostel for my first 2 nights. The first thing that struck me, is that it wasn’t big at all. It only had 2 or 3 floors and about 20 dorms. Second of all, it seemed that it had gotten stuck somewhere in the early 1990’s. They still used actual keys to open doors, rather than swipe cards and only had 1 (yes, one) computer for access to the internet. The place had narrow hallways that were constantly blocked with plastic crates and big bags of dirty laundry(fire hazard). As I was only staying there for 2 nights and I found a bottom bunk in my dorm, I decided not to make too much of a hassle of it because I was in Sydney to see the city and not the inside of my hostel. When I arrived at the check in desk, I was told that it was too early to check in and I could come back in 2 hours time. If I wanted, I could sit in the lounge and watch tv. It was turning into a beautiful day, so the last thing I wanted to do was sit in a lounge and watch Friends reruns. My stomach had improved remarkably overnight (as it always does by the way) and I walked into the city.

I was close to the Darling harbour area, so I decided to check it out. When I walked across the bridge that gives acces to this area, I was immediately struck by how incredibly beautiful Sydney is. The harbour was fantastic and with the rising sun giving the water a silver shine, it looked like it had been transported from a fairy tale. I walked around for a bit and decided to go for a drink.

Now tell me this does not look beautiful..

493. The Watershed.

This place looked to be just opening for business (it was, after all, only 10.30 in the morning) so I walked in, checked the beers on offer and ordered a James Squire Sundown Lager. The girl behind the bar informed me that someone was still working on the lines, so they had no draft beer for the moment. I then opted for a James Squire pilsner in a bottle and while the girl was opening the bottle, a colleague came out to inform her that the lines were working again. She put away the bottle, got a glass and started pouring a beer, only to find that the lines weren’t working after all, so I was back at the bottle. I took a seat in the sunshine, got out my guidbook and enjoyed my first impressions of Sydney. Life is so much nicer if you can start the day by sitting in the sunshine, having breakfast outside, which in my case consisted of beer. After some 20 minutes, the bar girl walked up to me, carrying a glass of the draft beer I had originally ordered and put it down on the table with the compliments of the house. Sydney started a rapid ascent in my list of excellent cities. I finished my second beer and had to resist the urge to order another one and enjoy the sunshine for some more. I knew that if I had a third beer, I would want a forth and eventually would end up spending the entire day on the waterfront at Darling Harbour. I had to check in to my hostel first and I planned to get my feet on the ground in central Sydney.

So that’s what I did.

The final night in Melbourne

After sleeping for a good 6 hours. I woke up to a sunny day and sat down to a breakfast of Vegemite on toast. A lot of people I know don’t like it, but I have sort of developed a taste for it. On top of that, I always try to eat local food and drink local beer when I go somewhere, so Vegemite had to be on the agenda. Still in my pyjamas (which consist of black cargo shorts and a black t-shirt before you get any silly ideas) I walked across the street to the supermarket to buy shampoo, when my phone went. It was a guy named Steve, who I had met a couple of times in Dublin through a mutual friend. He was wondering if I was interested in going for a beer that afternoon. Asking me for a beer is a bit like asking the pope if he would like to read the bible, so we agreed to meet in the afternoon in the Fitzroy area of town. I then took a shower and got ready for my last full day in Melbourne. As I was planning to leave Melbourne the next day, I walked over to a hostel a couple of streets from mine where, so I was informed, I would be able to book a bus trip to Sydney.

Why would I take a bus to Sydney rather than flying there, which would only cost me about 100 AUS$ or taking a train, which would be much more comfortable? Well, first of all, if I took a plane, I would have to get back to the airport, which would cost me another $16, check in my backpack (another $20), wait, fly to Sydney and get a bus from the airport (another $12,-). That would take the price of the trip to around $150,- . If I took the bus, yes, it would take me 10 times as long to get there, but the costs were much lower. Apart from the fact that the bus ticket was only $58,- and I could take my bags for free, I also had the option of taking the overnight bus, saving about $25,- that I would normally have to spend on a hostel. This would take the net price for the bus trip to $ 33,- which made the flight nearly 5 times as expensive as the bus. On top of that, the road trip seemed like much more fun than yet more time on planes and I would get to see some of the country, whereas from a plane you only see clouds. And, another reason for the bus trip was that I had never been on a Greyhound bus before. Either way, I booked my ticket and took the tram back to Fitzroy. As I was a bit early, I walked around for a bit, had a beer at Bar Open which, as it turned out, was not actually open, but the door was open and one of the guys that was inside served me a bottle of VB and didn’t mind me hanging around while they were doing maintenance, removing empty kegs and other stuff you get to do when you work in a bar. The fact that I was drinking sort of inspired the people who were supposed to be working and soon no work was being done and everyone was enjoying a beer break.

I then went over to a different bar, met up with Steve and had lunch. We caught up on what had been happening in the past year since he moved back to Melbourne from Dublin, what was going on with mutual friends and the state of the Aussie Rules football league. After lunch, he showed me around parts of the neighbourhood that I hadn’t visited yet and then went for another beer.

489. The Spread Eagle.

No, I am not joking. This was really the name of the pub. I thought this was really funny somehow. As it was sort of chilly by now, we sat at the bar inside and discussed the quality of Australian beer which, up until then, I had been very impressed with. Steve then had to leave because he had another appointment so I was left in the pub on my own. This gave me the chance to look around for a bit and I discovered a very interesting map on the wall. It was an historic map of Richmond, the part of town I was now in, and showed all the pubs that were there in the past. I was impressed because there were nearly a 100 pubs on that map alone. I entertained myself for the remainder of my pint by looking at the map and trying to find pubs that were still there.

When I had finished my beer, I walked around Richmond for a bit and then decided to take the tram to South Yarra. This was the area where I had watched the football final over the weekend and I wanted to check out the neighbourhood some more. By the time the tram had wormed itself through the evening rush hour traffic I was sort of urgently looking for a toilet and walked into a bar called

490. The Lucky Coq.

Yeah, strange name, but the big rooster that was painted on the wall explained it. I rushed to the toilet and after that to the bar. I ordered the house ale, called Blonde Coq, and I must say it tasted really nice. While I was looking around, I started to get a strange sense of déja vu. I was 100% sure that I had never been in this bar before, but it somehow looked strangely familiar. It took me about 10 minutes to figure out why, and I finally caught on when somebody walked up to the bar to order food and left the menu on the bar. The menu, I noticed, was exactly the same as in Bimbo Deluxe, the Fitzroy bar where I had been a couple of days earlier. It then all made sense. The house ale was called Blonde Coq (Blonde Bimbo in the other place), they had the same science-lab type of bowls with flavoured vodka above the bar and the place was not so much decorated exactly the same, but you could definitely see that the same designer had been at work. Somewhat proud of my Sherlock-like deduction skills, I finished my beer and headed out the door.

I then set out to find another place I wanted to visit and I walked by it at least 4 times before I finally figured out where it was. The reason for this confusion was, again, the description in my Lonely Planet book, which had labelled it as “the Rock&Roll atmosphere is genuine- it is owned by the drummer of local band Something for Kate.

491. Yellow Bird.

Now, if I think ‘genuine Rock&Roll atmosphere’, I get a picture in my head of a place with flyers and posters in the windows advertising future gigs, band logo stickers on the door, a dark interior with loud guitars blasting from the speakers. Long haired guys, dressed in black, are sitting at the bar drinking lager and Jagermeister, or playing pool or pinball machines. One of the regulars has put his head down on a table, passed out from too much alcohol. What I do not picture, is large floor to ceiling windows, pleasantly lit by coloured lights. Neither did I picture a bar with cheery girls behind it, dressed in colourful tops, mixing fancy drinks, while the diner tables are filled with groups of women dressed in what is probably in fashion at the moment, drinking white wine from a bottle in an ice bucket.

This is the reason I had missed this bar completely the first 3 times I walked past it. I had even looked inside through the window on one occasion. Anyway, this is not to say that it isn’t a pleasant place. It actually was quite nice, and the food looked really tasty. But Genuine Rock&Roll? No.

I had a bottle of Melbourne Bitter and went in search for a bite to eat. I didn’t have to go far, because when I crossed the street, I saw a place with a name so dumb that I just had to go in there.

492. Mad Mex

Yes. Mad Mex. You do not get a price for guessing what kind of food they sell here. I walked over to the counter, ordered a shredded beef burrito and a bottle of Sol and sat down. The burrito was really tasty and I buried it in hot sauce. At only $6,95 this was a real steal, and I enjoyed every bite of it. While I was eating, I noticed that I could make some serious money. All I had to do was smuggle my beer bottle out of the restaurant and return it to a shop in Quebec to pocket the 15 ct. deposit. Now all I have to do is get to Quebec.

I took the tram back to the city centre and made a short stop at my hostel. One of the great things about hostels is that they exist in a sort of parallel time warp to the real world. I got back to my hostel at 11 PM, went to the living room/kitchen area and found this sight: one guy who obviously just woke up was eating breakfast cereal, dressed in his pyjamas. Next to him was a guy who looked like he was planning to go to a corporate board meeting, dressed in a white shirt, black suit trousers and shiny polished shoes. He was also drinking cheap red wine straight from a 1.5 litre bottle. Across from him was a Japanese girl dressed in jogging pants and a pyjama top. She was drinking straight whisky from the bottle and kept urging her friends to go downstairs to the bar to party. A scene like this, you will only encounter in a backpackers hostel. A group of Irish guys then came in with a case of beer and 2 bottles of Bacardi, declaring the party was now officially opened. As I had no intention of spending my last night in Melbourne in the hostel, I finished my last can of VB and headed into town. I spent the rest of the night pub crawling through central Melbourne, and at around 4 AM ended up in the hostel bar, where the party was still in full swing. I had more beer, shots of Jim Beam and then more beer. I don’t remember going to bed but it must have been late. My final day in Melbourne had been an interesting one.

Yummie, VB tinnies.

Lennard's last days in Melbourne

Before I left Fitzroy, I had 1 more bar to check out. After walking around for some 20 minutes through the back streets of Fitzroy, I found it.

485. Kent Street Pub.

One of the reasons I needed some time finding it, was that I expected this bar to be on Kent Street. Well, wouldn’t you? It was actually on Smith Street so I got to see a bit more of the neighbourhood.

“If you like a beer for brunch and your bars dishevelled, Kent St. keeps it coming morning, noon and night” shouts Lonely Planet. Somehow, I feel that they sort of missed the point with this observation. First of all, it’s not really dishevelled. Apart from a couple of duct taped bar stools and a toilet full of graffiti, it was not dishevelled at all. When I think dishevelled, I think paint peeling from the walls, pool tables with dark, unidentified stains on the cloth and broken furniture. This had nice tables, framed paintings on the wall and an espresso machine. The beer that was supposedly flowing morning, noon and night was absent as well. I spent about an hour and a half there and exactly 2 beers were sold in that time frame, apart from the ones I ordered. Which is not to say that it is not a nice place. Actually, it was a really nice place and I would probably regularly spend time there if I lived locally. It’s just that it was more coffee-focused than a real pub. Maybe that’s because I was there during the day on a working day. Another nice thing about this pub was that I just happened to walk in to a discussion between the bargirl (who, again, was very pretty) and a liquor salesman. As he was trying to introduce a new brand of rum and a new brand of bourbon onto the Victorian market, he had brought sampler bottles, so I let him finish his sales pitch and then feigned to be a connaisseur of sorts when it comes to bourbon which, technically, isn’t really a lie. Let’s just say that I exagarrated it a little.

Keen to get the word on his product out on the street, he took 2 glasses from behind the bar and poured me generous measures of both the bourbon and the rum. The rum was alright (I don’t know an awful lot about rum) but the bourbon was absolutely brilliant. I spent quite some time in a whiskey bar in San Francisco last year and sort of found my way with the drink. Living in Europe, you don’t really get past Jim Beam and some other well known brands when it comes to bourbon. In America, bourbon is revered in the same way single malt whisky is praised in Scotland. I complimented the sales guy on his excellent bourbon and told him that if he put it on sale in Europe, I would definitely buy a couple of bottles.

Free bourbon.. always good.

So, having ticked the Kent St. off my list, I decided it was time to go to the other side of town to visit some more places I wanted to see. I hopped on the tram that would take me directly from Fitzroy, which is North East of the city centre, to St. Kilda, which is due South from the city centre. I spent my half hour on the tram trying to make out where we were exactly (it was dark by now) and studying my guide book. When we got to St. Kilda station, I decided to walk the rest as I thought it would make a nice walk. I picked up a slice of pizza on the way and headed for

486. Hotel Esplanade

According to the website, and various guide books, the Esplanade, Or Espy for locals, is a legendary live music venue and rock bar. It looked quite cool, a big white building on the corner of the boulevard. I ditched the rest of my pizza in a bin and headed for the entrance, which was next to a big balcony where you could sit, have a beer and a smoke and watch the sunset. To my annoyance, for the second time that week, a doorman started bitching about my shoes. He could not allow me in because I was wearing steel toe boots. Now I don’t know why this is such a big deal, because I have been wearing steel toe Dr. Martens boots for over 20 years and nobody ever made a problem of it, not even in Holland, where they make a problem of everything. If he thought I was going to kick someone with my boots, would I have been any different wearing boots without steel toes? If I had been some violent nutcase, I could just as easily have battered someone with a barstool or an empty bottle. After some discussion with the doorman, he agreed to let me in with my dangerous boots. So much for safety.

The place looked really cool. Just the type of venue I would go to watch gigs at. It had a large central bar with couches, tables, stools and a stage. Down a hallway was a poolroom with several tables and some arcade games, and down another hallway was the main venue, with a capacity that I would estimate at about 500-600. There was also a café in the buidling that sold standard pub fare like hamburgers, lasagne and pie. I walked up to the bar to order a drink and found to my chagrin that beer was sold only in pots. Now this may sound good, but a pot is a half pint, and that is a glass size that I find ridiculously small these days, having lived in Ireland for 4 years. On top of that, I was charged $ 4,80 for this tiny beer, which I found somewhat disturbing. As it was Tuesday night and there were no gigs on, it wasn’t exactly busy and apart from me, 4 students playing pool and a soundguy muttering around on the stage, there was nobody there. I resisted the urge to get a second beer and went on my way. I bet this is a great place to go for a gig and has excellent atmosphere when it’s more crowded.

I walked around for a bit, looking for a good place to drink and somehow found myself in the back streets of St. Kilda, walking between the gathered local heroin addicts who were either drinking, scoring or sleeping. Out here, I couldn’t find a good bar either, just a bunch of discount off-licenses so I made my way back to the main street. I was just wondering around a bit when I saw a door with an RSL Logo on it. For those of you that are unaware of what the RSL is, this is a sort of leisure club for ex-staff of the Australian army (RSL stands for Returned and Services League). Officially, the mission statement says that the RSL is there to provide support for people who have served in the Armed Forces and have returned home, or words to that effect, but branches of the RSL clubs mainly consists of a hybrid pub/ jackpot casino where members can drink and gamble. Now, again, you can take members in the broadest sense of the word, because I have been in at least 3 or 4 RSL’s during my time in Australia, and the balloting process consisted of me entering my details on a slip and promising that I was living more than 5 miles away from each particular club. As I live about 11.000 miles away from each of them, this was no problem.

487. St. Kilda RSL

I walked up to the bar, ordered a nice-price beer and sat myself behind a pokie machine. To be honest, that’s pretty much the entertainment summed up for you- drink and gamble. I don’t have any problems with that because I happen to like drinking and gambling, but I can imagine that you would get sort of bored if you spend a lot of time in these places. To be fair, bigger RSL clubs often have a restaurant, sports bar, and other entertainment options added to the slotmachines and bar. Either way, I spent half an hour playing the pokie machine and ended up losing 2 dollars.

As I was by now planning to leave Melbourne in the next few days, I felt I needed to see one place that I knew I would like: the casino. And I’m not talking about a room full of pokie machines or a sportsbar with a TAB machine in it. Melbourne has a huge Las Vegas style casino, just on the South side across the Yarra river, behind Flinders Street station. So I headed back to my hostel, had a couple of beers in the hostel bar and walked the 20 seconds down the street to Flinders Street station. I crossed the passage way underneath the station which, like station passage ways all over the world, was dirty and smelled of piss.

I crossed the river by means of the Sandridge bridge and made my way to the casino. Let me tell you, it is huge. I walked past one of the restaurants that is part of the casino and it took me another 10 minutes to get to the main entrance which is more or less in the centre of the complex. As I was dressed in shorts and an old t-shirt that had once been black but was by now more grey, and had been drinking for the better part of the day, I had my doubts as to whether I would be allowed in. The casino website prescribed ‘smart casual dress’ , a term that always leaves me wondering what exactly it means. I think it’s just a term that allows the doormen to refuse you access if they don’t like you under the guise of being inappropriately dressed. To my surprise, the doormen greeted me with big smiles and wished me good luck inside.

488. The Crown casino.

This whole picture is the casino, from left to right, including that green tower in the back ground

After wondering around the building for about 10 minutes, I found a bar and decided to treat myself to a drink. This particular bar, one of at least a dozen throughout the complex, was called the Lagerfeld Bar and had a really cool bar that had water flowing through it. I ordered a pint of Victoria Bitter and had a talk with the bar man. I then made my way to the gaming area of the casino, a huge floor with hundreds of pokie machines, 2 bars, roulette and black jack tables and a huge sportsbar. I mean huge. You know those big projector screens that big pubs have to show the football? Well, they had a big wall in here that had 8 of those screens next to each other, showing horse racing, NASCAR, football, basketball and some other events. A cluster of TAB machines for instant betting was lined up against a wall, and next to that were several windows where you could purchase Keeno tickets, a lotto-type game with a draw being held every 3 minutes. It was then that I noticed that the dress code existed only on the website. I spotted several people who, like me, were wearing shorts and at least a dozen guys in track suit pants, running shoes and football jerseys who were all served with a smile. I spent a couple of hours walking around the casino, playing the occasional game, looking at other people play, watching sports and drinking beer. I had an excellent time and in the end broke even on the gambling, because I had a couple of good wins on the pokie machines. When I checked my phone, I realised that it was past 4 in the morning. A book I once read mentioned that all big casino’s in Las Vegas have blocked daylight in gaming areas and that there are no clocks on the gaming floors. This is to cause people to lose their sense of time so they keep playing and drinking, which in turn leads to making stupid gambling decisions. I decided that I had had enough of gambling for now and made my way back outside. I figured that the station would be closed by now so I decided to take the scenic route along the water, past the Melbourne Aquarium. As this would take me all the way around the station and then back up the street,I knew I would be in for a bit of a walk, but I didn’t mind as I had had a great day. It was close to 5 AM when my head hit the pillow and I fell into a deep sleep.