AUSTRALIA: A list of things you may like to do

The Yarra River at Wonga Park

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Rope swing, fast and slow moving water. Way more fun than the public pool.

Also good at Warrandyte and Warburton, but these places are more likely to be CRAMMED full of other people.

Werribee Open Range Zoo

Website • Google Maps • Wikipedia

While Weribee is mostly famous for its sewerage treatment facility, the Open Range Zoo is also pretty cool.

It likes to make like it’s Africa, and even has a pretend village in there, however there are animals from all over on site.

Warrandyte

Google Maps • Wikipedia

Sweet riverside town where we lived for a few months once. Easily can believe you’re in the country, you are very much in suburban Melbourne.

• The Stonehouse Cafe
• • Great place for breakfast.
• • Birds and other assorted creatures will frolic while-you-wait.

Glen Harrow Park Trees Adventure

Website • Google Maps

Why walk when you can glide majestically?

The Glen Harrow Park Trees Adventure gives you exactly that opportunity. It’s a high ropes course that includes flying foxes and other excitingly high fun.

Trams

Wikipedia

Melbourne still subscribes to the idea that trams are a good idea.

Basically it’s a small, electric train that runs down the middle of the street (they’re technically light rail when they aren’t running on a road, but no one calls them that)

Pay attention! (it’s a road, you should be paying attention anyway, but we digress) Trams weigh 30 tons and can cut you in to three lopsided bits without fuss.

This can really mess up your day.

The City Circle Tram

They still run some of the old W Class Trams around in a loop of the CBD, giving a tour of many of the touristy things you can do. Like all trams in the CBD “Free Tram Zone”, they don’t require a ticket (unlike all other allegedly “public” transport.)

It’s a great way to a) see cool things in Melbourne and b) ride a tram.

The Shrine of Remembrance

Website • Google Maps • Wikipedia

Australia is big on war memorials, and this one offers a surprisingly good and free view of the city

Planned by none other than General Sir John Monash, Commander of the Australian Corps during World War One and the last man to be knighted on the field of battle, Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance is the largest of Australia’s six State War Memorials.

At the centre of the Sanctuary, where many memorials have placed an Unknown Soldier, is the Stone of Remembrance, a marble slab inscribed with “GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN”. The building is designed so that at 11am on November 11th each year, a ray of sunlight shines on the word love, however thanks to Daylight Savings, a mirror is now required for that to happen.

It’s home to over 150 commemorative ceremonies a year, culminating in the Anzac Day Dawn Service and Commemoration March.

Since 2002, significant development has occurred, transforming the artificial hill the Shrine sits upon into a visitors centre/museum including greater disabled access to the undercroft and the wider building.

State Parliament

Website • Google Maps • Wikipedia

Built when Victoria was flush with Gold Rush monies, the State Parliament building is highly ornate, if (still) unfinished.

Also it’s where they run the State from. Democracy in action and such.

State Library of Victoria

Website • Google Maps • Wikipedia

The state library is a depository library, meaning that if you want to read something that was published in Victoria and you can’t find it anywhere else, you can at least borrow it from the State Library.

As well as those millions of publications, you can also see Ned Kelly’s armour, the folios of Captain Cook and the diaries of the founders of Melbourne, John Batman and John Fawkner as well as many other weird and wonderful historical trinkets.

The Chess Room features extensive and world-renowned displays on the history of Chess, if that kind of thing tickles your fancy?

Scienceworks

Website • Google Maps • Wikipedia

It really does!

A hands-on science museum that has a ridiculously big Tesla Coil to create lightning.

They also have control of the old pumping station next door which has exhibits on a lot of Victorian-era engineering feats.

It incorporates the Melbourne Planetarium too, for the joy of stargazing with the comfort of inside.

RAAF Museum

Website • Google Maps • Wikipedia

The Royal Australian Air Force is the world’s second-oldest independent Air Force, and the airfield at Point Cook is its oldest facility (It became an Australian Flying Corps base in 1913, making it 8 years older than the RAAF)

Since 1952, RAAF Point Cook has been home to a museum, showing off their planes and other interesting whats-its

Dandenong Ranges Gardens

Website • Google Maps

Puffing Billy Railway is a narrow gauge heritage railway and has been running steam trains from Belgrave to Gembrook since shortly after the line closed in the 1960. It’s wildly popular and the second-oldest heritage railway in operation anywhere in the world.

Tom Says: YOU GET TO HANG OUT OF THE WINDOWS AND RIDE OVER THE SWEET TRESTLE BRIDGES!!!

Old Melbourne Gaol

Website • Google Maps • Wikipedia

As the name says, it’s an old gaol in Melbourne.

The town’s original jail, most of it was knocked down or incorporated into the neighbouring RMIT university back in the 1920s. In its 90-year existence, 133 people were hanged at the Gaol, most famously the bushranger Ned Kelly.

Today it’s a museum to colonial-era justice with extensive law and order exhibits on display. Some people claim that it’s haunted (of course) and the after-hours Hangman’s Tour cannot be recommended highly enough.

National Gallery of Victoria

Website • Google Maps • Wikipedia

Home to art and so forth, the National Gallery has its main campus on St Kilda Road which is filled with international art and also the Ian Potter Centre, or “NGV Australia” down the road at Federation Square. Founded in 1861, it is Australia’s oldest, largest and most-visited art museum.

It’s well known water-wall entrance has entranced generations of schoolchildren who weren’t super excited about being sent to an art gallery.

Sometimes people complain about the gallery being called the National Gallery of Victoria, since it’s run by the State of Victoria and often gets confused with the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. This is because the NGV was founded before the Commonwealth when Victoria was an “independent” Colony (not to mention flush with Gold Rush funds.) So far as I can tell, the State Government’s position is “Get bent. Our gallery is over a century older than NGA, not to mention it’s the biggest and best gallery in the country”

Royal Melbourne Show

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Held during the October school holidays, Victoria’s premier Agricultural Show has acres and acres of sweet rides.

It’s the reason we have the Royal Melbourne Showgrounds, which is home to many festivals throughout the year.

Generations of Melbourne Children have suffered through being dragged through the display pavillions and blue ribbon competitions and the boring super-boring CWA cake decoration competition before being set loose on the rides. This is the authentic experience.

The Animal Nursery however, children universally love. (once they aren’t terrified of animals, that is)

Catch the woodchopping competition. It is ridiculous how fast those guys can cut a log in two. You’d probably still be picking up the axe by the time they’re done.

Melbourne Zoo

Website • Google Maps • Wikipedia

It’s a Zoo. You presumably have them where ever you come from, although this one probably has more Australian animals than yours.

Popular attractions include:

• the Trail of the Elephants
• the Great Flight Aviary and
• the Butterfly House

Melbourne Cricket Ground

Website • Google Maps • Wikipedia

The birthplace of Test Cricket, the MCG is a 100,000 seat stadium that is the spiritual home of Australian Rules Football and the location of AFL Grand Final.

It was also the main arena for the 1956 Olympic Games and includes a pretty impressive sports museum.

Immigration Museum

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The Immigration Museum is on the site of the old Colonial Customs House, and it tells stories about people who came to Australia. Some of them are permanent, while others disappear!

Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre

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No matter what time of year you visit, there will be some kind of Show on at the “Mc-Ek” that will be interesting, though possibly not exciting, or cheap.

Eureka Tower

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Home to the best 360 degree view of Melbourne going around, the Eureka Tower is an 88 story skyscraper on the edge of the CBD.

The best views are generally at night, especially if there happen to be fireworks happening for some reason.

The elevator is super fast, and they have this thing called “the edge” where you stand in a glass-bottomed room that is slid out from the side of the building so you can look down. They also play the sound of glass breaking, so that’s fun apparently.

Dandenong Ranges Gardens

Google Maps • Parks Victoria info page

Much of the Dandenong Ranges is covered by the Dandenong Ranges National Park, including the famous 1,000 Steps walk (don’t panic, there’s only around 800 steps — you’ll be fine.)

There are also a number of smaller Parks Victoria properties, which aren’t all that big on native plants but are still very pretty such as the National Rhododendron Garden.

Chapel Street

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Tom Says: It’s an adventure on wheels, unless you happen to be walking.

Carlton Gardens

Google Maps • Wikipedia

The Carlton Gardens is one of several gardens established on the edge of the CBD. They all have lots of grass and some nice plants and so on, but Carlton Gardens also has two large buildings in it, the Royal Exhibition Building, and the Melbourne Museum. There’s a weird juxtaposition going on in the shared courtyard between the two buildings which were built about 100 years apart.

Royal Exhibition Building

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Royal Exhibition Building (not to be confused with the Melbourne Exhibition Centre) was built to host the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880 and later hosted the opening of the first Australian Parliament in 1901. Between 1901 and the completion of Old Parliament House in Canberra in 1927, the Victorian Parliament met here while the Commonwealth Parliament lived it up in Parliament House on Spring Street.

At the time of construction, it was the largest building in Australia — although much of the building has since been lost to fire or short-sighted demolition works, it remains one of the most ridiculously ornate buildings in the country.

Melbourne Museum

This Melbourne Museum was built in the late 1990s and it often has interesting exhibits on, as well as these permanent displays:

• Science and Life Gallery
• Melbourne Gallery
• Mind and Body Gallery
• Evolution Gallery
• Forest Gallery — a big room full of plants and animals
• Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre — exhibits by and about the Aboriginal peoples of Victoria
• Te Pasifika Gallery - showing the history and watercrafts of Pacific Islanders
• Children’s Gallery

It is the largest museum in the southern hemisphere and home to Phar Lap, a stuffed racehorse from the 1930s who was a big deal. There is an IMAX theatre in the basement.

Captain America's Hamburger Heaven

Website • Google Maps

Captain America’s is an American-themed and menued restaurant in Ferntree Gully.

If you can eat a 1kg burger and 600g of chips, they will immortalise you on the wall! (while you probably feel really bad about yourself)

If that sounds too easy, why not attempt the Thousand Burger Challenge?

Because you don’t know what it is? Well, first you complete a 8.7km walk from the restaurant up the Thousand Steps, over the top of One Tree Hill and down the other side before you have your meal.

Brad Says: Of course "menued" is a real word!

Dandenong Ranges Lookouts

Google Maps

There are two major lookouts that share the best views of the Melbourne suburban area going around.

The first is called Burkes Lookout. It’s popular with people who enjoy pretty lights, photographers, and people who enjoy smoking joints. There’s a short walk through the bush to get to the lookout, but it’s super worthwhile.

The other option is Sky High. It has a fancy restaurant. Otherwise, it’s exactly the same as Burkes lookout, only it costs money and isn’t as fun.