Where Next? Travel with Kristen and Carol
Where Next? Travel with Kristen and Carol
Melbourne, Australia - Travel with Bitsy
Interview with Bitsy from Melbourne, Australia.
Bitsy tells us about life in Melbourne - sights to see, the culture and unique wildlife - including the nightly Penguin Parade.
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Hi, welcome to our podcast. Where Next Travel with Kristen and Carol. I am Kristen and I am Carol, and we're two long-term friends with a passion for travel and adventure. Each episode, we interview people around the globe to help us decide where to go next. In today's episode, we are meeting with Itzy from Melbourne, australia, who made her way there via Germany, norway, the US and London. Fun fact, melbourne was originally named Batmania, although it has nothing to do with Bruce Wayne. Instead, the name derives from one of the city's founding fathers, john Batman, who discovered central Melbourne and said this will be the place for a village.
Speaker 1:In this episode, we learn about the day-to-day life in Melbourne and talk about the native wildlife. Enjoy, hi B, native wildlife. Enjoy, hi Bitsy. Hi, nice to meet you, you too. Yeah, welcome from down under right, yeah, right now, I'm assuming Yep, that's correct Nine, nine, nine in the morning, so it's, oh my god, oh, thursday afternoon for you guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, how's Friday? Looking for us a preview. Well, here it's humid and a bit hot. So, yeah, probably a bit different from Colorado. And and I'm in California, you're in California, okay, yeah, yeah, oh, fabulous, so where? What's the weather like around? Well, look, height of summer, so normally very, very hot. Yes, melbourne's, melbourne's quite good because it doesn't normally get the humidity that you get in, you know, the further North you go. So I, I I'm not great with heat, which is hilarious that I live in Australia, but I'm okay here because it isn't usually too humid, but it is a little bit today we're we're going to get some thunderstorms later, so, okay, just in time for the tennis.
Speaker 1:Oh nice, oh fantastic, would you say that it's kind of like New York then a little bit, where, like you, get pretty good winters. When winter's there, I mean, do you call what you call June and July winter then? Or do you call, yeah, absolutely, yep, yep. So yeah, it's bizarre, isn't it? So? Christmas in December, so it's okay in the middle of summer, I would say so, latitude wise, it's about the same as in Virginia, near where Glenn and I went to university. Oh, but it's so we get.
Speaker 1:One of the expressions about Melbourne is that you get four seasons in a day, so we get all the weather. We get proper spring, we get proper summer, we get actual winter. It doesn't snow, but we get if it gets to, if it gets to the equivalent of 32 degrees. That's cold. Like you know, it rarely drops below zero for us.
Speaker 1:How long have you been there now? Well, this will be. This is my 25th year. Yeah, I moved here in October of 97. Okay, and did you come straight from Virginia or somewhere on the East Coast then? No, no, no, I was actually. You want the long version or the short version? Yeah, whatever version. It's open to whatever you want to discuss.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm a little bit of a nomad, but my father was in the army, so we moved my whole life. So I was born in Michigan, but then we moved to Germany for four years and then we came back to the States and then we went to Norway and four years, and then we came back to the States and then we went to Norway and I finished high school in Norway and my parents stayed in Oslo when I went back to the States to go to university. And then I was in France for a year and then back in Norway for a little while and then I went to London. So I was living in London when I met my husband, who is Australian, and we were there for about five and a half years together. We knew, you know, we knew we wanted to have a family and London's a great place to live. If you're young, dual income, don't have to worry about things like school. And a lot of our friends were moving out of London. You know starting families and moving out.
Speaker 1:So it was kind of we made the decision that you know, lifestyle wise, australia was a much better place to have a family and and he'd been away for about eight years by then. So he was ready to come home and for me it was just another move, so I was happy to come. Did it take adjusting to get into it or was it pretty comfortable right away? Look, it was pretty comfortable right away. I was lucky because I kind of came into a fairly established network, because you know he had grown up here. All of his friends from school were still here, you know so, and I walked straight into. You know it wasn't like having to start over fresh somewhere, and Australia is really Melbourne in particular. I really loved I had been here a couple of times on holiday, like once for his brother's wedding and once just for another friend's wedding and just to establish whether. You know, we came back to see whether I thought I could do this for good.
Speaker 1:And yeah, it's Australia's second largest city, but we're only behind Sydney by about I think it's less than a million now. So you know it's it's populations over 5 million. So it's a big city but it's got all the conveniences of small towns. So I like to describe it as kind of like London, in that it's like lots of little areas that all have their own individual character and feel and atmosphere, but they all kind of combine together to make one big city, combined together to make one big city. And I see it's like located on the very south and it's almost like there's a lake and then the ocean, but it's probably just an inlet or something. Well, it's the bay. Yeah, that's the Port Phillip Bay. So, yeah, we're. So we're the Sydney's on a harbor, we're on a bay. Yeah, I was just gonna say you know, we we don't have ocean beaches in Melbourne proper. All along the southern coast, both directions out, we've got the southern ocean, so we've got great, great ocean beaches, just not right in Melbourne proper. It looks amazing.
Speaker 1:I was curious when you first moved in you know it's a little bit ago, but I was curious what were some of the things coming from? And you were coming from the UK or from London yeah, already over there. But were there any like oh, wow, or you know different things that stood out? And are they still the same? Because I know things have changed so much too.
Speaker 1:I think I always described Australia as kind of like the perfect blend between the US and the UK. It's got the openness and friendliness of the United States and the service mentality of the US, but it's got a lot of you know the things that I liked about living in London. You know a lot of those were here as well. It's a really, really multicultural country. It's got huge amounts of immigration from all over the world. I think the last census, I think one in three Australians either was born overseas themselves or has a parent that was born overseas. So you know, people talk a lot about multiculturalism and things, but it's you know, it absolutely is kind of the backbone of what's made Australia so unique. I had no idea about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:At the end of World War II, a lot of Italian and Greek migrants came At one point. I mean, I don't know if I've got the stats anywhere to back it up, but at one point they used to say that Melbourne was the third largest Greek city in the world after Athens and Thessalonica, because we had a huge population of Greek people that came and now it's like second and third and fourth generation, but it's still really, really strong. And you know we've got lots of cultural festivals every you know. So we've got um Ligon Street in Carlton is like, with lots of Italian restaurants, because that's where a lot of the Italian have settled and made their homes, and um, and then further into the city, near areas, and um Oakley is an area near us that's got fabulous Greek community with great butchers and great bakeries and fruit mongers and yeah, so you can get any kind of food you want. Well, yeah, pretty much. And Vietnamese too. You have a really large Vietnamese community because at the end of the Vietnam War a lot of migrants came.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was looking at something about the religion, because sometimes I always like to ask that religion, but let me just do a little research. You know ahead of time, and it was saying that it's it's really broken up, so it's still like 14% Christian, but they send non-Christians you have. Islam is very popular 600,000. And I think this is all of Australia. Buddhism almost 600,000. Hinduism over 400. I think it's called Sikhism, s-i-k-h-i-s-m, and Judaism, 90,000. So probably from all this immigration that you were talking about Immigration, absolutely yeah. So the Hinduism and Sikhism, that is probably.
Speaker 1:We've got a very large Indian population that has that and that actually that's probably one of the big changes. When you asked about the changes, when I first got here, I was working at a university when I first not immediately, but the number of international students that we had from India was quite low. It was very much more Chinese, hong Kong, malaysian and Vietnamese. But now it's flipped. India's become like a huge source of immigration and international students and things. So there's a again. That's a big shift and that's probably why that reflects so heavily in the statistics about the religions.
Speaker 1:So how easy it is. Because I thought I remember either watching like a HGTV show or something about people wanting to move to Australia, or maybe my friends, they spend a lot of time way down up in the north but they said you can't just move there unless some requirement either you have to be able to buy a house or show that you have X amount of money. And so they said but if you're under 30 or something like her daughter, you could just move there. Are they pretty like do you know what the requirements are for our listeners to like? If you say, hey, I want to move to Australia, like, what does it take to be able to be a good candidate? So with the, with her daughter, for example, I believe, it's still two years that you can get. If you're under 30, you could get like a traveler's visa.
Speaker 1:So a lot of backpacker culture is huge here and that's one of the things that we're really suffering from with COVID. Isolation is that we have lost masses of backpackers that do a lot of agricultural work and hospitality work and so places, especially up north, up in Queensland, and the fruit farms and things are desperate because they just don't have the normal source of employees. So you can come for two years. It used to be a requirement that if you did three months of agricultural work you could get an extension for an extra year. So that's why a lot of people would go and do work, work the vineyards work, fruit farms work some agricultural things. So they've got an extra year to stay and I believe that they've gotten rid of that.
Speaker 1:But as an adult, as a moving here permanently, there are a couple of options. You can be sponsored. So if you are a critical, what your job is considered a critical skill that we are acquiring, then you can get sponsored to come in on a I think it's called a 480 visa. Or if you work with a company that needs you here, they can sponsor you to come in. Or there is the. So if you buy a business which will then employ a certain number of local hires, then that is a way to kind of fast track residency.
Speaker 1:What about, like a digital nomad who has their own business and can travel all over the world and wants to stay like there for like six months? Is that a typical visa? You can kind of yeah, I think six months is a tourist, but I don't know if that would allow you to work. But if you're only working for yourself, that's a very good question. I know that. You know, obviously tourist visas don't allow you to work, to be employed in Australia, but if you were working for yourself, I don't see how that would be a problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like for my example, I can get somebody in a lot of trouble. Yeah, look into that a little further. I guess, like for me, I do placement, fundraising and some other things, but it's all here in the U? S so it, you know. But all I need is a computer and a phone and I can do it anywhere and I know that's an interest of all of ours. And I thought there was like a standard like six months or so is typical, but I can be totally wrong on that. I'm pretty sure it's six months as a tourist and you can come and go. So you know, people go to New Zealand for a couple of days and then come back and then that extends your visa by another six months.
Speaker 1:So if you've got the means and the ability to support yourself, then I think you could probably jump around and go to Bali. Yeah, exactly, is Bali close to you guys? Yeah, bali is very close. Bali is from Melbourne. I think it's a five hour flight, so from the top end, from up Darwin, and I think it's only about two hours from Darwin. It's our closest neighbor, like your Caribbean. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, that's where you know, not a great image, but a lot of young Australians that end up going to Bali on cheap holiday. You know, cheap package holidays and well used to, right, yeah, it sounds incredible.
Speaker 1:So what do you do there? I've had a series of jobs rather than a straight career, I guess you'd say. At the moment I'm working with a friend who's got a training business so we deliver responsible service of alcohol, safe food handling, training in secondary schools mainly. I worked with this same friend many years back in the wine industry. So, oh fun, you know, wine's got to be kind of that's kind of a natural progression, that yeah, oh yeah, huge, huge, huge, huge. We've got yeah, I'm a little biased, but we've got some of the best in the world. So, okay, I know I live right next to Napa, so I guess, okay, I'm open, and my brother-in-law is French and he says his French wine is the best too. It works, so it's great. Are there industries that are strong, there, positions that are big that companies are looking for, or anything in that area? I think the last couple of years have made everybody realize that we are a little bit more creative and adaptable than perhaps companies gave us credit for.
Speaker 1:Melbourne unfortunately has the record for being the longest lockdown city in the world. We had six lockdowns. I can't remember the exact number of days, but it was over 180. It was a lot, but people really, you know, worked really well working from home and it just showed that you know it is possible and people still. I have to say I was very, was very lucky. My children are older, so I didn't have to deal with to me the the thought of having to try and work plus keep up a home plus try and make sure that my kids schooling wasn't as disrupted as it could have been. I take my hat off to the people that had to do that. But yeah, like I said, mine are a bit older so they were a little bit more self-sufficient.
Speaker 1:But creativity is a huge thing. I mean, you know digital creatives and technology and you wouldn't know it by our kind of reputation worldwide with climate change records but there's a real push for a lot of green technology and green industries and even things like one of our biggest mining companies is a company called BHP and they're looking at green hydrogen and about capturing that as a power source. So there's, yeah, I think innovation is a huge plus. If you've got creativity and ideas about innovation, that's a big feather in your cap to be able to pull that through. Right, okay, once you've thought of that, it's not my stereotype like stereotype of australia. It's cool, yeah, because we're laid-back surfers and right, exactly right. Yeah, something lower key.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the melbourne, uh, sydney are pretty big hubs for business, I'm assuming as well, just because those are two of the big, biggest cities. I see Adelaide I don't know if that's how big I think Adelaide's probably about fourth biggest now. Brisbane would be the next biggest. Here you go. I can't tell you if Perth or Adelaide is bigger. Perth, over at WA, is it's the most remote capital city in the world, but it's also kind of the hub for a lot of the mining industry. So that's why Perth is or WA. Western Australia is very wealthy. I didn't realize there was anything going on over there. So Perth is pretty populated. It's a couple of million. Yeah, it's a big city. It's just far away. It's five hours or four and a half hours from Melbourne on a plane, so it's Okay.
Speaker 1:And where were all those fires last year, beginning, I remember, beginning of 2020, that's, my daughter was talking about raising money and then like, yeah, funnily enough, that was actually that was in Victoria and New South Wales all along. So the Southeast coast of Victoria, kind of. And then coming up through, uh, into new south wales, they were, you know, devastating, devastating. There was a community that I don't know if you saw any of the images, but there's one, just haunting one, where it's a small tinny, a small like outboat outboard mortar boat going away from the coast and the sky's just red. I suppose in california you're probably used to those. I'm in in Colorado because you just had some devastating ones in Colorado as well. Yes, three different locations all being hit by fire. It's kind of impactful. Wow, right, yes, let's, yeah, yeah, that doesn't happen very often.
Speaker 1:I'm looking at the map and I see Western Australia, south Australia, queensland, new South Wales, australian Capital Territory. I don't see the top. My guess is that's probably North Australia. Oh, yeah, northern Territory just popped up. Yeah, northern Territory, that's where Darwin is. Yep, got it. And how do they decipher those? Are they all like states or are they just no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:We're a federation, so we've got states and territories. So the ACT is where Canberra is, which is the actual capital, kind of like Washington DC. They carved out a space and made it neutral so that at that point Melbourne and Sydney were the two largest cities and Melbourne was where the first parliament was held. And then they built Canberra, the head of the government being there and a lot of the you know any of the like the Mint and the National Science Museum and all those kinds of things. It's. Yeah, I quite like Canberra. It's a bit small for a lot of people and if you don't work in government, the complaint is that there's not a lot outside of the federal government. But yeah, so we're all independent states. So you said canberra, that's the one that's.
Speaker 1:Canberra looks like it's up and b-e-r-r-a yep, that's it. Okay, up towards the kind of almost between you and sydney, except it's close, exactly. Yeah, so they carved out a little bit of territory out of new squales. And have you been way up north like Darwin? Are those areas populated? It looks like that would be a nice, really hot area, very tropical, I would assume, super tropical. I haven't been to Darwin, much to my horror. I've been up far north Queensland. There's a city called Cairns, c-a-i-r-n-s, and then from there further up towards Port Douglas and the Great Barrier Reef and all the way up to Cape Tribulation, which is heading towards the northernmost point of the very tip, and so that's, you know, tropical rainforests, yeah, the reef, which is amazing If you get a nice clear day. It's just, it's magnificent.
Speaker 1:I think I did a little bit of research. I listened to a couple of your podcasts earlier, and your friend that was talking about snorkeling in the red sea and yeah, there's amazing snorkeling and the reef there is just it's fantastic, as you know, and hopefully it stays that way because it's I'm in danger of being bleached by climate change and right, yeah, and then I remember our friends. They, they would go to this place called new style, like the yogurt n-o-o-s-a that's. Is that in Queensland as well? Then that is in Queensland. That's much further south. So that's, yeah, that's kind of that's just a little bit north of Brisbane. So you know, when you say much further south, queensland's very long, like the coast is. It's a big state. I'm trying to think it's about an hour and a half, two hours north of Brisbane.
Speaker 1:Okay, so have you traveled a lot or are you just like here are these places? Or have you done a lot of exploration throughout the country? Yeah, places, I haven't been. I haven't been to the Red Center. I'd really like to get to Uluru. That is, as you know, when we were growing up, it would have been known as Ayers Rock, the big red rock in the middle of the country. Oh, okay, yeah, I haven't been. My parents had been one time when they came, but I haven't made it yet. I haven't been to Darwin, I've been to Perth, I've been to the far north Queensland. We lived in Adelaide for a year with my husband's job, which was a lot of fun. Yeah, I really liked Adelaide.
Speaker 1:Adelaide's also big in the wine industry because the Barossa Valley and the Clare Valley the great thing about it it is you're an hour away from you know world-class vineyards. So so if you like wine, australia is a great place for wine travel because you've got over in wa, you've got margaret river, you've got the barossa and the claire in south australia. Here in melbourne we're an hour from the yarrow valley, plus also down the mornington peninsula and it's quite tourist focused, like they've made it really accessible. You can get there and they can do. You can do tastings and tours and things and they, you know, to help educate and explain wine. And how do you get around the country? So say you want to go to Melbourne and Adelaide and then go up to Noosa.
Speaker 1:Do you have high-speed trains or does everyone rent cars or you have to just fly because it's way too far? No high-speed trains, unfortunately. That's something they've been kind of debating for. Well, it's been on the cards as long as I've lived here. They're building a high-speed train between Melbourne and Sydney, kind of via Canberra, which would be fantastic because the Melbourne Sydney air corridor is the busiest air corridor in the world because it's about a nine-hour drive, ten-hour drive, but well, I know with Qantas it used to be, there was a flight every half hour between Sydney and Melbourne.
Speaker 1:There's an, an expression that gets used like called the tyranny of distance, and that was about Australia being so far away and how that has shaped history and economic policy and things because of being so remote. But it's also kind of applicable within the country because it's big. It's just it's like the U S, you know, landmass wise. I was just wondering how, what the size compared to the U S is it? I think it's. I think it's almost the same. It's almost the same as the continental U S. Yeah, so, considering we have 50 States and you have like five or or I don't know if they're five, but yeah, we've got seven plus two territories, or no? Oops, let me get that back.
Speaker 1:Everybody forgets about Tasmania, which is a shame, because Tasmania is absolutely stunning Really. It is such a beautiful place. Yeah, it is gorgeous, if you are kind of into outdoorsy activities, it's got incredible mountain biking, it's got hiking, some of the most remote hiking you will do, and it is just breathtakingly beautiful. Look up a place called um wine glass bay in the fresne national park f-r-e-y-c-i-n-e-t, but wine glass bay is probably, if you get some google images that'll come up and it's just beautiful. It's. It is beautiful. Wow, there's some pictures of it with the different colors too, some greens and aquas.
Speaker 1:And what's the best time of year to go there? Um, I think autumn and spring are the two best times to come to australia, I think, you know, I think march, april or october, november, before it gets, you know, to extremes. I mean, if you come in the summertime, as in northern summer, you know, july, august then if you go up to our far north, that's the best time for there because it's not as hot and a lot of people escape up north during the winter. You know they go to New South Port Douglas or Cairns or Palm Cove, you know, to get out of the cold. Port Douglas sounds familiar, I've heard Port Douglas. Is that Tasmania or Australia? Port Douglas sounds familiar. I've heard Port Douglas. Is that Tasmania or Australia? No, no, that's yeah, port Douglas is in Queensland, it's, that's about. It's about an hour and a half drive from Cairns, so you fly into Cairns and then there's a. You know, there's Mission Beach, there's Port Douglas. Port Douglas is one of the main areas where you can leave to the reef cruises, so it's it's quite a big.
Speaker 1:But what I always liked about it is that it, even though it's a very touristy town it used to be it was a great blend, like there's lots of high-end resorts but there are also lots of backpackers, so it made it a really vibrant. It wasn't just like a five-star town, it was. You know, you had cane toad racing in the pub. This is a Queensland you're talking about. Yep, that's in Port Douglas. Okay, got it. And I'm looking at also Tasmania and I see snow. Is there snow? That happens there too? Wow, yeah, cradle mountain, that's. That's cradle mountain national park. There's some great hiking in there.
Speaker 1:There's something called the overland track, which is like a two or three day. I think you can do it for a little bit longer, but it's a well kind of known, kind of like the Appalachian Trail. It's a well-known marked trail that people can hike. And there's on the far southwest coast of Tasmania. It's like the most unexplored part of the world. It's, you know, you genuinely feel like you are the only person on earth. And what was that called specifically? Again, overland, that's just so. The Overland Trail. I think it's Okay, I think it's the Overland Trail in Cradle Mountain National Park. Yeah, okay, I'm going to highlight that. That sounds incredible. The Overland Track. There you go, okay, it's, it's the Overland Track. That's what I wrote In Cradle Mountain. Lake St Clair yeah, okay, Lake St Clair. Oh, it looks gorgeous. Yeah, the pictures are amazing, it looks really beautiful.
Speaker 1:And how far is a flight? Well, I guess depending on where you are in Australia, but from Australia to Tasmania, so from us, from here in Melbourne, it's, it's a, you know, it's a like up and down. It's a 50 minute flight to. Yeah, you barely, you barely get altitude before you're you're descending again. But there's also a ferry. Um, a lot of people take the. It's called the star of tesmania. It's an overnight ferry so you can take your car. So a lot of people. If you're going for a longer trip, we'll do that and we'll take the, the ferry from melbourne to devonport. Oh, okay, and that's so you kind of go to sleep. You've got your vehicle? Yeah, yep, exactly, that's part of the federation, then.
Speaker 1:Or new zealand, no, totally, um, totally separate, totally separate country. No, no, no, it's been. Yeah, it's been a consideration before. People have joked about unifying and making one country, but it's about three and a half hours away four hours away, depending on where you're leaving from. But a lot of it's an easy. If you were coming this far, it would be a good thing to make it a combined trip.
Speaker 1:New Zealand's got I think you probably need somebody to give you a little bit more in-depth information about New Zealand but New Zealand's got a lot of parts because it's further south. Oh yeah, I took a trip there in my 20s and we were there nine days and oh my gosh, we did like everything dangerous and like we didn't have to sign any insurance waivers, like, oh you hurt. You know that's your problem. You know the stuff we would do Fire beware.
Speaker 1:So let's talk a little bit about like cost of living in melbourne versus other places. So say, melbourne, is that one of the more expensive places to live, or is that you get a lot of digital nomads, or do they all nomads all hang out in queensland in certain towns that are a little more affordable. Or, yeah, um, melbourne is very, uh, it cost of living is pretty high. Um, cost of living is pretty high across the country in general where my sons, my two sons, are working part-time jobs at a butcher's. They're 27 an hour, you know, which is just, you know, unheard for someone who waitressed their way through college. Yeah, 27's, $27 an hour, that's just insane. But so that the trade-off is that, you know, everyone earns a living wage, but it means that costs are higher. What's that?
Speaker 1:So what is typical like, if someone wanted to stay there, how much would it cost to rent a I don't know a house or an apartment, a flat, I don't know what they call them. I would say that airbnb has become very popular here as well. You know, there's kind of flat sharing or you know, house sharing. Uh, websites, oh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't really know what I know for a hotel, really like, if you were getting a hotel room in the city, I think you'd be looking for, you know, a basic hotel room. I don't think you could really in melbourne find one for less than probably $150, $200 a night. And if you were staying just any real time, I think you would definitely end up getting either like a service department or renting a house or doing something like that, because staying in a hotel the whole time would get very expensive. How much is housing prices there Like what would typical, I think, your neighborhood or around it? What's cost of of just curious compared to, I know it's, it's, it's very expensive, it's crazy expensive and it just it can't be any worse than the Bay area. No, no, that's, that's actually. That's probably true.
Speaker 1:We, the last time we were in the States, we, we, we flew via San Francisco on our way in and you know I'd been to, you know my husband and I had been to San Francisco a couple of times, or I'd been a couple of times and he'd been once before. But the boys were very intrigued by, you know, they loved the idea of it being so, you know, so close to all of the tech over in the Valley. But it was gobsmacking. We always, you know, we kind of take a bit of a look in estate agents' windows and see what your money could buy anywhere else in the world. Yeah, so what would be a city in Melbourne? That's very expensive, oh, I think, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that our average house price is now I think it's tipped over 800,000. Okay, okay, so that's pretty similar to the bay area. Yeah, that's, yeah. So in the suburb that I'm in it's, I think it's it's high. Yeah, it's a lot. It's scary. That sounds like going to the grocery store. It's scary a lot. Yeah, it's a kind of pretty similar to the bay area as well.
Speaker 1:What's family like? Uh with uh, you know things that. What do kids typically do? I'm sure it's possibly electronics and similar to us, but are there any culture? You know traditions or things that families do or get together or certain foods that they like to eat or you know, share meals? It's funny.
Speaker 1:A friend from school from William and Mary, texted me and sent me a message a few years back because they were having a multicultural day at their school and they were doing Australian food. I was like well, make lamingtons, what's that Lamingtons? Lamingtons are lamingtons. It's like a vanilla sponge in a square that's split in half and it's got a layer of jam in the middle but then they're rolled in chocolate and desiccated coconut. They're pretty yummy. We have fantastic seafood, being very. Something like 75% of the population lives within six miles of the coast. It's all very heavily concentrated along the coasts, again, because of migration. We've got amazing ethnic any kind of ethnic food you would want. You can get barbecues, paul Hogan shrimp on the Barbie joke but we have a lot of bar. We do a lot of barbecues with friends because it's a very outdoors focused culture. We do do a lot outside.
Speaker 1:Sport is huge. Melbourne is sports crazy. What are the big sports there? Soccer, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep, that's, that's very, very popular. We have a sport called Australian rules football, which is for the uninitiated. It's pretty eyeopening. My, my father and my brother used to call it no rules football because it just looks like a free for all. Oh, wow, it's different than rugby, though, yeah, yeah, different to rugby. Yeah, rugby is a lot more popular in New South Wales and Queensland. It's not. We have a rugby team here in Melbourne, but it's just not too rugby. We have rugby league and rugby union. It's not as popular. Just Aussie rules has kind of got the grip and people are fanatical about it. You know, it's almost like their religion. You know, you're the team that you grow up supporting. You can't, you can't switch teams. You can't. Yeah, it's, it's fierce.
Speaker 1:And baseball, um, yes, actually there are, people do play baseball. Um, a friend of mine's son played softball and baseball. Here it's it's not as popular. You can pretty much find any sport that you wanted to play. You know that. I know another friend's children played lacrosse, which again is a bit of a niche sport. Here it's not as thing. My son was a very keen hockey player, which is unusual because field hockey in the US is strictly a girl's sport, but here it's in. Everywhere else in the Commonwealth it's a very popular sport for boys and girls. My younger son played soccer for a long time. What else? Tennis, starting next week We've got one of the Grand Slams. So you know the city loves sport and embraces sport and we'll bet on anything.
Speaker 1:We have synchronized swimming too. My daughter does synchronized swimming and the Olympic coaches coach her and she coached the Australian team. And my daughter this year she's a senior in high school is learning the Australian um, wow, olympic routine. They're actually yeah, yeah. So swimming, swimming of any kind is very it's, you know it's, it's almost compulsory. You learn to swim. It used to be a compulsory thing at all. All state schools, all primary schools did swimming lessons. Because it's just, you have to learn to swim. It's pretty. A lot of pools, yeah, oh, absolutely, especially surfing. I'm sure there's surfing things, yeah, all that, but no, it's interesting. The Olympic coach that was the trainer for the Australian team is our coach right now, or she's helping, helping with training her that that same routine that she created for the Australian Olympic team, which is kind of fun. So Lolly is really cool. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, so super fun, but really cool.
Speaker 1:So, in terms of the things that you would say are big highlights to visit, are there things that, uh, aren't really talked about? We always like to kind of get the underground. Are there other areas and places to go or see? And even in melbourne, um, if someone were to come there, that are kind of hidden gems that you know, maybe aren't necessarily, you know, marketed. Yeah, um, I think in melbourne, in in Melbourne in particular, we've got a really, really strong bar and music scene, lots of local. Again, this is all pre-COVID, you know, when we've been shut down for a number of years but lots of really cool hidden bars down laneways, rooftop bars you know, tiny little places that you know real word of mouthways, rooftop bars, you know, tiny little places that you know real word of mouth. And and restaurants. You know, again, we've got a huge food culture. Food, food, booze, music.
Speaker 1:We've got the comedy festival. We've got the international comedy festival every year in april. That's that's coming up and that's always good fun. You can just go. You can go to the ticket office on it. You know, obviously the headline acts you have to buy the tickets ahead of time, but it's a great way to go and you just, you know they're in little little bars and clubs and things and you can just go and see up-and-coming comic, very, very reasonably priced too. You can go and just pick up a ticket on the night.
Speaker 1:Um, the penguins. Depending on the age of the people that come, especially if they've got kids, I always take them to the fairy people. They're now called the little penguins. We're not allowed to call them fairy penguins anymore. They're um. They come in at philip island, which is about an hour and a half from melbourne, and they come in every night like in giant wave onto the shore. Actual penguins scramble to their burrows, actual penguins, actual penguins. Teeny, tiny, little penguins. Like how tiny, six inches about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're not little penguins, yeah, so it's.
Speaker 1:It happens at at sundown, so if you go in wintertime it's a lot earlier in the day, but obviously in the summertime sun it's not to about nine o'clock at night. So depending on like, if you've got little kids, they might not necessarily be able to stay awake that long. Is that only near Melbourne? Then, yeah, there's a, there's a colony of them on. Come up on Phillip Island. If you look up Phillip Island colony a penguin colony or the penguin parade, they call it. If you look up Phillip Island's colony, penguin colony or the penguin parade, they call it.
Speaker 1:So they've got these specially built bleachers in the dunes so that they're stacked up and away from the burrows and they just and they come. It's really, it's really cute because you know one of them will come in on a wave and kind of tentatively come onto the shore and then they scramble back in the water and then a couple more and then all of a sudden there's this wave of penguins. Oh my gosh, it's adorable. It's adorable, it is really really cute. And they've got and they've done it really really sensitively with the way they've built the walkways, because so they're raised, so they're away from the burrows and things so that the penguins aren't impacted. But you can get really close. You can see that it is really adorable. I'm seeing the, the um, the uh raised part where everyone's sitting and it even has like a glass part where it's sort of almost under and then there, so you can see it almost eye view, and then little penguins are running by. Oh, that's adorable.
Speaker 1:So we yeah, they're very cute, do they? Is it like just a time period? Are they? Did they hibernate there or something for a little time? And then they know that they're every day they, they, they go out and and you know the parent penguins go out and and fish and come back and feed the penguin babies and that's what you know. They come back in at night after having been out during the day fishing and getting food.
Speaker 1:And that same island, that Phillip Island, where that is, they also have a koala sanctuary, again really well done with a race, so you can walk along and get kind of like eye view to the koalas, and that's also on Phillip Island. That's also on Phillip Island, yeah, to the koalas, and that's also on philip island. That's also on philip island, yeah, because koalas are really I think a lot of people find them very disappointing because they sleep all day, so they're not exactly the most exciting animals to go and see, but they're very cute, wow, yeah, my girlfriend always my girlfriend always joke that everything in Australia wants to kill you. So it's nice that we've got cute animals too. Yeah, absolutely, oh, my goodness, this is so cute. So I'm looking, I'm trying to pan out, okay, so I see where it is now. So it's not in the newborn bay, but the next one, the next one over, yeah, and then there's a French island as well. Yep, french island isn't habited, but it's not on French Island. But you can take the ferry from Phillip Island to French's Island. Wow, that is so.
Speaker 1:And if you're, if you're into, if you like animals and you like cute animals, you go to Perth. There's an Island off of Perth and I'm completely blanking. You take it, you get there from Fremantle and they've got an animal called a quokka and it's about the only place in the world where you can. It's the only place in the world where you get the quokkas and they are, if you like, cute little animals. They're adorable. So it's Q-U-O-K-K-A.
Speaker 1:Rottnest Island that's the name of it. Rottn, that's the name of it. Rocknest Island, rot, rotnest, r-o-t-t-n-e-s-t. And the reason it was called that was because the Dutch explorers that discovered. It thought that the quokkas looked like rats. So it's Ratnest Island. Oh my gosh. But they're so cute. And how do you spell that again? Q? U, e, q? U o, k q? U o, double k? A quokka, okay, quokka. Brightness island off of earth. Okay, yeah, I see the island. Okay, cool, this is kind of little things we want to learn about. It's so interesting.
Speaker 1:So we interviewed someone from south africa. There was penguins down there too, so something about that latitude. Well, I guess maybe it's like the opposite, probably, of penguins down there too, so something about that latitude. Well, I guess maybe it's like the opposite. Probably have penguins up in um, you know Alaska, well, you only, you only get penguins in the Antarctic. You only get penguins down south. Oh, okay, penguins are only in the southern hemisphere and polar bears up north, in the northern hemisphere oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Oh, it has one that has its arms open like it's gonna hug. It looks like a squirrel, it's, that's a. That's a famous, famous picture. The guy, basically, because you can, they're super, super friendly, because they're so tame, so you um and you just bike around the island. Yeah, yeah, they're really yeah, so he was, he had a GoPro. I'm sure it's the one that I'm thinking. It looks like he's kind of leaping out to hug you. Yeah, he had a GoPro and he had this foot and this quokka just kind of left at him and he just caught it just in that Right, it looks like he's smiling like dad or mom or family. Yeah, it looks like it should be in a movie or something. Yeah, yeah, they're very cute and again, you can go up. There's so tame, yeah, you can go. Yeah, because they're so used to tourists, you know, they're so used to people. Now, you look like. So you just so you hire bikes. When you go to rotten nest, you hire a bike and just you know, you can just bike around the island.
Speaker 1:And how big are they? They look some, some of the pictures look like they're pretty decent. Well, no, no, no, they don't get, they don't get huge, they don't. They're, you know, again, like this, like a big, a cat cat, yeah, that's a small cat, yeah, that's. And I've seen one like on its hind. Almost looks like a kangaroo.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, tell us about kangaroos. Do you see them? How? Where do you have to go to see kangaroos? Um, you don't have to go far at all, actually, that's. That's a fun place that we like to take. You know, visitors um uh, so along. So you know, looking at the, the map of melbourne, again, how you? You know we're on port phillips bay.
Speaker 1:If you go along to the towards the west, there's a, a road called the great ocean road and it is one of the nicest, most beautiful drives that you'll do. It's kind of like Big Sur in California. You know, the one from San Francisco down, where it's just amazing beaches and cliffs and things. So along there is a town called Apollo Bay and Lorne. So in, is it Lorne? No, it's Anglesey.
Speaker 1:Anglesey is the one that has a golf course and you get kangaroos on the golf course. So the very first time I ever played golf in my life I was when I was here. My husband took me to Anglesey because we took a drive, a day trip, down the great ocean road. We went and stopped and played nine holes at Anglesey and there's it's kind of an urban no, not urban.
Speaker 1:It's a funny story now that there's a great shot of me on the first tee, you know, swinging through and all these kangaroos in the background. But if you look very carefully, the ball hasn't moved. Oh, it's going to happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So are they friendly or mean? Because I've heard they kangaroos? Are they friendly or mean because I've heard, um, they, they can, I think. I think they're mainly quite shy and they just will go. You know they don't tend to like people, yeah, coming close to them, but they can be very aggressive and they can be really dangerous because they've got really long claws and so if you ever watch the, you know the expression, the boxing kangaroos. They kind of they balance on their tail and they hit each other with their bottom, with their legs, and they've got really long, sharp claws. They can, they can eviscerate you basically. So don't get too close.
Speaker 1:No, that's and same with same with another other animals called cassowaries, which, if you ever want to see an ugly animal, look up a cassowary. How do you spell that? That's c-a-s-s-o-w-a-r-y. They're like a colorful emu with a big blue head, but they've also got these crazy sharp claws that can. So it's like kind of like an emu. You said, yeah, yeah, yeah, beautiful colors, they're almost like a peacock emu, yeah, but they're mean.
Speaker 1:So on philip island again, there is a, a small family-run reserve, like nature reserve, where they've got you can hand feed wallabies and kangaroos again. They're so tame now because they're so used to it, but you can hand feed them, um, and then they have emus and cassowaries and koalas, and so you can. You can do all the all the greatest tips, except for crocodiles. You don't want to do that for sure. Lots of snakes, yeah, yeah, lots of snakes, lots of snakes. And then I saw a fun fact that I was looking about boxes, it says.
Speaker 1:According to the rspca, melbourne is the fox capital of the world, with 16 to 23 boxes per square kilometer in melbourne. So they just like they were introduced, or, funnily enough, I have seen them, um, I have seen them at night a couple of times. I've seen them out on the road, um, we live not far from a? Um, a public tip, like a waste place, it's not, it's like green waste and recycling and things like that, but there must be enough to lure them there, because I have seen them coming from there at night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we introduced, I think, you know for I don't know if it was purely for hunting or if it was also to you know, we have a lot of problems with introduced species that have caused a lot of issues. Like, um, like the rabbits were introduced, which then went crazy and they had to come up with a, brought in a disease to help kill the rabbits, but myxomatosis, but um, yeah, so you know, cane toads were introduced to help with some bugs in the, in the, in the cane fields up in queensland, and then again they've gone crazy because they have no natural predators. So they're slowly marching, hopping their way down the country. So where are all the crocodiles? Is that in Melbourne or no? No, no, that's, that's um, so, um, queensland. Um, a lot of times you'll see them at Northern territory as well, like in Darwin, when you get out to um, like the Kakadu and the kimberleys and water holes, and, okay, they like it warm, I take it, they like it warm, all right, and so well, they've got saltwater and freshwater crocodile. So we've got both, okay, I can never remember which one one of them is more dangerous than the other and I can't remember. I think it's's salt waters that are okay, I'm not going to, I'm not going to make that pronounce it, they're just, but they're huge, you know. You see, see them on the coast sometimes, you know, swimming up on beaches. All right, so we're at the end of our hour.
Speaker 1:Kristen, do you have any questions? I'll go into my rapid fire questions. I'm so loving this. This is so helpful and exciting. I know I have lots of notes and I'm glad this is recorded so I can go back and look up these cool places. So thanks for sharing. Yeah, definitely, thank you, bitsy.
Speaker 1:So we talked about religion. What about, um, foods? Like we heard of vegemite sandwiches, like, is that something very popular there? Or what are some of your favorite foods? I know we have a menagerie of you know cultures there, but do you have a favorite? Yeah, uh, look, I think it's something you have to grow up with. It's not something you can. It's not something you can kind of, uh, pick up as a, as an adult. I think I like lamingtons. That would I like lamingtons. Lamingtons are great. Lamingtons are lovely.
Speaker 1:We've got great fruit too. You know great tropical fruit, you know so. Mangoes. We're in the height of mango season now, so that's a real. You know nothing better than a nice ripe mango, because it drips down your arms as you eat it. There's nothing you can't eat it neatly, it's so messy.
Speaker 1:And yeah, seafood, yeah, as you eat it. And there's nothing you can't eat it neatly, it's so messy. And yeah, um, seafood, yeah, lots of seafood. Um, good fruits, any kind of unusual seafood other than, like we know, we have shrimp and tuna and mahi, some different kind of fish that we haven't, maybe might not be popular here. Yeah, well, um, so one of the best eating fish that you'll ever have is called the barramundi, and that's really. You only get that up, really up North. For North you can get it obviously in restaurants and and and fishmongers, but to catch it it's up North and oh well, on a tangent. But if you like fly fishing, there's great fly fishing in Tasmania. Tasmania, okay, cool, um, all right.
Speaker 1:And then what's the music like? Does it just maybe western music or is it influenced from Asia? What's popular? Yeah, oh, look, I think, um, you know, we kind of sit halfway in the well, we're part of the commonwealth, so we get a lot of influence of British music and television, but the same as everywhere else in the world. I think it's all kind of universal. Now, things that are popular tend to be worldwide popular. One thing that's great is there's been a real focus on Indigenous cultures and Indigenous artists. But there's an Indigenous rap artist named Baker Boy. He's fantastic because he actually raps in his language. Don't ask me, I can't remember exactly, because there are hundreds of Aboriginal languages, but it's great that that's kind of becoming mainstream, accepted musically and culturally, and there's a real push for recognition of those. You know kind of movies, television, music, like indigenous stories are gaining a lot more traction, which is fantastic and long overdue and is all your entertainment, streaming stuff now.
Speaker 1:Cause I just feel like in the last two years we had Netflix, but now we have HBO streaming, disney has their streaming, nbc has their streaming. Is it the same down there? Yeah, I don't think we've got our own. I don't believe we have our own streaming services, all of our streaming services. So we've got Netflix, we've got amazon prime, we've got um, we've got one called stan which is a australian owned one, but a lot of it's all of the content. The majority of the content is from, you know, hbo or or um other you know streaming services in the us. What's the one netflix hulu in the us? Is it hulu? Yeah, yeah, we get a lot of the I think. I think stan gets a lot of the hulu content which is the like the, the handmaid's tale and those kind of things. Yeah, yeah, cool, yeah, so we it's. We do a lot of streaming. I think everybody does now, but yeah, they're popular, okay.
Speaker 1:So where's the nearest places to surf? I know, not right in the Melbourne Bay, but do you have to go out a little bit? Yeah, yeah, so if you go along, you know, if you go onto the great ocean road, so the first kind of place that you hit is Torquay and that's the start of that whole great ocean road and there's great surfing there. There's actually Bell's beach and Janjok are both part of the surfing the world surfing competition rounds. Yeah, so it's only two hours, two hour drive with traffic. Oh, wow, that's pretty. Bell's Beach, I see it, it's very close. Yeah, bell's and Janjak are the two that I know. How do you spell Janjak? It's J, that's uh, jan and then juc, so it's two words. That's right. Next, I think bells beach is next to janjuk. They're very close. Janjuk, victoria, australia, just zoomed right in, okay, by the bird rock lookout, okay, oh, bird rock, oh, okay, that's not very far at all, it's almost like no, no, it's going to santa cruz from san francisco. Yeah, it's kind of looks a lot like, uh, california, yeah, that.
Speaker 1:So that, like I said, that's the start of the great ocean road, which is that, that amazing drive that you can do all the way down to. You know, you go down to an area called a place called Port Ferry, so most of the time it hugs the coast, it goes inland a little bit, but, yeah, the 12 apostles are along there as well and that's a big tourist draw. What's that? I think there's only nine of them left, but they were um big rock formations right out off the coast. So if you look up 12 apostles, okay, let's just find a great ocean road. Oh, there it is. Yeah, oh, oh, beautiful, wow, they're like all these tall rock formations that look like buildings. Yeah, one of them, I think one, collapsed about four or five years ago. They keep collapsing because they're you know, they're ancient. So there's not, there's not 12 left. Okay, gotcha, nine, eight, seven. It's kind of counting down. Oh, that's great, but that that drive is that?
Speaker 1:That drive along the great ocean road is just spectacular. Like, if you get a, you know, if you have a, if you had a good couple of days and wanted to take it really slow, you could do it in a day. You can, but if you had a couple of days to stopped along the way, and is there some hotels to stay at along the way? Yeah, yeah, there's lots of um, there's quite a few um holiday cities or towns along there, all the way along. You know, and you know smaller ones, bigger ones. There's a larger town called lorn, and that's got. You know lots of. You know hotels and and places to stay, but then there's smaller ones that are more kind of residential or lots of camping. There's lots of campgrounds as well. So if you camp and then walk across to the beach, does it end at the national park there, the great otway, or does it as really, lauren is the ball, it goes over? So, um, I think the I don't. I don't actually know where the official end of the great ocean road is. I know that. So, cape ot, there's a lighthouse there and at that Cape Otway lighthouse.
Speaker 1:The next thing, the next bit of land, is Antarctica. So it's, you get a really strong cold breeze. It can be, it can be 15, 20 degrees colder there than in Melbourne. Oh, okay, can you get. You know the, you know the the wind straight off antarctica.
Speaker 1:It's virtually all right, okay, well, thank you so much, and then I just got the money, but I know about the australian dollar, so it's pretty. Yeah, I know what's the difference between australia. It's, it's, it's just the dollar. We have dollars and cents, but it's um, it's what's it? Now I think it's sitting at about 75 cents us. Yeah, yeah, it fluctuates. It's not, it's not tied. It fluctuates, but you know, there have been times when we've had near parity, but just depends on the strength of the us dollar and the weakness of the australian dollar.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, thank you, bitsy, so nice to meet you and talk with you. You too. This is really great and, um, we'll let you know when it's ready to preview. Yeah, australia is definitely on my list and this is all of those places sound amazing and I want to check them all out. Yeah, love to come for a long time. Yeah, just travel around the entire, do the circuit, do that. Six months, absolutely, perfect, wonderful. Thank you so much. Thanks, guys. Enjoy your Friday. Bye, bye, bye, bye. If you enjoy our podcast, be sure to subscribe to our show. If you enjoy our podcast, be sure to subscribe to our show, rate us in your podcast app and follow us on Instagram at where next podcast, if you are interested in being a guest on our show or would like to nominate someone. Please contact us on our website at wwwwhere next podcastcom. Thanks for listening.
