Transport issues in Melbourne

A new road safety plan is being voted on this week in Melbourne, and I couldn't agree more with what the council is hopefully going to change here. We came to the conclusion very early on in our move here that pedestrians are the lowest on the travelling food chain. It can take an absolute age to cross at lights, you often have to wait in excess of 5 minutes, and if it is a particularly wide street you can barely make it across before the light changes again.

Very few of our friends here don't have a car. We are the minority, whereas in London it was the other way around. Public transport is ok, but obviously nowhere near as comprehensive as in London. I am lucky that my train journey to work is pretty easy, but a major factor in deciding where to live was how I would get to work. Originally I wanted to live closer to the beach, but working in Ivanhoe (north-east) makes that pretty much impossible - it would probably take me about an hour and a half each way to get to work if that were the case. As it is  I make it about 50 minutes door-to-door, which is about my limit.

At the weekends we are often frustrated when we try to get anywhere on public transport. There are very few trains south of the river, and so you need to rely on trams which are slow as they are in the same lanes as the cars. We are trying to cycle more, but frankly I don't trust the drivers here yet - I'm not convinced they are aware enough of cyclists yet! There are some good bike paths in places, but unfortunately they are pretty inconsistent at this point (I actually miss the bright blue Boris cycle highways!) I am not surprised so many people drive everywhere here, as it's so frustrating to walk, cycle or take public transport.

But it seems the council are aware of these problems and will hopefully pass legislature to give pedestrians priority over cars in Melbourne's CBD. As Councillor Oke is quoted saying "no city in the works is designing their city for increased car travel". Main points being addressed are:

• Cut waiting times for pedestrians at busy crossings
• Widen footpaths in pedestrian heavy areas
• Consider giving cyclists and trams a head start at lights
• Encourage cyclists to ride in the middle of the road to avoid being squeezed between tram stops and traffic

The issue of traffic combined with lack of public transport and safe cycle lanes is one of Melbourne's biggest downfalls to us. These and other changes would hugely improve what it is like to get around the city as a pedestrian or cyclist, however I still think the city has a long way to go in order to encourage people to take public transport or cycle instead of their car. 

Full news article here

Permission To Teach

When we decided to move to Melbourne we knew it would be difficult for mrwandymcnoble to get a job teaching here. The reason is that he qualified via the Graduate Teacher Programme (GPT) in England, which is not recognised as a valid teaching qualification in Australia.

The GTP is a work-based route into teaching, which means you spend your training year as an unqualified teacher working in a school on a reduced timetable, and learn on the job.

In order to work in any school in Victoria, even independent schools, you must be registered by the Victorian Institute of Teaching (information of registration here), but of course the VIT won't register those with a GTP qualification.

There is a loop-hole of sorts, called Permission To Teach (PTT). PTT allows an "unqualified" teacher with teaching experience to teach in a school for up to 3 years, however in order to gain PTT a school who is willing to hire you must apply with you. Schools must prove they can't find a registered teacher to fill the post before going through PTT, so as you can imagine a school would normally rather just hire a VIT registered teacher.

Last week mrwandymcnoble went to a job interview and the school does want to hire him to cover a 3 week sickness leave starting next week, which could turn into a maternity leave that starts in Term 3 (July). However, the PTT application takes 4-6 weeks to process so won't be ready in time for him to start the job next week. So frustrating! We are still waiting on the school to see what they decide, crossing our fingers that even though he probably can't do the sickness cover, they will still want him to do the maternity leave in Term 3. Cross your fingers for us please!

Anyway it is all a bit stressful, but at least we know that there are schools out there willing to go the PTT route. The most annoying bit is that in New South Wales unregistered teachers can teach in independent schools. So if we had decided to move to Sydney he would have had a much better chance of finding a job. But I suppose that is a very unhelpful way of thinking!

Easter Holidays!

Hooray for school holidays! I've got through my first term of teaching in Australia, and let me tell you I was no where near as exhausted on the last day of term as I normally am. A good sign, however I must keep in mind that it was a short term, only 8 weeks (due to Easter being so early this year) and next term will be much longer at 10 weeks. The longest I've ever had to teach without a break, eek!

Anyway, last weekend was Easter weekend and we had a lot of fun catching up with some new and old friends.

Good Friday we went for a long bike ride with Team Olympic Dreams, probably the first time we have all rode together since our 5am Richmond Park Ride. Actually it was the first time I've got out on my bike since we moved here and it felt so good! I am now re-determined to ride my bike to work, at least once or twice a week. We'll see how that goes next term...

We followed the Yarra River north-east all the way to Abbotsford where we passed a farm and waterfall (not quite as exciting as it sounds). If you follow the Yarra you will eventually get to Ivanhoe and quite near my school, however it is extremely windy and is about 20km each way, which is too long of a commute for me!

"waterfall"

Saturday we drove to Port Phillip Island to stay the night with some new friends: Alan, Dan and Laura (I'm actually not great with coming up with nicknames for everyone so I'll probably just end up using real names from now on). Dan and Laura were lucky enough to have been lent a house to stay in by friends of theirs, who also generously told them they could invite some friends to stay at well. The house was gorgeous, right on the sea, a perfect beach house that you would aspire to have one day! We had a nice relaxing stay there and would like to return at some point to see the famous Philip Island Penguins (although they are the same ones we have already seen in St. Kilda).

Beach house by the sea

Port Philip Island

Sunday we had lunch with Andy's friends from uni, Pete and Elle, who have just had a baby! Poppy is so cute and lovely and probably the best dressed baby we've ever seen. That's what happens when both your parents work in fashion!

Andy has been practicing his baby skills: holding, rocking, pushing the buggy, and seems quite enamoured with baby Poppy. I am glad he will be ready when we finally decide to have a little mcnoble of our own!

Andy and Poppy

Bloc Party!

On Thursday we went to see my favourite band of all time, Bloc Party, play at the Royal Festival Hall in Melbourne. Bloc Party announced an indefinite hiatus in 2009, which many fans, including myself, feared was actually a permanent break up. During their break many of the band members did side projects, and I was lucky enough to see frontman Kele play a gig in Brixton about a year and a half ago. However I truly thought I would never see my favourite band play together again.

About a year ago though I heard an interview with Kele on BBC Radio1 that confirmed the band were getting back together. So happy! They played a small show in London last fall that I wasn't able to get tickets to, and then their second show was scheduled in February, which was when we were already in Australia. Disappointed again... However I got some good news when we arrived in Melbourne. Bloc Party were playing at the Future Music Festival last weekend, and also headlining their own show later that week. I love a music festival, but if I want to see a band I really love it's much better going to see them at their own show, as they play a lot longer and the crowd is all their fans etc.

Ok, so here are my thoughts on the venue and the show. Royal Festival Hall is a good venue actually, not too big and the sound was good. We had floor tickets - there is no way I would get seats for something like this - how boring! One big downfall - you can't drink (alcohol) on the floor or in the seats! You have to get a wristband to go to a special licensed area and you can only have your drink in that area. Which is like a basement, and so you can't see or even really hear the stage from there. Weird! The supporting band, World's End Press, sounded really good when we went in. Apparently they have also been touring with Hot Chip, who are another band I really like. Anyway, we had a drink in the basement instead of watching them so I can't really tell you what they were like. Drinks were expensive but pretty much in line with drinking in Melbourne. I had a G&T for $9 and it was served in a can which made me laugh. I think Andy's beer was $6, so pretty much normal gig prices. 

Ok so on to Bloc Party. Now, I absolutely love them so my judgement is slightly clouded. However I do not love all the songs on their new album, Four. The album has some pretty heavy rock songs on it, like "Kettling" and "We Are Not Good People" which they thankfully did not play. There are a few good tunes on the new album, such as "Truth"and "V.A.L.I.S." but in my opinion Silent Alarm and Weekend in the City are still far superior albums to anything they have done after. They played quite a few songs from these albums that the crowd got really into, like "Positive Tension", "Banquet", "Hunting for Witches" and closing with the classic "Helicopter". Not much of the dance/electro crossovers at the gig, except for "One More Chance" and also they covered a bit of Rhianna's "We Found Love" before the song "Flux". I really enjoyed those but I'm not sure this was the right crowd for that. A nice surprise was they played "Blue Light" which is one of my favourites from Silent Alarm that they don't often play at gigs anymore. We also got to hear a new, unrecorded song called "Ratchet"which we both liked and makes me excited for what's to come. And lastly, they played our wedding song "This Modern Love" which was a huge hit with the crowd as well as us! mrwandymcnoble made a short recorded of it which I'm disappointed wasn't longer but to be fair he just wanted to enjoy the song and not film the whole thing! 

Overall it was a fantastic night. The band is super tight, drummer Matt Tong is incredible to watch, Kele is still a bit awkward but endearing when engaging with the audience, the light show was pretty amazing and fit well with the music, a good setlist overall and a good crowd. 5 stars (out of 5) from me! 

Birthday Weekend in Sydney

Last weekend was both a holiday long weekend in Victoria (Labour Day), and also my 32nd birthday - yikes! That sounds old. But hurray for having my birthday on a long weekend! We flew up to Sydney with mr and mrssweatybetty on Friday after work for a lovely weekend in a beautiful city.

Saturday (my actual birthday) we went for lunch with mrwandymcnoble's uncle and aunt who live in Sydney. We were at a golf course right on the beach and had a bottle of prosecco (my favourite!) with our lunch. 

Birthday lunch

Birthday prosecco compliments of mrscanada!

Mrssweatybetty is from Sydney (well, near enough) and lots of her friends live in the city. We went to one of their houses that evening for a girly evening of wine and gossip. That is something I've not done in a while as we have a limited number of friends here in Melbourne at the moment, so it was good to hang out with the girls, even if I had just met them! The boys went for a night out in Sydney to the Opera Bar, and from what I can tell had a fun evening without us!

Sunday we went to Balmoral Beach for a day of sunbathing and kayaking in the sea, and then the 4 of us took the ferry from Manly to the city centre during sunset for one of the most breathtaking views I have ever seen! The Harbour Bridge is such an impressive structure, and the Opera House looks amazing at night (although I think it looks less amazing in the day - not as white as it looks in pictures). We had a delayed birthday dinner celebration at a fantastic wine and tapas place in The Rocks, the historical part of Sydney.

Harbour Bridge - view from the ferry

Monday was our last day, and of course we had to visit Bondi Beach before we left. Not in the least because mrwandymcnoble is a big fan of the reality TV show "Bondi Rescue". Ok, I will admit, I kind of like the show too! Even if every episode is pretty much centred around fully clothed tourists almost drowning in the waves and then being saved by the awesome Bondi lifeguards. I was expecting to be a bit let down by Bondi as it is such an obvious tourist destination, but it did not disappoint. The beach is stunning and we had so much fun playing around in the waves. It is certainly different to the beaches in Melbourne! You feel much more like you are in the ocean in Sydney and water is a lot warmer! Unfortunately they were not filming Bondi Rescue while we were there and we didn't see any of mrwandymcnoble's favourites like Hoppo and Chappo.

Bondi Beach 

We did a cliff walk from Bondi to Bronte beach, and it was just stunning view after stunning view.

Bondi to Bronte cliff walk

I was not really expecting to like Sydney as much as I did, but it is a fantastic city to visit and I can't wait to go back. Probably the only downfall would be it is really spread out and you have to drive everywhere, and from what I have heard traffic is horrendous. (But, so is Melbourne traffic to be fair!) Most Australians seem to either love Melbourne or Sydney and hate the other one, but I don't quite understand that. They are both fantastic cities, and I am quite happy to live in one and visit the other when I can!

Interesting article about living in Australia

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21519050

Two Birds One Stone

We've experienced a few different places for brunch since our post about Birdman Eating, and none have failed to impress so far. One of our locals (yes, we have found a flat!) is Two Birds One Stone, which is in South Yarra and less than 5 minutes from us our new home.

We've been for coffee a few times, and also sampled their delicious white chocolate and raspberry muffin - which is full of huge chunks of white chocolate and so big we shared between 3 people. This morning we sat in for the first time. Trying to be healthy mrwandymcnoble had poached eggs on toast with a side of bacon (that is healthy for him!) and I had stewed berries layered with honey Greek yogurt, granola and toasted coconut. Very yummy, although was a bit sweet near the end.

To drink we had our regular flat white, mine with skim milk and mrwandymcnoble's with full fat milk. One thing mrwandymcnoble has noticed about the coffee here is it is always served at perfect drinking temperature, not too hot or too cold. Just right. Of course that means you end up drinking it really quickly and end up wanting another one! Which, at $4 per cup, we must try to resist!

Australia Day

A bit late but 26th January was Australia Day. Unlike Canada Day/Independence Day this isn't a celebration of when Australia became a country, rather it is to celebrate the arrival of the First Fleet (the British) in Australia in 1788. This causes some controversy as the Indigenous Australians were in Australia long before this time, and some see this as celebrating the invasion of their land by the British. I guess that's understandable.

On a less political note, we celebrated by going to The Local Taphouse in Balaclava, having Australian flags tattooed on our faces and hanging out with a blow up kangaroo. As you do.

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Sad faces as those beers were $13 each!

The Australian Open vs. Wimbledon

For the past 2 weeks Melbourne has been host to the Australian Open and we have gone tennis crazy. I've never watched so much tennis in my life (although this is possibly due to the fact that up until yesterday I didn't have to work). Last night we watched Andy Murray beat Roger Federer in a 4 hour, 5 set match at a pub with mr and mrssweatybetty, so now he will go on to face Djokovic in the final on Sunday. Murray recently defeated Djokovic to win his first grand slam title at the US Open, and won gold at the London Olympics last summer, so Scotland's favourite son seems to have broke out of his habit of choking during really big matches.

However, this is not really meant to be a sports related post (it is me writing after all, not mrwandymcnoble). Last weekend we had a grounds pass to the Australian Open with mr and mrssweatybetty, and as all of us had been to Wimbledon and thoroughly enjoyed it, we were really looking forward to a day of watching tennis. However, we fast came to this conclusion: The Australian Open is no Wimbledon.

Here are our reasons for this:

1. If you only have a grounds pass at Wimbledon you can happily watch all the big matches on Henman Hill (more recently Murray Mound) on a huge screen with a picnic. At the Australian Open (AO) there is a lawn with chairs and tables and a teeny tiny screen that you can only really see properly if you are near the front.

In our tennis whites!

2. No strawberries and cream and at the AO.

3. You cannot bring any alcohol into the AO. At Wimbledon you are allowed one bottle per person. This is especially annoying when the cost of a small glass of wine or a pint at the AO is around $8-10.

4. There seemed to be no atmosphere at the AO. Australians have this perception that Wimbledon is really snobby and stuck-up, but that could not be further from the truth. Everyone is really friendly and there to have a good time.

5. A grounds pass is free at Wimbledon, but $35 at the AO. (However you have to queue at like 5am on premium days for a grounds pass to Wimbledon, so actually I'd probably rather pay the $35 and go at a regular time. Although mrssweatybetty assures me that the 5am queue is all part of the Wimbledon atmosphere. Not sure I believe her)
ETA: a grounds pass at Wimbledon is NOT free. Sorry, I was misinformed on this point. It's £8-20. So I guess the AO wins on this point!

6. Unbelievable queues for drinks and food at the AO. Although this probably saved us money in the end as we couldn't be bothered to wait for more drinks. To give credit to the AO, there are plenty of water fountains where you can fill your water bottle with (lukewarm) water for free.

The boys spent A LOT of time watching Sharapova practice

7. And finally, it is just TOO HOT for tennis here in the summer! It's crazy. There is almost no shade anywhere on the grounds so you just have to hope your sunscreen is doing its job, and drink your drinks fast so they are still cold. And we are not even the ones playing tennis! I feel very sorry for the players that have got stuck playing on the 40 degree plus days here.

All in all, we had a good day, but agreed we'd have rather saved our $35 and gone somewhere else to watch the tennis on a screen, and that in the case of putting on tennis tournaments, England > Australia.

Brunch

Yesterday we went for our first brunch in Melbourne. Melbournians love their brunch and going out for brunch is a very popular thing to do here. After the meal we had I can understand why!

We went to Birdman Eating in Fitzroy after at 15km run with mr and mrssweatybetty around the Yarra River and Albert Park. We were feeling pretty smug about having done so much exercise before 9am, and were able to fully indulge guilt-free. We sat outside in the sun in our lycra and barefoot running shoes, looking slightly out of place compared to all the Fitzroy hipsters.

 Running around Albert Park Lake

Andy loving the run

First up: the drinks. mrwandymcnoble and I went for relatively boring/safe choices; a soy flat white for me and a latte for him. mrssweatybetty had a chai tea latte and mrsweatybetty had an iced coffee, which was served with a scoop of real vanilla ice cream. It was like a coffee milkshake! I definitely had coffee envy.

Chai latte, regular latte and iced coffee

Birdman Eating has 2 different baked egg specials everyday, which apparently mrssweatybetty was dreaming about even before we went on our run. She had the ratatouille baked eggs and the boys had the chilli con carne baked eggs. I went for the other special which was a poached egg with pumpkin and sage hollandaise sauce on sourdough bread. It was the best brunch I have ever had!

Chilli con carne baked eggs

Poached egg with pumpkin and sage hollandaise

I can't wait to go out for brunch in Melbourne again. I know we need to try somewhere new, but it will be hard to not just return to Birdman Eating!