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Victoria - The place to be
Melbourne is completely not what I expected it to be. Colder (it's about 3 degrees at night, 15 degrees in the daytime - a bit of a shock from Fiji and not what I packed for!). More multi-national (the food here is phenomenal!). Bigger - the area it covers is massive, all roads seem to be about 3 lanes minimum in each direction and there are so many different shops and cafes and restaurants packed into actually a rather small CBD (Central Business District).
It took me a while to warm to Melbourne actually - I think I underestimated the challenges of moving to a new city in a new country all by myself. There was so much to do - open a bank account, get a tax file number, update my CV, look for rooms to rent, make friends, look for jobs, go for interviews - oh and turn up to my elective placement!
I did the second half of my elective at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in East Melbourne and fortuntely it was a very relaxed placement. I was given a timetable of clinics and theatre times, together with the option of going to the Emergency department and otherwise left to my own devices. I spent the first 2 weeks mainly with Ophthalmology but despite my best efforts, I never saw anything on the retina with the slit lamp - I am an expert however, at focussing on all the scratches on the lens! I then spent a couple of days with the Cochlear Implant team, which I loved - the RVEEH was the first place in the world to do them, doncha know and there is even a little lane near the hospital named after it: Bionic Ear Lane. I spent my last week and a bit flitting between ENT and the Emergency dept which was a lot more fun and I could actually see things!
Somehow, in amongst the life admin of setting up in a new city and being in hospitals for 12-14 hours a day (only kidding!), I found time to explore the city and have fun. Mei Ling was my Melbourne buddy and together we did the touristy things: the Neighbours Deluxe tour (oh yes, Deluxe tour!) and the Phillip Island tour. The latter involved a whole 12 hour extravanganza of all Australian animals: we held a snake, fed kangaroos and wallabies, saw dingoes, whooping owls, wombats, tasmanian devils, koalas as well as the highlight of the day: sheepshearing! Oh and several hundred wild penguins came ashore at sunset which was pretty special too!
I also met relatives I'd never seen before - I met my mum's cousin Mariette and her husband Richard at their beautiful home in Mount Eliza on the Mornington Peninsula. I also met my second cousin Robert (my mother's cousin's son) and his wife Amanda and their very cute little girls. I met my second cousin Jules in a bar in Richmond right after a footy match at the G (the Melbourne Cricket Ground stadium, known as the G). Amazingly a friend of one of her friends is a St Olave's boy (boys' school down the road from my school) who lives about 5 minutes' walk away from my house in Bromley! How small is the world becoming?! Smaller still because just five days later when Mei Ling and I were on the hunt for a restaurant we bumped into Kat Green in the street in Melbourne! A city of 4 million people and we bumped into her - what are the odds?
The rest of my time was spent at hostels - I spent 2 weeks at Nomads All Nations which was not great to put it mildly. But it was central and I met an awesome Irish guy called Dermot (or James, depending on your hearing) so not all bad. It was also great to meet up with Vanessa again (girl I met in LA who I flew to Fiji with) - we had 2 great evenings of Greek desserts and cocktails in a Hawaiian bar! After 2 weeks I moved to a better (more expensive) hostel in St Kilda on Prostitute Avenue (for the first week I thought women were just waiting for lifts from people they knew...). Habitat HQ (since voted best hostel in Melbourne) was awesome and I had a great time there - met some awesome people so I was actually a little bit sad to move out to my own room! But before that, ADELAIDE!!
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