Jon's Trip to Melbourne, December 1999.

I travelled by Greyhound bus over there (via Adelaide)
Back by train (Overlander; Melbourne to Adelaide, Indian Pacific; Adelaide to Perth). for the Australian Men's 50km walk Championship which was an Olympic Trials race.
Got some great help from a good friend in organising where to stay, and other things both before and while I was in Melbourne. She was very helpful! Watched the latest James Bond movie (The world is not Enough).
Was good to catch up with Michael(a friend from school) again, at his really large church.
Visited the Rialto Towers, see the photos I took from there here.
Unfortunately I dropped out at the 44km mark of the 50km walk race. First 10km was great, right on my target of 55min...But from 26km onwards I had trouble with hamstrings cramping up every time I tried to speed up. An interesting, worthwhile race which hopefully I have learned something from my mistakes in it. Hopefully I will be back again to do this same race again for at least one more time.
The trip from Perth to Melbourne took about 48 hours, and being on the bus was very hard, but both the bus and especially the train trip was very, very interesting!!! The train trip was a bit of a marathon cos I ran out of money and therefore food for a lot of the way.

The Indian Pacific goes from Adelaide to Perth, and I got a very good look at the nullabor from this train on that journey. If you look closely at the first photo on the left you can make out the solar panels at the bottom of the tower. Cook was a small settlement which the train stopped at along the way.
Below are some more sights along the train trip, such as the Keswick terminal sign in SA, and the old cells used to put prisoners in at Cook.;
On the way over;

On the BUS;

I saw many sights as well. Here are a few;

Left to right; Near Port Pirie in South Australia, two photos of the Nullabor service station, there is just low grass on the plains around you in every direction as far as the eye can see, (apart from the road), and this service station just pops up like a mirage in the desert, except its real.

We stopped at the Norseman Service Station, in south eastern WA, on the Coolgardie/Esperance Hwy so I took a photo of the signs there. The big green sign in the middle points to Esperance and Albany on the left, and Coolgardie, Kalgoorlie, and Perth on the right. The green sign on the far right points to Balladonia and Adelaide, its the Eyre Hwy.


PHOTO 1;One of the many old! buildings in Kalgoorlie WA, (The York Hotel.) I wanted a photo of the massive mines there and in SA but I couldnt get a good look at one while the bus was moving...PHOTO 2;Its pretty hard to take photos from moving transport, but I did get this one of sunrise on the Nullabor from the bus.PHOTO 3; Meckering, a small WA town, was the site of a large earthquake. (not while we were passing through! *LOL*.)

The variety of sights along the way was remarkable, and the photos don't even go close to describing it. For example crossing the Murray river in SA, the huge mines, and the whole nullabor experience, it is quite an interesting, but long! train trip, or bus trip.
In Melbourne;

Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre entrance, (Albert Park Lake which is adjacent, (My 50km race was near there as well), and the noticeboard for th Australian Schools Volleyball cup which was being played at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre when I was there. I went and watched a game or two after a swim session there on the Friday.
I also visited the Rialto Towers with a friend, which was very interesting, and some much better photos from there can be found here. Back to Jon's main travel page
Back to Jon's main homepage