Walk about….

by Mandeep Gaygoat

As we had planned a full schedule for the day we got out early to visit Queen Victoria Market, the market sells everything, clothes, fruit, vegetables, fish, meat and aboriginal art you could say just like any other market.

The Queen Victoria Market (also known as the Queen Vic Markets or the Queen Vic, and locally as ‘”Vic Market”‘) is a major landmark in Melbourne, Australia, and at around seven hectares (17 acres) is the largest open air market in the Southern Hemisphere. The Market is significant to Melbourne’s culture and heritage and has been listed on the Victorian Heritage Register. The Market is named after Queen Victoria who ruled the British Empire, from 1837 to 1901.

The Queen Victoria Market is the only surviving 19th century market in the Melbourne central business district. There were once three major markets in the Melbourne CBD, but two of them, the Eastern Market and Western Market, both opened before the Queen Victoria, closed in the 1960s. It also forms part of an important collection of surviving Victorian markets which includes the inner suburban Prahran Market and South Melbourne Market.

Fantastic graffiti on the way:

Queen Victoria Market:

A talented musician

For email subscribers:
Talented musician

Art work stall

More stalls

More musicians

Afterwards we walked to Smith Street via Queensbury Street then past the museum and Melbourne Royal Exhibition Building, as we had got out early it was good to see hardly anybody there, we got back onto Gertrude street and turned right on Smith Street to have a fantastic breakfast at Las Vegan, which comprised of tofu, tomatoes, mushrooms, beans, toast, ‘bacon’ it was absolutely amazing and we can definitely recommend this restaurant. For Sangeet they had gluten free toast. On the way to the cafe a Sikh chap in a van pulled up beside us and shouted “Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh” we responded, he stopped the van and got out, he said he does not see many Sikh people around the city centre and was happy to see us. He also mentioned that they are 7 Gurdwara’s around Melbourne. It was great to see and talk to another Sikh.

A colourful building on the way:

Las Vegan

The Royal Exhibition Building is a World Heritage Site-listed building in Melbourne, Australia, completed in 1880. It is located at 9 Nicholson Street in the Carlton Gardens, flanked by Victoria, Nicholson, Carlton and Rathdowne Streets, at the north-eastern edge of the central business district. It was built to host the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880-1881 and later hosted the opening of the first Parliament of Australia in 1901. Throughout the 20th century smaller sections and wings of the building were subject to demolition and fire; however, the main building, known as the Great Hall, survived.
It received restoration throughout the 1990s and in 2004 became the first building in Australia to be awarded UNESCO World Heritage status, being one of the last remaining major 19th-century exhibition buildings in the world. It sits adjacent to the Melbourne Museum and is the largest item in Museum Victoria’s collection. Today, the building hosts various exhibitions and other events and is closely tied with events at the Melbourne Museum.

After breakfast, which filled us up for a good days walk, we walked onto Smith Street and popped into a shop called Vegan Wares. The shop sold vegan shoes, okay basically a sales technique, why can you not just say that are non leather….vegan???!?!? Not as if you are going to eat them, perhaps some people may eat them….that’s recycling for you!

We carried on Smith Street and got so carried away that we walked straight past Rose Street! At this point we did see a lot of factory outlet stores, so decided, to walk into one. Considering the shops were factory outlets, the prices were very expensive.

No comment!!

We walked back to Rose Street and found the Rose Street art market. A fantastic market selling unique items, we even found a vegan, gluten free cupcake stall. We got a bit carried away and bought five cupcakes! – well it is good to support the small business!!

More great graffiti on the way to Rosé Street art market

Great advertising for Rosé Street Art Market

Zombified Cupcake Boutique
W: www.zombifiedcupcakeboutique.com.au

One of the many stalls

On the way out there was a guy selling a very unique game, called ‘which?’, so Sangeet bought two of them. The game is about answering questions about each other some answers may cause controversy!

Outside the market, a wall garden

Nice building

Afterwards, we walked along Brunswick Street, which is a very busy street, plenty of cafes, restaurants and shops, you could compare it to Oxford Street, London. We also saw a lot of vegetarian restaurants.

Artwork on the pavement

We carried on Brunswick Street and stumbled upon ‘Fiesta 2012’ a Hispanic festival which is held every year over a weekend. The atmosphere was fantastic with plenty of food and various performances, the time we got there, we saw a salsa dance class. It was a very enjoyable experience and we were lucky to have arrived there at that time.

Salsa class

Later, we carried on walking along Brunswick Street and passed a vegan cupcake shop called:

Merry Cupcakes
261 Brunswick Street
Fitzroy
Australia
E: [email protected]

As we still had the cupcakes from Rosé Art Market we found a coffee shop where we could eat them:

Cafe Klein Espresso Bar
113 Brunswick Street
Fitzroy
Victoria 3065
T: +61 9417 6661

Flower shop

Great architecture

Yarra trams

We had arranged to meet our ‘sister ‘ Parvyn, she came with her husband Josh and mother in law. It was great catching up and meeting them all. We chatted for an hour, Josh and Parvyn are very talented musicians and have various cd’s out. The group is called Bombay Royale.

http://thebombayroyale.com/

Afterwards we walked to Parliament House, Parliament Gardens, Melbourne Docklands, the Royal Botanic Gardens and Chinatown.

Docklands (also known as Melbourne Docklands to differentiate it from London Docklands) is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2 km west from Melbourne’s Central Business District. Its Local Government Area is the City of Melbourne. At the 2011 Census, Docklands had a population of 5,791.
Docklands occupies an area extending up of and adjacent to the Melbourne CBD. It is bounded by Spencer Street, Wurundjeri Way and the Charles Grimes Bridge to the east, CityLink to the west and Lorimer Street across the Yarra to the south and is a primarily waterfront area centred around the banks of the Yarra River.
Contemporary Docklands is the product of an ongoing urban renewal project to extend the area of the Melbourne CBD (excluding Southbank and St Kilda Road) by over a third when completed around 2015. It is now home to several of Melbourne’s modern landmarks, including Etihad Stadium, Southern Cross Station and The Southern Star.
From the 1880s, the former swamp west of Melbourne became heavily used as a dock, with an extensive network of wharfs, heavy rail infrastructure and light industry. However, following the containerisation of shipping traffic it fell into disuse and by the 1990s was virtually abandoned, becoming notable for an underground rave dance scene, a dance culture which survives through popular organised events held at Docklands Stadium.
Docklands Stadium (first known as Colonial Stadium) was built in 1996 as a centrepiece to kick-start developer interest in Docklands as a viable renewal area. Urban renewal began in earnest 2000, with several independent privately developed areas overseen by VicUrban, an agency of the State government of Victoria. The brief for the master plan was for wide open water promenades and road boulevards with contributions of landscaping and public art commissions to be made by each developer and construction was to adhere to strict milestones. VicUrban promotes its vision of Docklands as being a major tourist attraction and projected over 20 million visitors a year and a future (2015) residential population of over 20,000.
A handful of significant buildings were retained, generally due to their association with the area’s industrial and maritime history. Most of these heritage buildings are intended for adaptive reuse and integrated with new facilities.
Docklands has become a sought-after business address, attracting the national headquarters of the National Australia Bank, ANZ, Medibank Private, Bureau of Meteorology, Myer, National Foods as well as the regional headquarters for Ericsson and Bendigo Bank. The business park model of medium-rise office buildings combined with transport and proximity to the City Centre is seen by many in the real estate industry to be one of the reasons behind the success of the Docklands office market.
Docklands is also the home to a number of water sports, including Dragon Boat racing.
While still incomplete, Docklands developer-centric planning has been widely criticised and many Melbourne politicians and media commentators lament its lack of green open space, pedestrian activity, transport links and culture.

The Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne are internationally renowned botanical gardens located near the centre of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, on the south bank of the Yarra River. They are 38 hectares of landscaped gardens consisting of a mix of native and non-native vegetation including over 10,000 individual species. They are widely regarded as the finest botanical gardens in Australia, and among the best in the world. However, the gardens are also noted for their historical contribution to the introduction of invasive species.
The Royal Botanic Gardens have a second division in the outer Melbourne suburb of Cranbourne, some 45 km south-east of the city. The 363 hectare Royal Botanic Gardens, Cranbourne have a focus solely on Australian native plants, and feature an award-winning special section called the Australian Garden, which was opened in May 2006.
The Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne are adjacent to a larger group of parklands directly south-east of the city, between St. Kilda Road and the Yarra River known as the Domain Parklands, which includes;
Kings Domain
Alexandra Gardens
Queen Victoria Gardens






Observatory

Melbourne’s Chinatown was established during the Victorian gold rush in 1851 when Chinese prospectors joined the rush in search of gold. It is notable for being the oldest Chinatown in Australia, the oldest continuous Chinese settlement in Australia, and the second longest continuous Chinese settlement in the western world, only because San Francisco’s Chinatown was nearly, but not completely destroyed the 1906 earthquake.
In 2010, the ground floor of the Chinese Museum was remodeled as a visitor centre for Melbourne’s Chinatown. In 2011, a Memorial statue of Dr Sun Yat-sen was unveiled outside the Museum’s entrance in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China. The traditional Chinese New Year Lion Dance has always ended at this spot, but will now end with a blessing of the statue.

Tan Track

There is a 3.8-km running track parallel to the perimeter fence of the Botanic Gardens. Officially termed The Tan Track as it has a surface of tan-coloured stone aggregate, it is more commonly and affectionately known as The Tan.
The Tan originally served as a horse track for Melbourne’s well-heeled, and is now one of Melbourne’s most frequented locations for joggers. Locals, visitors and famous alike now share the space as its international reputation has grown. The Tan is often used in training by professional athletes, such as AFL footballers, particularly during pre-season time-trials. Running greats such as Hicham El Guerrouj, Steve Ovett, Cathy Freeman, and Sonia O’Sullivan have all rubbed shoulders with the general public on The Tan.
The quickest lap of the Tan has been held by such notable Australian runners as Robert de Castella and Steve Moneghetti (10:41, 2003). The current record is 10 minutes and 12 seconds, run by Craig Mottram in 2004. On the 21st of December, 2006, Craig Mottram unofficially broke his personal best time around the tan, running a scorching 10 minutes and 8 seconds while running with the Richmond Football Club during their pre-season training. He gave the footballers a two-and-a-half minute head start and still managed to beat them comprehensively.
The inaugural Go the Tan run was held in early February 2006, and provides the opportunity for participants to run, jog or walk around The Tan and receive an official time.
The Corporate Cup, a team based lunchtime running program has been held at the Tan Track for over thirty years. The Corporate Cup provides team and individual statistical analysis of running times over an 8 week program.

Melbourne City Centre (sometimes referred to as “Central City”, and colloquially known as simply “The City”) is an area of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. It is not to be confused with the larger Local Government Area of the City of Melbourne. It is the area in which Melbourne was established in 1835, and its boundaries are defined by the Government of Victoria’s Melbourne Planning Scheme. Today, it comprises the two oldest areas of Melbourne; the Hoddle Grid and Queen Victoria Market, as well as sections of the redeveloped areas of Southbank and South Wharf.
It is the core of the central activities district (CAD) of Melbourne’s inner suburbs, and encompasses a number of places of significance, which include: Crown Casino, Federation Square, Flinders Street Station, Melbourne Aquarium, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Melbourne Town Hall, National Gallery of Victoria, State Arts Centre of Victoria, State Library of Victoria, State Parliament of Victoria, Supreme Court of Victoria and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Bordering its north-east perimeter is the World Heritage-listed Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens as well as the Melbourne Museum. It is also the main terminus for the Melbourne metropolitan and Victorian regional passenger rail networks – being Flinders Street and Southern Cross stations respectively, as well as the most dense section of the Melbourne tram network.
It is the major central business district (CBD) of Greater Melbourne’s metropolitan area, and a major financial centre in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. The City is home to the corporate headquarters of the World’s two largest mining companies: BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto Group; as well as two of Australia’s “big four” banks: ANZ and NAB, two largest gaming companies: Crown and Tabcorp, largest telecommunications company Telstra, two largest transport management companies: Toll and Transurban as well as the iconic brewing company Foster’s Group. It also serves as the main administrative centre for the City of Melbourne and the Government of Victoria – the latter with the suburb of East Melbourne. Two universities have major campuses in the area: Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT City campus) and University of Melbourne (Victorian College of the Arts).
It has hosted a number of events of significance, which include: the 1901 inauguration of the Government of Australia, 1956 Summer Olympic Games, 1981 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, 1995 World Police and Fire Games, 2000 World Economic Forum, 2006 Commonwealth Games and G20 Ministerial Meeting. It is also recognised for the substantial number of cultural and sports events and festivals it holds annually – many being the largest in Australia and the World. The Hoddle Grid is home to Melbourne’s famed alleyways and arcades and is renowned for its distinct blend of contemporary and Victorian architecture as well as expansive parks and gardens which adjoin it edges. It is also the literary centre of Australia, and has more bookshops and publishing companies per capita than any other city in Australia, and includes the headquarters of the World’s largest travel guidebook publisher Lonely Planet. In 2008, it was designated a “City of Literature” by UNESCO in its Creative Cities Network.

Area is called Southbank

Melbourne library

On the way back from the city centre, we saw funky bunny

For email subscribers
Funky Bunny

In the evening we ate at

The White Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant
185 Victoria Street
West Melbourne 3003
Australia
T: +61 3 9326 6040

Again the food was bland, not a restaurant I would recommend.