Moving On to Melbourne

We bade farewell to Canberra this morning and took the Greyhound bus for the approximately 8-hour journey to Melbourne. While the coach didn't have the luxurious fully reclined seats of those we used in Vietnam, there was working WiFi and USB charging points on board. It felt safe and secure.

The long journey was done in a flash down the Hume freeway, partially aided by the fairly monotonous scenery. We stopped only briefly at a truckers' café for some 'home-cooked' food, which mostly seemed to be potato wedges and a deconstructed coleslaw salad with sliced peppers and beetroot for vegetarians. It filled a hole.

Pulling in to Melbourne's Southern Cross station, we offloaded our bags and made our way to the tram stop. Trams! My measure of civilisation and worth in a city is certainly influenced by whether it has a good tram system. However, the stop names were disconcertingly familiar - Victoria, Richmond, Box Hill?

A London down under

The city centre is replete with crisscrossing tramways and, perhaps because of this, appears a little like a European city. The initial impression is one of a slightly grimier and busier CBD than Sydney's gleaming wide-open spaces with healthy, tanned people zipping about.

We elected to stay at a small, affordable place, situated within walkable distance east of the town centre on Victoria Parade. The Baden Powell hotel is what we would style an inn, with 11 rooms above what is now a gastropub with a permanent Italian pizza chef. I'm not sure what the relationship is between the founder of the Boy Scouts and a bar.

Got my craft beer badge

Having arrived, we availed ourselves of the reasonably decent selection of pale ales and a $10 pizza special, including a potato and rosemary pizza bianca, and a cherry tomato, olive and caramelised onion pizza rossa.

Rossa e bianca

Of the available beers, the Pacific ale from Stone & Wood (Byron Bay) was antipodean light but full of juicy grapefruit flavour from the Galaxy hops that are used in abundance here.