In honor of Independence Day in the United States of America, I'm going to continue the narrative of our visit to Australia.
On May 5 we started our day with brunch at the Sydney Seafood Market — some big raw oysters and an assortment of sushi. No clownfish.
Then by foot to the Australian National Maritime Museum, a.k.a. the "Mu-Sea-um." (Somebody got paid to think that up.) It's actually a very good maritime museum. The collection includes the HMAS Vampire, a Cold War era destroyer, her contemporary the diesel submarine HMAS Onslow, a replica of Captain Cook's Endeavor, the recently retired patrol boat HMAS Advance, and — sadly not open to the public on the day we visited — Australia's deadliest warship, the MV Krait.
Touring the Endeavor replica was very hard for anyone over four feet tall, as the aft spaces had very low ceilings. The naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, who sailed with Cook, was six foot four, and must have collected an impressive array of bumps and bruises on his skull during the voyage. Both Vampire and Onslow had Navy veterans as tour guides, with some cool anecdotes about life aboard when the ships were in service.
We scrambled through ships for several hours, and took a nap back at the hotel to recover. In the evening we dined at a Thai place near the hotel, and then stopped in a local movie theater to watch Thunderbolts*. (Solidly entertaining but no more than that.)
The following day we left Sydney — and both of us had the feeling that we had only scratched the surface of the place. I would dearly love to be able to spend a couple of weeks in the city, long enough to really explore. But, leaving the flag and footprints, we boarded a plane to Melbourne. At breakfast the crown on one of my molars came off — the same tooth that had been feeling weird ever since I ate some overly crunchy unagi a couple of days earlier. With no time before our flight, I just stuck it in my pocket and hoped for the best.
We got to Melbourne and rode the bus from the airport to the Southern Cross Railroad station downtown. While Adelaide reminded me of Austin, and Sydney felt like San Francisco, both of us agreed on first sight that Melbourne had a distinct Chicago vibe to it.
After checking in to our hotel the first order of business was to get a dentist to put my tooth back in place. The very nice Dr. Vaishali at MC Dental in the Melbourne Central shopping center did the job quickly and painlessly. Melbourne Central itself is an interesting place: it's built over a train station, much like the hybrid mall-stations of Japan. One cool feature is the historic Shot Tower museum, contained completely within the shopping center's giant atrium.
We did some shopping in the afternoon, and stumbled across a lovely little street called Hardware Street completely lined with restaurants for three or four blocks. For our dinner we got a delicious Mediterranean style seafood dinner. I had a whole grilled calamari, which was surprisingly tender. We put away a half liter of wine between the two of us. The restaurant was called "Claypots Barbarossa" which sounds like a pirate with a sideline in ceramics.
May 7 was a bit chilly and damp in Melbourne, but we sallied forth anyway and got tea at Melbourne's oldest tea room, in an old arcade known simply as "The Block." We had fancy tea and scones with clotted cream and jam. Two tables away an adorable little girl of about eight was having a grown-up brunch with her mother, and was obviously loving it.
After that we went over to Minotaur Books, where I signed some store copies of my books, and then spend two hours chatting with the store manager about science fiction, things to do in Melbourne, things to see elsewhere in Australia, and the state of the publishing industry. We also looked at an art exhibit at the old town hall, and visited a couple of other bookshops, then returned to the hotel to rest up.
In the evening we went out to the nearby suburb of Kensington to meet with the NOVA MOB — a group of Melbourne science fiction fans who meet monthly in person (and via Zoom) to talk about all things SFnal. They very kindly invited me to come read from The Miranda Conspiracy and talk about the Billion Worlds setting, which I did at length. We all had a good time and Mr. M. gave us a little guided tour of downtown Melbourne on the way back to our hotel.
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