City of Melbourne

War Memorial

Spirit of Tasmania

Port Melbourne

St Kilda

St Kilda

We are booked on the Spirit of Tasmania on Saturday morning and being strangers to Melbourne we decided to have a dummy run into town to the departure terminal at Port Melbourne. We had to measure the Jeep from the front of the bull bar to the back of the caravan, a total of 14 metres (the Jeep is 5m and caravan is 9m), which is a fair lump.

Coming from Sydney, it was a novelty to see the trams running everywhere in the city. Sadly, like the rest of the state, there is no green grass anywhere, even the lawns in front of the War Memorial are depressing to look at.

3,806,000 people live in Melbourne and 4,284,000 in Sydney and there has always been friendly rivalty between the two cities but I did notice one difference today.

Travelling 30 kilometers from Rockbank into the city and back, we didn't pay one toll. Coming from the Hills District in Sydney, 31 kms north west of the city, we would have paid $4.40 on the M2, then $2.72 in the Lane Cove Tunnel and finally $3 to cross the Harbour Bridge into the city. If you continued onto the Airport, it would be even more.

Eleven hundred people a week are moving to Queensland, most of those are from Sydney and Melbourne and when you add up the expense of living in a big city, you can understand why.