Markets, Ghosts and Armour - oh my...

G'day from Melbourne day... 5 is it? I am loosing count trying to recap the events that take place in each calendar day.

Today was my big trek into the city! As it may seem like no big deal to others to get on the train/subway and head to the city, to me, a girl who grew up in the mud, dirt and open spaces of the country it was a very big deal. A little worried I'd get lost I called a taxi and got dropped off at the Mooroolbark Railway Station and took the hour train ride into Melbournes city center. For Paul who picked me up through the other end as I came up from the Railway lines it probably seemed like just another busy day in the city, showing me the boring sites and sitting on the silly old trams to get us places, but to me it was a great experience that I - even as a 21 year old adult - had not yet experienced alone, by myself, ever.
We decided that it would be worth riding the 'City Circle Tram" to see the sites and listen to the speakers pumps out cheesy tourist information as it did a rectangle of all the main points within Melbourne city limits. The tram took us to a stop point just a few blocks from the Queen Victoria Market and we disembarked to walk the 2 blocks through the market.
It was as if Daryl's subconscious had climbed into my head from all the way back home and started drooling over counterfeit everything! Though the market was a great place to walk through and admire it was filled with the same old cheesy flea market stuff as say St. Jacobs Market back home would be excepts on a slightly classier scale.

After leaving the flea tenders to their sales we headed up a few blocks to what I really wanted to get over with: Aussie authentic shopping. When it comes down to it, bring home a few key chains and bumper stickers and a few authentic memorabilia from the country that I fly home from seems like an easy and care free task, well that would be so, if I didn't have apparently the biggest family in the world, a few key chains and stickers here and there or authentic now and then meant give or take 20 different of each, not that I don't want to bring it home for you all but bloody hell I only brought ONE hiking pack! ;)

It was time for some grub! Our stomachs started to rumble as we boarded one of Melbourne's city trains to get us across town quickly and in range of some lunch food. Paul decided more choices were better then one or two and took me into a cafeteria inside a mall that proved perfect for a nice piece of pizza and a drink before our adventure moved on, turning into much needed FUEL for the rest of the day to come.

This is where the day begins and we have already hit 3 different places, I had taken 3 different trains and walked at least 20 city blocks, but as we came strolling up the steps towards the State Library of Victoria all that seemed to vanish in my new amazement for the beautiful building in front of me. It took a moment to take it all in but as we walked through the front doors, took an elevator to the 4th floor and I looked out onto the ready room of the State Library I swear I lost all care or need for rational though, I would have given away the very clothes off my back at that moment just to be allowed to look into the big open, gorgeous room a little longer.
You have the understand for a country girl who never felt the need to read or study outside of home or the books that school or her family/parents provided a library is really just another place to me, though I have obviously been in a few before and they all seemed quick dull and without any form of character that was completely stricken from memory at the sight of the dome that looks down upon the students and patrons of Melbourne, reading and studying away in the muffled world within the library walls. I do not know if I've ever seen such an elegantly beautiful and history filled building, from the desks on the main floor to the casting of the dome all the way to the balconies which held gorgeous old books waiting to be discovered and loved again.

After walking through the 'History of Victoria" and "Ned Kelly Exhibit" where we got to admire even Ned's final suit of armor in which he was finally brought down in a hail of gunfire true with bullet holes and blacksmith marks in all we headed for a look around the rest of the historic building. The many rooms as Paul walked me through seemed to get more intricate by detail and design as we went through, though it was the
modernization that struck me most of all. As if walking through a time capsule from old to new, the State Library had a changing mood with each transition. The main reading hall which was decked in gorgeous woods and old books and character then transferred into the relaxing lounge where students were offered cosy bean-bag chairs to nap on or sit on while they played XBOX, Wii and Kinect with
their friends. The State Library of Victoria = a definite MUST SEE.

Moving right along, only about 2 blocks along to be exact we walked through the entry to the Old Melbourne Gaol, the old jail had been used from 1845till it closed in 1924, 130 hangings took place in the jail including that of Colin Campbell the only person hanged and then pardoned in Australian history as well as the infamous Edward "NED" Kelly who hung from the stocks that are still in the jail to this day.












As we walked through there is an eerie feeling of being trapped, the damp, dark and deadly echoing building could bring chills to your spine on the hottest of days and its not just the creepy dark manikins the lurk in some of the closed cell blocks - 2 of which scared Paul and I nearly right out of our sneakers -, the building gives off a feeling of history and eerie realization that people once walked those halls, hung from that beam and were buried beneath your feet, eerie but ever so interesting! We walked around examining each "dead mask" for prisoners who had been trialed, found guilty and hung from the gallows, each body was left hanging for 30 minutes after death - just to make sure it was good and truly done - then cut down and wheeled to the 'dead house' where they had a wax plaster of their face... only 30 minutes after they were hung! Some of the masks including that of Ned Kelly's are on display at the jail alongside the stories as to why they were found guilty and when they were hung.

After our long walkabout through the jail, every cell, every plaque, every 'death mask' and each of the levels we headed for the "Watchtower Experience" honestly we didn't really know what to think when we were marched into the old watch tower and a short man dressed in uniform demanded to us "Women on the LEFT WALL, men on the RIGHT WALL.... NOW?!" he then handed out cards that read offences on them, as I looked down at my card I could not help but start to laugh out loud. My name was Naomi Roster, I lived Rosanna and I had been arrested for 'possession of an indecent weapon in public', public was listed as a grocery story to be specific and then it mentioned my address and a few other little bits of information, after filling into the main front desks of the watch tower the guard proceeded to pick people from the crowd ask; name and offence and then went on to the next. As I watched he pointed a finger at Paul as said "name?" the name Paul gave was somewhere between gibberish and what I suspected to be something out of India or Pakistan, he did his best but the name alone made me crack up and left the guard giving pointed looks around the lot of us. "what are you in for ?" the guard asked and Paul - with a big dopey smile might I add - said "public nuisance" and he too tried to hide back a giggle. The group was then led through into the cell blocks, the men were put into a cell and the door locked, then one group of us (women) and then another into 2 other cells, the guard played it up, whistling and walking back and forth up and down the cell blocks as a guard on duty might do before yelling "LIGHTS OUT" and hitting the light switches in each of the cells leaving us in complete dark for almost 10 minutes... about 8 minutes too long and then the nervous and uncomfortable feelings set in.

The watch town was full of life and history, build to cycle prisoners through as the judicial system thought of where they should be placed it had been in working condition and used right up until December 1994 when it was officially closed and deemed a historic building and then becoming part of the Old Melbourne Jail museum. This made it all the more eerie, as Paul and I walked around it was impossible not to notice the engravings - all original - from prisoners with time to kill, many carved with stones, rocks, or anything else they could find and on the benches, walls and doors of the cells were names or words and beside most a year, what caught me and left a strange uneasy feeling within the pit of my stomach was looking at a door in the female section of the holding zones and seeing "Lisa 1992" and "Merrianna '92" this hadn't been long before is all I could think to myself, after I was born in fact... with that we up and left to join Brad for dinner at a pub just up the road a ways.



Though it was time for dinner we had scheduled something before we left, another tour through the Old Melbourne Jail called "Ghosts... What Ghosts?" this tour was strictly a believe or don't believe - no opinion by staff - kind of tour, they told us things and stories and experiences and we chose whether we believed them or not. When we arrived at 7:20pm we were not the only ones and as the front doors opened we gathered into the gift shop awaiting our tours beginning. When we were given a bathroom break before it began, Paul and I clasped hands and started the eerie walk from the gift shop, through a darkened jail to the other end where lights had been placed on near the washrooms. "Watch where your going there is stairs right around h..." THUD! I couldn't have tried to stop laughing if you had have put a gun to my head, in his own warning to me and the others behind us - a very jumpy and very chicken crowd of about 8 Asian people - he had walked straight into one of the displays in the middle of the main floor, though he was sore and I found it hysterical, the Asian crowd thought the noise was a something totally different and they freaked! Loosing all ability to listen it took Paul and I's guidance to get everyone to the washrooms in an orderly fashion, after we finished we met back up and headed for the gift shop again through the jail leaving the terrified Asians to their own defences... sorry but it was bound to happen sooner or later.

The tour proved to be very interesting, because Paul and I had done the tour in the day we knew something's but it was the photos and stories of experiences that was the interesting part! It started with a little light hearted fun and a mistake as the guide was telling us a story of an experience involving what someone believe to be footsteps and the bolts locking on the doors and keys clanging together much like a guard doing night checks, but in the climax of her story someone knocked her aluminium water bottle knocking it to the ground and nearly giving the woman beside me a heart attack! Then again as she spoke of the sound of something SLAMMING on the door of a cell on the top level the guide smacked her hands on the display case she was leaning on, if I hadn't seen them standing there myself I'd have said the Asian's had LEFT the building which is how it seemed when they all jumped and let out little screams hugging one another tighter. The tour in all was a great success, unfortunately we did not meet and or see any ghosts and we didn't have any experiences of our own, but the stories were great to hear and some of the photos were unexplainable as it seems.

After another drink and some jokes at the same bar we had left Brad at 2+ hours earlier we arrived at Paul and Brad's to give the kitty a hug and then Paul drove me back to Aunt Kim's and Uncle Derek's.
It is now 12:28am, we didn't get home till about 11pm and then talked to Aunt Kim a while including changing my well planned itinerary to give me a few more days of exploration all on my own - very capable self might I add - in Melbourne tomorrow and the next day.
But for now, I am in bed almost out cold but was determined to finish this so everyone would have something to remember me by, just in case the ghost of Ned Kelly followed me home and isn't willing to let me live.... woooooooooo  haha.

We shall meet again

-A.G