Lions of a Different Persuasion – Melbourne

Our Australian adventure didn’t have the smoothest of starts, as when we tried to check in at OR Tambo Airport in Johannesburg the Cathay Pacific lady there told us in confusion that our passports were returning a ‘do not board’ response on her system. A quick call to the Irish embassy had her asking us with raised eyebrows whether we’d gotten our visas for Australia…cue our blank looks. I’d like to absolve myself of all responsibility here as Australia was Sean’s organisational responsibility! As he’d had a working holiday visa last time he didn’t know we needed tourist visas, but fortunately we were at the airport with two and a half hours to spare before take off so the lovely check in lady showed us how to apply online and thankfully the visas were approved within about 20 minutes. We’ve since heard of this happening people in Asian airports who then charge $50 USD for the privilege of applying for one, so be warned it’s very easy to do yourself should the need arise!

 

Melbourne was a complete contradiction to Africa in many ways. From the moment we landed we realised the warnings we’d had not to expect trademark Aussie sunshine were completely correct. We were somewhat unfortunate to be travelling here during the depths of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter, and all the shorts and t-shirts in my rucksack would definitely be staying buried for a few weeks. Another culture shock was the cost of living; again we’d been warned to expect this but people really don’t exaggerate when saying just how expensive Australia has become, in particular cities like Melbourne and Sydney. Everything seemed roughly on par with Irish prices, except alcohol which is significantly more expensive when you don’t hunt out the complete bargain spots. $13 for a pint was probably the worst we experienced in a pub, and hostel accommodation was about $30 a night. Wages are of course comparatively higher here but as backpackers this was definitely a bit of a drawback.

 

In terms of sightseeing in Melbourne, a combination of meeting friends from home here as well as the party atmosphere all over the city due to the presence of thousands of travelling Lions fans meant that we were rather poor tourists compared to our action packed days of the previous two and a half months. Our most adventurous excursion was to the famous Great Ocean Road a couple of hours from Melbourne, which we drove to in a rental car along with our lovely hosts for the week John and Dianne. We stopped off in a sleepy little town called Lorne for the night and continued along the route early next morning, taking in the beautiful scenery and stopping at the picturesque Twelve Apostles (or rocks in the sea as one of the lads so eloquently put it). This trip is definitely worth doing if staying in Melbourne, and a highlight on the way home was stopping at the lighthouse used in kid’s TV show Round the Twist!

 

Other than sampling the many bohemian cafes and bars (and nightclubs) in the suburb of St. Kilda, we didn’t do a whole lot else in Melbourne. It’s a city obsessed with sport, and with five enormous stadiums (stadia?!) the facilities on offer are second to none. One activity I’d have liked to do was a tour of the majestic MCG Stadium, but we settled for heading to a friendly match between the Lions and the Melbourne Rebels in the Etihad Stadium in advance of their second test against the Wallabies. Immediately apparent here was the fact that Melbournians are fairly indifferent to rugby union, being an AFL-obsessed city; the crowd was almost entirely a sea of red. The match was good fun but with a scoreline of 35 to nil in favour of the Lions there wasn’t an overly tense or exciting atmosphere! We didn’t get tickets to the test game, watching our pennies carefully at this stage, but the day of the match was brilliant in Melbourne city centre, with the bars rammed with supporters all day and great banter between the Lions fans and what few Wallabies there were around. 

 

We had a really enjoyable stay in Melbourne, and to anyone heading over I’d definitely recommend Base hostel in St. Kilda which is a huge party place with great drinks promos in a city notably devoid of them. It was a welcome relief to finally be in a place where we could walk around safely and comfortably at night time too! One slight drawback, if you want to call it that, was the fact that at times it was almost exactly like being back home in Ireland with the sheer volume of Irish people residing in Melbourne these days – in one nightclub we went to there didn’t seem to be one Australian except the barman. This was probably exacerbated by the travelling Lions fans too but is definitely a sign of the times that Australia is the home of choice for so many young Irish people.

 

A twelve hour overnight bus journey now awaits to Sydney (we bought a $425 Greyhound ticket which does us all the way up the coast to Cairns) where we’ll continue the Lions party.

Johannesburg

The first thing that struck me about Johannesburg was that on initial impressions it seems just as sprawling and menacing as all the guidebooks describe it. We were staying outside the city centre, in a township called Soweto, home to some five million people. An acronym for ‘South-Western Township’, this neighbourhood is almost entirely populated by black Africans and was the scene of some of the most vociferous protests against apartheid. It also holds the unique accolade of containing the only street in the world to have housed two Nobel Peace Prize winners; Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu lived within metres of each other on Vilakazi Street. We were staying in Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers, the only hostel in the township and one which offered something a little different to your average city stay.

Joburg is made up of several spread out suburbs, and we discovered that public transport from Soweto was pretty much non-existent and taxis were relatively expensive, so for a longer stay I’d definitely recommend having a car here. Although this meant we couldn’t really venture into Joburg city centre, which by all accounts is worth avoiding anyway, there was still plenty to keep us busy on the outskirts. Lebo’s run daily bicycle tours of the township which was one of the main reasons we stayed here. We did a four hour tour with a great local guide and saw so many eye-opening sights, from the famous Mandela and Tutu residences and the local Orlando Pirates stadium to the moving Hector Pieterson memorial site. Hector was a 13 year old boy shot by police during a peaceful student protest in Soweto in 1976 against the shortcomings of the education available to black citizens, among a number of other innocent casualties.

From visiting the Rocinha township in Rio I had expected Soweto to be just a mass of overcrowded shacks, but it’s much more varied. There are notable class distinctions, from the reasonably well-built houses in the ‘upper class neighbourhoods’ to the far more modest corrugated iron shacks that usually house illegal immigrants from other African countries such as Zimbabwe who can’t go to the government for assistance. We stopped in the more run down area to visit a ‘shebeen’, a dark shack where residents go for a home-brewed beer and interestingly a term descended from the old Irish word for drinking house. The beer was questionable; extremely thick and yeasty, it was nearly a meal in itself. We also headed into a ‘restaurant’, which comprised a corrugated iron shack with a wooden bench, to try the local delicacy of cow’s head. This didn’t seem too bad to me until our guide pointed out one morsel which constituted the cow’s furry tongue, I lost my appetite after that!

We headed to have a look at the Mandela and Tutu residences on Vilakazi Street before finishing in a slightly more upmarket shebeen for a few drinks. Overall the tour was definitely the highlight of our Johannesburg stay. It was insightful to see the conditions of what is accepted to be the largest township in the world, and one of the best moments was cycling through the poorest parts where the tiny children all leapt on our bikes begging for ‘lifts’ for fun, as well as pleading with us to take their photo so that they could gaze at their image in wonderment on the screen afterwards.

Our only other major activity in Johannesburg was a trip to the unmissable apartheid museum. Although neither of us would be museum buffs, this is by far the best one I’ve ever been in and definitely the only one I’ve spent five hours in without getting bored! Entering the museum sets the tone for the shocking and sometimes chilling evidences of apartheid that the museum portrays by only allowing you to enter through one of two doors, white or non-white, based on a random label on your ticket. We first diverted to a temporary Nelson Mandela exhibition currently running, which is fitting given the fact that he’s on every South African’s mind at the moment. A series of text, videos and memorabilia give an informative account of his life and struggle, a highlight being footage of his controversial first ever television interview when he was in exile. The museum itself is an extremely well put together series of photos, videos, artefacts and first hand accounts of daily life during the apartheid years. One particular 20 minute screening of clips from the violence during the 1980s is quite tough to watch in places. I can’t recommend this museum highly enough o anyone visiting Johannesburg, but just be warned you really need at least four or five hours to get a look at everything.

This saw the culmination of our South African adventure, and it’s a country I’m reluctant to say goodbye to as we did and saw so many unusual things here. On a general front the country obviously has a lot of growing to do – for example, a chat we had with a Soweto bus driver over dinner revealed that the people see so much wrong with the way the country is being governed that there’s genuine fears of a revolt soon, with many believing Mandela’s death could be the catalyst. The race division is still unfortunately so prevalent, but this isn’t a huge surprise given the fact that apartheid was only abolished 22 years ago in South Africa. I definitely want to come back here and venture into Kruger National Park to satisfy my new found love of safaris, and hopefully by the time I make my way back South Africa will have settled into its democratic freedom.