Melbourne

My flight didn't leave until late afternoon the next day so I thought I'd take a wander around Melbourne - a beautiful city with an architecture very different to that of Brisbane. In some ways it's reminiscent of Manchester - not surprisingly, as it was built at around the same time. This is the old Melbourne Gaol, just opposite the room I was staying in. This is where Ned Kelly was hanged, supposedly his last words as he was lead to the gallows were 'Such is life' and this phrase lives on in a thousand bogan tattoos.

Flinders St Station, on mainly deserted streets (well, it was only around 10am)
For some reason my bike hire was valid for the whole weekend so I amused myself for a bit by trying to get pictures of me riding next to trams
and then I found out that the 'Moomba festival' was on that weekend. This included a 'Birdman of Melbourne' competition where hopefull souls hurl themselves off of a platform in the Yarra.This guy's heading for a painful bellyflop

and this lady put her faith in some black balloons
Further up the river was a water-skiing contest - I'd like to pretend that this guy just had a massive change of heart when he saw the ramp, but sadly I was only there for the slalom competition and not the ski-jumping
although I did catch a bit of BMX action at the skatepark - some of these kids were incredible
My time in Melbourne was coming to an end all too soon so after some fantastic chinese food and a couple of craft beers I had one last ride, returned my helmet and got the bus out to the airport. My timings were a little out so I was lucky to make the flight home with about 15 mins to spare.

All in all an awesome weekend, I just need some time to recover now.