Melbourne,
Australia
Friday, February 24, 2006
We only spent one night in Melbourne and we got our first taste of what a real hostel should be. Hundreds of people were staying there, mostly in dorms. There was a flurry of activity in the TV rooms, tour desk, employment office, and kitchen / dining room. Boys were running around shirtless and girls were wearing short shorts. The average age was around 20 but there were a few old fogies like us and older. We wondered how all this kids could afford to stay in Australia for so long but a month later we figured it out. There is a huge culture of working backpackers. The hostels employ them, the tourist centers employ them, restaurants employ them, and mostly farmers employ them for seasonal harvesting. I'm sure none of it pays much but if you work 8 hours a day for $8 per hour (after taxes) that's $64. $20 goes to the hostel and $15 to food. That still leaves you with $29 to play with. I talked with someone who worked on a liveaboard for 3 days cleaning rooms. She didn't get paid but she got to eat, sleep, and dive for free -- something that would cost about $500.
We did very little sightseeing, only taking a trip to the planetarium which wasn't showing anything at that time (always double check because the guidebooks often have times and prices wrong). It had a really good exhibit on the human body and the rest of the museum had such good exhibits that I could have spent another 2 or 3 hours there easily.
We did manage to book our flights back home. We found a pretty good deal to fly from Sydney to South New Zealand, out of North New Zealand to the Cook Islands, and from there to Los Angeles. We haven't figured out how to get home from there (or even where home is) but we'll be within bus distance of family and friends.
