My Australian Journey (Part 3)

DAY 3 June 20, 2010
§ Southbank, Flinders…We Call it City Central §

This is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.
(Jacob Bronowski 1908-1974)

I woke up at 12.30……I was wondering how that could be…I thought I would wake up at 6 or 7 in the morning. I took a bath directly and planned to have a “late breakfast”. When I entered the kitchen, Annie was there with Kay. She said that my body needed to take a rest, that’s why I could sleep that long. I made four slices of toasted bread with strawberry jam and a glass of Apple juice (Annie’s favorite).
Then, Annie took us to Hawthorn and showed us the route we are going to take the next morning. Ormond – Caulfield – Hawthorn. I got it!! Thanks Annie. Then, we arrived at Hawthorn campus…it’s soooo quiet (of course as today was Sunday). After that, Annie dropped us at Kooyong station (the closest station from Hawthorn) and let us begin our adventure. While waiting for the train, I tried to activate my Optus number. Oh man…it’s so complicated. Unlike in Indonesia, I had to talk DIRECTLY to the operator and she asked me a lot of questions. But thank God..it’s all done and I can use my new Australian number. The first thing I did was testing it by sending an sms to Liana, the coordinator of our group in Hawthorn. She replied, which meant I could use it.
In a few minutes later, the train arrived at the station, so Yudi and I got on the train and went straight forward to Flinders street station. I kept explaining to Yudi how to use the public transport just exactly like what Annie told me to do the previous day. Yudi seemed understand…I hope so!
Finally, we got off at Flinders Street station..and the exit led us directly to Southbank. We were so amazed…Yarra river was so clean and beautiful not to mention the bridge. The bridge was designed like a parabola and made of white solid metal. The wood became the main material of the lower part of the bridge. So we used that opportunity to take pictures each other. We crossed the bridge to the Sunday market. On the way to Sunday market, we passed through a long beautiful path with cozy restaurants on our right side and Yarra river on our left reflecting golden color of that afternoon sun. The wind was soo cold..but it didn’t bother us as we were dozed up with the beauty of Southbank. We can see some people sitting on the bench feeding the pelicans that flew over the river. Some cyclists were also enjoying that afternoon atmosphere, while some others were having meals on the restaurants.
Then we got to the market. Frankly speaking there was nothing special on this market but since we’re stranger, and were curious about that, we explored that 20-meter long market, until we reached a way to go upstairs which took us to another side of Yarra river. We kept on walking until we reached Victoria Gallery. Then, we turned around and have a cup of coffee to make our body warm. With the cup on our hand, we crossed the upper bridge of Yarra river. This bridge was in line with Swanston Street so it’s so crowded with people and trams moving back and forth. I took Yudi to the Federation Square and showed him that a lot of youngsters gathered there. We passed the square and came to ACMI (the Australian Centre for Moving Images).
Through the escalator, we went down this antique building as it has no shaped at all, I guess! Suddenly…..my jaws dropped as I saw something right in front of my bare eyes!! Do you want to know what that was??? That’s BATMAN’S CAR exhibited on the ground floor of the building. I just couldn’t believe it. Oh man…Batman’s Car!!!! We took some pictures there and continued to the Multimedia room. Here we were shown more eye catching scenes….the multimedia of any movies and games. We explored this wide and dark but sparkling room. We tried almost every single things there until we came to a huge ball-shaped room where there were some touchscreen TVs outside. I was wondering what that was, so I asked the person in charge there. He told me to enter this big ball, and when the beep sounded, I could do anything I wanted to do like jumping, kicking, or punching. What surprised me was that there were tens of cameras inside the ball. When I went out, I saw in the touchscreen TV that I was recorded. Amazingly, it’s just like MATRIX movie in slow motion. Unbelievable!! Moreover, my “movie” can be sent directly to my email. So I did hoping that I could see that again in my email. Check it out at http://www.acmi.net.au/timeslice/Timeslice.htm?file=ts-20100620-9ec12c16952764358e326b4ea81c4072.flv
Satisfied with this strange adventure, we went out to have something to eat. We walked along Swanston street as I knew exactly our destination: NELAYAN Resto! On the way there, I called Annie telling her that we would not have dinner at home.
Nelayan Resto!!!...I love it because this is one of the options to satisfy the worms in our belly with Indonesian halal food. We ordered some rendang, and we were surprised because the portion is jumbo…then I thought that it resembled TIDAR hill…sooo big!! Eat it up Isna..eat it up…until there was nothing left on the plate. Both of us were full and ready to continue the journey back to Annie’s house.
We walked to Melbourne Central station to catch the Frankston train on Platform 2. Without waiting too long, the train came and we were off to Ormond station. It took us about 30 minutes to get to Ormond and we walked to Annie’s house. When we got there, some people were sitting on the dining room to have their dinner, but feeling tired, we just said hello and then took a bath and went sleeping. That was the adventure of the second day. MARVELOUS!!