We love these walking tours!

No pictures of us today just the pure beauty of Melbourne. Our walking tour in Sydney was brilliant because we learnt so much about buildings we would of just walked past and heard the un-sugarcoated history and stories of the city. We decided to do the same thing here in Melbourne. We were meeting at 10:30am by the central library, a half an hour walk away from our place. We decided to arrive half an hour early to go inside the library to see the beautiful dome interior from the 6th floor. The layout of the tables below made the floor look like a board game's board and the architecture was so impressive so we were glad we made time for this stop. The group was a lot larger than in Sydney and even divided in two groups there were still about 25 of us. Our tour guide was good at projecting his voice though and was very witty and full of knowledge. Victoria had a huge gold rush, luckily a month after it was formed having spit states from Sydney and New South Wales which meant all gold found went into Melbourne itself. Billions of pounds worth of gold was uncovered and this caused an influx of grand town buildings and houses to spring up. The settlement grew in 30 years by the level of growth that usually takes cities hundreds of years to achieve. The city is now so picturesque to walk around with many winding alleyways and ornate building details. There's also a big street art culture here so we visited some of the famous streets that showcase this. I asked the guide if Banksy had done any work here and he said he had two pieces; one was painted over by a council worker who didn't realise it was banksy and the other they put clear plastic over to preserve it which the community felt ruined the point of street art to the point where another artist poured white paint between the plastic and the wall and then wrote "Banksy was here" over the plastic cover. Melbourne had a decade called the marvellous Melbourne when many parties and celebrations took place during the gold rush. At this time they hosted a world invited party that attracted more than the whole population of Australia at the time in 6 months. For this event they built the most stunning white building with a dome roof and beautiful gardens that has since hosted Olympic and Commonwealth game events inside. Melbourne has a wonderful variety of things to see that if we had worked in Australia this would be the city I'd want to settle in. After the tour we went back to the library to apply for two more au pair and farm work roles. As a result we had a response within 20 minutes offering a Skype interview tonight but by the time we saw the email we'd decided to go to the cinema and had bought the tickets already! We plan to Skype tomorrow night which is exciting but nerve-wracking at the same time. We had to power walk back to the house to cook dinner and make it back in time to watch the film. We watched Dunkirk, a film I'd highly recommend because it was so powerful and emotional but also eye opening to what happened and what people experienced. It was so nice to end our evening with a treat like this and on a bit of a high knowing we have an interview tomorrow.Read more