Day 293! Today’s the day! My last day in Melbourne. I had a wonderful day chilling out and then hanging out with my friends Dom and Casey, who I met in Koh Tao. But I’m ready for the next step of my travels!

I woke up this morning at 9am and I thought about sleeping in for longer… but I didn’t want another day of waiting to eat breakfast till noon, so I got myself up.

Today was my last day in Melbourne. I didn’t have any big plans, but I still had a couple to dos to tick off.

But first, breakfast!

I finished off the free eggs and the end of my sausages. I also started eating the Greek yogurt I got yesterday, which I threw the rest of my granola into. I’ll finish that up and the rest of my bread tomorrow morning before I leave for my train!

I had a fairly lazy morning and it was shaping to be a beautiful day. So while I waited for the temperature to keep going up, I plopped myself into the TV room to play some guitar. I then turned on the latest season of Outer Banks and watched a few episodes before heading back to the kitchen for lunch.

This season of Outer Banks is pretty subpar… and funnily enough, there was a scuba diving scene in it. The unfortunate part of being a professionally trained scuba diver is I now know how terrible TV scuba diving can be. Everything about it was wrong… they weren’t certified, one of them had never scuba dove before and was going down to almost 30m, oh and they were penetrating a shipwreck (Blackbeard’s ship to be precise).

They got attacked underwater by another scuba diver and the guy ripped out one of the characters regulator and broke it. She then proceeded to hold her breath as she swam around, the first rule of diving is never hold your breath. Anyways, I could go on and on about how wrong it was… they even went to a hyperbaric chamber, which was all sorts of wrong… it was comical to say the least. Not sure it showed the world of scuba diving in the best light.

For lunch I had the rest of my tuna sandwiches and then I headed out into the beautiful day to read!

I sat down on a bench in the park near my hostel for the next couple of hours. I enjoyed the amazing weather, read more of Dune (which I’m starting to enjoy), and had a very nice FaceTime with my parents!

Before I called them though, a magpie swooped past me and I saw a white blob fall from it… and sure enough, the bird just about pooped on me! It was an inch from hitting my shoulder, but thankfully landed on the bench just behind my shoulder.

My parents and I actually chatted a bit about when they come to Australia! It’s a while out still, but I can’t wait to see them!! It’ll be just over a year since I’ve seen them in person when they come to visit.

I read a bit more after our FaceTime, but then it was time to head back to the hostel. I needed to do the biggest of my To dos, pack my bags!

This was actually a faster process than I thought it would be. I thought with some of the new clothes I got, my bags wouldn’t fit well… but with a little bit of rearranging, I got it all to fit just fine. I’ll probably mess with my wardrobe a bit and exchange some clothes at a thrift store once I get to Yamba. But for now, I’ll travel with what I have.

I’ll be leaving my work boots at the hostel and hopefully someone will get good use out of them! They unfortunately don’t have shoelaces so I can’t tie them around my bag… also, I hope I won’t need any steel toe shoes anytime soon!

By this point, it was nearing dinner time. I had plans today to meet my friends Dom and Casey for dinner at a nearby pub. I got a text from Dom saying they’d be there a bit earlier than they had thought, so I set back out into the, still, gorgeous day to meet them.

I met them at the Napier Hotel, home of the Bogan Burger… something Dom told me I had to have and he was going to buy for me.

As pictured above, these burgers are massive. This burger has a minute steak, chicken schnitzel, bacon, fried egg, potato cake, pineapple, beetroot, onion, tomato, and cheddar cheese with a side of salad and potato wedges. And I ate every last drop of it.

This monstrosity was delicious and apparently something Dom used to have every now and then, with his dad, while he was growing up. We had a couple beers too and chatted about our weeks since Dom’s party and what’s to come with my traveling/working.

We then headed over to a nearby bar that I haven’t been to in a while, Naked for Satan.

I had never been to this bar during the day and it was a much better vibe than at night. The view was actually super nice with the sun out and it was a decent spot to watch the sun set as well.

We had a couple more pints, which were a little hard to drink with how bloated my stomach already was. But we had plenty of time to sip and chat.

I couldn’t have asked for a better way to end my night in Melbourne. It’s pretty amazing that I met Dom and Casey in Koh Tao and we’ve been able to hang out a couple times in Australia! They are both such lovely people and I’m sad I won’t get to see them for a bit, but they’ll be taking a trip up the east coast soon and potentially moving up the east coast as well… so who knows, maybe I’ll see them in Yamba!

As the night came to an end, I gave them both big hugs and said “see you later.” I walked back to my hostel to give a few more of those hugs to my friends.

Lewis, Immy, and Charlie were all in the TV room and since my train is in the morning, I probably wouldn’t be seeing them when I woke up. So I gave them all hugs as well.

I hope and I’m sure my path will cross with my Melbourne friends again! Whether it’s when I come to visit Melbourne or further down the line of our Australia experiences, I’m fairly certain I’ll see most of them again.

Melbourne has been a wonderful start to my Australia journey… but it’s time to branch out, get out of the city, and live the Australian lifestyle I came across the world to do…

It’s time to surf!!

– Elie

(I have an 11 hour train ride tomorrow and a 10 hour train ride the day after… so if you want to give me a ring, catch up, and help me pass the time, that’d be a great time to)