Week 490 · CBD · Southbank · Docklands · Australia 108
Moving to
Started a six-month assignment in Melbourne, Australia — the assignment materialised pretty quickly and I'll return back to my old position by the end of the year. Sharon will be joining me for a good portion of the time so it will be a good opportunity for both of us to see a part of the world that I haven't been to before. One slight downside — leaving summer in the US (and the best time in the neighbourhood) to winter in Melbourne.
The trip is long — the fastest trip to Seoul was a 14-hour trip from DC direct — but the fastest way to Melbourne is to SF then 15.5 hours from SF to Melbourne. So 22 hours best case — but on my trip, my first transpacific flight from SF to Melbourne was cancelled the day before and I was re-routed through Sydney which added 2 more hours — but after we boarded that flight was cancelled (about 3 hours sitting on the plane) and we deplaned and the masses had to wait in line to get a hotel. I luckily got quickly re-booked to leave on a flight to Melbourne the following night — so I arrived 24 hours late and 53 hours total door to door. The glamour of international travel.
Being a former British colony, people drive on the left side of the road. Unlike Britain, they constantly walk on the left, escalators are on the left — but they do not have the handy "Look Right or Look Left" when crossing streets. So far so good — I haven't stepped in front of a car or tram yet.
But I did have a mishap — automated rotating doors rotate clockwise (to the left), not counter-clockwise like in the US. So I walked into one that was not moving, heading the right side — and it engaged and rotated into me. Luckily my head shielded my shoulders and wrists from the impact.
After arrival — straight to work and starting the onboarding process, but the general impression of the city was very positive. It is a dense urban area and I won't need a car and it's very walkable. What we would call downtown in the US stretches over both sides of the river with Southbank being pretty much all new — like the Wharf in DC but several times larger with 100-storey buildings.
Melbourne is the 24th most vertical city in the world — to put that into context, it would be 4th in North America, behind New York, Chicago, and Toronto and just ahead of Miami. Australia 108, where the AirBnB is located, stands at 319 metres across 100 floors and was Australia's tallest residential building when completed in 2020, surpassing the Eureka Tower next door. The building's name references Australia becoming the 108th country to become a federation. Southbank — the area south of the Yarra River — was largely industrial until the 1990s when redevelopment transformed it into Melbourne's premier entertainment and restaurant precinct.
"Melbourne is the 24th most vertical city in the world — 4th in North America. I had to get the 66th floor out of the way before Sharon arrived."