It’s been a while since I left Australia and I still haven’t finished uploading the stuff I intended to.. And this week I’m in Japan, which leaves me with a dilemma, do I just throw away the Australia stuff and move to Japan or should I stick to it??

WELL, you’ll be glad to hear that nothing ends up on the cutting room floor at Dingle Speaks, no matter how dull and inane it might be, so let’s be on with it.

So I think I’ll do one of those posts where I just upload all the other pics (pretty much all from Melbourne) and then make short sarcastic comments about each one, partly because it’s the only way I’ll get through everything and partly because it’s 6am and despite the fact that I’m sitting in front of my laptop in a Japanese hotel my brain is still well and truly in bed.

Anyway:

(click for full size) Melbourne was covered in graffiti. Porky reckoned a lot of it was commissioned to stop the junk graffiti (who would dare write “GAZ 4 EMMA” in thick sharpie over any of this? Well, yes, lots of people apparently

A side alley off Flinders Lane, I thought this place was really cool, this tags me as a “white guy” according to What White People Like (according to Porky)

Weird cybersex booths all over town, does Australia not have uncensored internet anyway????/

Australia reminded me a lot of the UK, especially Melbourne, the mixture of the crap weather (while I was there), the trams and the mixed architecture reminded me a lot of Manchester..

Some fancy shopping walk-thrus, again, very reminiscent of Manchester

Ah some more pics of how to get to Sister Bella from my disasterous third trip (they were closing when I arrived), you walk down this side alley off Lonsdale Street (or is it the other one, frankly I don’t care any more)

Then turn down this alley lined with bins full of stinking filth

Which leads you directly into Sister Bella’s splendid beer garden

Victoria market – chemists that sell ukeleles, Swiss would have totally hosed his shorts at this point.

A splendid traditional Australian Bratwurst in french bread, as recommended by the man himself (I mean Corky). Later I would find out that actually I went to the wrong shop, the ones in the other shop are better…

Coffee and a doughnut, which would have been great if the coffee hadn’t been served in a pint glass (WTF??) and the jam doughnut wasn’t filled with apple jam. Australia still has a long way to go…

Loads of fancy delis in Victoria Market, if only we had ONE of these in Shanghai!!!!

Australians please note, sure, nobody likes the French but these days pretty much everyone uses the word “LINGERIE”, give it a try!

The Bank of China on the high street in Melbourne!

Melbourne’s favourite superhero is Batman, the caped crusader, even a park is dedicated to him.

It’s a crap park though, just an empty pigeon coop and sleeping (or potentially dead) homeless people. It did have a floating helipad though, presumably for the batcopter.

More mixed architecture in Melbourne, from old, to middle eastern, to modern, to ultra modern (I don’t know what I’m talking about by the way).

Hold on a minute, that’s TWO places named after Batman right in the city centre, yet not a single place dedicated to Rolf Harris or Crocodile Dundee, WHERE IS THE JUSTICE/??????