From the minute we had set foot in Tullamarine airport, we knew that our first fortnight in Melbourne was going to be as exciting as "a walk in the forest"… Forest is definitely beautiful but also scary, as we try to find our way into the unknown. But what we didn’t know was that the first night in the city would be eventful in itself and would reveal more to us about Melbourne.
The incident with the ketchup sachet at the airport café had already pointed towards how much we had to learn about this country, when we didn’t even know how to get tomato ketchup out of a bloody sachet.
Since I was in Melbourne only for 2 weeks and had to get my partner all settled and battle ready before I left for India, there was definitely a level of haste and anxiety in our minds. We were working on a very tight schedule of two weeks to achieve the first milestone of our mission. The flag off ceremony of the first stage was to be held the next morning.
For today evening, we were relaxed and were looking forward to our dinner with “Googleman” and his partner.
Since winters had already arrived in Melbourne, it was expected that the days would be short and evenings chilly. We would need to have our warm clothes on guard for this kind of weather. From here it was supposed to get even worse, winters would be in full swing till the end of November.
To let you know, I am not a very big fan of winters and love the tropical weather of Pune, which had almost a constant 25-40 degrees weather all year round, expect few months of “so called” winters when temperature dipped to around 12-15 degrees. Melbourne is a drastic contrast to it. The winters here are supposed to be punishing, with temperatures dipping down to 3-4 degrees and strong, cold, piercing winds blowing through your clothes and into your bones. I hated the thought of it. For the time being the consolation was, I was not supposed to face them during these two weeks, but my partner would be facing it later…. All alone!!! Gosh… God Bless her!!
We got up after our short nap and as we looked outside the window, we noticed that it was already pitch dark. A little peak from the window confirmed that it had gotten pretty chilly. But nothing confirmed the chill in the weather more than the feel of the cold water on our faces when we tried to freshen up. The water was freezing cold!! Our hands and face froze; we were jerked out of our sleep. We took a little while to get back to normal.
“Welcome to the Aussie winters” we thought!!
I could see the look on my partner's face. Her expressions clearly showed the fear she was going through thinking it would only get worse from here. I tried to remind her of her childhood spent in the harsh cold winters of the hilly town of Shimla, where it used to snow heavily in winters with temperature dipping below zero. But then that was long back and not a trace of that courage was visible in her now.
We started looking around the toilet for a water heater, but to our surprise we could not find one in there. That was quite shocking for both of us.
How could you not have a water heater in the bathroom in this kind of a weather??? we said to each other.
It didn’t make sense. We looked around a little more and realized that our eyes were working perfectly… there was actually no water heater in this bathroom. We tried to run the tap in both the directions, but all we got was cold chilly water. We thought, maybe we got the wrong room and decided to call the housekeeping. The call was picked in one ring and the lady on the other side politely welcomed us in her heavy Aussie accent and asked what could she help us with. Our obvious question was..
“Miss, we can’t see a water heater in the bathroom. Do you know how freezing the water is?? We can’t even wash our hands, let alone anything else. Can you please change our room immediately?”
We didn’t hear any response from her for a few seconds while she took her time to digest our question, and then after about 5 seconds she replied politely…
“Sir, is it your first time in Australia??
I was taken aback and my instant revert was…
“How does that matter ma’am?”
She now replied with a little sarcasm in her tone…
“Sir, its central heating, we don’t have water heaters here. Please leave the tap open on the left hand direction for a few seconds and hot water will start”
Now, it was my turn to digest her response.
It wasn’t the first time I had encountered this facility, but somehow it had not come to either of our minds that this could be the reason. I politely said “Sure, Thank you!” and kept the phone down.
After keeping the phone down, we looked at each other for a few seconds. The gravity of the situation was becoming even more clear to us. We were subconsciously going through so much anxiety, that we overlooked things that were, in a normal situation, obvious for us. We had to do better than this. We couldn’t be swayed by these emotions!!
Anyways, so finally we got hot water. We took a shower and changed for the evening. We had some time with us before Googleman came to pick us up for the dinner, so we decided to explore the neighbourhood. It was not very late in the evening, would have been around 6 pm, but as I had said earlier, it was pitch dark outside.
We stepped outside and the first thing that struck us was that was it was chillier than we had expected. A gush of cold air met our faces. The evening had gotten pretty cold. We zipped up our jackets and started to scan the area around us for exploring. We love walking, so we decided we would walk to the nearest market to explore the shops etc (as if we had any other option anyways!!!!) ;-).
To our surprise, as we walked out of the premises, we noticed, the whole street was deserted. There was not a single soul to be seen on the road. And to make things worse, the only light on the street was the dim street lights or the light emanating from some of the houses lined up on the street. Further, there was pin drop silence around us, except for the sound of an occasional car going past the main road at the far end of the street.
It looked exactly like a scene straight out of a horror movie. The scene where the hero and the heroine venture out for a walk in middle of the night (for some stupid reason) and are killed in the alley by the ghost of the old lady who had been murdered at the same place by her son long back for greed of property… and she is now running amok in a white dress, hair all messed up, ready to kill any man she sees…. Scary thought it was!! :-(
We were not sure what to do. The only living beings we could see around us were two ladies playing tennis in a tennis court… in a white dress!!!!!! We were in a dilemma, whether to venture out in the dark and desolate road to the market or to stay back in the B&B.
Anybody who is from India knows that there is never a situation when you don’t see any people on the roads. If not humans, there are always stray dogs, cows and/or bulls on the roads to give you company day and night. So we are not used to seeing empty, deserted roads. India never let you feel alone. But, when you are in an alien country, this not a very pretty sight (There aren’t any of those stray animals on the streets of Melbourne….. only stray people!)
Here again, the courage of my mountain girl (I call my partner that because she was born in the hills) awoke and she decided to take the plunge and take the situation head on. She asked me to hold hands and started walking in the direction of the market. I reluctantly agreed, having nothing better to do (Old lady in white dress was still haunting my mind). She put on the directions on the map and we started to walk on the pavement.
We had barely walked a few meters when we saw a person walking towards us in a hoodie and track pants. His strides were big and he was walking fast. He looked huge, at least 6 feet high and well built, like a true blue Aussie. We both held our hands tighter and were ready to flee at the first indication of any danger. This was it…. We were going to either get robbed or worse.. physically assaulted… we thought. As the guy approached us, we quickened our pace so as to just pass him as quickly as possible. Right when we were about to pass him, he respectfully made way for us and we heard him say,
“Good day mate……………..”
We were taken aback for a second…........ we didn’t know how to react in that instance as we had those disturbing thoughts running in our minds… and also, in that muddled situation, we could not immediately comprehend the Aussie accent. So, before we could gain our senses and respond, he had already passed us. We felt bad for not responding to him. But, it was a great sigh of relief for both of us. We were alive!!!! :-)
This incident gave us some courage and as we started to move on towards the market, my partner’s first comment was…
“Maybe we need to leave our preconceived notions behind and clear the canvas so that a new picture can be painted.”
She was absolutely right.
We had to start with a blank page.
We decided to do so and moved on towards the market. As we got past a few more houses on the way, we noticed a huge park on our right hand side. Though it was quite dark, apart from the light from the street light, the light from the moon was pretty bright. That’s when we noticed that the moon was near to full and in its light the huge park was looking like a green emerald. The park was emaculately manicured. It was like a huge piece of green carpet in between the houses. A look at the sky revealed what was the clearest sky we had ever seen. The stars were bright like diamonds in the sky (Exactly like the poem “Twinkle Twinkle” had intended them to be :-)) and the air, though chilly, was as fresh as you could think of. This kind of a set up is only available in the hilly areas of India, which may still be untouched by humans. My partner was really excited to see the beautiful set up and was reminded of her days in the hills. For a minute we both forgot we were the only ones standing there looking blankly at the open space. The feeling of being alone was not bothering at that time due to the natural beauty around us. It was kinda soothing!! We absorbed the beauty a little more and planned to come in the morning to enjoy the park.
As we moved on and neared the market, we came across same kind of a situation we had encountered near our B&B. Few cars here and there, but not many people in sight. This was not a typical market scenario that we were used to back in India. As we entered the market area, we noticed that all shops were closed, apart from one supermarket. We checked our watches once again. It said 6.30 pm.
How could the market be closed at 6.30 pm??? We thought..
We checked around in the super market and came to know that during winters the markets closed around 5 pm in the evening. Only the super store was open till 10 pm.
Another shock!!
It felt as if we had come to some village, where everything came to a halt in the evening. Social life had to be over the weekend, else it would be the mundane routine to contend with during the week.
Looking at the situation my partner said..
“Well, since we have already come that far now and have endured so much on our way to the market, let's take a walk around inside the super market to get a hang of the items available.”
Given my zero interest in walking the aisles of supermarket normally, I also agreed, so as to check out how a super market in Australia looks like, to kill time…. Lame one, but then we had to get some ROI out of the efforts we had put in to come here, putting our lives in danger… so to say!! Lol!!! (My CA mind was, as always, working).
After a few minutes of walking around the super market and realising that it was only making us hungry, we decided to walk back. So, out of sheer disappointment and with food on our mind, we commenced our journey back to the B&B.
On way back, I am sure we both were thinking the same thing…
“How would we survive in a country where shops and entertainment places closed at 5 pm, when we are used to living in a country where we were getting everything till at least 12 pm at night? Further, it’s like living in a deserted village, where you don’t see any people around for a good part of the year i.e. winters”
A little bit of doubt started to creep in my mind i.e. did we make the right decision to move to Melbourne??
India seemed to be a good place to be in right now!!!
Well, we reached back safely to the B&B and Googleman had arrived on time to pick us up for the dinner.
At dinner, we posed all the questions we had in our mind to him… empty streets, desolate surroundings, shops closing so soon etc. etc. After long discussion over a few glasses of wine, we were comforted by him that this was normal for Melbourne during winters and that we guys had nothing to worry. It was a very safe country to stay in, as we would come to know in the next few months once we settle in. And come summers, it would get much better, with long and warm days and shops remaining open till late.
The dinner was sumptuous and we were dropped back to the B&B by him post the meal and some more chatting. That dinner with the Googleman was a welcome change to the experience of the evening. We bid our good byes and decided to stay in touch as we went on with our plan for the next two weeks, which we had shared with him earlier already.
While we were retiring for the night, I reflected on our first day in Melbourne. Few Lines by a famous poet, Robert Frost came rushing to my mind…
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
The "mission" was a go from tomorrow morning and we had a lot of achieve in the next fortnight.
Our morale was high now and the target in sight...and with that we slept into the night!
Coming up... the excitement of the first fortnight in Melbourne and the new experiences it came with. The chaos and running around to meet the first milestone.. would we be able to survive the first fortnight in this new city...... to find out read on.......... :-)