My journey to Asia started somewhat rough. The airport bus that was supposed to pick me up at eleven ran late and didn’t arrive before 11:20. The driver did his best to get us to the airport in time and an hour before check-in closure I was at the terminal. The domestic terminal, cause that’s what it said on my ticket. Turned out to be a printing error and my flight was leaving from the international terminal as one would expect.

Aussie culture is often described as evolving around three things: footy, beer and barby. As I already experienced and enjoyed beer and barby I wanted to give footy a try as well. Melbourne is the uncontested sports capital of Australia and as such the perfect place to see a live football game. With 11 of the 18 premier league AFL teams based in Melbourne it’s not hard to find a game but rather to choose which one to see.

During the last two days I got a couple of offers for the car ranging from $100 to $400. Not really convincing but would be better than nothing. This morning I got another call from a guy who works for a TV company (Southern Star) and he offered me $500 and a cab ride if I dropped the car of at their place. No better offers came in and so I drove the car to the studio this afternoon.

Today I was strolling around the CBD and came across a couple of graffiti artists on Swanston St. They were spraying pictures of surreal landscapes and it was very interesting to see which techniques and tools they used to create some really impressive pictures. There is still no good news about the car. Right now I’m trying to auction it off till Thursday hoping to get a halfway decent price. It’s really weird, when I arrived two guys at the hostel had just sold a car like mine for two grand and now… something’s rotten in the state of Melbourne.

So far the car market in Melbourne exceeds my worst expectations. Since Tuesday my ad on gumtree had 500 views and all I got was two replies. Over the weekend I put the price down as far as $500 but still got no offers. I don’t really know what to think about that. The high number of views shows that people are interested in buying cheap cars but for some reason nobody is really interested in mine.

On Monday I left Adelaide, two months after I arrived there. Can’t believe it’s been that long. After a short stop in the Grampians national park I arrived in Melbourne on Tuesday. My goal is to sell the car for basically any price. It’s not a good time to sell a backpacker car as many backpackers already left the city. I’ve put an ad on the message boards of the bigger hostels and put an ad on gumtree as well.

Upon arrival in Melbourne I remembered how driving a car in Sydney and Brisbane was and decided to not do that to myself again. I left the car in a residential neighbourhood half an hour outside the city and took a train into the CBD. Didn’t regret that decision. Melbourne struck me as more relaxed than Sydney even though they are of a similar size (about 4m citizens). There is a lot of nice old buildings in the city and every now and then an antique tram or horse carriage drives down the road.