Melbourne, Australia - Running around in circles

What follows is an article I wrote for an online running magazine about a month or so ago. As it relates very much to my time here in Melbourne I have decided to put it on this travel blog as well.

There are very few things that Australians don’t do well it seems (their very un-festive Christmas Day on the beach being one of them of course!). While the rest of the world suffers from a never ending recession and falling currencies this proud nation has withstood most of what the Global Economic Crisis has thrown at it and has become the number one emigration destination for Europeans desperate to avoid the farcical levels of unemployment that are plaguing the European Union, and Ireland in particular.

Notwithstanding the recent detrimental floods to hit Queensland this country more often than not is baked in burning sunshine providing an ideal climate for surfing, beach volleyball and indeed any type of outdoor activity. Australians certainly love their sport and their lifestyle is very much exercise driven as a result. In addition the land down under is also one of the world’s great holiday destinations with an abundance of unique wildlife, buzzing cities, and astonishing coastal and bushland scenery.

Track and field is another area where this country is currently excelling with numerous athletes claiming Olympic and World Championship medals over the last few years. In particular Steve Hooker has shown himself to be almost unbeatable in the Pole Vault and has his sights set on Sergei Bubka’s iconic world record, and Sally Pearson is shaping up to be one of the prime contenders for sprint hurdles gold at the London Olympics next year.

However this strength extends far beyond the elite level of the sport. Throughout Melbourne and the rest of Victoria the governing body Athletics Victoria runs a state wide inter-club track and field competition called the AV Shield. The championship is divided into 6 regions and incorporates 13 track meets from October to February with the top clubs qualifying for the AV Shield final.

Each athlete can compete in as many different events as he or she wishes with many people attempting as much as possible in order to score more points for their respective clubs. It is not unusual to see somebody warming up for a Javelin competition just minutes after running a lung-bursting 1500m. The idea behind the AV Shield is to get as many people of all ages, abilities, shapes and sizes competing in track and field. There is of course a strong competitive element to it with every club aiming to qualify for the Grand Final but the main emphasis is on getting people to actually enjoy competing in this great sport and not being afraid to give a new event a try.

Through the kindness of Richmond Harriers AC I got the opportunity to participate in a couple of these meets as a trial member giving me the chance to experience this great competition first hand. One of the big concerns people have (myself included) when joining running clubs and signing up for competitions is that everybody else will be much faster. The questions “will I be quick enough?”, “will there be other people there who run to my level?” etc. crop up time and time again. The AV Shield banishes any such worries. Each event is graded with the fastest people running together and the slowest doing likewise. If 65 seconds is as fast as you can sprint 400m then not to worry, you will simply be paired with other runners with similar personal bests. This gives everybody a proper sense of actual competition and a chance to win a race rather than simply running against the clock. Of course you always get the odd person who will enter a slower race just to claim a victory but thankfully this is a rare occurrence.

Athletics Victoria and the local clubs have really fostered a great culture of grassroots athletics and after seeing such a well organised event that caters to absolutely everybody it makes me feel quite sad that such a setup does not exist in Ireland.

There has been a huge running boom throughout the Western World in general and Ireland in particular over the last few years with more and more people signing up for road races such as 10Ks, Marathons and Ultra Marathons. Record numbers ran in last year’s Dublin Marathon and it appears that ploughing through the muscle aching torture of the iconic distance is becoming more and more popular among recreational runners.

Getting specific about my own country though this mass participation success does not tell the full story about the state of the sport. While the popularity of road running is at an all-time high track and field is suffering from low participation numbers. The reason for this is simple; there is no structure in place to develop a grassroots culture in the sport. In Dublin there are graded meets which is the closest thing we have to Victoria’s AV Shield. However such an event still attracts mainly runners who are of a high level and a 2:30 runner for 800m would be very quickly dropping off the pace in even the slowest race. In Ireland there very much exists an elite culture when it comes to track and field. If you are a 55 second runner for 400m there is no future for you in the sport which is why so many give up and end up running marathons or other road races.

Maybe if we took a leaf out of Athletics Victoria’s book and got more of the average Joes running 400m, 800m etc. rather than just road running events then perhaps our country would have a much greater interest in the sport of Athletics. Just a thought Athletics Ireland if you’re reading!

For good measure, here are some pictures from the recent Melbourne Track Classic at Olympic Park.

With Sally Pearson of Australia, Olympic Silver medallist in the 100m Hurdles in Beijing.

With Bernard Lagat of the USA (formerly of Kenya), the second fastest runner of all time over 1500m, twice a World Champion and twice an Olympic medallist.

With Craig Mottram of Australia, World Championship bronze medallist over 5000m in 2005

With David Rudisha of Kenya, the fastest man in history over 800m. 1:41.01! Enough said!

Melbourne, Australia - Standing up to the Bullies

For the most part Australians are very friendly and welcoming people. They are usually always up for a bit of craic and are quite similar to the Irish in terms of their sense of humour and liking for a night in the bar. However this is not to say that everybody I have met in this wonderful country have provided pleasant encounters. What follows are two examples of how certain people down here try to con backpackers. But unfortunately for such people this particular traveller was not one to be fooled. Out of respect for the other parties involved I will not be mentioning their names here, not that they actually deserve such consideration.

First up, the landlords. Within a few days of arriving in Melbourne I found a place that I was happy to move into. The rent wasn't too expensive, I had my own room, all bills and Internet included, and situated very close to the trains and trams. However it didn't take me long to realise that the two landlords were not experts in the field of property management and were clearly on a get rich quick scheme. Anytime something broke in the house (a very regular occurrence) they were usually pretty slow about getting such problems rectified and would usually try to fob us off with some sort of nonsense. However regardless of the extremely poor maintenance I was starting to get nicely settled into my new accommodation and was prepared to put up with a lot of the landlords annoying habits. However, then disaster struck. During one February evening, out of absolutely nowhere, came severe flash floods which reduced Melbourne to chaos. Ok, it was nothing in comparison to the horrible scenes from Queensland that we have witnessed on our television screens, but at the same time it was the worst I had ever encountered personally. Three and a half hours were spent travelling home from work as a result of trams breaking down and after such a torturous journey I was greeted upon arrival with the most unwelcome gift of all - my room had got soaked!

Yes, while I was on my way home from work my room got flooded due to the heavy rain breaking through the extremely dodgy roof, soaking my bed and about 40% of the carpet in the process. The next morning I eventually got through to one of the landlords and proceeded to give him an earful and he quickly arranged for somebody to come around and fix the roof. However no consideration was given towards the wet carpet which was ever so quickly providing an ideal habitat for mould and bacteria to thrive. I made a request to have the carpet either cleaned or replaced, to which the landlord rather arrogantly stated that he fully intends to let the carpet dry naturally. Despite my many references to the room being unhealthy to live in under such conditions he stood firm and fully intended to do nothing about the problem whatsoever.

Enough was enough and I made the journey into Consumer Affairs Victoria to find out my rights with regards repairs. The very helpful lady informed me that I needed to fill out a non-urgent repairs request and if the problem wasn't attended to within 14 days then the landlord would be in serious trouble. I also found out that the deposit I had paid at the start of my lease had never been lodged with the Bond Authority, which is a serious offence under the Residential Tenancy Act. After I communicated this information to the landlord, he then proceeded to tell me that I would have to leave the premises within 28 days. He was basically trying to evict me simply because I was stating my rights. Something didn't seem quite right about all of this as a minimum of 60 days notice needs to be provided to a tenant when giving a notice to vacate for a lease of less than 6 months. Again I consulted Consumer Affairs, who informed me that everything they were trying to do was illegal. When I told the landlord this he then tried to evict me immediately "for my own safety" as the room was "not fit for human inhabitation". Unbelievable. This chancer kept changing his story every time I slapped him in the face with a piece of legislation.

At this stage I was well and truly sick of all the rubbish he was throwing at me and so I spoke with a representative in the complaints department. After informing him about the details of the case he then phoned the landlord regarding the various issues. According to the representative, the landlord was absolutely petrified and started to panic over the phone. He admitted that he knew that his reasons and methods for trying to evict me were completely illegal but that he was angry at the time and so wasn't thinking logically. To cut a long story short, within the space of a few days, I managed to turn an immediate notice to vacate into a brand new carpet and got my deposit lodged safely with the bond authority. Too many backpackers down here just accept what landlords tell them and are too afraid to state their rights and so settle for any sort of rubbish as a result. But in reality if people just stand up for themselves and use the law to their advantage, then chancers like these two guys do not have a leg to stand on.

If you think these guys were bad then wait for the next story. Upon arriving in Melbourne I was shocked at how expensive everything was here. The Euro was struggling badly against the Australian Dollar and so I needed to start earning local currency as soon as I possibly could. For this reason I accepted a poorly paid call centre job so I could stop living off the Euro and in the meantime look for a proper form of employment. I ended up lasting 5 weeks in this place (much to my own amazement). The rate of pay was 17 dollars an hour, but even stranger was the fact that instead of being paid as an employee under a Tax File Number (TFN), I was actually hired as a contractor on an Australian Business Number (ABN). Something seemed odd about this but for awhile I didn't bother questioning it. However after a few weeks my patience started growing thin with how dishonest everybody who worked within the organisation seemed to be, with most of the sales representatives, who are based in India, full on lying to customers in a pathetic attempt to make sales. The whole operation was nothing but a scam and after 5 weeks I was happy to leave.

The following week, myself and a friend from home, who was also working in this organisation, took a journey into the Fair Work Ombudsman to make enquiries about the work practices that were being adopted by this business. After discussions with two representatives we were informed that we should never have been hired as contractors but rather casual employees. To be a contractor you usually are required to dictate the hours of work, the rate of pay, write up invoices and provide your own materials to the place of work. None of this happened during my 5 weeks. I was trained to do a job that I was supposedly being contracted to do, I was told when to go on lunch, where to sit, when I could leave, if I needed to stay longer, and provided no materials to my place of work except for my brain.

We gathered all sorts of complex information from the Ombudsman for Fair Work. As a casual employee I should have been entitled to a base wage (16.58 per hour in this instance) plus 25% casual loading for a casual employee + 15% shift loading when a shift finishes between 7pm and midnight (which was about 90% of my shifts), along with 9% superannuation added on top of all this for good measure. Including superannuation my hourly rate should have been $25.30, a far cry from the $17 dollars I was being paid. Once all the information was gathered, myself and my friend carefully drafted a professional looking email stating all the facts behind this "sham contract" and attached a spreadsheet calculating the total amount we were each underpaid. Over the course of just 5 weeks I was underpaid by $1,157 and my friend was shafted over 8 weeks by an amount just under $2,000. In the email we gave them 7 days to provide us with a satisfactory response and to credit our bank accounts, otherwise it would be necessary for the Ombudsman for Fair Work to intervene on our behalf and investigate work practices within their organisation further. Lets just say the money was sitting in my account within 48 hours!!

It is known fact that backpackers get dreadfully underpaid in Australia but for some reason people just seem to accept this treatment and not bother to do anything about such injustice. Again people are too afraid to state their rights and easily get scared away when such employers mention that they will get their lawyers involved. The fact of the matter is that what these guys were doing to the two of us was highly illegal and like the landlords above had no leg to stand on at all. Now I have $1,157 extra in my bank account which will go along way towards my trip around the West Coast later in the year. More people should do the same.

I hope that by writing this blog that people who are thinking of moving to Australia over the coming months and years will be made aware of some of scam artists that exist and to not be afraid to exercise the law for ones own protection. It is there for a reason.

That's all for now.

Melbourne, Australia - Metropolitan Paradise

As previously mentioned Melbourne is possibly the most sports-orientated city on the entire planet. However this city provides so much more and whether you are just on holiday or indeed living here for an extended period of time there is no shortage of things to see and do.

I have certainly been one to complain about modern buildings being far uglier than their predecessors and in my previous blogs the cities of Santiago and Montevideo got a verbal trashing with regards to this. As a general rule; the older the city, the more beautiful it is. However Melbourne is an example of a modern metropolis which can provide an exception to such general guidelines. The city is simply stunning with a countless number of large urban parks, giving one the feel that you are a million miles away from an area that houses almost 4 million people. There is simply no shortage of places in Melbourne where one can escape for a picnic or a kick around, with Fitzroy Gardens, Carlton Gardens, Albert Park and the most beautiful of all, the Royal Botanic Gardens being among the most popular.

Situated very close to the centre of the city, the Royal Botanic Gardens provides 38 hectares of landscaped gardens consisting of a mix of native and non-native vegetation including over 10,000 individual species. Heaven for nature lovers. For me however, the Gardens provide a different attraction: the world famous Tan Track, more affectionately known to Melbourne natives as "The Tan". This is a 3.827 kilometre tan coloured stone surfaced marked running trail which circumnavigates the Royal Botanic Gardens. Easily the most popular part of Melbourne for runners and joggers, this trail attracts hundreds of people a day, of all shapes and sizes. It is not just the average Joe who uses this fantastic facility however. Many running legends such as Steve Ovett, Hicham El Guerrouj and Sonia O'Sullivan have rubbed shoulders with the general public on The Tan. To date my personal best for the course is 16 minutes 44 seconds, a time I expect to improve upon come the winter road running season.

There are two specific areas which provide a stunning view of Melbourne. The first being from the top of the Shrine of Remembrance, an attractive building dedicated to all Australians who lost their lives in World Wars I and II. From here you get the most perfect perspective of just how green Melbourne is with its many parks visible well into the distance. The other area that brings me personal viewing pleasure is on the bridge crossing over the Yarra river from the Royal Botanic Gardens to the various sports stadiums and arenas in Richmond. On a sunny day there are very few urban places that can compare to this: the amazing Gardens on the left, the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground on the right, the Yarra meandering ahead, and the city's modern skyscrapers watching over all this from a distance. It is the perfect combination of nature and modern infrastructure, a fusion of old and new.

Although the city is less than 200 years old, it still boasts some impressive architecture. Now of course it is never going to rival anything Cusco, Stockholm or Edinburgh have to offer but considering the lack of history in Australia this is hardly surprising. Among the most picturesque is Flinders Street Station. This flashy yellow bricked building has long been the meeting point for Melbournians who congregate "under the clocks", referring to the row of clocks above the main entrance. Other attractive buildings include St Paul's Cathedral, the Parliament of Victoria, and the Royal Exhibition Building, the last of which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

However, as previously mentioned, what this city does better than most is its ability to mix old with new, and right across the street from this century old railway station is Federation Square, the futuristic and artsy civic centre of Melbourne. This area plays host to many concerts that celebrate the mix of cultures in Australia and also has a big screen, allowing sports mad people to congregate to watch the big events together. In my humble opinion Federation Square forms a perfect contrast to nearby Flinders Street Station and St Paul's Cathedral, and this mix of ancient and modern works very well.

Another highlight of Melbourne is the sports district as I like to call it, situated in Richmond. Within this area you will find most of the city's big sports stadia and arenas. The Melbourne Cricket Ground takes centre stage of course, but there is also the Melbourne Park tennis grounds, Rod Laver Arena, Hisense Arena, Olympic Park, AAMI Arena along with some smaller sports and training grounds, all within a couple of hundred metres of the Yarra River and the numerous park lands nearby. As a sports fanatic this is obviously my favourite part of the city. Melbourne simply couldn't have picked a better setting for its favourite past time.

This city also provides a vibrant bar scene with Brunswick Street, Acland Street, Fitzroy Street and Chapel Street being the most popular, providing so much choice for one's drinking and live music needs. It's just a shame that the price of alcohol is so expensive and I would recommend anybody travelling here for a holiday to get their ticker checked out before arriving, as 10 dollars for a pint of Carlton Draught in certain places could bring on severe palpitations for the unprepared and unwarned tourist.

Melbourne is not particularly known for its beaches and the hugely touristy St Kilda Beach is one of the most unremarkable parts of the city I have seen to date. Perhaps the reason why more Irish people flock to Sydney rather than its younger and brighter brother (in my opinion) is due to that city having much more so called better beaches. However Brighton Beach, located just 30 minutes by train from the city centre, provides Melbourne with a hidden gem, one which rivals Sydney's Manly Beach in terms of beauty, and which wipes the floor with Bondi Beach, one of the world's most overrated places. Brighton Beach is not particularly touristy with very few bars and restaurants within walking distance from the shore, but rather is a place where the locals like to chill with their family after a hard working week. What makes this rather upmarket beach so special however is the numerous multi-coloured beach huts which run parallel to the shore. This is an area which would bring the photographer out in even the most unenthusiastic person.

Last weekend I journeyed out to the suburb of Sandringham where I accidentally encountered the stunning Red Bluff, a steep cliff filled with fascinating rock formations. There was literally not a tourist in sight and indeed my housemate who has lived in Melbourne for years said to me that he has never even heard of the place. It is little gems like this that I will continue to search for over my remaining time in this magnificent city.

Bye for now.