A Walk Through Time

I took a walking tour of Melbourne's Federation Square on Tuesday. The city's main public square is only about 10 years old and its very modern buildings are quite controversial. When I bought my ticket, the woman said, "It's just going to be you and 20 men. Is that okay?" Um, that's pretty much my dream tour.

We had to walk quite a ways to meet these men, and the lady kept trying to talk me out of it. "You know we have another tour at 2pm... they're a probus group... are you sure you're going to be okay?" I was starting to wonder if it was a group of ex-cons. It turns out probus is "an association for active retirees who join together in clubs, to keep their minds active, expand their interests and to enjoy friendship." These men were all age 70+. For some reason, the tour guide put me in charge of collecting their tickets. This caused much confusion because they thought I was a guide-in-training.

Once that misunderstanding was cleared up, we had a grand old time. The men were really interested in where I was from, what I thought of Australia, why I was traveling, etc. They were on a day trip from a town about 30 minutes outside of Melbourne so they had lots of stories about growing up in the area. One man told me about taking the train into the city with his dad in the 1930s to watch cricket matches. Another tried to explain the old layout of the city. Another talked about the pubs he used to visit in the good old days. I was informed about the top sites to see and the best place to play the pokies. It was great! I learned just as much from these guys as I did from the tour guide.

As we parted ways, one gentleman told me: "The Aussies and Yanks have always been great mates, so we're glad to have ya here." And I was happy to be had.