Melbourne: Our Gateway to the Land Down Under

A portion of the Melbourne skyline

So, as some of you know, we've been in Melbourne for the past week. I flew in on the 20th, but NHS, Rachel, and Graham were in the country a few days before that, picking up our caravan of four vehicles sponsored by VW. We didn't anticipate being in Melbourne this long, but some delays with getting the solar car through customs and out of quarantine pushed us back. Apparently the union of the workers involved somewhere in the process was striking, which meant working only quarter time, and a large delay.

With not much to do without access to our shipping container and the car and supplies inside, we decided to thoroughly explore Melbourne. Early in the week we had two barbecues generously hosted by local Stanford alums, and talking with them gave us a good idea of what to do. Melbourne is a beautiful, clean, and organized city, with excellent public transportation in the form of street-level trams and a huge amount of ethnic and social diversity. Various team members did any number of things, including getting 'extra tasty' cheese and fresh bread and the Queen Victoria Market, watching Australian Rules Football in Federation Square, visiting the National Gallery of Victoria and the immigration museum, going to the zoo and royal botanical gardens, eating excessively spicy food and unlimited dumplings in Chinatown, chilling on the beach in St. Kilda near our hostel, kiteboarding in the bay, and much more. We also spent the week organizing some of the more practical things we'll need for the race, like getting internet access and phone service and making sure the team members joining us in Adelaide and Darwin bring the rest of the supplies that we need.

This morning, however, we finally recieved the car out of customs quarantine. This means the time for relaxation is over, and beastmode was engaged. We rolled out of our hostel at 7am this morning and headed for the docklands, where our beloved car was waiting for us. After some more waiting in an empty parking lot, we rolled up to our shipping container in full force and proceeded to completely empty it, including the solar car, move the trailer box maufactured at the shop onto our rented flatbed trailer, repack the trailer, move to a safe location, unpack everything, protect the solar car, modify our trailer rig to better suit our flatbed, paint it, completely load everything back up again - just in time to go and eat ludicrously large amounts of very spicy asian food, a Stanford Solar Car tradition. On top of everything, it was raining all day. On the plus side, this just served to increase the tastiness of the asian food.

Tomorrow morning at 9:30am, we'll be hitting the road for Adelaide, our base for the next two days. Then, it's off to the outback to prepare the car and our awesome race team for the long, fast traverse from Darwin to Adelaide.

Sunset on the beach in St. Kilda