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Day 12 of our cruise and we’ve arrived at Melbourne.
I was looking forward to meeting Shawn Callahan and his wife Sheenagh who had kindly offered to give us a tour of their wonderful city. Shawn was an early pioneer of the art of storytelling for getting organisations to behave more collaboratively and improve knowledge flows. I’ve followed Shawn for several years on social media, and have been a regular reader of his blogs and the services he provides through his company Anecdote.com. I met him face to face a couple of years ago at one of his Storytelling Workshops that he occasionally runs in London, but as I’ve mentioned, our friendship has been primarily nurtured through social media.
We’ve always known that you can only really scratch the surface of a city’s culture and get a mere glimpse of some of the main attractions when you only have 8 hours or so before sailing to the next destination on the schedule, but Shawn and Sheenagh managed to pack in an extraordinary amount of sightseeing and information during our brief visit. And all of this without ever feeling rushed or overwhelmed. Perhaps they should consider branching out into the travel business!
So, after a breakfast of fresh croissants and coffee, we explored the Botanical Gardens, with views of Government House; we took in Federation Square, overlooked by the imposing architecture of St Pauls Cathedral; we experienced the café culture of the many narrow and intersecting lanes; we had a slightly surreal refreshment break at the “Captains of Industry” – a café that also provides shoe repairs, a barbers and a tailors. We had an excellent lunch across town at a retro-restaurant called the Action Rooms, where we met Shawn and Sheenagh’s daughter, Georgia, before finishing the day at the Post Office – not for stamps, this was the name of the local pub.
Altogether, a wonderful day for Lynda and I, and a Melbourne experience we won’t forget.
