Hi all,

I decided to split off a new thread from the SYD Labor Day thread, in case anyone who will be in the MEL area this weekend is not looking at the SYD thread.

WHERE: MEL CBD or just across the Yarra, exact location TBD now moved from Nobu Restaurant next door (westward) to The Brasserie in the Crown Casino Complex.
WHEN: Sunday 5 September, early evening (exact time TBD 6:30).

WHO: HPN-HRL, Antipode, Dyung, UncleJed, SWinsider +1, and anyone else who wants to join us!

Let us know here if you are interested in joining us!

Wife and I will be in MEL from Sept 4 thru 6 on a combination mileage run and mini-vacation. We are flying from LAX on Sept 2 on DL, so please post the particulars here. We have three nights booked at the Rialto Intercontinental right in the middle of the CBD.

I will update here when plans are finalized (probably in the next 24-36 hours).

See Post #5 for finalized plans.

We just spend last weekend in MEL, great weather, they were celebrating their 135 years birthday on Monday.

Too bad it was not last weekend, otherwise I would love to join.

Thank you. My wifi access to the internet might be iffy after we depart LAX this Thursday night.

Hi again,

We will meet Sunday September 5th on the south bank of the Yarra river, outside of Nobu Restaurant (which is part of the Crown Casino Complex), at 6:30 pm. I will be the guy standing outside without a coat - if it's raining I will have a white umbrella. There are several restaurants nearby that we can choose from. Also, there is an interesting fire display on the south bank that occurs every hour (starting at 8:00?) that I think everyone will enjoy

From the CBD: make your way to the Yarra river and cross over to the south side. Nobu is directly across the river from the midpoint of the Melbourne Aquarium.

I walked there from the main entrance of Flinders St. Station in 15 minutes (but note that I walk rather quickly; most people would take 20-25 minutes). (The Westin is ~5 minutes walk to Flinders St. Station). If you walk across the Yarra directly from Flinders St. Station, note that there is construction at the south end of that bridge (on St Kilda's St.), making it a little tricky to make your way down to the south bank river walk. You are probably better off crossing on any of the bridges west of St. Kilda's road.

Looking forward to seeing all of you!

^ (Except there appear to be some bridges missing across the Yarra.)

Thanks for posting the map, SWInsider! It certainly is missing all the pedestrian bridges, though.

One note: we will be meeting on the path labeled "Yarra Prom", not at the tip of the arrow.

Just arrived in MEL, and I ran into another FT on my flight ran into another FT'er on his way to MEL, N751PR. And on my flight SYD-MEL met a future FT'er who I'm hoping they will both be able to attend as well!

Nice recruiting work, dyung!

However, due to constraints not under my control, We have to move the DO next door to the Brasserie (Nobu can't get a table for 8 until 9:15!). Now it looks like we may have as many as 10!

I'm sending a PM to all who have responded to me.

Yep, he did a good job after putting up through an entire SFO-SYD-MEL segment with me sitting on the fence on whether I should go. Looks like you can count me in for tonight! ^

I will be an apology for tonight - unless someone has their helicopter handy, and can pick me up from the other side of this flood? No?
Enjoy your dinner!

Ugh, sorry to hear that SWInsider....

Wanted to give my thanks to HPN-HRL for setting up this mini-DO (and to dyung for spending the SFO-SYD flight to encourage me to go ). Truly was a lovely night to spend with fellow FTers! ^

I had a wonderful time in Melbourne sharing dinner with everyone. Thank you HPN-HRL for setting this up and for catching me on the Hilton meeting thread since I forgot to read this section prior to leaving for Melbourne.

Now that I'm back and functioning on a reasonably coherent level, I just wanted to once again thank everybody who came out on Sunday. I still can't believe we could get 8 Americans together on the opposite side of the world!