Parkdale

We are staying in a small suburb in southeast Melbourne called Parkdale.  This is a typical suburb with a downtown community surrounded by neighborhoods.  Parkdale is located on the shore of Phillip Bay.  We took this picture from the train station while waiting for our train to the footy game.  In the bigger suburbs it's amazing how many little shops they have.  Instead of huge stores like Wal-Mart you get row after row of strip malls with a shop for every different kind of store you can imagine.

You'll notice in that picture there aren't any pickup trucks.  Below left is most common configuration of a work vehicle, known as a ute (pronounced either U-T or yewt).  Most of them are Ford Falcon's.  Below right is the flashy bloke's version of a ute, a Holden SS (Holden is General Motors).  You could practically count on one hand the number of full size non-commercial vehicles we've seen since we got here.