Month completed: January 2008

On the same day as I completed goal 12 (visit the Melbourne Aquarium) Nat and I decided to knock this goal off my list as well.

And I am glad we did. The view from the Tower to all angles of Melbourne was tremendous, and we could see out as far as Mount Dandenong in the east.

For those not in the know, Melbourne’s Eureka Tower is the world’s tallest residential building, and the 88th floor (known as Skydeck 88) is the highest public vantage point in the Southern Hemisphere. Pretty impressive, and thus visiting it was on my list.

One of the unique features of the Eureka Tower is The Edge, a glass cube which projects 3 metres out of the building, 300 metres above the ground. Once you are out of the building, the walls, roof and floor of the cube go from white to transparent. It was weird looking down, and seeing nothing but the ground 300 metres away. Not exactly scary, but definitely worth doing if you are up in the Skydeck anyway.

I was most impressed with the 30 viewfinders scattered around the Skydeck. Going to many tall buildings in Europe, none was ever able to deliver a clever, simple way to point out landmarks (the Eiffel Tower, for example, was particularly void of any tool). Skydeck has.

There are a number of vertical poles with metal cylinders at the top acting like telescopes, but without any magnifying lens. They simply direct your vision to exactly where they want you looking, which is at a particular landmark. The landmark you are looking at is written on the pole, and LED displays on the floor next to the pole give a little detail about the landmark. Very simple, yet very effective (you can see a couple of examples in the photo below).

And given the Eureka Tower will become one of Melbourne’s key tourist attractions (if it hasn’t become such already), here is me with the typical Japanese photo salute. If you can work out how Nat is in the picture as well, take a bow.