The Rough Guide to Melbourne [Paperback]

Stephen Townshend (Author)

Book Description

Series: Rough Guide Mini Guides | Publication Date: January 1, 2002

Small format guide to Melbourne.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Stephen Townshend was born in New Zealand in 1962. Before settling in Melbourne in 1994, he worked as a music journalist in Perth and as an editor in Sydney. Since then he has travelled extensively in Southeast Asia, the USA, and in Cuba, which was the subject of his first guidebook.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

WHEN TO VISIT

Melbourne’s climate is variable, being warm to hot in summer (Dec–Feb), mild in autumn (March–May), cold and damp in winter (June–Aug), and cool in spring (Sept–Nov). The warmest months are generally January and February, which are often dry and prone to barbaric hot spells when temperatures can climb into the forties. The coldest months are June and July, when frosts sometimes occur during the night, while October is the wettest. A feature of Melbourne’s climate is its changeability, particularly during spring and summer – dramatic falls in temperature sometimes occur within a few minutes, both intriguing and infuriating locals, who describe the atmospheric transformations as "four seasons in one day".

Product Details

• Paperback: 317 pages
• Publisher: Rough Guides; 2 edition (January 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 185828743X
• ISBN-13: 978-1858287430
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #623,905 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > Travel > Australia & South Pacific > Australia > Melbourne

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Serviceable, but nothing special, November 18, 2010

By 

C D (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rough Guide to Melbourne (Paperback)

I wanted a guidebook to take on my Oct 2010 trip to Melbourne, but I really could not find one that I liked. I settled on this one. It contains all the basic travel info (electrical current, etc.), short history and major sites as any other guidebooks, but not much beyond. The listings for restaurants, bars/pubs & live music are pretty limited, and the full color insert on "eclectic multicultural cuisine" was short and don't add much more than a few pretty pictures. It does offer good coverage of major attractions around Melbourne proper like museums, the gaol, the state library, etc. However, while the book covers Southern suburbs like Toorak & Prahran and as far down South as St Kilda, it only goes as far North as Carlton & Fitzroy, completely omitting North Melbourne, Brunswick & anything beyond.

It does cover some areas outside of Melbourne like the Great Ocean Road and the Yarra Valley, but someone like me who intended on spending most of my time really getting to know & soaking in the life of the city, I thought this book does so at the expense of giving a more in-depth details of Melbourne itself.

The book is split up into sections for different parts of the city with a map of the area at the start of each section. But I was disappointed that the map of the larger Melbourne area at the beginning of the book do not cover enough area so that I had to keep flipping between the various maps in the book to figure out where I am & where I'm supposed to go.

Overall, I didn't like this guidebook much. It's serviceable, but I would have loved to see more tidbits on the culture, cuisine and music scene mentioned in the product description. This book really doesn't delve into any of them more than a few sentences. I did enjoy the section in the back that list some notable Australian books & movies (some of which I did check out prior to my trip), but overall I didn't think it offers much to set it apart from most other city guidebooks.

1.0 out of 5 stars don't bother, October 28, 2010

By 

Stephanie Moses - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Rough Guide to Melbourne (Paperback)

We just returned from our first trip to Melbourne and found it to be an exciting and wonderful city. You surely could not tell that from this book. The author's favorite words were shoddy and tacky. She had very little enthusiasm for anything in the city. The maps were inaccurate and lacked important labels. Only when we arrived did we realize that we were staying on the south side of the river instead of the north. This is the last Rough guide I will buy in a long time.