Eureka Tower…

While Richard was spending his Sunday morning attending to the business of signposting; Kym, Shelby, Tarryn and I took a ride into Melbourne to visit the Eureka Tower, the tallest building in the city, which has a viewing deck on it’s 88th floor…

On completion in October 2006, this was the tallest residential building in the world with apartments going right up to the 87th floor…!! It has since been surpassed by other sky-scraping residential buildings, and currently ranks as the 6th highest in the world in this category… There are only six apartments above the 86th floor of this building, each one on it’s own floor… Current values of these six humble abodes are in the region of A$15 million dollars each…!!

We bought our tickets to the Skydeck on the 88th floor and zoomed heavenwards in one of the fastest lifts in the world… Traveling at 9 metres per second, the 13 lifts in the building get folk from the ground level to the uppermost apartments in just over 30 seconds…!!

The views over Melbourne from the 88th floor are stupendous…!!

Looking out over Melbourne, with the F1 Grand Prix track that circles the waterway below...

This is the highest public vantage point in a building in the Southern Hemisphere, and encompasses the entire 88th floor, giving you a 360 degree view of the city and it’s surroundings… Standing up close to the glass walls, I looked down to the streets far below, and felt my stomach churn as I imagined what it would be like to do a base jump from the “Terrace”, a small open air platform which was closed at the time, due to high winds….

The Goodwin Girls... Tarryn, Kym and Shelby, my guides for the day...!!

The top ten floors of the building are clad in 24 carat gold plated windows, giving Eureka Towers it’s distinctive Gold Cap…!!

There is also an additional viewing experience known as “The Edge”. This is a glass cubicle, capable of carrying 8 people at a time… The view from the windows and floor are blocked out, and the cubicle is then pushed out into space…!! After a few seconds, it comes to a stop, and then, magically, the material blocking the view disappears, leaving you “suspended” 88 floors above the streets below…!!

After a brief moment grappling with vertigo, we walked around on the glass floor, and I could not resist jumping up and down to make sure the floor was indeed shatter-proof…!! The other occupants did not take too kindly to my antics, and clutched at the walls, a number of them with a terror-stricken look in their eyes…!! Serves ’em right for getting into a glass box, suspended 285 metres above the ground, with “Captain Devil-May Care”…!!

With only the glass floor between us and the street 88 floors below, we posed for the official photo...

Before the cubicle was finally winched back into the building, we posed for an official photo, which we discovered was not included in the cost of the “ride”… As we exited the room, it just so happened that the photo of the four of us was being shown on a large TV screen at the entrance… Grabbing my camera, I quickly snapped a shot of the screen, and that is how I came to save myself A$15…!! You gotta think on your feet, see…!!

Back on “terra firma”, Kym then drove over to the Ferry harbour nearby, so that I could see where I would be departing for Tasmania from… The “Spirit of Tasmania”, a huge red and white ferry, was tied up to the wharf, and as we headed back inland towards Rowville, thoughts of my upcoming trip to ‘Tassie, were uppermost in my mind…

©GBWT 2011