Melbourne’s older tourism guides on the ball
Older people mad about Melbourne have become passionate city tourism guides who point everyone in the right direction from St.Kilda to the nearest toilets.
City of Melbourne Tourism Volunteers enthusiasts such as Joan Belot, 68, give up their own time to cheerfully assist visitors in one of the world’s most live able cities to get around to the right places.
Ms Belot, dressed in the bright red official Melbourne guide jacket, spends every Friday standing in the Bourke Street mall sharing stories and suggesting places to visit. She’s one of 350 volunteers and says “I love meeting people and being able to help them”.
The volunteers include people fluent in languages ranging from Spanish to Hungarian, field more than 100 queries each a day, and are always ready for the most common request: where’s the closest Ladies or Gents?
