We did all the touristy things we hadn’t already ticked off our list, like standing on The Edge on the 88^th floor of the Eureka Tower. We walked the length and breadth of Chinatown and took in all the sights and sounds. We took the free City Loop tram and admired all the beautiful scenery.

I think we were luckier than most when it came to our sightseeing jaunt to the big smoke. Why, you may ask? Because we kept our mobile phones in our pockets most of the time. Not one photograph (with the exception of the magnificent night views of Melbourne from the 292m Eureka Skydeck. Those views needed to be shared).

This almost phoneless weekend meant we could really soak in the views and take in the sounds of the city. We could see things with our own eyes ... not through the camera lens of a mobile phone or an iPad.

We had our heads up and truly sightseeing, unlike the million other people who had their heads bowed over their electronic devices while trying to cross busy Flinders Street, or negotiate the thousands of pedestrians on the footpath or dodging the trees and park benches which adorn the streets.

And I reckon around 974,721 of those one million people either trod on my feet, hip and shouldered me as they walked by or acted completely bemused when I kept saying “Excuse me!” to them as they walked straight into me.

I know many of these phone-watchers were probably not tourists, but a lot of them would have been.

Why would you want to spend your hard earned money visiting a place and spending the entire time glued to a little screen in your hand? Is there something that important happening on social media that you miss … well, life?

And the constant need to be on one’s phone didn’t stop at sightseeing. While out for a quiet dinner in Melbourne that night, we observed couples conversing with their phones, rather than themselves.

It’s sad that we spend more time caressing our phones than the ones we love.