The trip of our lifetime: Melbourne

Showing posts with label Melbourne. Show all posts

Recently (on Monday) we had a wild life day. We spent the day checking out Australia's native wild life. Australia has such a unique eco system. Given the geography and history of the continent the animals here have evolved like no other animals on the planet. Due to the way the tour companies work here they ended combining 3 different tours into one big tour. Means more animals, more stops, and more free food. Woohoo!

Bats, 1000's and 1000's of bats... see the black things? All BATS!

Bats with Fox Fur Scarves
Our first stop was Yarra Bend Park. This is the home of Australia's Fox Bats. These bats are primarily fruit eating bats. They are becoming an endangered species so they have a conservation park for them. They look like bats that wear fox fur scarves and jet black skin. Very striking to look at. At first when we went down into the park there were only a few of them. Than as we went down the path we started to see hundreds of them! As we walked along we noticed them all around us. What they did next was pretty creepy. They all started waiving at us! They hang there with one arm waving constantly. It's pretty freaky to watch. Being me of course, I naturally waived back….for about 30 seconds….alone, until someone told me that they weren't really being nice to the tourists. It's something they do to keep cool. I didn't feel weird at all! Afternoon tea followed.

Kangaroos, Wallabies, Dingos, Oh My!
Next we went to the animal sanctuary. They created a nice outdoor habitat area for these animals to roam. It's basically a nice petting zoo with more interesting animals. We learned that Koalas are only awake about 4 hours a day. What do they do with their time? Eat eucalyptus leaves, digest said leaves, and go back to sleep. That's it! The hour that we were there was not one of the 4 holy hours the koala is awake, so we got to watch them sleep all day. It's okay, if we were willing to pay $15 we could've got a picture with said sleeping koala. Lucky us! Some of the other animals were very awake. The kangaroos & wallabies were awake, and adorable. We even saw an albino kangaroo. We had some food for the animals, but the kangaroos could give two shits. They act like little furry celebrities lazing about waiting to be served by their human butlers. The other animals were very grateful to see us. The donkey, sheep, and alpaca ran across the stock like old relatives who haven't seen us in years. The emus were all smiles to see us! They looked so happy.

Enough! Tell Us About the Penguins!

Alright! Since you asked. The reason we went to Phillip Island is to see these ridiculously cute penguins. These penguins aren't the penguins you saw in the movie Happy Feet. They're only 30 cm tall and only come out at night from the ocean. These little penguins attract about 3000 visitors a night! They're ridiculously cute and have a huge fan base. We had to sit in these huge concrete bleachers off the beach to watch them come out at night. They didn't show up until after 9:30pm. As they came out of the water the seagulls were there to bully them a little, but they made it past the people and up the hill to their burrows. They came in groups of 3-8 typically. The best part was when we left. The boardwalk meanders through their burrows. Once they're on land they're very vocal and social creatures. They walk around and hang out in front of their burrows and chill with us afterwards.

Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures of the penguins, so here are some pictures from the beach walk and the nobbies.

After the wildlife day, we spent our last day in Melbourne trying to plan our second part of the journey and learn what it's like to do laundry at a laundry mat (cough $22.00). Man are we spoiled in Canada. Followed by our farewell dinner with our awesome Aussie friends Sam and Bryce! Hi Guys! We miss you already.

Next stop…. Great Ocean Road!

It took only one night (and 14 hours of sleep) to adjust to the time difference. Once we had our shoes on we explored Melbourne. Explored it so much, that Anna knows all the streets and can give people directions (talk about ego).

Highlights:

Yarra River Cruise
South Gate (Harbourfront Center; Shopping, Food - Amazing Food)
Melbourne Central (Downtown Center with a Coops Shot tower inside)
Federation Square (Where festivals happen)
ACMI (Australian Center for Moving Image)
Free City Trams
Secret hidden lanes
Meeting a pen pal of 12 years in person!
and probably about 2000 more things

Things we learned:

Dermologica is sold at pharmacies
Aussies wear jeans in +40 degrees like champs
Asian people with an aussie accent is a mind boggling experience
Food, any kind, is better here than, ANYWHERE
Left side driving is very confusing for pedestrians and jaywalkers *cough us cough* (not to mention the escalators too)
Not to mention Mr. Moo has his own adventures.

We are off to see the penguins tomorrow :) and than our Melbourne Adventures will be coming to an end, but we will be setting off to go on the Great Ocean Road Trip for a couple days, and after flying out to Christchurch, New Zealand.

Stay tuned!

AK & AB

Wow! Travelling can be exhausting. Anna and I have spent the last 28 hours in transit. We left Calgary at 3:30pm on January 1st and arrived in Melbourne at 10:30am January 3rd. That's right people! We time travelled into the future! Except instead of Doc Brown's Delorean we had a monstrous Airbus A380. This thing had around 600 passengers and probably about 15 bathrooms.

The fun and tension that we experienced was due to one of Anna's biggest pet peeves, lateness. It's one thing when a person is late for lunch. It's another when a plane is very late for a date. We were panicked because we had 3 connecting flights all scheduled no more than 2 hours apart. The first flight from Calgary to Vancouver was delayed by an hour, which was a little freak out, since we had 2 more connections. But we kept cool. Once we passed the US Customs in Vancouver (with Ali having a second screening test, because well he is of course a terrorist) we found out our second flight to LAX was delayed by another 90 minutes. Kept a little cool, but starting to freak just a little. Once we landed in super busy LAX, we found out we had to run around to a different terminal and our plane was boarding in 5 minutes. Kept our cool? Not even close. Not to mention the 45 minute security line up. The good news is that our plane hosts 600 people, so once we ran to the gate, we were technically on time.

16 hours on the (coolest, biggest) plane was a bit tiring. Once we landed in Melbourne, our minds stopped racing and we were safely on the ground without any more delays. Until of course the 2 hour line up at passport control. Once we finished that, we were excited to see Melbourne, didn't even matter that our luggage didn't make it.

Here we are! In Melbourne, let the adventures begin.

Everyone should follow Anna's Instagram because Mr. Moo is definitely becoming a celebrity amongst travel mascots. Instagram: Anna's user name is theannichka or follow online: http://web.stagram.com/n/theannichka/

Love,

AK & AB

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