Healesville Sanctuary and St Kilda

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Greetings from Down Under!

Three weekends ago, we headed out to the Healesville Sanctuary, which has an abundance of animals native to Australia. It was about an hour bus ride out of Melbourne through the Yarra Valley, which is known for its vineyards. It gave us a chance to check out the variations in animals and even up close. Up close enough to pet a wallaby. It was the most friendly and hopped right up to people. They pretty much are miniature kangaroos in appearance and there was a species that was even the size of a fat cat. It was so tiny and one even had a joey in the pouch moving around. We also were graced with the presence of a tasmanian devil and a wombat. i should mention that they were both sleeping!! So we had to imagine the real deal through the pictures we saw. From what we saw, kangaroos like to scratch themselves. There was a cage with huge bats, not the kind found at home which are dwarves compared to these. We could even walk into the cage but it wasn't my cup of tea so I steered clear. At lunch, this crazy birds came our way. I say crazy since they had beaks about 8 inches long that curved and were as annoying as pigeons. One managed to get a piece of bread and then spent its time running to avoid the other ones that wanted some of it. The sanctuary put on a "birds of prey" show so we went to that and learned a bit.

Two weekends ago was a chill weekend. I just went over to Mandy's apartment on the south side of the city, which translates into an hour and fifteen minute tram ride. She lives in the only building in the vicinity that reaches above 3 or 4 stories and her apartment is entirely windows on the outside edges. This gives a great view of the skyline of Melbourne as well as a touch of the bay. Ended up being lucky enough to head to another footy game. West Coast Eagles beat the Kangaroos. It was a bit more interesting with a little more roughing up of the players and one player's shorts even coming down exposing his undies. Just a small brawl.

And this past weekend, Beth and I headed to St Kilda which is right on the bay and has a beach. We were fortunate enough to have a gorgeous day with a ton of sun and not much of a breeze. The pier was absolutely gorgeous and boats lined up the docks. There's also a place right off the pier where the penguins come in at night. It's difficult to describe how serene the area was along the water. After we got our fill in of the water, we headed to the street with all the shops. So many bakeries to entice our tastebuds but we just did window shopping. We had dinner and then headed back home. The tram was full of surprises including two entirely drunk men, the first at 1:30 pm and the second on the way home. The one on the way home, his speech was so slurred, I'm not sure it was even close to english. Drinking on the trams isn't allowed but he managed to get on just to guzzle his wine. He got the lady next to him laughing, whom happened to missing some teeth. Let's just say, we got off at the next stop to catch the next one.

Other than that, we've just been planning our weekend trips around the city and the big one over holiday up to Queensland, which is our Mexico at home. 😉

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Photos

The dingo ate my baby...what a cliche
But this dingo looked quite content

Those are huge bats my friend
...and you could go in the cage

roos
he couldn't stop itching himself

if I remember right...tasmanian devil
since the real one was sleeping...

wallaby
it's a miniature one with a joey in its pouch