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Published: August 19th 2006
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As I think I mentioned in my last blog, the plan for the next few weeks is to do a Melbourne tourist attraction each week. This week saw Chris and myself take a trip to Phillip Island a small island off the south coast of Victoria (Victoria is the state in-which Melbourne lies). Matt wasn’t really very interested in this particular adventure so and worked the previous night so we left him back at the ranch.
In true Aussie tour style Chris and I went to see Matt at work the previous night (Sunday night) at Q-Bar, where funnily enough the whole Australian Big Brother house were hanging out after it’s recent final, drinking and being that kind of famous for being normal, nobodies that Big Brother is famous for. It’s nothing like in the UK though, there wasn’t one single member of paparazzi waiting outside or trying to get a drunken photo of Jamie (the winner here). They were able to relax and act like idiots without having their picture printed all over next day’s tabloids. Anyway, because BB (Big Brother) has been on here at a time when we are normally eating dinner… and I hate to say
this, we did actually feel like we knew them all and knew all their names, eek! shouldn’t write this kind of thing for the world to see, but hey there it is! It was quite strange to see them in real-life and most of them are pretty normal people rather than the whacko’s UK BB puts in the house.
Anyway back to our trip. We weren’t due for departure until 12pm so that gave us a bit of recovery time to nurse our hangovers in bed. We were then collected from Peterpan’s travel shop and Internet café in the standard style tour bus. There wasn’t really anyone very interesting to share the experience with on the bus, but as we slept our way to the first stop it didn’t really matter. First stop after a 2hour drive out of the city in mixed and confused sunny/raining weather was Maru Wildlife Park. Chris has had a disaster with the memory card in his camera and has lost the majority of photos from the East Coast, much to everyone’s disappointed, as I’m sure you can sympathise with, so his mission was to replace his pictures with Kangaroos and Koalas, which he
was able to do here at Maru, smiles all round, even by the Kangaroos. It was a strange little park, but in our hung over way we made it quite funny between us, but finding a lot of our witty banter and jokes were falling on deaf ears and Chinese people, that don’t speak English, ah well we laughed our way round, in the very cold wind, hence; “so where are the polar bears kept?”
Not to mention one of the highlights of the whole trip; the farting Wombat! "name that tune in one!" another joke falling on deaf ears! It was very funny though.
We were then given some food, included in the $99 paid for the trip, which was very nice and then off to Phillip Island.
We stopped at a blustery surf beach called Woolami beach, which was awesome, just to be back at a surf beach was great so we did it ‘Coogee style’ and ran towards the ocean stripping as we went only to feel the cold wind against our chests and give up half way.
Then it was on to a place humorously named the ‘Knobbies’ that was even windier and even colder, but
quite beautiful scenery. After some coffee and biscuits we were taken to the award winning Phillip Island penguin exhibition, where we could learn about these little penguins, they are actually called Little Penguins too, standing at only 30cm high. The whole attraction of the place is based around these little birds waddling out of the sea after a day of fishing and running across the beach to their burrows within the grass and beach land. They have built a very ‘subtle’ concrete stadium on the beach (like all natural landscapes?) to be able to view the penguins, but they only come out of the water when night has fallen so they aren’t exposed to predators, just a couple of hundred tourists and a beach lit by flood lights instead! They have very strict rules at the attraction that you aren’t allowed to use any photographic equipment at all, so no flashes, no filming etc. as to not disturb or scare these little penguins. The budding filmmaker I am I didn’t pay $100 for a trip where I can’t document the main attraction, so as my video camera is very small, I cunningly tucked it away inside my jacket and like
a secret spy opened the zip slightly in order to capture the little critters, haha!
As nighttime fell along with the light rain and freezing cold wind and quite a long wait the first group of Little Penguins began to appear out of the ocean. They were so funny, one or two would pop out, waddle around a bit then something would startle them and they’d run for their lives back into the sea, it was quiet amusing. I can’t imagine why they’d get startled when in perfect synchronisation everyone watching would go “ooohh” “aaahhhh”.
The weather began to get worse we began to loose interest as the Little Penguins were really taking their time running across the beach petrified of all the tourists, but we did stay until one group made their way bravely across the sands and just in front of us. Then the rain became too much and the stand as empty in minutes as we all huddled and waddled back the warmth of the exhibition, much like the Little Penguins to their burrows. With the warmth slowly making it’s way back through the body it was time to depart Phillip Island stopping for pizza (also
included in the $99) along the way and back to St. Kilda.
It wasn’t exactly the Great Barrier Reef but it was still enjoyable none-the-less.
Everything in Melbourne, we each feel, has now come into place and we are very much enjoying our time here. Our days of not going out have also been solved, as on weekends Matt and myself now take full advantage of free drinks at work and then make our way to 161 bar with a couple of friends from work to visit Chris and then get more free, or at least, very cheap drinks, so we can still enjoy ourselves and not really spend any money, perfect! The only thing is that this doesn't encourage us to get an early night, in fact on Saturday we didn't actually roll in bed until 11am on Sunday, taking full advantage of 24hr drinking. Coming out of a dark bar to daylight was a very strange experience, but pretty funny.
Unexpected a few months ago, our time here in Melbourne is going to be sorely missed!!!
Next week 'the Great Ocean Road' this will be awesome... Road Trip!!!
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