Weribee and relatives

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Back to Melbourne and it was time to relax and put our exploring into the hands of Alice’s mum’s cousin, a 2nd cousin I guess. Having left Ireland and moved permanently out to Australia, on what was supposed to be just a short trip in the 70’s I can understand some of the anxiety Alice’s parents had about us coming here. Not quite a £10 pomme, Helen fell in love with the country as any young traveller could. She showed us some photos of her travels and unsurprisingly there was the trademark hold a koala shot, nothing changes.

It was quite an anxious time stood at the station to meet someone we knew little about and had not seen Alice for 21 years, but it was all behind us quite quickly and we were all soon sat sipping morning tea, as families should.

We spent our first day attending some charity open gardens and meeting some locals and just generally catching up with stories.

On the Monday morning we were picked up from our hostel in the city and treated to a trip to the zoo at Weribee Park. An open range zoo, no riffles allowed, we all piled into a tour bus and it drove us through the open paddocks of animals, a lot like West Midlands zoo but on Australian scale. We saw loads of African and American animals, giraffes and rhinoceros along with loads of zebra.

Attached to the zoo is an old manor house, well 1800, it was built for an English family and the original estate spread half way across Victoria. The house then fell into the hands of the church before being brought by the government as placed under the equivalent of the English National Trust. Unfortunately the building looked a little tired, a few parts had been restored cheaply to demonstrate the original but for us it just didn’t seem to measure up to great British Stately homes. Perhaps it was just too new.

On the way back to the city we took a detour to Williamstown, the original landing in Victoria. With it’s old beauty and charm it’s not hard to see why this bay side city is one of the most sort after areas of the Melbourne suburbs. It was where our host’s husband was brought up and we saw his old family house. It was a really nice end to the day.

It was soon time to say good bye to Melbourne and Victoria, a month well spent and lots of experiences and stories to take on with us. Just time for a flutter at the casino which we got 300% return on our bet, yes $1 in and $3 out, and a trip to the Melbourne museum, but we couldn’t find the sink of number 26 Ramsey street, although the other exhibits were interesting.

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Photos

so early
the horses still had their PJs on