I Guess I'm 17 Again!?

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After our few days in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, we decided to make the fun seven hour drive from Canberra to Melbourne and I had my first taste of driving in Australia this time around. The drive from Canberra to Melbourne is quite boring- you drive through miles and miles of bush land with nothing really significant to see. We arrived in Melbourne late in the afternoon and attempted to get to our hotel. The problem with Melbourne is there are trams that go throughout the city so it makes driving especially difficult. When you add all this together with the wrong side of the road thing, it can be quite confusing. We made it to the hotel, but my dad definitely had some not nice things to say on the way! Good thing I was driving and not him. We hurried to get ready to meet my parents' friend Denise for dinner that night. Denise lives in Melbourne and my parents met her on the Scandinavian cruise they did this past summer. Denise is so "Aussie" to me- she comes complete with all the Aussie slang you could ever want, she was such a firecracker and we had a great time at dinner with her. Plus, it was really cool for my parents to be able to see one of their new friends in Oz. After dinner Denise took us on a small tour of the city. She took us to the oldest pub in Melbourne to see "Chloe." We didn't really know what to expect except that "Chloe" is notorious in Melbourne and hangs out at that particular bar all day. When we walked in to the room "Chloe" was a giant painting of a naked woman. At least the boys liked it! Since Denise loved the casino and so does Jeff, we headed to the biggest casino in Australia, the Crown. Jeff lost $100 in about 10 minutes bringing his Australia winnings down to $700. I was pissed at him, but he is still doing pretty well. I stayed with my parents in Melbourne at the Crown Plaza hotel, which is next door to the casino. Every time we would take the short cut through the casino to the hotel I would get carded. Now the legal gambling age is 18 here in Australia, so that meant that every time I went through the security was assuming I was 17! I will take it as a compliment of my young looking skin. At least I moisturize for a reason right?!

The next day we headed off for a full fledged mommy Lundgren tour of Melbourne and for all of you who know my mom, you know it was jam packed! We started at the Flinders St. train station and the gorgeous cathedral, St. Paul's, across the street, then we boarded the free tourists’ trams for a quick spin around the city. We stopped at Queen Victoria market so my parents could do some souvenir shopping. The Queen Victoria market is filled with over 1,000 stall and holds everything you could possibly imagine. It took a while to walk down all the aisles and see everything it had to offer. Then it was back on the free tram and back to the hotel to pick up our car.

We set out by car to Phillip Island, an island about two hours from Melbourne. We arrived in the town just in time to see a classic car show, which both my dad and Chris loved. It was pretty weird seeing an American classic car show in Australia. Then we did a short walk out to the pier to see the coastline. When we arrived on the pier we saw a group of kids that were jumping their BMX bikes off the pier and into the water. This is the kind of stuff I love about Australia. You would never see this in the states- the kids would have been arrested after their first attempt, but in Australia they just don't care. Everything is super laid back. So here these kids were, jumping their bikes off the pier and enjoying their summer vacation. We grabbed some Subway sandwiches after that and headed up to the look out point on the tip of the island for pretty views of the coastline.

Then it was off to the main attraction of Phillip Island: the march of the penguins. Yep, that's right! Every night hundreds of little fairy penguins come on shore to nest for the night. My parents had arranged for us to be with our own private guide so we could get some background on the event. We listened to our guide tell us about the area and let us know that we picked a great time to come because more penguins are coming to land to nest since they just had babies and must feed them. Right as it got dark we were able to watch hundreds of little bluish penguins come out of the water and start the journey to their nest for the night. The Little Penguin is the smallest species of penguin. In Australia, they are referred to as Fairy Penguins because of their tiny size. They slowly come out of the water, coming in and out until one guy finally decides it's safe and then they all start to wonder on to shore. From there they march to their nest. Some penguins march over one mile and often uphill to get to their nest for the night. By the dawn all the penguins are back in the water and will return the next night for another rest. The penguins were so cute and it was hilarious to watch them parade out of the ocean and up onto shore. Our guessed that there were about 700 penguins the night we were there. Since there were chicks waiting in the nest, we would often see the chicks come out and approach any adult penguin for food. However, if it is not their child they will not feed it and will actually nip it on the head. We saw a few hungry chicks get nipped on the head. Obviously we were not allowed to take photos of this so I don't have photos of this event, but it was pretty neat!

The next morning we left Melbourne to head south to the Great Ocean Road. The Great Ocean Road is a 243 km stretch of road along the south-eastern coast of Australia between the Victorian cities of Torquay and Warrnambool. The road was constructed to provide work for returning soldiers and dedicated as a Memorial to those killed in the First World War. It is one of Australia's great scenic coastline drives, comparable to our highway 1 in California. Torquay is famous for Bell's Beach, the most well known surf break in Australia and the sight of many surf competitions. The whole city is filled with surf outlets and stuff like that. Of course, we had to stop and see it, but the surf was flat! As we continued on the great ocean road, we had quite a surprise. We saw many cars stopped along the highway and people looking up in the trees. I immediately said, "Koalas, do you want to stop?" Of course we did because koalas are super hard to see in the wild, but there they were. Probably about ten koalas in various trees right along the highway. They were just sitting there sleeping or eating, what koalas do best! We stayed there for about 15 minutes watching them and thinking how lucky we were to actually see some in the wild!

The most famous spot on the Great Ocean Road is the 12 Apostles. We reached them after lunch just in time to have the sun perfectly shining and ruining all our photos! The twelve apostles are 12 limestone pillars free standing in the water. They are absolutely gorgeous and so cool to see. They are eroding quite quickly though because of the pounding surf, but they look unchanged from five years earlier when I was there! As you continue down the Great Ocean Road you can see Loch Ard Gorge, the Grotto and London Bridge. There are so many cool limestone formations. The limestone mixed with the turquoise seas make for a great sight. The road is beautiful.

We spent that night in Pt. Campbell before continuing back to Melbourne the next day. We saw a few more sights on the Great Ocean Road that morning and then headed inland for the faster, less winding route back to the city. Along the way we stopped at a good Australian winery and did some free wine tasting. Got to love free wine tasting! We made it back to the city that evening in time for mom to grab some Australian Open memorabilia (the tennis match that starts here in a few days) and to see the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground. There was a cricket match going on so my parents got the full flavor of crazy Aussie cricket fans painting their faces with the union jack and Southern Cross. My mom thought they were hilarious. Since this was their last night in Melbourne before they flew to the outback, we decided to have dinner in the pub with Chloe. My mom finally had her Aussie meat pie and my dad had the classic bangers and mash (sausage and mashed potatoes). Then they were off and we were staying in Melbourne for three more nights before we all met up again in Queensland.

Since my parents had been running us rampant, we decided to just chill out for the next few days. We walked around the city and did some much needed internet time to try to sort out the rest of our trip. We met some cool people at our hostel and played in the hostel trivia night, winning three free pitchers of beer. Go Team! One night we met our friends Renee and John, who live here in Melbourne, for drinks. We had met them in Xi'an at our hostel and have kept in touch ever since. We met them at a bar in Federation square and caught up on how their travels met after we left and visa versa. The bar we were at ended up having free beer tasting so we partook in that and then they came back to our hostel bar for $5 pitchers of beer. It was really cool to be able to meet someone so far away and keep in touch all the way until now. They are really nice people.

The next day, we woke up and checked out of our hostel room and headed off into the city to try to win a handful of first row tickets to Wicked- the Broadway musical was here in Melbourne. Unfortunately we didn't win, so we spent the day walking through the city and relaxing at the movies. That night, Renee and John picked us up again and took us to the hotel. We had a late flight to Cairns to meet up with my parents.

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Photos

Dead baby penguin
The only picture I was allowed to take of a penguin

Comments

[Mom]

What fun!
We did have a great time, didn't we??? Loved this blog!