Australia Part 5 - Philip Island

---

Philip Island, more chocolate than I could shake a stick at and feeling old.

We arrived back in Melbourne tired but with that weird dream like awakness you get from not stopping for days. In my enthusiasm to get as much finished in Melbourne as possible, (as we were getting a bit bored of Melbourne now- so easily we loose interest in places these days) I’d booked us a car for the day so we could go to Phillip Island without thinking how tired we might be from coming back from Tassie. Oh well it was done now and considering we couldn’t get into our good old favourite dorm at the Miami hotel till 2pm we dropped our bags off and headed for the car rental place. I hadn’t realised how far away Philip Island was from central Melbourne so in the end we paid extra for unlimited mileage so that we weren’t bent over a barrel so to speak.

Of course for us it was breakfast time and we knew our first stop would be good old McDonalds. Before that though we had to navigate our way round the scary hook turns we mentioned before. Luckily on getting in the car I managed to find a sat nav in the glove box, which I half thought of borrowing “on a long term basis” but figured they probably knew it was in there. If they didn’t then that saved us a load as normally you get stung for hiring one. Anyway with this little diamond we were able to navigate the roads through Melbourne avoiding every right hand turn possible. It took a while having to keep going left but we made it to McDonalds and out the other side again woohooooo!!

So we were off and couldn’t believe how far it was to the beginning of the high way to Phillip Island, I was hoping this was worth it! Nath did the driving to start with and I had a go later on to give him a break. We arrived at the first animal sanctuary on the main road that the German couple from the ocean road had recommended. It was set up very much the same as the other animal places we had been and I was beginning to think why we had come, but the recommendation at the time had been enough for me to make a note of it. There were again kangaroos laying about the place, they seemed to get bigger every place we go!! We were given the option of food to feed them with but it was extra so having already fed most of the kangaroos in Australia I decided against it. I did how ever pay the extra to have a cuddle with an albino possum which I’d seen on the website as looking very cute.

It was a very small place, with some more unusual animals in it, mainly the dingoes and some emus. It also had Tasmanian devils which surprised me as they weren’t meant to live outside of Tasmania itself, turns out they were rehabilitation cases as with many of the animals at this sanctuary again, all I could think was wow there are a lot of animals being rehabilitated, every one of them must have been hit at some point in their life. The funniest part of the sanctuary was the bird enclosures, as usual with a talkative parrot that we spent ages trying to teach inappropriate words without much luck. The best part was a chicken Nath managed to photograph drinking out of a dripping tap, and a bird I managed to scare by peering round the corner at the wrong time, causing it to actually fall of its perch and run away into the back of the enclosure.

Anyway It wasn’t long before it was my turn to go and have my possum cuddle, the ranger who looked after her seemed to be from New Zealand so when I was stood with her I tried to make conversation about possums in NZ and having been there for 4 months…nothing…I think I’d caught her on an off day maybe (although I suspect it was more to do with the fact that the young girl at the desk hadn’t charged me enough for the cuddle). Anyway the possum was very cute but wasn’t interested in being near me or the food at all, so all in all the cuddle lasted a few minutes, which was just long enough for their photographer to take his shots (at a huge price) but luckily Nath got his own shots done!

With that interaction now complete we were ready to leave but before we did, we needed to find the crocodile that was on the map, which even though we’d walked round twice we couldn’t find. Turns out it was actually inside by the café, this poor single croc in a bath tub with lots of pot plant greenery around it. There was a sign next to him and next to a lot of other cages actually, that stated about how the sanctuary fulfils all its obligations for habitat enclosure etc so not to worry. They’d obviously had people ask or pass comment, and looking at it, I didn’t see the fuss really, yeah the place was old and probably didn’t make much money (especially when the staff undercharge you) but bar a few of the bird cages, which I always think look mean, it was a fine place…..kind of wish I’d paid my money for my photo to help them out now.

On to our next destination, the best place I’ve seen in Australia so far - the chocolate museum!! Now this wasn’t some lame place where they say you have freebies and you just get given a little bag when you enter of the broken bits and then find the actual shop is super expensive. Whilst the shop was super expensive the freebies were great, but you had to nearly complete the tour to find this out. We arrived just before a big group of girl guides so waited a moment for them to pass through, in the mean time I looked through peoples comments and notice an awful lot saying how stingy the freebies were so I was already a little bit disappointed. Anyway we walked round the displays, which were impressive; a life size chocolate “David”, Dam Edna’s face made out of wrapped chocolates and a huge chocolate miniature railway. In one room they explained about how it’s made etc, so I fained interested, read the information briefly and then moved on, each time hoping the next room was the freebie room. One room did have some little games inside where you could win chocolate but by the time I got to one, some fat kid had pretty much emptied it and another got stuck and stopped working before I got anywhere. I was beginning to panic; if this was the freebie chocolate I was missing out and would demand my money back.

Luckily we moved on to the next room, which was like Charlie’s chocolate factory with a waterfall of chocolate, mmmmmm, and then finally some little robotic gismo, that collected chocolate coins for you with the press of a button and then just dropped them down a shoot for you to collect- bingo!!! I stayed here for ages, sometimes pushing kids out the way when they started moaning, something about “the big lady keeps taking all the chocolate” - grow up kid, life’s hard and this chocolate is mine, I paid the entrance fee not my mum!!! Sorry chocolate turns me into a little bit of a monster, anyway I had so much of this that by the time I entered the next room I was beginning to feel a little bit ill…..kind of wish I’d waited a bit longer, in front of me was the best looking chocolate machine ever, a conveyer belt that constantly poured chocolate with a lever where you could spell stuff out, it was like the best etcha sketch ever!! The machine was having problems and there was a maintanence guy there working on it who Nath started chatting too. Nath persisted long enough with the guy that despite it not working properly to let him and me have a go. So after Nath bumbled his way through trying to spell something I took over and managed to write “Mandy and Nath @ Melbourne”, I had to do the “at” as the machine stuck at that point and poured a big lump of chocolate out. Anyway once written it then moved down the belt and slowly, very bloody slowly dried and came out the other end. At the time of writing our names we were the only people in there, so I was looking forward to trying to get our names off whole, but then more fat kids entered and started slavering at the thought of eating my art work. I know they didn’t know I’d just made this beautiful piece but I was prepared to knock them all down to get to it!!! Before our names made it to the end though, I spotted a sight of sacrilege, all the previous scribbles just piled up in a box at the end of the belt, for free, yes, but just left there. If only I’d had a bag or box or sock or anything to put it all in I would have dished it all up and taken it away. On speaking to the staff it got worse, they get rid of all the writing if no one eats it!!!!what!!!!!!!

Anyway finally the glorious moment came, and our names flopped off the belt, but broke as they did so, I’d obviously made it all too long, but I managed to salvage some of our names and devour them before the fat kids got there. Now at this point I was really beginning to feel sick, but I was torn, I couldn’t bare to see all that chocolate go to waste, so I kept going, but in the end had to admit defeat, I’d started to get all dizzy and figured that probably wasn’t a good sign- so in conclusion, best place ever!!!!

After all the chocolate I was starting to feel a little worse for ware and the early morning was beginning to catch up on us, but we still hadn’t quite reached the end of Phillip Island and seen the penguins etc. so we drove on not quite sure what we were gonna do but knowing that after coming this far and hiring a car we should at least try and stay out a little longer (even though I think both of us would have easily gone to bed). We arrived at Nobby's point and spent a small amount of time in the gift shop and penguin/seal museum. The place ran penguin tours but considering we’d already seen them in Omaru we decided we wouldn’t pay the stupid amount of money they were asking, so instead we went on a board walk to see the coast line and see if we could spot any of the seals etc ourselves. We hadn’t walked far when we spotted our first little blue penguin sat waiting for his mate to come home with the dinner. This was about as close as we’d been so far to one of these little fellas and we hadn’t paid for it this time - typical!!

Anyway after a brief walk around the coast, I say brief as it was bloody freezing by this time, and having seen no seals but a couple of penguins, we figured we’d done enough for our day to Phillip Island and heading back knackered to Melbourne, to face the gauntlet of hook turns again but this time in the dark!! Luckily the good old sat nav didn’t let us down and we managed to get back to the hostel without having to cross any of them. So after a quick subway sandwich for dinner, we headed to bed, as I closed my eyes all I could see still was the chocolate conveyor belt that made me heave a little each time I thought about it.

So we stayed in Melbourne for the next few days as with Tasmania out the way we had the rest of our tour to figure out. So between days on end in the library using the free internet and general stressing over making sure we were making the most of our time, we managed to book a train pass that would take us all the way up to cairns for half the price of any car or van rental etc and through some negotiating we got our china leg of the tour finished and booked too. I had one little bit of excitement in the library to break up the days; the terminals all have numbers on them and a maximum log on time of 1 hour before the next person can reserve the computer. I waited for mine as usual and found ahead of time that it was now shutting down ready for the next user. There was a bag on the side but I figured they would be back for it at some point so I continue to log on. Shortly afterwards a student came back and there was an awkward moment where she said she hadn’t finished and why was I on the computer. I told her it had started to re boot so I didn’t know that, at which point she went to check what was going on with the staff at the desk. So politely as usual, I sat and waited, wasting minutes of my time until we found out what the issue was, eventually she came over and I asked what the outcome was. The young girl collected up her things and said “the technician said they don’t just turn themselves off so you must have done it, but don’t worry about me, hope you have a nice day” and stormed off…..what a little bitch I thought, if someone had logged it off it wasn’t me!!

On one of our last days in Melbourne, we were due to meet up with Amanda and her family again at a aussies rules football match, but also with another of Nath’s family friends (as we’d just found out they happened to be in the area on holiday - small world). Unfortunately although these social events broke up our time in Melbourne and were a brilliant distraction from our boredom of planning and booking, it just so worked out that they both occurred on the same day. We met Sally and Toby about 11am at the same place we’d met Amanda and Graham when we first arrived, we’d arranged this and it made us feel like we were locals now. We’d met them at Federation Square where there was a lot going on because of the comedy festival. As we were talking about a million things having just met up, one guy came over with a clip board and a manic look on his face and said “hi folks, any of you ever wanted to be on TV?”. Now one thing I’ve picked up on so far in OZ is that a lot of Aussies use a lot of swear words for everyday use (much like myself to be honest) and they tend to only respond to the same sort of talk so, when asked this question, and feeling he was very rude interrupting our meeting, I replied “Fuck no!”, to which he replied, “oh ok thats pretty definite” and walked off!!

We took Sally and Toby to the same restaurant as we’d been on our first day in Melbourne (it felt like we were taking our new partner on the same place we went with our ex!!) the Vietnamese noodle bar. I’d mentioned to them about the service there but not said much, I wanted them to see for themselves, and like a good restaurant with awards for its food, that dishes out great meals night after night, we weren’t disappointed buy the same enthusiastic service we got this time. After some grunting, tutting and general eye rolling we managed to order our food and get those plastic cups to drink out of without much agro, good thing the food was nice!! Sally and I had noticed a couple of chocolate cafes on the way up to the noodle bar, and the family they were staying with had also written some notes on the best places to go for pudding, so we all marched off down the streets of Melbourne on look out for one of these great stops. Well about an hour later and having walked the same streets over and over, we still hadn’t seen any of them. We were getting tired and a bit miffed at how the streets of Melbourne could possibly be moving around as we walked them (it took us half the time to realise the mall we were looking for wasn’t a shopping centre but a street of shops!) so in the end we walked all the way back to the noodle bar and ate cake at a café two shops down!!

It was now getting on for 4pm when we were due to meet Amanda and the family, although we were a little tired that wasn’t what was concerning us it was more the fact we were meeting them for dinner and were still stuffed from noodle, tea and cake!! It reminded me of that episode of “the vicar of dibley” where she has to eat 3 Xmas dinners in one day to be polite. So we said our goodbyes to sally and Toby and promised to meet up with all of them (including the 4 boys this time) when we were all in Sydney later in the month - made us miss home a little. Anyway it was getting busy outside Flinders Station by the time we met up with Amanda and her family, as it was footy night tonight and everyone was getting excited. There was quite a buzz about including a load of frozen Barbie dolls in blocks of ice (I don’t know why!) all over the streets - we were really looking forward to our footie match later that night. In the mean time we took our time choosing somewhere to eat, if only to help our digestion and make room for our next meal!

We ended up eating at some up market meat restaurant where Nath had a massive steak burger and I opted for the salad to try and squeeze it in to my stomach. Unfortunately it was the biggest bloody salad I’ve ever seen so still I looked like I’d hardly managed a mouthful by the end. So with another meal squeezed in we headed off for the match along with most of Melbourne by the looks of it. I made sure I bought by inflatable finger before we headed inside, we’d been told the place was huge inside and it was massive but I’m not sure it was any bigger than Wembley. It was a match that was half way through the season so not all the seats were taken, but we still had pretty good ones at one end of the pitch. Now can I explain what this mad game is, I’ll try; it’s a mix between football and rugby on an oval pitch where the guys catch the ball and have scrums like rugby but can kick the ball in any direction like football, but also carry it around and bounce it like a netball. They have posts like rugby with scoring like tries etc but the funniest bits are that water girls and coaches can run on whenever and “service” the players, the ball is funnily shaped so when it bounces on the floor it bounces off in different directions, making them all look like a bunch of girls who fumble over trying to catch a ball, and the referees throw the ball back onto the pitch by launching it over their heads backwards, which means that they looked like some “day release” resident whose wandered onto the pitch!! Does that all make sense?

At half time we had the obligatory donought which had bright blue icing on it, which didn’t taste as good as it looked, and of course a couple of properly cold beers. I hate sport but had a great time and I think the guys trying to catch the ball like pansies made it all the more enjoyable, made me feel like I could have played the game! Of course the other interesting thing about the game was watching people get so het up by the players and the referees to the point that they go mental. I could understand how people get in to trouble at matches as they really get worked up whilst watching the match. I tried not to laugh when a couple of guys behind us started calling one player a “see you next Tuesday”, in fairness he did miss a really easy goal but it wasn’t a huge deal I didn’t think. It was like a turrets convention for most of the game!! In the end my inflatable finger didn’t seem to help the game and we lost, we had chosen to support Carlton.

With our introduction to aussies rules football over we headed back to our hostel through the bustle of people leaving the stadium and said our goodbyes to Amanda and co; it was sad to say goodbye, as they had really helped us settle into Melbourne and aussies life easily when we arrived, so thank you guys, maybe see you back on a visit to the UK one day.

We didn’t do much over the next 2 days that’s is blog worthy except for the following; before we went to Tasmania we had decided that we would not use the stupidly tiny and messy kitchen at the Miami hostel, but whilst we were away in Tasmania something must have happened that caused everyone staying there to actually stop being scummy bastards and clean up after themselves. Anyway one evening when we were making dinner I was watching something called “secret diary of a teenager” and I had one of those life affirming moments, when all the travelling we had done really came into perspective……no I don’t mean it was an advert for those less fortunate or a documentary about how lucky we are; it was the moment I realised that for all of our thoughts that we were getting older, they were bloody true!!! On this programme the MOTHER happened to be played by the same girl I used to watch in Dawson’s creek when they and I were younger….it was so gutting and now it seemed it was official, I’am getting old!!! So I’m now going with Nath’s philosophy that “you’re only as old as the GIRL you feel”, which for me the man I feel happens to have the mental age of 12 so I needn’t worry about getting older again for a good few years!

---

Photos

P1120232
Beckham down under!!

P1120234
Drunk kangaroo

P1120235
No wonder he is lying down, who wouldn’t be when you have to carry them around all day

P1120240
Weird little albeno head sticking out - not sure the kangaroo following this one around is the father!!

P1120242
Nath makes a friend

P1120245
kissy kissy

P1120247
Dingo having a sleep

P1120252
Ever seen a chicken drink from a tap!!

P1120271
Evil looking kaola paw!! grrrr

P1120274
Possum holding time!

P1120285
Mandy returns to the mother ship!

Comments

[Donna]

Blending in
Wow love the hat, I think you've found your ideal style! As they say, when in Rome..