Australia, Part 2: Melbourne area

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As I said in the last blog, we spent some time visiting with people we’ve met on the road. Pete’s been to Sri Lanka several times since 1982; the first time he stayed at a guesthouse run by Punchi and Wansa. They no longer run the guesthouse, but we keep in touch and stay with them when we visit Sri Lanka. One of their sons moved to Melbourne with his wife. As it happens, Punchi and Wansa were visiting their son’s family in Melbourne when we were there, and their son had enough room for two more guests. We also had dinner with a fellow traveler we met in Turkey in 2005.

We ate some Sri Lankan food with the family. For a typical meal, a serving of rice is usually placed on the plate. Servings of side dishes are placed around the rice and with a clean right hand, you mix any combination of the side dishes with the rice, scoop up a fingerful, and eat. I tried eating some with a fork, but I couldn’t get the right mixture; it tasted better when mixed and eaten with fingers.

As we were planning where to go in Australia, Sydney had been experiencing an extreme heat wave (117F degrees), so we passed on Sydney (for now). Melbourne was having its own heat wave. One thing I was really looking forward to in Melbourne was going to the Healesville Animal Sanctuary. The day we went to Healesville, it was sunny and felt like 105F degrees. Because we’ve been in Seattle for so long, anything over 85F feels like a heat wave. I thought we were through with the heat when we left Asia; apparently not. We just drank lots of water and went very slowly. Many of the animals at Healesville were sleeping, trying to keep cool in the shade, but we did see our first koalas. Very cute. They’re usually eating or sleeping off the effects of their eucalyptus leaves (they sleep up to 20 hours a day). When they’re sleeping, they look like lumps In the trees. But they can move very fast. Pete has a movie of a trainer moving the food source, and the koala was up that tree in a jiffy! We even heard a koala grunting - it was a very strange sound.

We saw more koalas as we drove down the Great Ocean Road. When we saw cars parked by the eucalyptus trees along the road, we stopped and looked up. These were “wild” koalas - not in a zoo. Some were sleeping, but others were quite active, looking for their food. Very cute animals. We spent almost 90 minutes watching them.

The Great Ocean Road is a scenic road that goes along, surprise, the ocean, on the southern coast of Australia, and is about 150 miles in length. There are rock formations in the ocean formed by erosion; one group is called the 12 Apostles (although there are probably only 7 formations in that group), another is London Bridge (parts of which really did fall down in 1990, stranding two tourists who had been on the outer portion and had to be rescued by helicopter). The Great Ocean Road was built by returning soldiers between 1919 and 1932, and dedicated to soldiers killed in World War I. It was nice to see soldiers honored in such a way. It is gorgeous scenery, but most of the beaches were unsafe for swimming.

It was also the time of the super moon.

We had a hard time editing our koala pictures, so we’re just including the Melbourne area in this blog. From Melbourne, we flew to Cairns, along the east coast of Australia, with its easy access to the Great Barrier Reef ...

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Comments

[Douglas]

Great Travelogue !
Peter and Carolyn, Thanks for the great narrative, and the wonderful photos! I vaguely remember the 12 apostles from my trip to Oz many moons ago. And the cute Koalas! Great that you could see Punchi and Wansa again! Heidi and I have great memories of seeing them in 1988. You are indeed intrepid travellers, backpacking around the world again, as almost seniors! You are much tougher than I am. Looking forward to your New Zealand photos, especially of the Bovill family in Onewhere. Lets arrange a Skype session to commemorate the exactly 30 years since I saw them last! Douglas and Pinya