Advertisement
Published: January 17th 2007
04/01/07 - 10/01/07 Melbourne
We first met the Manzins outisde the Druk airline office inBangkok on the morning of the coup. They invited us to join them when our travels finally reached Victoria so we graciously accepted and actually settled in one location for a whole 6 days and nights!
The Manzin's home is in the northern Melbourne suburb of Eltham, a beautiful leafy green area perfectly situated between the attractions of the city of Melbourne and the Yarra wine valley, complete with koala spotting in the gum trees just 5 minutes walk from their house. UK animal and bird life of surburbia seems tame in comparison to the possums growling in the trees at night and cookatoos and king parrots feeding off the bird table.
We hit the Yarra valley sampling the range of wines and purchasing a cheeky little number to go with our classic Aussie Bar-B in the evening. At the Healsville animal sanctuary, the heat sapped our strength as we struggled to walk around in humid temperatures in the mid/late 30's. The birds of prey show was made more fascinating by the presence of a 'wild' wedge tailed eagle disrupting the show's eagle from
Aposltes of the Great Ocean Road
There used to be 12 but not any more!it's normal show flight. A tiny spot in the sky circled lower and lower as a male eagle approached to warn off the show eagle which the staff retreated back into its home pretty quickly.
Melbourne is a beautiful city, and as many cities we visited, has a botanical gardens and river passing through it's center. We played dodge with the trams when thinking you are on a pedestrian only stretch of mall!! and wondered through the gardens to the war memorial and art gallery. In one of those strange incidents that happens, Jen suddenly delared how
weary she felt (not a word she often uses) just at the exact moment that we passed a statue in the park that turned out to be of sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop.
Robin Manzin tirelessly drove us all day so that we could see the arches and stacks of the Great Ocean Road and Jen was in koala heaven on the way back as we passed through Sausage Gully where approximately 30 koalas sat in trees alarmingly close to the roadside. Stunningly there were no Koala warning signs, despite seeing koala warning road signs all over Australia and never seeing a
The Manzins
Our hospitable hosts! single one nearby, at Sausage Gully they are everywhere...and no signs! An echidna at the roadside completed a great day of wildlife spotting.
On our first day in Melboune we had climbed a fire tower and looked over the area in clear skies. 3 days later we had very hazy firesmoke skies. Bush fires provide beautiful sunsets with the sun glowing as a red ball in the sky, but poor visibilty for sceninc drives along the cliffs. As we drove down the Mornington peninsular, the sea and sky were both a blanket of white. It didn't spoil our view underwater, however as we dangled on buoy lines on the back of a boat, snorkling with the bottle nosed dolphins and seals.
Two culinary secrets of Melbourne are the Saturday morning market, perfect for a tasty breakfast and the stalls of fresh seafood, fruit and cheeses and the plethora of BYO Vietnamese restaurants.
Asian food is also plentiful in St Kilda, where we dined and were nearly blown from the jetty by the strong evening winds. Our walk rounded us past the 2 infamous drinking venues of 'The Prince of Wales' and 'The Esplanade' famous for it's live
Flower Clock
in the gardens in Melbourne city centre music - an institution that has seen many famous Aussie bands pass through.
On our last evening in town we headed for coffee at the Crown Casino complex at the South Bank and watched the 'pigeon roasters' - huge fireballs that shoot out of a row of sculpted pillars, high into the sky. You can feel the heat from the fire as they light up the night sky.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.195s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 13; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0659s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
baon Von Bonnett Hausen
non-member comment
Luv toys.
guys - just seen the Echinida warning sign - I may have some sort of porn vision going on here, but it looks remarkably like a 'adult massage' toy Ive seen advertised (Aherm) in adult interest pamphlets - I can see why aussis seem soo happy now! Take care funsters.