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Published: August 23rd 2005
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the tears of a clown...
one of the decorated bollards in geelong ...oh my!!
update! (another long entry, i think this may be a trend)
ooooh, ok, first thing's first, i've booked my flight to alice springs! i leave melbourne next wednesday morning at 8.35, and should get to alice at about 11am. gonna stay there for a few days, get my bearings, have a look around, then i'm going to (hopefully) be going on a camping safari to uluru (ayers rock) for a few days!! i just need to book the camping trip, then i'm all sorted!! very very excited about it all! will keep you updated...
trying to remember what i've been upto since i last wrote in here!
ok, sunday:
we went on a little mini beach tour which was really good, even though it really isn't beach weather!!! the views more than made up for the fact that we couldn't actually go in the water. well, i guess we could have done, but i wouldn't fancy it much in this weather!!!
first stop was geelong. geelong is great and i imagine that in the summer it is totally how you would imagine australia to be - palm trees line the beach, and its so
more bollards!
with geelong beach front in the background amazingly clean. they have an outdoor swimming pool there which is actually part of the sea that has been netted off. all around geelong, along the beach front, they have these bollard things which are actually quite well known around victoria, or so i'm led to believe by the amount of photos of them that i've seen in tourist brochures! they're all painted to look like people in different clothes and costumes. absolutely brilliant photo opportunities! my favourite was the rollerskating crying clown 😊 there must have been about 40 of these bollards, and i don't think that we saw them all.
next, we drove down to torquay which is where the great ocean road starts. apparently they have some great surfing beaches there, and, despite the weather, there were actually quite a few people surfing!! it was amazing to watch - i know that if i tried i wouldn't even be able to stand up! although i may just give it a try when i get to queensland... could be quite amusing - watch this space, hehe! the beaches down in torquay are beautiful, very picturesque indeed!
we drove on to ocean grove, more picturesque beaches, and
then to queenscliff and lonsdale point. lonsdale point is where 'the rip' is - apparently its one of the most dangerous stretches of water to boats in australia. its the entrance to port phillip bay which is the bay melbourne is in. we went up to the viewing platform and you can see right to the other side of the rip.
tuesday - we actually had some nice weather! (well, by nice i mean that i could walk around without a jacket on, and the sunglasses actually got a look in 😊 oh the novelty!) i went into melbourne and had tram adventures. adventures in that i got on the right tram going the wrong way and didn't realise until it stopped at the other side of the city and i had to try and find my way back. hm. wanted to go up to fitzroy and have a look around, but by the time i actually managed to figure out where i was and how to actually get back into the city centre it was kind of late, so i decided to go the the immigration museum instead, cultered lady that i am, hehe.
to be honest i
kookaburra sits in the old gum treeeeeeee!
well, kinda. a blue winged kookaburra at melbourne zoo. wasn't expecting much, but it was brilliant! and i got in for free - yay for student cards! it was so interesting and i managed to spend over 3 hours wandering around! (eep, geek 😊) it's in the old customs house of melbourne, and that in itself was interesting, the building was so ornate and beautiful. the main exhibition was all about immigration to australia through time, there were loads of different case study type things and stories about people who had come to australia from all over the world. didn't manage to get around the whole museum though, so i went back on wednesday to finish it off 😊 definitely worth visiting!
wednesday - i finally saw kangaroos! and koalas! and wombats! (i cheated but shhhh, don't tell anyone - i went to melbourne zoo 😊)
ok, so i'm not actually a huge fan of zoos, but i had the best day! it was a really really nice zoo (of course, using the "wonderful" whipsnade as my reference point...), set in a kind of tropical park sort of setting, palm trees and crazy plants everywhere. there were little lake areas dotted around the zoo too, with turtles
poser!
it's almost as if he knew i was taking photos... (a meerkat at melbourne zoo) and birds and stuff.
the meerkats were brilliant, absolutely hilarious creatures! they were all playing and running around, it was great 😊 particularly enjoyed the reptile house, the butterflies (they were in a sort of enclosed aviary area and you could walk through and they were all just flying around and landing on you. there were so manyn different types, all pretty colours!) and the lion walk - you could walk right over the lion enclosure, all the lions were looking up at you, got some wicked photos! twas a little bit scary though :s
lunch was horrible 😞 overpriced and yucky. so i wasn't overly upset when a seagull landed on my table and took it upon himself to steal half of it!!! cheeky git! still, source of much amusement for me and the other people sitting outside.
thursday - wanted a lazy day, was feeling a little bit homesick 😞 got up late and decided to walk into werribee and treat myself to posh lunch to cheer myself up 😊 went to this little (apparently award winning) cafe restaurant place called raffael's - oh my god, i haven't had food that good in i can't even
roooooaaaar!
'nuff said :) remember how long! and the coffee was brilliant too 😊 when i was on my travels around town i found a little shop called the cheesecake shop (no prizes for guessing what they sell :P) and couldn't resist buying one to take back to nick and rachael's with me 😊 they were the hugest yummiest looking cheesecakes, like, ever! and they had all different flavours. brilliant stuff 😊
today, the weather was rubbish 😞 it's been raining all day, but i trekked into melbourne regardless. cue more tram adventures, grrr :s ok, i must have got on the wrong tram about 4 times today, the most noteable time being the one where i was about 5 miles out of melbourne before i realised that i didn't have a clue where i was and where i wanted to be was actually in the opposite direction. the tube in london is so much easier 😞 anyhoo, i eventually reached my destination, brunswick street in fitzroy, which all my guide books raved about. ahem. whatever. maybe it was the rain. or maybe it was just the fact that it was rubbish. it's supposed to be 'very bohemian and alternative', kind of camden-esque i guess. really really wasn't. so yeah, all that hassle with the bloody trams (today and the other day!!) for nothing! i walked down one side of the street, back up the other then got back on the tram (right one this time, yay me!) in short, brunswick street, big disappointment in my opinion. ah well!
when i got back to the city centre i went to degraves street (one of the little back alley sort of streets that isn't actually a back alley and is totally packed with cafes) which is supposedly
the place in melbourne to go for good coffee. i wasn't let down 😊 (thank god, don't think i couldn't have handled the disappointment after fitzroy street) the coffee was brilliant!!! yay!
anyhoo, i think that i've gone on for long enough now! there ya go, you're all up-to-date on my adventures!!
hugs to all 😊 hope everyone is ok, thank you for emailing me and leaving comments, tis nice to know people are actually reading 😊 right, till next time, bye-di-bye people!
xx
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Andy
non-member comment
ha ha first one to comment...
"wonderful" whipsnade? was that a slight on our fabled zoo??? Not zoe - zoo...