Ooooooh the ickle Penguins!!!

---

Ahhhhh, on the road again, if even for a few days! I was determined to do some "good stuff" with the girls in the greater Melbourne area while they were here, so a day after we got back from Sydney I had arranged for us to hire a car, and set off down the Great Ocean Road. Now, obviously I have driven in Australia before, but driving in Melbourne presents a whole new list of problems due to the "feckin trams". Main problem being, you have to turn right from the left hand lane if you are crossing a tram track. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either. Also you have to remember to remain behind a stopped tram, even if there is room to pass on the left hand lane, cos if you do pass you'll probably mow down a few pedestrians on your way. SO, as a result I was a little nervous about driving our rental car out of the city and heading for the highway. Oh yeah, and getting onto the highways is a bit tricky as well. Anyway, long story short, we're all still alive, I didn't kill (or badly injure) any pedestrians, and despite a few mishaps we managed to get onto the West Gate Freeway without any major dents to the car or my driving confidence. The traffic was absolutely chockers, clearly everyone in Melbourne had decided to hit the Great Ocean Road that weekend, so it took us a while to get moving.....you have to head to Geelong, and then on to Torquay, and from there on you are pretty much on the Great Ocean Road itself. We stopped in a little town called Angelsea for a delicious lunch (and me and Maco discovered little delights called hedgehogs - chocolately, biscuity slabs of goodness), and then kept going until we hit Apollo Bay, where we were staying for the night. The main thing to see on the road is the 12 Apostles, which are an hour or so past Apollo Bay; we got to AB around 5pm, and decided to just chill out there for the evening and hit the road (relatively) early the next day. Our hostel was run by an Irish lunatic from Tullamore called Molly Malone. And ya know, I don't even think she was making that up.
Apollo Bay is a lovely little seaside town, very touristy, and very Australian - we had fish and chips and a couple of beers in one of the local pubs and even managed to bump into a bloke called Seamus, who had called to our house about two weeks previously to pick up a present from his mum at home who works with Sarah. Confusing I know, but what are the chances! When we were walking back to our hostel the stars were so clear you could literally see the curve of the sky; it was amazing, I felt like I was in the middle of the desert. So we headed off for the Apostles the next morning, along some very windy roads - I think the drive on the Saturday was actually nicer, you just never get tired of seeing the amazing aquamarine colour of the sea, the bluest of blue skies and the beautiful white sands. Along the way to the Apostles, we took a bit of a detour, in the vain hope of finding the lighthouse from the TV Show Round the Twist (remember it??) - anyways we took a left turn and drove for about 20 minutes down a dusty bumpy road, until we came to the carpark of the Cape Otway lighthouse. There was a rickety little souvenir shop, which we strolled into, and along the back wall there was a shaky door with "Lighthouse Entrance" written on it. The girl behind the counter actually managed to keep a straight face while she told us the entrance fee was 14 dollars. 14 DOLLARS!!! To see a feckin lighthouse! And it wasn't even the one from the show! Well we stomped out of the shed of a shop in disgust, with much grumbling from me about driving 20-feckin-5-feckin-minutes down a shite-arse-feckin-road only for some fecker to try and feckin rip us feckin off by feckin charging into a feckin lighthouse. Feckers. So we bundled back into the car, and were on our way back down the aforementioned crappy road, when we noticed a few people pulled over in their cars, staring up into the trees. Now, they did look a bit German, so at first we thought it was entirely plausible that they were just looking at the trees, but then we realised that there was something in the trees - KOALAS!!!! We pulled the car up a few metres further and in total we ended up seeing four koalas in the wild. FOUR! Amazing, what a turn around - just imagine if we hadn't bothered to try to find the feckin lighthouse; not such a waste of a journey after all!
So feeling much happier with ourselves (and with a lot less grumbing from the driver) we went on to the 12 Apostles, and oh yes, they were worth the drive. It's just a view really, a very big view, but it is absolutely stunning, and the girls loved it. The only bad thing is, once you've seen them you just have to turn around and drive back! We stopped in another lovely roadside place for a leisurely lunch, and took an alternative route home so we could take in the Otway Treetop Walk. It's a canopy built 20 metres or so high in the rainforest (the highest point is 45 metres), and it basically gives you another view of the rainforest. It's all very well done, and it gives you a proper idea as to just how high the trees are. It's all a little bit queasy though, cos the structure actually sways in the wind! From there we headed up the Princes Highway and back home to Canning Street, the end of our short but sweet road trip!
But not the end of our post-New Year's fun......
On Monday, we boarded a vehicle that is a essential part of every Irish and English backpacker's stay in Melbourne....the Neighbours bus!!! Yes yes people, we were on our way to Ramsay Street!!! I had visions of having a coffee break with Susan Kennedy in between filming, giving Karl an aul wink when she wasn't watching, and ya know, basically becoming best friends with all the cast and crew. But it wasn't to be. First stop on the tour was Erinsborough High - you don't actually go into the school (which is a real school), the bus just pulls up outside and they let you take a quick photo with a fake sign outside. What a start. Then it was on the the studios.....ooooooooooooh the studios - how exciting! Except we were not "permitted" to go in, and even if we had barged our way in there, our helpful guide informed us that all of the stars of our favourite Aussie soap were off in the UK doing panto over Christmas - a cry for help for a pay rise if ever there was one! So in the absence of actually being allowed into the studios, we were pretty much just driven around the car park; which thankfully did include outside sets of Carpenter's Garage, Grease Monkey's and the bus stop where everybody waits before they go to Queensland!!!
Next stop was the only REAL stop - RAMSAY STREET!!!!! It turns out it is a real street, with real people living in the houses, whom I'm sure are overjoyed every day to see cultured visitors such as ourselves poking around their bushes. Ah, it was great though; we posed with the Ramsey St sign, and marvelled at how small it really is (that game of cricket they used to play in the opening credits would be a total walk over), before we were bundled back into the bus and driven to St Kilda to meet a STAR OF THE SHOW!! Or so we thought. I had my fingers crossed for Harold or Lou..instead we got Janelle. Ja-feckin-nelle. When she got on to the bus there were several whispers of "Who the....??", before some English devotee shouted her name. So poor Janelle (who left the show two years ago and doesn't look like she's worked since) had to stand outside the bus for photos and autographs. Cringe.
And there were more blows to come... we still had the Neighbours Night ahead of us, which is held in the Elephant and Wheelbarrow in St Kilda. We were under the impression that Karl Kennedy AND HIS BAND would be entertaining us for the evening, and there was a chance that his on-screen daughter Libby would even join in for a song or two! This was what should have happened, until our spirit-crushing tour guide told us that Karl was among the Panto brigade in Brighton, or wherever they were all gone. So we got no Dr Karl!! Well, I'm still getting over it. In his absence there was a variety of stars of the show, none of whom I recognised except the young girl with the dark hair who's having an affair with her teacher. Despite all those disappointments we had a great (cheesey) night into the wee hours.
The next day we went along to the cutest, most lump-in-you-throat enducing encounter of my life. Oh jesus, just thinking about it makes my cute sensors want to explode. We had booked a tour to Philip island (I won't go into the details of the day - just think winery, kanagroos, koalos and various other Australian animals of which I have offically seen ENOUGH!), which culminated in the Penguin Parade. Every night thousands of little penguins (I'm talking the size of a beer bottle) come ashore on Philip Island with their bellies full and run up the beach to the dunes to find their little house and feed their babies. And every night about three thousand people come to sit on the beach and watch them do it. It was excruiatingly sweet - you're sitting there waiting for some to appear, when all of a sudden you see a few little black heads in the surf - the first few are thrown of our the water, but they don't starting running straight away, no no, they glance back over their little shoulders and wait for their friends, and then when they are feeling brave enough (to dodge the scary seagulls) they make a run for it and start waddling up the beach, nose first, with their little bellies practically dragging along the sand! We had a great spot so some actually ran past us, and it all gets a lot harder when they have to try to make it up the (little) dunes. You really think some of them are going to give up and just roll back on their fat tummies! We sat watching this amazing scene for about half an hour, and then you walk back up the boardwalk towards the interpretive centre, all the while stopping to glance over the edge which is illuminated by spotlights, where you can still see the little penguins wandering around the dunes trying to find their homes. THE CUTENESS!!!!! It was absolutely amazing, so worthwhile, and I have never seen anything manmade that fits in so well to an animal's natural habit. Fantastic.
After all that tourism we spent the last days with our visitors back in Melbourne, doing a few different things around the city. And after several teary goodbyes it's back to just the three original eejits on Canning St. Ahhh.

---

Comments

[Maco]

Oh Sarah im sittin in poxy college, freezing my ass off and then I read your most delightful recap of my time in melbourne:-). You have made my presence in this shit hole of a room so worthwhile. God im serious exploding here with the thoughts of the fat ickle penguins, waddling their little fat bellies - SOOOOOOOOOO CUUUUUUUUUUUTE!!!!do you rememeber the REALLY fat one that kept falling down and picking himself back up??Seriously that was the day I nearly burst with an overwhelming feeling of cutness.Funnily enough it was just the other day i was watching 51st dates and there was a pint size penguin, wearing a coat!I have found a new love for penguins:-). By the way GREAT photo of you and Shaz, yee both look FABTASTIC.Miss yee loads and loads XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX