Melbourne and Around

I took the night train from Sydney directly to Melbourne and arrived early in the morning. I quickly found my hostel and then went to meet Naf for lunch!

Melbourne is a very easy city to navigate, being built in a very square manner. Also, public transport is easy and the city is tourist friendly with many maps all over for easy orientation.  Of course I have to love Melbourne, considering that everything carries my name, albeit with an extra ‘r’ – Yarra River, Yarra Trams etc.; this is due to the fact that Melbourne is in/near the Yarra Valley. I had a great time there seeing some friends and experiencing the city. The food in Melbourne is amazing, there is so much variety and it’s all really good!

In Melbourne there is a free city circle tram that takes you around the city and gives some commentary on the sights. I took this tram on a rainy day and used it as a free hop-on hop-off service. Some of the architecture around Melbourne is stunning and here too the old and the new work together well.

The aquarium was also a nice experience – we of course got stuck by the penguins for ages – but they are actually quite interesting creatures. The aquarium also had some HUGE crabs and many varieties of fish, sharks, eels, sea dragons and sea snakes. I always find the jelly fish mesmerising. The large tank – which really was huge – had some giant flat sharks – rays I think they are called. The initial one or two hour aquarium trip ended up being about four hours long and we really had a nice time.

Williamstown

One day I took the train to the suburbs of Melbourne and decided to go to Williamstown, on the other side of the bay from Melbourne. It is about 30 minutes by train and you get out in a totally different atmosphere. Williamstown is a sleepy, seaside town, with some nice walks along the beach and a cute little harbour with views of Melbourne’s skyline.

Philip Island

On the weekend Naf and I took a road trip and drove through the country side to Philip Island, home to a Koala Sanctuary and where the famous Penguin Parade occurs every day.

The country side in this area was very green and there was a lot of farmland. The land is relatively flat (not like in Holland of course), with some rolling hills. It really was gorgeous. For the last stretch of the drive we had the fields and hills on one side, and the ocean on the other with some stunning views.

Once we arrived at Philip Island we headed towards the Koala Sanctuary, where we saw many koalas – mostly sleeping, though some were eating – in their eucalyptus trees. They looked so cute and cuddly! Koalas sleep for 20 hours of the day – how cool is that!

I didn’t see a kangaroo, but we did see a wallaby – which for all intents and purposes is the same thing; it looks like a kangaroo and jumps like a kangaroo, but apparently it’s smaller than a kangaroo.

 

When we left the Koala Sanctuary we decided to get an early dinner before heading for the Penguin Parade which occurs just after sunset. The only place we found was a kitsch tex mex restaurant, where the food wasn’t too bad I must say, but the place looked like it could have easily been featured in Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares!

After eating and warming ourselves up, we prepared for a cold few hours on the beach watching the penguins arriving from their day, or maybe days, of hunting. Just after sunset, the penguins start arriving in little groups and get washed up on the shore, where they regroup and then run across the beach to the relative safety of cover and where their nests are. It is the mating season at the moment, so you can see penguins mate and others happily reuniting with their partners, who were waiting at home watching over the eggs. These penguins are the smallest in the world and are approximately 20 or 25 cms tall; really cute things. When they run across the beach or up the hill to their nests it always looks like they may be trying to go to fast for their little legs and that they might topple over at any time. Unfortunately no photography was permitted, because the penguins are very sensitive to light, it would have been great to be able to get a photograph. Totally frozen and after a great day, we then made our way back to Melbourne, where bed was calling!

After a very nice week in Melbourne, eating great food courtesy of friends who know where to eat and how to cook, I took the train back to Sydney. This train journey was quite interesting:

Across the aisle was a woman who has an imaginary friend and spent the first few hours talking to herself; she emptied her one bag and pulled out lots of random bits of food – which stank; I felt really sorry for the guy who had the joy of sitting next to her.

Another man got caught without a ticket and got kicked off the train. He had strategically put his luggage throughout the length of the train, so they had to go and get all his things before they could kick him off at the next station. It was quite funny.

Then of course, to top it off, the train was delayed by a few hours and it was hot, with the mandatory baby crying added of course. So yea, that was another successful train journey! It could have been worse of course.