J-turns, Speed Snakes, and Yarra Valley

At last, I'm back on the internet. It's Thursday, March 18th here.

We left Sydney on Friday, March 12th to go to Melbourne. We had cheapie seats on a 9 am flight from Quantas, with no exchange, refund, etc. Wouldn't you know it, with five people to organize, we left Jaime and Jon's a bit late, and missed our plane. Jon was fantastic. He went up to the Quantas counter and somehow got us all seats on the next flight so we got to Melbourne only 1 1/2 hours later. We didn't get into apartment, though, until midnight.

Instead, once we had the rental car, we went off to Philips Bay to see the koalas and the penguins. Didn't know that Australia had penguins? Neither did I. But more about them later.

We saw about 7 koalas. They don't leave the eucalyptus trees, except to go to other eucalyptus trees, and so can spend their entire lives in the branches. The leaves are the only things they eat, and have been known to literally eat themselves into starvation. According to the rangers in the koala reserve, the koalas will eat the leaves from the eucalyptus until the tree dies, and once that happens, they are out of food, and so will starve. The rangers put huge plastic panels around some of the branches to keep the koalas away and allow the trees to recover. The reserve we visited had about 37 koalas, of which we only saw 7. The rangers told us that the reseve isn't big enough to sustain the existing koala population, so they will be relocating some of the koalas to other areas of Australia.

From the reserve, we drove down the road to the Nobbies. That's an area of Victoria which has wild rugged coastlines and seal and penguin populations. You would have thought you were in parts of Ireland, or Scotland. The coastline is rocky and rugged, and drops off into the sea. The vegetation is a lush green, and looks so different from the inland scrub and dust. The seals were out on the rocks well off the coast, so we could only see them in the distance. The penguins, on the other hand, are another story.

The south coast of Australia is home to the little pengquin (really, that's its name). It's the smallest of the penguins at about 8 to 12 inches high. They like to nest in burrows in the ground. At the Nobbies, we were walking along the board walk, and could see babies in the nests, just a few feet from us. Also, quite a few of the penguins were nesting under the boardwalk. The walk itselft twists and turns, and by lying down on one section, I could see under another section, and so got a few photos of them.

At night, after dusk when it's safe, the penguins come ashore. There are about 6000 in this area of Australia, and we saw probably about 1000 of them. The first few come up to the beach and wait among the rocks. The only reason we could tell where they were was because we could see their white bellies in the dark. They wait for another group to come ashore. As each group comes out of the water, the waiting group greets them. When they reach a critical mass (a safety in numbers thing), they all dash across the beach to the green hillsides. You can hear their babies calling them. Once they reach the safety of the grass, it's every penguin for themselves as they hurry back to their nests. As we were walking back up to the car park, we saw some many of them walking to their waiting babies. One little group had two babies who were rubbing against their parent (and we all went 'ohhhh' when we saw them).

We left that area of Victoria and got into Melbourne around midnight. The next few days were spent exploring the city. Melbourne is very different from Sydny - more cosmopolitan, and had great ethnic neighbourhoods. We spent four days looking around the city and enjoying great food and coffee before Jaime and Jon went home to Sydney.

Traffic in Melbourne can be somewhat daunting to drive in. Not only does Melbourne have trams which operate in the middle of some very wide streets, but it also has something called a J-turn. This is not for the faint of heart. It works like this: In order to turn right, across the tram tracks (remember, we're drivng on the left side of the road), you have to get over to a separate far left lane, and wait. (Yes, you read correctly - you get into a left lane to turn right). This allows the regular straight going traffic to go through. Then, when the traffic on the cross street to you stops, you come out of your lane, across and stop. By now, you're in front of the traffic on the cross street that's going in the direction you want to go. When you get your signal, (not the same as theirs, and if you're not used to it, can be hard to tell) you go across the tram tracks and literally cross the street you whose left lane you just left. The first time Jon did this, we all thought we were going to die. There were several quickly muttered prayers in the car! But we made it. When Walter had to do it (I refuse to drive in Melbourne traffic), we all prayed again. I'm glad to say Walter mastered it, and not every intersection requires this manoeuvre.

One of the other interesting things about Melbourne is speed snakes. In residential areas, instead of having speed bumps to slow down traffic, they have parts of the road that narrow and twist right and left, which unless you learned racecar driving and do it for a living, means you have to slow down. It's very effective, because if you don't slow down, you're liable to do some damage to the bottom of your car.

On our last day in Melbourne, we went up to the Eureka Tower. This is the highest residential building in Australia at 88 storeys. On the 88th floor, there is an observation deck. Now I've been up to the observation deck at the CN Tower, which is actually higher, but this was more scary. The Eureka Tower has large plate glass (I think it's plexiglass, but I didn't ask) windows. The floor actually slopes up to the windows slightly, and the windows bow out just a little. Just enough to give you the opportunity to look almost straight down. And because there is nothing to tell your brain that there is a barrier (i.e. the glass), you get the feeling when you look down that you'll fall. The view, though, is magnificent. You call see all of Melbourne, the port and the peninsula, and the mountains in the distance.

For the last two days, we've been in the Yarra Valley - only an hour and a world away from the hustle and bustle of the city. There are some great wineries here, and Walter, Kristin and I have visited quite a few. It's very rural - also lots of cattle and horse farms. This morning we were up early and took a ballon flight over the valley. Hot air ballooning is amazing - gently gliding across the sky. We were up for a little over an hour. The hilarious part is getting in and out. The only way to do it is to climb into the basket, (and it's a little over chest height for me,) and then climb out. There are holes you can put your feet into, to help you up, but you still have to get your legs over the basked edge. All I can say is, I'm not as limber as a I used to be. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

We're here until Saturday morning, when we start our trek to Adelaide. Australia is great. We've met some wonderful people. I'll write more when I get another chance.