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Tom C-B's Travels 2006
After having the Rents on my back for not updating my site often enough I am trying to turn over a new leaf, so you are witnessing the first day of this dedicated service to bring you, my captive audience, up to date with everything that goes on while I am away!! Here goes...
THURSDAY
After last night's marathon session on the internet filling in the significant blank spaces that had been created by the neglectful 'old' me, I ended up getting to bed at 2:30am.
Four hours later, I was up and about as we had to leave with Rosie and Olivia at 7:30am, so that we could be taken to the train station for our train back to the city. A quick, emotional farewell was had at the train station, and Kim and I stumbled, bleary-eyed, on to the train and planted ourselves down in the nearest available seats. We arrived back in the city at 9ish, quickly checked into our hostel for the third time, and headed out so that Kim could send home some of the unwanted bulk that was mounting up as a result of her various shopping extravaganzas. We then rang Oz Experience, the tour company that was taking us up the East Coast, only to find that the next bus out of Melbourne was not until Sunday. This simply wouldn't do, as we had people to meet and things to do in the next few days in Sydney, namely the 'Home and Away Night' on Sunday, so we went back to the drawing board and decided to get a direct coach to Sydney the next morning. This radical change of plan saw us subsequently running down to the booking agent's office a few blocks away and booking ourselves on the obscenely early bus at 6:30am on Friday morning! We puffed our way back up to the hostel in time to buy some fresh fruit from the markets, and then the bus arrived to pick us up for our Phillip Island tour at 11:30am.
After an hour or so of highway driving, we turned off and stopped at a winery called 'The Gurdies Winery', as it was situated in the Gurdy ranges. A wine tasting was included in the price of the day trip so we duly tasted two whites, two reds, a port, and a Muscat, all of which were very reputable! We then wandered around the vineyard for 20 minutes or so, and got back on the bus to go to the 'Maru Wildlife Centre'. Here we saw more koalas, kangaroos, Tasmanian Devils (at feeding time!), wallabies, and albino wallabies. We also got to feed the kangaroos by hand, an experience I left to Kim while I snapped away as the official cameraman! Hopefully we'll be able to upload some of the photos soon to give you an idea of what it was like... After this we headed over to Phillip Island itself and saw the Seal rocks where a seal colony was lazing about in the early evening sun. We had tea and coffee at the seal lookout point, and finally made our way over to the main event - the Penguin Parade. Our bus driver gave us a few tips as to where the best place to sit was, and we used his recommendations to get the best seats in the house. What followed was a truly amazing experience; watching completely wild penguins (the 'Little Penguin') go through a seemingly rehearsed, flawless routine, coming out of the water and scurrying across the open sands towards the shelter of the sand dunes and their burrows. Like watching a David Attenborough documentary, everyone stared, transfixed by the natural miracle taking place in front of our eyes. When all the penguins had made the mad dash out of the sea, we walked along the boardwalks overlooking the dunes and followed the penguins all the way to their respective burrows. We climbed back on board the bus filled with the charm of the Little Penguin, the smallest species of penguin in the world.
Another feature included in the day trip was dinner, so we went to an excellent pizza restaurant and had our fill. To pass the time on the home leg of the journey, we watched a film called 'Crackerjack': a comedy about bowls. It did its job in passing the time, and we were just pulling up at the first hostel drop off as the credits started rolling. We were dropped off at our hostel at around 9:30, and quickly jumped on the internet to spill the beans on what was a very long but exciting day! So there you have it, and I hope you have all been impressed by my dedication to the new regime?! Hopefully it will last...
Anyway, as I mentioned before, we have a ridiculously early bus tomorrow morning so I'm going to rest my little head and catch up on some beauty sleep.
Night night,
Tom xx
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