Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
So this is our final entry for Melbourne our home for the last 4-5 months. Not much has been happening, we have been getting on with life, working, partying and saving for the onward journey which has yet to be decided.
Work has been getting tougher and tougher with higher expectation and pressure expect from us now not newbies. We did however have an awesome close out in August and with the whole team behind us we succeed for the first time since the facilities had new management i.e. ligament memberships!!!. It was a nice feeling to have been apart of a winning team, flying the flagship as a Scottish manager would say. We celebrated with drinks and pizza!! We shared a few other nights out with the team, always ending in messy outcomes but always lots of fun.
We have been getting very excited as our duo is turning to a threesome with the addition of Shereen (a friend of Hana's from school!) joining us in September, and this has marked a change in us to move forward and move on from Melbourne to a warmer climate. However, before this excitement we have more great news as Sam and Matt our on their holidays in Australia and they too have scheduled a stop in Melbourne to come visit us!! So lots to look forward too.
As soon as Shereen arrived we got her into the city visiting all the important locations to ensure the best start into the working world of Australia, it was cool being the teachers and we were super excited to have a friend joining us from HOME. We didn't spend much time as there were much more important things to show, we introduced her to our great friend Cat and showed her around our little home suburb visiting all the local spots. This was made much easier, as the day Shereen arrived I went to work in the morning to hand our notice in and although I was about to give our manager our 2 weeks notice he said not to bother and sent me on my way!!! We then cracked onto our important travel plans and soon had our flights booked to Brisbane, half way up the East Coast of Australia.
We weren't that bothered about our jobs, we didn't like it much and it gave us more time to prepare, see our friends and do some touristy attraction before the move. As it was "Melbourne weekend" and lots of the local tourist places had 50% discounts we decided it was time to visit some cultural sites, so we visited Melbourne Gaol (Jail to us English!!)!! It was really cool, we got locked up in the cells which had only recently be decommissioned and then toured the older areas. We learnt lots about famous Aussie killers, the most famous being Ned Kelly. We saw the place where he was hung, tried on his body armour and visited his cell. We later that evening watched the film to get a better understanding, and although he seemed a bad man I think he had good intentions. The best bit was having our pictures taken looking like criminals (He was like the English Robin Hood).
On the day of Sam & Matts arrival we went to Federation square and awaited looking at all the people surrounding us trying to spot the familiar faces. It was so exciting when they appeared and we had another little moment of home again. We showed them around Melbourne museum, showed them some Melbourne sites and planned our exciting trip to Philip Island. We left full of excitement and went to book the car, although we had some issues we found the perfect little run around and we went home to get a good nights sleep ready for the next day.
The morning arrived and it was an early start to get a good full day out of the car! We picked it up and navigate our way around the confusing one way street and interesting left hand lane right turns of Melbourne but we were soon out on the open road heading to the little island. Philip Island is famous for Fairy Penguins, every night come rain or shine these little guy and girls make the little dart from the sea across the beach and into the bush land to their homes. Everyone knows how we like our wildlife trips so this was a biggy for us and made special with our friends in tow. We stopped to take some scenic photos before arriving on the island, slamming on the brakes at one point to take a rare photo of an alive Echinda (normally these pictures are just road kill, which for this guy could easily have been!!). Now the penguins are a hugh tourist attraction and a sell out most evenings so we headed straight there and although the big show wasn't for a good few hours but still we booked our tickets, but went a little crazy and got tickets to the Koala sanctuary too. We had planned to cook up a BBQ in the gorgeous weather using one of the many BBQ that line local parks and beach fronts, however the tourist guides laugh at us when we said we had no equipment (we thought we could rent some for the record!!). So we scratched this idea and settled for some fish 'n' chips, but ate them on the beach surrounded by hungry angry birds!!
After a full stomach load of food we drove over to the koala sanctuary to walk off our lunch,we wondered around the park areas looking high and low for koalas with not much success until we arrived at one enclosure and finally found the family that were sleeping as usual!! We were blessed with a quick wake up and stretch by daddy koala, dangling by his front paws having a full body stretch it looked good, but this didn't last long thou before he was curled back up in his tree and fast asleep again. It is a hard life being a Koala!!
Having a car made it very easy to whizz around the island visiting all the good spots, so with this we still had some time to pop to the far point I try and grab a view of the seals. Unfortunately we couldn't quite see them but we did get the joy of seeing lots of birds, and I have a funny feeling it was mating season!!! We had a quick coffee to grab some needed caffeine, and watch the seals via cameras before setting off to the ultimate show.
When we arrived there were lots of others all queuing for their tickets and pushing closer and closer to the entrance to the stadium!! We had gone with the cheap option, but knew this ment getting close to get the best seats. Hana & I have lost of British queuing instinct and were quick to push past everyone to get your spot and then take your toilet and shopping trips from your anchor point. Wondering around there were several holes to peep in to watch the babies that were sleeping in their little homes starting to stirring know that mummy and daddy were soon to return with food. The countdown timer started to flash that it was time to be released into the stadium to get your seats ready for the show. We lead at the front of the line and got great seat right at the front with clear views to both the left and right. As the sun set and the warmth disappeared the Brits who had been fooled by the daytime sunshine started to shiver but we stretched out our jackets and looked like old people huddled together, similar to penguins I suppose.
Dark set in and we were given our orders to protect the penguins no photos were allowed!! The flood lighting was acceptable but not flashy lights! Everyone sat in silence starring into the dark mysterious sea, watching wave after wave roll in until..... "look"!!! Little black objects were being washed in by the gentle waves, washed in behind the small rocks. You couldn't make it out until the little guys stood up and saw the white bellies, you soon realised the little black objects were the main event, Fairy Penguins coming home for the night. They were so tiny, hiding behind the rocks waiting in groups of 6-10 scanning the area. When they thought the coast was clear they would make the dart up the open beach area and hide amongst the grasslands. No one would go alone and it looked like a delicate military operation, where no penguin would be left behind!! It started of with just a few groups scattered across the stretch of beach but soon more and more arrived, I don't know how many returned that night but they were great to watch their waddles. You wanted to scream to the ones going in the wrong directions and laugh at the ones that would start but get scared and retreat and the stupid ones that would think they saw something so would fall to the ground and desperately look like a rock. As the number of penguins got less and less we realised the show had come to an end, but we all had hugh smiles on our faces. We set off back to the car, walking the paths but stopping all the time to watch the guys that had already done the beach run wandering around trying to find their burrow home!! I don't know how they found their homes in the dark, but they did!! It was a great day and evening so much fun and a great big tour to end our time in Melbourne. We were all pretty tired after our full day out, so we had a silent trip home, drop the others off and went straight to bed!!!
It soon became time to have to finish up our time in Melbourne, so when our landlord came round to collect our rent we explained this would be our last. We thought and hoped for a easy departure but hey that wouldn't be in keeping with our usual travel experiences. Luckily we had awoken the following morning realising we only had 4 days till we flew and decided a practice pack was needed to remove a lot of the winter clothes we had to purchase, when the landlord showed up with what we hoped would be our deposit. Oh know he had come round to demand more money, although we had always been up to date with our rent it appeared there had been weeks when he hadn't collected rent and we now owed him for his mistake. Well it was a lot more than we had, and we did the quick maths to realise it served us better to leave without our deposit than pay up. Luckily our bags were virtually packed and we were extremely grateful when Shereen showed up and we loaded her with bags and ran to our saviour Cat!!!
We were very lucky that although we had nowhere to stay, we had lots of people who looked after us and Shereen Auntie took us out for the day to show us the sights. I had spent the whole time in Melbourne saying how I wanted to go see the 'Neighbours' set tour even though I didn't really watch the show anymore, but after research I found out that it was just an ordinary street and this was where Shereen's Auntie started our tour. "Pine Oaks" is the official street name and actual real people live there, we did the touristy thing and had all our pictures taken it was crazy as they looked so real!! They weren't filming so we didn't see the stars but that didn't matter it was a lovely sunny day. From here we headed up to the Dandengon mountain range, where we got some bird feed and fed the beautiful birds that you would normally only see in a zoo. They were the white parrot like ones with a yellow feather on their heads, cockatoos I believe is their name. It was great fun although they are very greedy and would attack you, they also were not interested unless you had food for them!! I became friendly with one that just happily sat on my shoulder as I fed him, the other two were finding it funny to try and get each other to kiss the birds, I didn't need to worry I could stroke and kiss mine just fine!! Once all the food was gone and the birds had stopped attacking we went for a walk around the foresty area chatting away, it was nice to be out in the fresh air. We had heard of a place called the "thousand steps" and was keen to check this out. Shereen's auntie said it was a lovely place high on the mountain range where you could look down over Melbourne, thinking we were in for a nice day we went to check it out but Melbourne true to form had one of its many weather changes and decided it wanted to rain. Unfortunately it didn't pass and although we made it up there it wasn't possible to get out of the car without getting soaked plus Melbourne was covered in clouds. So we did a quick turn around and headed to a little coffee house for tea & scones, wasn't quite English scones but they were very delicious.
Back into the beautiful city for one last night out with our dear friend Cat before we leave for Brisbane. It wasn't a sad event as we had made plans for a little holiday on the sunshine coast in couple of months time. So we drank plenty had some good laughs and then said our goodbyes. Dumping a lot of our winter clothing (which we hope we wont need in sunny Brisbane!) at Shereen's auntie's we set off to the airport ready for our new adventures in Brisbane.
- comments