Victoriana

After a month's lay up in Sydney, it was time to load up and hoist the backpacks again, so on the 15th January, we were back at Sydney airport for the hop down to Melbourne and a 9 day stop, including 3 days driving up and down the Great Ocean Road.

The main reason for our trip, was to see the Melbourne branch of Sue's family, including an aunt and uncle and two cousins. Once again we were humbled by the hospitality offered us and a huge thank you in particular go out to Sue's cousin Steve, his wife Jane and their daughter Sam for making us so welcome in their home for a week. Sue doesn't get to see them very often, so there was much ground to be made up. Here are some pics of the re-united clan!

 

It was the first time that either of us had been to Victoria, so there was much that we wanted to see and do, in addition to catching up with family. Before we tell you what we got up to though, a word about that English obsession 'the weather'. We arrived, as Melbourne was experiencing an unprecedented heat wave: 5 days of 40+ degree temperatures. Even in the Northern Territory, I don't think we'd felt anything like it, hitting 45 on our 2nd day. Bizarrely though, the wind turned from a northerly to a southerly on our third day and you could virtually see the thermometer gauge dropping: the next day the temperature only got to to 20 and we were reaching for our fleeces!

Our home for 7 days, was Hampton East, a suburb 10 miles south of the city centre and well placed to get in by train and to explore the area. With Steve and Jane as our guides, we headed south to Phillip Island and north to the Yarra Valley - the rolling hills famed for their vineyards. Phillip Island was particularly enjoyable, with its beautiful coastline akin to Cornwall back in England and renowned for the fairy penguins that nest here in their thousands. We stopped at sunset on one long stretch of sandy beach and, as the dusk started to offer them some protection from the sea-eagles that find them a tasty morsel, they waddled out of the surf towards the burrows where their young were waiting to be fed: tentatively at first, then boldly in packs of a dozen at a time. It was a wonderful sight and we were able to follow some of them at quite close quarters as they steadfastly made their journeys.

A young fairy penguin, patiently waits for feeding time.

We haven't seen a whole lot of the city of Melbourne at this stage, though we will be back there for a couple of days in a weeks time before heading on to New Zealand. On our one trip into the city together, the 45 degree heat put us off too much activity, but we took refuge for a couple of hours in the very interesting Immigration Museum. It provided a frank assessment of how Australia has been defined by immigration, from the days of the first European settlers, the shameful treatment of it's aboriginal people and the evolution of policy away from a vision of a 'White Australia' to a modern cosmopolitan country on the edge of Asia.

I also headed into the city for a most enjoyable evening with my old clients at Avatar and my thanks again to Konrad, Ben and Josh for their hospitality. The city was lively that evening, as the Australian Open tennis was approaching the end of its first week.

Probably the highlight of our trip to Victoria, though, was our 3 day excursion up and down the Great Ocean Road, which runs for 150 spectacular miles along the Victorian coastline. The road was built by soldiers returning from the First World War and hugs the coastline nearly the whole way: along miles of golden sand with breakers driven by Antarctic winds; over cliff-tops, with precipitous drops to inaccessible beaches; past massive layered limestone stacks and arches and only occasionally twisting inland through dense eucalyptus forest and rolling farmland. But words don't do it justice, so here are some pictures of the scenery and some of the wildlife spotted along the way.

We're off to Tasmania next for a week, so we will report back on our time there in our next post.

 

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

And finally...not sure the latest Aussie super-hero is going to catch on!