Our Excellent Australian Adventure – Part 3

When we were leaving Sydney to move to the next phase of our trip in the Melbourne area, we all knew that this part of Our Excellent Australian Adventure was going to be quite unique. Why so? Well we were going to be doing something that (for Barb and I) we have only done once in all of the years that we have travelled: we’ll be staying with family

Left Side

One other unique aspect this this section of our trip is that we now have a rental car which we picked up at the Melbourne airport. Under normal circumstances renting a car hardly any newsworthy information but this happens to be one of the rare times where we are driving in a country where driving on the left is normal. I’ve had a few opportunities to drive in countries on the left side and find that this is one of those thing that the thought of doing it is far worse that actually doing it. Once you get behind the wheel and start driving, it’s surprising how fast you force yourself to start thinking on the left . Of course there’s also the part of your brain that’s telling you that if you lose concentration for a second that you’re going to be in a horrible car accident.

By The Bay

We’ve now spent the first night at our cousin’s place which is located a couple of hours outside of Melbourne called Corinella . From our room we have spectacular views of Western Port Bay. The weather is a bit cooler that it was in Sydney (probably around 18 degrees in the daytime and much cooler at night) but it’s still sunny most of the time so things are still looking up.

One of the day trips that we did while staying with my cousin in Corinella was to visit nearby Phillip Island. Located just a few kilometers away at the southern part of Western Port Bay, Phillip Island had several things to do that easily filled up an entire day. Perhaps the two standout attractions are the koala park and what is called the “Penguin Parade“.

Disclaimer: The above image was copied from the Internet. This was necessary as the taking of pictures at the penguin place was not allowed.

The koala park is a nature conservation area where you can walk through this protected area where the koala bears live. In most cases the koalas are high above you in the trees (almost always just curled up asleep) but there were a few that were at eye level and awake.

The Penguin Parade is a whole different thing. The whole thing with the penguins is that they come out of the water every night (almost to the minute each night) and walk towards their nesting grounds. Along with the couple of hundred penguins are about 10,000 tourists – all gawking for a view.

Before the penguins start coming ashore, the people tell you (over and over again) that you are not allowed to take any photos. I’m not 100% sure why this is not allowed, assuming that you don’t use your flash, but my gut feeling is that it’s 25% for the penguins and 75% so you can purchase penguin photos in the gift shop.

In the City

For the final two days in the Melbourne area we moved from my cousin’s place in Corinella to a hotel in downtown Melbourne. In reality, we ended up arriving in Melbourne late on Sunday night and only had one full day in the city before we’re back at the airport early Tuesday morning.

Only having full one day here in downtown Melbourne was unfortunate given that it would have been nice to see more of the city. However we also felt the same way about only having a few days to spend with our cousins here as well. On our next trip to Australia we will probably want to have at least two weeks allocated to this area as five days went by way too fast.

Tonight we will have a final dinner in Melbourne and tomorrow will be moving to our five day camping trip in the Outback so we will be saying goodbye to big cities for the rest of the trip until we return back to Sydney before flying back home. However we have one more section of our trip between camping in the Outback and flying back home. More on that later.

It’s quite possible that I will be completely offline for the next 5-6 days as I don’t expect that I will have any phone or Internet service during this time. As such it may be about a week before I next check in.

Baden