We enjoyed our "free" breakfast this morning and then headed for some real coffee or at least it was espresso. I got a kick out of ordering an iced mocha with extra ice only to discover their iced mochas don't normally come with ice. Once again, another bad assumption in a country where I've found things just aren't always as logical as I might wish.
The weather today was rainy and very overcast to the point of being foggy in sections. We decided that based on that, we might as well do the inland drive to the other end of the Great Ocean Road today because it wasn't going to be conducive to short hikes and sightseeing.
We skirted Melbourne, and then stopped for lunch in Geelong. The lunch was excellent and we wandered around the Geelong waterfront for a bit and then hopped back into the car. From there we headed pretty much due west and saw cows, sheep, cows and sheep, and sheep and cows. It was kilometers and kilometers of pastureland. What was puzzling was the pastures were semi-separated by lines of trees that had been obviously planted a large number of years ago. I'm only guessing that the trees were meant to separate the properties as there didn't seem to be rhyme or reason to much of their placement.
I was profoundly disappointed that in all those hours of driving we did not see a single kangaroo except for a few who had found their close encounter with a vehicle to be their last unfortunate moment. We did finally see a mob of them in the evening near Cape Bridgewater, but I was surprised that was the only time we saw them since I see them at least half the time on the way to work and here we were in absolutely prime grazing land.
We ended our day in Portland of all places. I guess people long ago did not have much in the way of imagination as they seemed wont to use the same names for many places. At least we'd passed through some places with much more interesting names like Warrnambool and Bolwarra. You just don't find those towns all over the world now, do you?
We found a place to stay for the night and then took off for Cape Bridgewater which was supposed to have a seal colony. To my great disappointment we didn't find the seals. We thought we saw some penguins at one point, but it turned out to be some well-fed cormorants. Drat!
We drove around the port in Portland and it looks like Portland ships out a lot of grain and who knows what else. One of the ships appears to have been a fish processing ship as there must have been 8 stories of lighted levels.
Tomorrow we start the Great Ocean Road and with any luck the weather will be an improvement on what we had today.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
First Australia Vacation Day 1
We finally decided to take the plunge and take a week to do some touring of this huge continent called Australia. Since we hadn't seen much of anything except what was within a few hour's drive from our place, there were lots and lots of options. We finally decided on the Great Ocean Road. This is reached by essentially driving south until you hit the ocean at the bottom of the continent. The Great Ocean Road then runs west to almost Adelaide.
Eric commented that it was odd that the climate gets cooler as you go south - just another thing that's backwards to our lifetime of experiences. There is never any shortage of things backwards to us here, that's for sure.
We took off a bit late this morning, but Eric had planned for a not-too-strenuous day of driving. It was all pretty normal to start with as we've done the drive to Sydney several times now, but it did take on new meaning as I've been reading a series called the Australians which is a fictionalized account of the settlement of Australia, but has kept to factual history as much as possible. It was fun to head through a few of the suburbs of Sydney now knowing about the story of their most humble beginnings.
It wasn't too long after we departed Sydney that we hit new territory. Eric and I commented that the land was starting to seem very normal to us. It turned very hilly which surprised us, but eventually started to flatten out again and then we started to see sheep and more sheep.
I was surprised we didn't see much in the way of wildlife. The only thing we saw was what might have been a fox and some lizards crossing the road. The areas we drove through seemed like they would have been prime kangaroo land as it was pasture after pasture, but we saw very, very few of them. Maybe tomorrow we'll see more critters.
We put in for the evening in Albury. As seems to be so common in smaller towns, walking into the hotel room is a step back in time - like 20 years maybe. It's clean, but the bed has seen better days. We joked that the checkout time was 10:00 because they didn't want people sleeping in too much as they're trying to make the mattresses last forever.
The room came with free breakfast and we were told the breakfast was already in our room. With great curiosity we took a peek in the fridge to discover a little thing of orange juice, a little thing of milk, and four slices of bread with butter packets. I found myself thinking that was pretty funny, but then we discovered there was some Vegemite and packets of jam. Uh, dibs on the jam! We next discovered there was a packet of Weetbix and a single serve cereal box so the breakfast options were definitely improved, but that was as far as it went.
Tomorrow we hit Melbourne. We'll launch from there to the Great Ocean Road and eventually loop back to Melbourne before we head back home. There is a Costco in Melbourne and we find ourselves looking forward to seeing what an Australian Costco sells. I'm especially looking forward to seeing if there are huge jars of Vegemite.
I hope everyone back home is not freezing too much. I must admit I'm certainly enjoying the glorious summer here. You can too, just hop on that plane and get your arse over here. I can never have too many excuses to take more vacation!
Eric commented that it was odd that the climate gets cooler as you go south - just another thing that's backwards to our lifetime of experiences. There is never any shortage of things backwards to us here, that's for sure.
We took off a bit late this morning, but Eric had planned for a not-too-strenuous day of driving. It was all pretty normal to start with as we've done the drive to Sydney several times now, but it did take on new meaning as I've been reading a series called the Australians which is a fictionalized account of the settlement of Australia, but has kept to factual history as much as possible. It was fun to head through a few of the suburbs of Sydney now knowing about the story of their most humble beginnings.
It wasn't too long after we departed Sydney that we hit new territory. Eric and I commented that the land was starting to seem very normal to us. It turned very hilly which surprised us, but eventually started to flatten out again and then we started to see sheep and more sheep.
I was surprised we didn't see much in the way of wildlife. The only thing we saw was what might have been a fox and some lizards crossing the road. The areas we drove through seemed like they would have been prime kangaroo land as it was pasture after pasture, but we saw very, very few of them. Maybe tomorrow we'll see more critters.
We put in for the evening in Albury. As seems to be so common in smaller towns, walking into the hotel room is a step back in time - like 20 years maybe. It's clean, but the bed has seen better days. We joked that the checkout time was 10:00 because they didn't want people sleeping in too much as they're trying to make the mattresses last forever.
The room came with free breakfast and we were told the breakfast was already in our room. With great curiosity we took a peek in the fridge to discover a little thing of orange juice, a little thing of milk, and four slices of bread with butter packets. I found myself thinking that was pretty funny, but then we discovered there was some Vegemite and packets of jam. Uh, dibs on the jam! We next discovered there was a packet of Weetbix and a single serve cereal box so the breakfast options were definitely improved, but that was as far as it went.
Tomorrow we hit Melbourne. We'll launch from there to the Great Ocean Road and eventually loop back to Melbourne before we head back home. There is a Costco in Melbourne and we find ourselves looking forward to seeing what an Australian Costco sells. I'm especially looking forward to seeing if there are huge jars of Vegemite.
I hope everyone back home is not freezing too much. I must admit I'm certainly enjoying the glorious summer here. You can too, just hop on that plane and get your arse over here. I can never have too many excuses to take more vacation!
Sunday, February 6, 2011
More Things Not to See and Do
Yesterday we went with friends to check out Barrington Tops. We tried to do Barrington Tops when A.J. was visiting, but according to Eric, A.J. and I did not correctly navigate us to the real Barrington Tops. Strangely enough, A.J. and I thought that a brown sign that said "Barrington Tops National Park" with an arrow that pointed left meant we should go that way. So, yesterday, Eric was determined to get to the "real" Barrington Tops and that meant not following those signs. Instead, we would go to one of the "i" stores the Aussies have sprinkled everywhere to get the needed information and maps.
We stopped at the Gloucester "i" store and encountered Lorraine. She was a kick. She gave us all sorts of good information, stories, and maps. My favorite was the story of the group of Chinese tourists who ran across a sizable lace monitor (goanna) and they all started pointing and yelling "clocodile". The goanna thought maybe he just might like Chinese food so they had to leave before the "clocodile" got them.
Armed with information and maps, we first fortified ourselves with a chicken, curry, or mushroom pie at the local bakery except Eric who had a sandwich (weirdo), and then sallied forth into the hills. We drove a while on fairly level roads, but as we started to climb the road suddenly turned into gravel and dusty gravel at that. As the elevation increased we noticed a welcome drop in temperature. It was over 100 degrees when we started, but at 1500 meters elevation it was more like 80 - much better. We got out for the first walk at Honeysuckle something-or-other. It was a 30 minute return walk (round-trip) so off we went. It was a little damp and Ron was setting a brisk pace. We were back in just under 15 minutes and a bit disappointed that it wasn't all that interesting. Little did we know.
We hopped back into the car and took off for the next point of interest which was Thunderbolt Lookout. The lookout was a 300 meter walk. We got out of the car to go and I just happened to look down because I felt something on my leg. I wigged out because there was a creature there and got it off as quickly as I could not caring one whit about identifying it first. The quick look I got made me think it might have been an inch worm - that was until I looked at my leg again. There nestled next to my sock was a black thing which I was horrified to realize was a leech! I got that off as fast as I could and it bled a bit because it was in the process of attaching itself for some lunch. Eeek!
We realized I must have picked it up on the first walk and as you can imagine our entire foursome immediately commenced with our best Chubby Checker imitation - doing the twist in earnest to complete a thorough inspection for leeches. Finding no more, we next debated whether or not we wanted to do the hike since we now knew it to be true that leeches can just drop from leaves when a potential meal passes by. Attempting to show some Aussie spirit, we decided to do the short hike. The lookout was nice and showed a great expanse of heavily forested area below.
The view was somewhat diminished in my eyes since I had the misfortune of brushing against a stinging nettle plant; bushwalking was definitely starting to lose its allure for me. I was starting to feel like the weak animal of the herd - you know, the one the lions have for dinner. But Eric unwittingly came to my rescue by noticing there was a black thing on his sock. Another leech! He yanked it off only to realize it had been a bit more attached than mine was - you know, like mine was at the hors d'oeuvres and his had started the main course. He had more blood on his sock than I did which was disconcerting because the best prewash spray they have here we have dubbed "Spray 'n Wish" as in that blood may be there to stay.
After we all did the twist one more time, we checked out some marshes and then moved onto an area where they did an experiment years ago with planting firs. The firs did very well and were now quite dense. We took a quick walk through the firs and the meadow behind them, but Eric also brushed against some stinging nettles. We both had a little tingly/throbby sensation at the point of contact the rest of the evening - nasty things they are.
We went through the dingo gate and just like that we were on the other side of Barrington Tops. I think we expected it to be a bit more scenic (and less leechy) than it turned out to be, but it was on our list of things to see and do, so we can cross it off the list. Heaven knows the leeches and stinging nettles have been completely blacked out on that list because we really don't want to do that again.
We stopped at the Gloucester "i" store and encountered Lorraine. She was a kick. She gave us all sorts of good information, stories, and maps. My favorite was the story of the group of Chinese tourists who ran across a sizable lace monitor (goanna) and they all started pointing and yelling "clocodile". The goanna thought maybe he just might like Chinese food so they had to leave before the "clocodile" got them.
Armed with information and maps, we first fortified ourselves with a chicken, curry, or mushroom pie at the local bakery except Eric who had a sandwich (weirdo), and then sallied forth into the hills. We drove a while on fairly level roads, but as we started to climb the road suddenly turned into gravel and dusty gravel at that. As the elevation increased we noticed a welcome drop in temperature. It was over 100 degrees when we started, but at 1500 meters elevation it was more like 80 - much better. We got out for the first walk at Honeysuckle something-or-other. It was a 30 minute return walk (round-trip) so off we went. It was a little damp and Ron was setting a brisk pace. We were back in just under 15 minutes and a bit disappointed that it wasn't all that interesting. Little did we know.
We hopped back into the car and took off for the next point of interest which was Thunderbolt Lookout. The lookout was a 300 meter walk. We got out of the car to go and I just happened to look down because I felt something on my leg. I wigged out because there was a creature there and got it off as quickly as I could not caring one whit about identifying it first. The quick look I got made me think it might have been an inch worm - that was until I looked at my leg again. There nestled next to my sock was a black thing which I was horrified to realize was a leech! I got that off as fast as I could and it bled a bit because it was in the process of attaching itself for some lunch. Eeek!
We realized I must have picked it up on the first walk and as you can imagine our entire foursome immediately commenced with our best Chubby Checker imitation - doing the twist in earnest to complete a thorough inspection for leeches. Finding no more, we next debated whether or not we wanted to do the hike since we now knew it to be true that leeches can just drop from leaves when a potential meal passes by. Attempting to show some Aussie spirit, we decided to do the short hike. The lookout was nice and showed a great expanse of heavily forested area below.
The view was somewhat diminished in my eyes since I had the misfortune of brushing against a stinging nettle plant; bushwalking was definitely starting to lose its allure for me. I was starting to feel like the weak animal of the herd - you know, the one the lions have for dinner. But Eric unwittingly came to my rescue by noticing there was a black thing on his sock. Another leech! He yanked it off only to realize it had been a bit more attached than mine was - you know, like mine was at the hors d'oeuvres and his had started the main course. He had more blood on his sock than I did which was disconcerting because the best prewash spray they have here we have dubbed "Spray 'n Wish" as in that blood may be there to stay.
After we all did the twist one more time, we checked out some marshes and then moved onto an area where they did an experiment years ago with planting firs. The firs did very well and were now quite dense. We took a quick walk through the firs and the meadow behind them, but Eric also brushed against some stinging nettles. We both had a little tingly/throbby sensation at the point of contact the rest of the evening - nasty things they are.
We went through the dingo gate and just like that we were on the other side of Barrington Tops. I think we expected it to be a bit more scenic (and less leechy) than it turned out to be, but it was on our list of things to see and do, so we can cross it off the list. Heaven knows the leeches and stinging nettles have been completely blacked out on that list because we really don't want to do that again.
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