After arriving back in Melbourne, I had a couple of days taking it easy after a 3 week hetic schedule.
During my stay in Melbourne, I went to Phillip Island where there a Little Penguins and a Koala Park. After booking another penguin tour I headed for the koala park where there were an abundance in and around the trees, I also managed to stalk a couple of kangaroos through the woodland that were also in the park.
I then headed to the beach to kill some time before the penguin tour. Unlkie the tour in New Zealand these penguins come in at night, there were a few options to view them two classes of veiwing platforms but I went for the small tour where no more than nine people go and you sit on the beach waiting for them to come in and walk past. In dunedin we saw around 10 to 15 penguins so I was expecting the same sceniario at Phillip Island. We were kitted out in waterproofs a seat and night vision goggles which were cool, although hard to get in focus alot of the time.
The guide counted 73 penguins and we saw more on the walk back along the road back to the centre.
The following day I went back to Healsville Santuary where I went the first time I came to Australia. They have everything from Wombats, Kangaroos, Wallabies to Birds and Reptiles. I saw the birds of prey show without ooohing or arrrghing, but it was stil pretty spectacular. It was good to re-visit considering the last time i went it was my last day and i wasn't real ly in the mood for sight seeing.
I met up with Steve at the Weekend finally. We use to work together 13 years ago or so when he was travelling the UK. We went down to St Kilda along the beach and to Luna park, which is supposed to have the worlds oldest wooden rollacoaster it looked dodgy.
We had a look in the Espy which is the Esplanade Hotel which is famous for having such bands as the Birthday Party playing there. We didn't stay long as no free bands were playing until later. We then headed past the cafes and bars to a record store which did have some live music out back. They weren't that great but its nice to see those places of the tourist track that Melbournites do on a Sunday.
We went to a couple of other record shops which I love looking at indie record stores since they have so much more unuaual stuff than the chains.
The start of the next week I flew to Sydney
