Another couple of days job searching and making phone calls, and the sad thought that we may have to give up soon due to funds. I don't know what we expected, I guess we thought it would be easier to get a job than it has been and at the moment we're running out of funds and no closer to having a means to top them up. Our reasoning for coming here was to work, if we can't find work we will have to leave sooner unfortunately. I'm getting knocked back at every turn for not having the necessary certificates for health care and not having enough experience for admin, it's beginning to get very irritating! Liam has also been told he's " too experienced" for the job he interviewed for with no negative feedback from the interview to even help him improve on anything. Doesn't make any sense!
On the 19th we went into the city first thing in the morning to go to the Melbourne museum. We arrived there around 11am and we were there until closing. We arrived just in time for a free tour, which was an hour and a snippet view of everything for us to get an idea of what we could see in the time we had. It was a great modern museum with interactive computer screens and things for adults and children. We saw some contemporary aboriginal art as well as some photos showing their ancestry. There was a section about the history of Melbourne including the famous race horse phar lap, who's skin had been used on a model that was really life like. I hadn't heard of him from before but most people probably have, he was a famous horse in I think the 1930s who won the majority of races and became really famous. They entered him into a competition in America that was a really prestigious race, which he won. But he died in suspicious circumstances whilst he was over there. It was thought for a long time he had been poisoned, and recent tests have concluded he died of arsenic poisoning. But that said they used arsenic a lot int hat time believing it would make things better so although he did die of poisoning people generally believe it was accidental.
We learned about a famous opera singer called Nellie Melba who was very well loved in Australia in the 1930/40s. We saw a snippet of Coles book arcade which was absolutely incredible, he was an English guy who settled in Australia. In the 1880s he opened his book shop which was unlike anything anybody had seen before. He not only had books but he made it into a kind of carnival style place with interactive machines, he even had a cage of monkeys. People were free to go in and read at leisure for as long as they wanted, with no need to buy if they didnt want to/couldn't afford it. I think I even read he put an advert in the paper for a wife and married a suitable candidate a few weeks later and had quite a few children with her. An odd and brilliant man!
There was an outdoor part which walked you through the history of the land and how the plants and animals have changed over thousands of years. A part with dinosaur bones and even some real life fossilised dinosaur eggs which was pretty cool. Also an underwater area, a rocks and minerals area. We spent ages in the mind and body section with interactive boards. It taught about the mind, consciousness, how attitudes have changed over the years, the sorts of experiments they used to do on people, the way the brain works. It was really interesting. As was the body section with pickled body parts and interactive areas showing how the body works and again different ways of experimenting over the years. There was also an area dedicated to Darwin and others like him who have helped us understand evolution with hundreds of stuffed animals from small birds to tigers. It was presented really well. By the time we were out we were both really tired with sore feet, and a bad head for me. So we made our way back and were home by around 7.30 with a fairly early night in.
I spent most of today with a terribly sore head and pain in my neck. I used the time to tidy the house a bit and do a load of washing, but other than that I just moped around. Liam did a bit of job searching and stuff but in general neither of us did much at all. I didn't even look for work due to my head hurting. Paula and Richard fancied going out for a change of scenery for food so we went out with them in the evening. We went to a charismatic traditional English pub about a 10 minute drive from here in the woods. Food was good although expensive for us who aren't working still but all on all it was a nice couple of hours. Paula offered to give me a neck massage when we got back which turned into a full on back and neck massage with oils. That and the heated bag afterwards made me feel a lot less tense so hopefully ill be headache free tomorrow!
We were out by 8am this morning for the hour and a half ish drive to Phillip island. The drive was quite nice as there wasn't much traffic. First stop was the koala sanctuary. I have to remind myself not to call them koala bears because they're not bears!
We spent a while in the information centre reading up on the work of the centre and why they're open. Koalas are quite specialised animals (don't think that's the right word), but basically they can only eat eucalyptus trees and nothing else. Due to the decline in their habitat and the increase of traffic, domestic pets such as dogs and cats etc their numbers are beginning to dwindle. We read about how they process the leaves due to their high toxicity, how much they sleep to conserve energy, how they raise their young. It was all very interesting. We then went outside, it's kind of like the monkey place in trentham I suppose, you have boardwalks where you look out for the different kinds of birds in the habitat and the koalas in the trees. Like in most places you're warned to look out for the local snakes, if you stick to the laid out paths you're generally ok. We saw a few different birds, I love the kookaburra they look really weird. We spied a few koalas, all of them asleep in the trees. Some quite a distance others fairly close to get a good look. I'm not quite sure what I think of them, they're kind of cute but not at the same time. They are cute but after hearing the sounds they make and how vicious they can be with each other it made me a bit wary. At one point a koala decided it was hungry and moved off its branch and onto the boardwalk. We got a good video of it but I was way too concerned about cameron getting too close to it to fully enjoy the experience!
As we were walking back we spotted some wallabies, which aren't part of the sanctuary but like to jump though and have a nosy from time to time.
We then went to the harbour where we saw the pelican feeding time. There's a local fish and chip shop that have been feeding them the scraps for about 100 years. The birds are all wild so some days there are hardly any and others there are a lot. Today there were maybe 20 of them, and they're absolutely massive, reaching above my waist. They're obviously used to people because they would walk right by you and allow you to get really close to get a good look at them. Liam saw some gigantic sting rays in the water behind us and was more interested in them so he went across onto the peer to get some shots of them. They were enormous, I'd say at least a meter in length and they also came quite close to shore probably expecting some scraps too.
After that we had a bit of food, I'd prepared a whole loaf worth of sandwiches of various types the night before, we had fruit and vegetables etc so we were well fed before heading into the Churchill island heritage farm. It was definitely for the kids rather then adults but it was still a lovely afternoon. We spent over 3 hours in there walking around the old house with all the original clothes and furniture in there, it even had some of the original wall paper left which was really interesting. There were some lovely herb gardens and wonderful flowers. Mostly we went from one demonstration to another all afternoon, which was a wagon ride with a big shire horse, a black smith demonstration, sheep shearing, cow milking, sheep heading, whip cracking and boomerang throwing. The weather was lovely the whole afternoon and the view from the farm was spectacular.
We then drove to seal rock, on the way we saw loads more wallabies along the coast line, we loved it!
We went down to look for the seals and spent over half an hour down there but we were unlucky and couldn't see any. It was still great because the sun was beginning to get lower and it looked beautiful over the rocks and the really high waves.
Then on to the penguin parade, which is the most popular attraction on Philip island. We had booked tickets before hand to make sure we had a seat on the viewing platform. After spending some time in the information centre and looking through the holes at the nesting mothers with their babies we we walked down the boardwalk to the coast. It was getting a bit chilly and was past 8pm. The seating was rubbish, you couldn't see a thing. We waited for half an hour or so with the rest of the people and the first penguin scouts started coming out of the water before heading back in to grab their group. The gradually started coming to shore in groups, taking about 45 minutes in total. The boardwalks were above the dunes and cliffs so could watch them all walking about by the low flood flights trying to find their nests. It was so great watching them and listening to them. We walked around watching them for an hour or so before the kids got bored and cold so headed back. On the way up you could watch them too, at one point we were walking at the same pace and in the same direction as a group of them. Unfortunately you're not allowed to take any photos to prevent scaring them so we don't have any photos of them.
After checking under the car for any we headed back home and were back by about 12am.
