Penguins, wine, and planning chaos
NEW ZEALAND | Saturday, 27 March 2010 | Views [429]
3/28/2010 10:00 AM
Wow – time is just flying by here in Oz. Our first two days (yesterday and the day before, not including the night we arrived) were jam packed with stuff, and last night we spent planning out the rest of our time here. It was a bit of a headache, but I think we’re all squared away. But here are some of the highlights so far.
On Friday morning, we grabbed a cab right from the YHA to our hotel/hostel that we’ve been staying at the past two nights. It was fairly close by, so it allowed us enough time to get checked in at the hotel and grab a quick breakfast before we headed off on our 12 hour adventure with kangaroos and penguins. We booked this 12pm-to-midnight deal where we visit a wildlife sanctuary, a farm, a koala sanctuary, grab some dinner, visit the baby penguin chick habitat, and then head to the beach for the “penguin parade.”
The wildlife sanctuary was pretty neat. They had a wombat, a koala, some dingos, an emu, some lizards, four kangaroos, and a bunch of wallabies. It was definitely an authentic Australian animal experience. We started off at the lizards, then moved over to the koalas, then the dingos, etc. … it was pretty uneventful, until we got to feed the wallabies and kangaroos. That was pretty sweet. We bought a packet of dry food, and you just pour it in your hands and these little wallabies hop over to you and gently eat out of the palm of your hand. The wallabies were only about 2-to-3 feet tall, quite cute. The kangaroos did much of the same, except they ate much quicker and a bit more slobbery. It was about at this point when my Australian wildlife experience got really authentic. Jess fed this one alpha kangaroo character, and I was standing a few feet away with the rest of the food. Jess came over to me worried that the kangaroo was going to attack her because after she finished feeing him, he just kept starring at her, slowly hopping in her direction. I thought nothing of it; he was probably just a hungry kangaroo. So I walked over to the guy, poured some food in my hand, and he gobbled it up. No big deal. But he moved in for more food, and I pulled the bag away; then he stood up, grabbed my arm, leaned back on his tail … and before he could finish launching a massive kangaroo kick at me, I stepped outside and pushed him to the ground … a total ninja move. He did manage to get the kick off … but he didn’t land it too well so it didn’t hurt; it did, however, manage to cut a tare in my shorts --- bastard! After that, there was really no place to go, other than past this angry kangaroo; the only other way, was by a dozen little wallabies, one of which was vomiting profusely all over the place --- hahaha. It was quite hilarious. So, we chucked the food, which distracted the kangaroo, and then booked it out of the forest. Awesome times, ha. Jess told the keeper what happened, and I guess this isn’t the first time that roo has gotten aggressive; she said something about giving him a “timeout”; I think I’d go for something more of a “turning him into a hamburger” type of punishment.
Needless to say, the wild life sanctuary was pretty fun. After that, it was off to the oldest farm in Australia, where we got to see a sheep shearing show! That was actually a pretty neat experience. This older Australian farmer guy came out and gave a bit of a talk on the history, yes, the history, of sheep sheering, and even gave a few stats on “world records” for sheep sheering. He kept bringing up this one “bloke” who I guess was the master sheerer of sheep for decades and decades, until the electronic shaver came out. The farmer guy telling the story even used to enter sheep sheering contests himself. Hah. Wicked. The show was pretty neat; basically, a guy sheering a sheep for a few minutes. For some reason I thought this fluffy sheep would just sit there “bahhing” while someone sheered him. But it was more of a farmer manhandling and wrestling the sheep all over the floor, sheering the wool one bit at a time, with the sheep trying to escape at every possible second. Hah. Quite fun to watch, actually.
Then, we headed to the koala sanctuary. That was neat, but it was very rushed (traffic put us behind schedule). Basically, you walk through the gift shop, into a forest, and then along this boardwalk where there are about 5 koalas sleeping in the trees. They could’ve all been stuffed animals for all we knew; they just hung out there sleeping. However, one guy got up to scratch, so we managed to get that on video. Woohoo! Koala scratches!! So exciting.
After that we grabbed some mediocre pizza dinner, and then headed for the penguins. The first stop was where all the baby chicks were waiting for their parents to return. The deal is, the parents head out into the ocean before sunrise, spend all day fishing, and then come back after the sunsets to feed the chicks. We got there just before sunset, so we didn’t get to see the feeding, but we did get to see a bunch of little excited penguin chicks waiting for their parents to return; they were quite cute. We spent maybe 20 minutes walking around there, and then headed to the actual site of the penguin parade. This “parade” is so routine, that they set up bleacher seats for people to sit and watch the penguins come in from the shore … and they have massive lights on the beach so we can see the little guys come in from the ocean. Ha. I imagine this would look very bizarre from the penguin’s point of view, but it was really cool from ours. We got front row seats, and just waited and waited and waited … eventually, we saw a group (they call it a “raft”) of about 8 penguins swimming into shore. Once they hit shore, they sort of stood there, looking around for about 5 minutes. Then they made a mad dash for the sand dunes behind us. After that, two more guys came in, but they kept running back into the ocean, waiting for more penguins. It’s funny … they have to move in groups of around four or five --- for safety reasons. So if one or two come in by themselves, they’ll wait for more, and then join up. It’s quite cute to see them get all organized, and chase after one another trying to join a group.
After we saw about 30 or 40 little guys come in from the ocean, we headed back along the boardwalk which crosses the sand dunes, and we could watch the penguins walk back to their homes, and preen each other, etc. That part was really cool because they walk so close to the board walk you could literally reach through the fence and grab one. At one point, Jess and I were standing above this penguin, not more than one foot from him. I so wanted to grab him and run away … what a souvenir that would have been! Especially considering no video or photos are allowed the entire time.
Around 10:00 we headed back to the bus (grabbed a couple postcards along the way), and made the 90 minute journey back to Melbourne. Before we left, however, the bus driver had to look under the bus for penguins; these guys have been known to hang out underneath buses and cars.
We got back around 11:45, and went straight to bed --- long day.
Yesterday was also quite a long, but fun, day. We booked ourselves on a 7-8 hour winery tour through the Yarra Valley. It was quite the deal because, although we only stopped by four wineries, you could taste every wine on their list if you wanted to, which would have added up to over 60 tastings! Hah. They also threw in lunch at one of the wineries.
The ride in was uneventful, but they gave us some cool history on the region. Basically, in the late 1800s, the Dutch made this valley a very well known boutique wine region. They won lots of Parisian wine awards, and became huge exporters to Europe before the Great Depression. Then once the GD hit, no one could afford the wine, and basically everybody closed up shop. The region laid “dead” until the 70s, when rich Aussies rolled in to make more wine. But it wasn’t until Moet and Chandon came in in the mid-1980s to buy out a winery that they would use to hit their Asian market. Since that day, the region has exploded in wineries and vineyards. Kind of a neat history of that region.
All the wines were good, but none were really THAT good where we had to buy a bottle. We did two wineries, then grabbed a delicious lunch. I had some salmon risotto deal, and Jess had the lamb and potato meal. Both were amazing; and we got a “free” glass of wine with it as well. Then we did some more tasting there, and hit two other wineries. Hah --- naturally, we were quite enjoying our afternoon.
Before long, we were back in the city. It was at this point when we finally decided to get our act together and figure out what we were going to do with the rest of our time in Oz. We had heard about a place called “Peterpans Adventure Travel.” They help you book everything; wicked. So we swung by there, but basically it was some 20 year old girl trying to sell us on all these cool college kid party type tours; all the pamphlets looked like they were made by some 19 year old frat kid. Hah. Nice. We did manage to grab some good suggestions from her, but nothing was booked. We left there, grabbed some dinner on the way home, and then dominated the two free internet computers at the hostel for the rest of the night (probably around 4-5 hours). Absolute insanity. We tried to plan dozens of different iterations of our original plan, but basically everything was being shot down by this dang Grand Prix. Also, “Easter Week” is coming up, which books up next week like crazy, and then school gets out for the high schools / colleges, and that floods pretty much everywhere we’re trying to go on this trip. Unlike NZ, our timing for OZ has been pretty poor. But oh well, we managed to figure out a plan. And while we did that, we chatted up a couple locals near the computers who were very friendly and gave us some great advice on what to do. One thing I’m remise about is that we’re here from the 25th-28th (the exact date of the Grand Prix), but are totally going to miss the WCT surfing competition at Bells Beach on the 30th. Noooooo!! Had we known this in advance, we probably would have started in Adelaide, and then made our way over here. Ahh well, this trip has been pretty successful so far.
At any rate, here’s our great plan for Oz: we take an overnight train to Sydney tonight, spend a few nights there. Then hopefully take a hop-on, hop-off bus from Sydney to Airlie Beach. We’ll stop off at Byron Bay, Brisbane, Fraser Island, Whitsunday, etc. (all the major stops) along the way. Then once we get to Airlie Beach, we’ll be renting a camper for at least two weeks, and slowly make our way up to Cairns. Once in Cairns, we’ll do a one or two night live aboard boat and dive the great barrier reef. That should take us right up until about the middle of May, and then, back home to the real world.
So … that’s the “plan”; it’ll be fun to see how this all plays out! Ha.
Now it’s about 10:45am, and time to get our day started. Probably going to catch an AFL game (Australian rules Football --- supposed to be absolute nonsense), and then catch the train.
