After returning from Tazzie, Heather Jekel took us on a grand tour of Melbourne that lasted for a couple of weeks! It’s a huge town, and beautiful too. Having our own guide was wonderful and saved us the typical tourist’s struggle with where to go and how to get there. Heather loves to walk everywhere and it shows in her physique, so walk we did! After our wine, beer, cheese, honey and berry tour of Tazzie, we needed it.
Melbourne has an extensive electric tram system, so when our feets got flat, we could wimp out and catch the tram home. Like most of Australia’s cities and towns there is an open air market, but Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market runs 5 days a week, though Tuesdays are best for fresh veggies and small crowds. We went several times while in Melbourne and found the meat and fruit/veggies to be of excellent quality and lowest price - not to be missed! Early in our tour, we went up to the top of the Rialto Tower to get a good overall view of the city.
A long walk through the Botanic Gardens was followed by a day long tour of the Melbourne Zoo where, among other things, we saw this little guy.
His name is Yakini and he’s a baby gorilla. This is Heather’s favorite attraction in the zoo and she’s followed Yakini’s progress since he was born a short while ago. Cute, eh? Speaking of cute get a load of this.
I was referring to the butterfly of course! The butterfly house was positively stiff with flying flutterbys of all sizes, descriptions and colors. They would land on our heads, shoulders and cameras while we were trying to photograph them!
We spent many magical hours with Heather walking through the various ethnic suburbs of Melbourne, tasting the bewildering array of goodies in shops and buying souvenirs for our friends. We had a wonderful dinner with Heather at the Le Meridien restaurant, a favorite haunt of Heather and Harry’s - it would have been Harry’s birthday.
Just outside of Melbourne, in the Dandenong mountains, is Puffing Billy, a train line that operates steam trains. It used to be a functioning, commercial rail road, but now operates to amuse tourists, like us. The engines and carriages have been lovingly restored and are operated by volunteers. The route is through the forests and foothills around Melbourne.
Passengers are allowed to hang out of the carriages as the train rolls along and fully enjoy the experience, complete with soot ash! Coal is the fuel, and we were covered with the ash by the end of the day, but didn’t care. The train stops at various places so that the passengers can get out, stretch their legs and admire the equipment.
We spent a delightful day rolling along the rail, admiring the country side and touring the old rail museum. We were treated to a change of engines for the run back down the hill.
On the way home, we were treated to this sunset over Melbourne, far in the background.
Heather has some friends that own a holiday flat (apartment) on Phillip Island who offered to let us stay there. So we packed up and went off to see the sights. Phillip Island is noted for it’s population of Fairy or "Small" Penguins. We went to see them, but, unfortunately, it was not allowed to take photographs as they swam from the sea and trudged up the cliffs at sunset. None the less, we enjoyed the spectacle despite a strong, cold wind. They were really cute, waddling up the sand dunes from the sea on the way to their burrows in the hills. This was taken from an automated lighthouse along the coast and is typical of the coast along Phillip Island.
This guy was seen stumping along the beach shouting "Arrr, mity, were’s me ship?"
The island is also the site of a Grand Prix track which we toured and throughly enjoyed. In town, it seems that at least one of their clients was in a hurry to leave.
You have to wonder if he payed his bill for what must have been a great tune up!!
After leaving Phillip Island, we headed off for Geelong with a great tour and view of the Mornington Peninsula along the way. Heather was raised in Geelong, which a gorgeous coastal town south of Melbourne. We stayed with Margaret and Lindsay, friends of Heather’s, who live just outside of Geelong. They also gave us a tour of nearby Barwon Heads, which is right on mouth of the harbor into Melbourne.
From there, it was back into Melbourne and preparations for our tour of the Victorian highlands, but not before we treated ourselves to a production of J. R. R. Tolkien’s " The Hobbit" at Her Majesty’s Theatre, which was performed using puppets! It was very well done, and we really enjoyed ourselves!!
Next morning, we packed up and headed out of town to explore the southeast coast of Victoria, known as Gippsland.