Activity level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Modes of transportation: 👟🚌 🛫🚐🚊
Nothing dried. The dryer at the hotel must have been broken, so we had to pack all of our stuff wet. Thankfully, we pulled some of the moisture out with a towel trick, but it was still pretty damp when we packed it away. Luckily the airline didn’t weigh our bags, because they were heavy.
We got to the van drop-off dark and early (even earlier than bright and early), and ran into a guy speeding to also drop off his car. Sarah offered him a ride in our Uber, and he was ecstatic. Turns out, he was in town for a tennis tournament for his son, and couldn’t have been nicer. Talking to him, we found out that he was an Olympian bobsledder and decathlete in the early nineties for Australia—pretty cool! We later heard the airport paging him and his son to get on their flight, so hopefully they made it!
We still had some cash to spend, so Sarah went and bought a full wool hat, which Eric might have lost as of the time of this writing. RIP possum hat. (Update: We found the hat!)
The flight went off with no issues, and we arrived in Melbourne, where we took the Skybus into the city to catch a tram to our hostel. Some nice Australian we had met in New Zealand had described Melbourne as “very cosmopolitan” to us, and we weren’t really sure what that meant.
Melbourne turned out to have a fantastic public transit system, and we could easily get to our hotel from the airport with no need for a car. Also unexpected was how cold Melbourne was—it was about 11° Celsius (51°F). When we had booked 10 days prior at LAX to get on our New Zealand flight (see post), we knew nothing about Melbourne, but the weather seemed decent.
Turns out the city got a cold front from the El Niño winds. Sarah immediately started looking at Google flights to get out of this city but ended up deciding to tough it out (which is was the right decision but RIP Aussie beach vacay)
As soon as we got onto the tram, we started to see people in full costume and sort of alternative styles. We were like “oh cool, very cosmopolitan” before realizing our tram stopped at the convention center, where there was a video game convention. Then it started to make more sense.
We unpacked at our hostel, a cute older building with a lot of character and Sarah booked a “penguin parade” tour—apparently one of the big attractions in Melbourne according to the nice Aussie we met.
Before we went to the city center to catch our tour, we decided to walk down to St Kilda beach and ordered a bite on the beach.
After lunch we walked to a tram and met our tour at the city center. From there they drove us out to Phillips Island to a koala reserve, where they converted a koala habitat into a conservation park.
It just happened to be joey season, and we saw up close (~5 feet away) a momma koala and her baby eating eucalyptus. It was surprisingly entertaining.
From there, we did a quick ride by the Moto GP track, where there is apparently one of the biggest motorcycle races of the year in two weeks, then over to “The Nobbies”. They say there are seals in the volcanic rocks there, but we couldn’t really see any since they apparently blend in well with the rocks.
Finally, it was time for the penguins, which come out right at sunset. This island is native to the Little Penguin, which are only about a foot tall and the only species of penguin that’s blue and white instead of black and white (and extremely cute). They’re like this to match their environment better, which is more of a dark blue than the black waters of the rest of the Antarctic. We went to the penguin park and got some food (butter chicken and fish & chips—both excellent), then walked over to the beach.
The penguins came out much later than expected onto the beach, but we had gotten the tip to stay near the boardwalks, so we went searching for penguins early. While everyone else was waiting, we saw some penguins waddling around into their burrows, feet from the boardwalk. They generally seemed unfazed by people, and waddled around together, singing to each other and huddling up.
Then, they came waddling out of the water in little groups, stopping to survey, sometimes turning back terrified, but ultimately ending up in the brush where they lay eggs and mate. Unfortunately, they don’t allow photos because of the flash—but it was a sight to see.
After the parade, we pretty much just took the bus back and made it back to the hotel where crashed.
Leave a Reply