Part 3 - Melbourne
March 11 - 14, 2005
Friday, March 11th: Canberra to Melbourne
Driving from Canberra to Melbourne, we had planned to drive through the Snowy Mountains and ride a cable car and a moderate hike to the top of the highest peak in Australia, Mt. Kosciuszko. Unfortunately, it turns out that there's really no efficient way to GET to the mountain along a sensible route from Canberra to Melbourne, so we had to scrap that plan and just take the freeway straight down. It was, in all honesty, a pretty dull drive. There wasn't much to see but scenery, and that got pretty dull after a while. Things were livened up a bit by some incredibly rocky pastures, some stretches where there were allegedly koalas about (none materialized), and a few brushfires. About the only attraction along the way was the Dog on the Tuckerbox (http://www.pcug.org.au/~stmcdona/tuckrbox.html), which was pretty much as advertised, plus a BP station.
There was one thing about the freeways that did lead to a few shocks when my attention would wander. The freeway from Canberra to Melbourne isn't limited access all the way. Large stretches of it, especially near cities, are limited access (with off ramps and all that), but the road will occasionally change to a simple divided highway and even to a regular 2 or 4 lane non-divided highway. Because all of their pavement markings are white, with no yellow stripe to indicate the center of the road, I occasionally found myself in the right lane of a divided highway, with trees in the median obscuring the other travel lanes, wondering if I wasn't actually in the wrong lane of a 2 line non-divided highway, with no way to tell from the context available. I never ended up in the wrong lane, but there were quite a few of these momentary panics when I wasn't quite sure.
As we got in the vicinity of Melbourne, the day was still young, so we took a detour into the Yarra Valley area to see a few sights. It was kind of a long drive, but it was pretty, out among rolling hills and forests. We headed to Steavenson's Falls and passed a mysterious road sign along the way. The first time we saw one of these, we thought it was just a wombat crossing sign that had been defaced, but when we saw another and stopped to look at it, we realized that it was an actual sign. Nobody we asked could really tell us what it meant, but we assumed it was some sort of generic "wildlife crossing" sign. The falls were pretty, if somewhat difficult to photograph because of the bright sun washing out all but the final cascade of the multi-tiered waterfall.
Heading out from the falls, we saw a wild wombat crossing the road. The photo Julie took didn't really turn out, because he was moving and she was running along trying to get a photo of him. If I came back from Australia a big fan of any one thing, I think it's probably the wombat. The stuffed wombat toys that were available EVERYWHERE were absolutely adorable.
Still having some time to spend, we took a slow drive along the Acheron Way, a gravel road that winds about 20 miles through the absolute middle of nowhere. It was pretty, though. And it was all worth it when, near the end, some sort of deer walked out into the road in front of us. It wasn't real interested in getting away from us, so we just kind of followed it slowly down the road for a couple of miles before it finally decided to let us pass.
We ate dinner at a cool little restaurant (I think it was in the town of Warburton, but I might be wrong about that), around which time Julie started feeling a little sick. After dinner, with her feeling bad and me anxious to get us to the hotel, the drive into Melbourne was somewhat worrying - it was dark, the road was twisty, I was tired and worried about Julie, and it seemed like it too FOREVER to get to Melbourne. Luckily, we found the hotel without any problems and got into the room.
The room was really, really nice - it was hard to believe that we got it for the rate that we did. It was a nice furnished apartment with a large bedroom, a large living room, a full kitchen, and a combination bathroom and laundry room. It was in a historic building that had been renovated into a really pretty hotel, right in downtown Melbourne. The only complaint (a recurring one for the trip, it turned out) was that the A/C didn't work at all, so the room was fairly sweltering. We weren't in the room very long before we decided that Julie should probably go to the emergency room rather than wait for a regular doctor in the morning, and luckily there was a pretty nice, mostly deserted hospital just a block from our hotel. We were in and out in very short time, and the whole cost to Julie including a prescription was LUDICRIOUSLY cheap compared to healthcare in the U.S. I think the whole visit (with no insurance payment) was about the same price as just my emergency room co-pay. So thumbs up to the Australian healthcare system.
Sometime after midnight, we finally settled into our hot and stuffy room for the evening, after a fairly busy and eventful day.
Saturday, March 12th: Phillip Island
On Saturday, we headed out from Melbourne to Phillip Island, which is about 78 miles to the south. Aside from getting tangled up in some oddball toll road kind of thing just outside of Melbourne (and, if I remember correctly, having some struggles finding a gas station with the tank nearly bone dry), the drive was pretty uneventful. (We also got mixed up in the toll road thing on the way back - there aren't any toll plazas, just photo-enforced tolls. It turns out that you can buy "day passes" to use the toll road, even retroactively, so a couple of days later when we turned in the rental car and asked about the tolls, they told us what the deal was and we bought the pass to cover the day we drove on the toll roads. Kind of an odd system. As for the gas station thing, it seems that our American notions of where gas stations should be located were completely not applicable to Australia. We thought we got lucky and found one at the first freeway exit we tried, but it turned out to be out of business. We tried various other major intersections and freeway interchanges before we finally found a station some distance from the freeway. Very annoying, and pretty stressful, because we were nearly out of gas - I was trying to hustle into town the night before since Julie was sick, so I passed up some chances to fill up to expedite things.)
Our first stop was at the Penguin Parade to buy tickets for that evening's penguin viewing. (There's a colony of fairy penguins on the island, and every evening at sunset, they come back from fishing and waddle up the beach to their nests.) We decided to pay a bit more and get the "Penguins Plus" tickets, which gave you access to a better viewing platform with a smaller crowd than the main grandstands. It was only a few bucks more than the basic ticket, and turned out to be TOTALLY worth it - much better views of the penguins from up close, and a much smaller crowd. Apparently the penguins are free to roam wherever they want. After the penguins were nearly wiped out by development on the island, the government started buying back land from the big housing development that had taken over the area, and turning it into a protected area for the penguins. Since the penguins are free to roam, there was a pretty amusing sign in the parking lot.
After securing our tickets, we went out to the Nobbies, a headland with some nice coastal views, including a blowhole, a coastal cave where incoming waves compress air in the cave, causing a blowback out of the cave entrance and a really cool noise, and Seal Rock, where they claim there's a colony of fur seals, though we couldn't really see them from the observation point, and the path that went closer to the island was closed.
As we were walking along the boardwalk, we noticed some people looking up under the boardwalk and taking pictures. It turns out that there were some fairy penguins hanging out under the boardwalk (down by the sea). It was molting season, and when they're molting, they can't swim, so they just basically sit around and molt for a couple of weeks. It was hard to get good pictures of them, but they were very cute just hanging out right under our feet.
Next, we went to the Koala Conservation Centre, where they have a boardwalk up among the treetops so you can get up-close looks at koalas (they put out fresh eucalyptus near the boardwalk to encourage the koalas to hang out close enough for some good photo opportunities). Some of them were close enough to touch (but you're not supposed to), and they were pretty cute. Some of them were even active, which is apparently rare - one climbed up a tree and kind of got stuck trying to move over to another branch, which was funny. We also learned a lot about koalas that was kind of interesting and kind of gross, like what their poop looks like (they had exhibits about it, and one cooperative koala gave us a show), and about some kind of koala Chlamydia that was going around.
We went in search of lunch/dinner and drove around the island a bit, finally ending up in the town of Cowes, which had a nice strip of somewhat touristy restaurants, shops, bakeries, and so forth. We picked out a place we wanted to try (a southwestern (U.S.) restaurant - by this time we were about ready for something familiar to eat), and wandered down to the beach while we waited for it to open for dinner. We passed the time eating snacks from a bakery and taking photos of seagulls, then went back just as the restaurant opened. It was kind of funny seeing this restaurant trying to represent one part of American culture (probably how Australians feel when they go to Outback, though I think maybe Outback is a little more accurate). The decor was a mixed bag of American Indian stuff, John Wayne stuff, and license plates from like Arizona. The menu was in a skillet. The bean dip was, honestly, not very good and pretty much completely wrong. But it wasn't bad overall.
We then returned to the Penguin Parade to look around the visitor center and get out to the viewing platform. On the way out to the platform, we heard a few penguins hanging out in the vegetation, and saw a wallaby hopping around a nearby hillside. There was a ranger at the viewing platform who gave some fairly interesting tidbits about the penguins and the area, and as the sun set, the penguins started coming ashore. Unfortunately, because people have proven to be morons in the past, no photography was allowed, so I didn't get to take any photos of the really cute penguins, but there are some photos at http://www.penguins.org.au/02/sec_02_html/penguin_pg.html. They came ashore in waves, and it took them quite a while to waddle up the beach, over the rocks, and up into the grass near the boardwalk. Some of them were fattening themselves up for molting (they don't eat for a couple of weeks while molting), and could barely walk, which was the cutest thing - they'd fall over on their fat stomachs and just kind of wallow their way forward with flippers and feet. They came right up to where we were standing on the boardwalk, so we got a really nice, up-close view of them as they walked by. The Penguins Plus ticket was totally worth it. As it got darker and the stream of penguins slowed down, we also got what turned out to be the best view of the starry night sky that we got on the whole trip - it was really amazing, and it wasn't even all that dark because there were a few dim lights on the boardwalk and in the surrounding area.
Then they moved us out of the area so they could turn out the lights and let the penguins do their thing, we spent a bit of money in the gift shop, and we headed back to Melbourne. Here are a couple of scans of postcards showing the penguins that I bought at the gift shop.
Sunday, March 13th: Melbourne
We spent Sunday walking around Melbourne. We started out in Fitzroy Gardens near our hotel, where we saw the Conservatory and some nice flower gardens, and Cook's Cottage, which belonged to Captain Cook's parents in England, and was moved brick-by-brick to Melbourne and reassembled. While we were at the cottage, Julie had a Star Trek/Australia epiphany: James Cook, James Kirk; the Endeavour, the Enterprise. Coincidence? Probably not, but I'm a Star Wars guy, so who knows.
We wandered around the downtown area, eating lunch at a sidewalk cafe and exploring some of the shopping areas. Some of the shopping arcades had cool decorative tile floors that had apparently been lost beneath grime for decades before they were rediscovered during renovations. We eventually came upon the Flinders Street Station, a really cool-looking train station that's apparently a Melbourne landmark. Then we headed to Federation Square, which was built to house the National Gallery of Victoria and some other cultural and retail things. I didn't get a good photo of the main courtyard, but this photo sort of captures the angular, modern, kind of ugly architecture of the place.
The National Gallery of Victoria was OK. It featured only Australian art, from Aboriginal stuff to classically-styled stuff to modern art. They didn't really have anything that I was familiar with, but some of the stuff was kind of cool. I don't really get the Aboriginal art, but some of the colors and patterns were interesting. There was one "modern Aboriginal" work that was pretty vehemently anti-American, which I wasn't crazy about, but generally the museum made for a pleasant diversion from all the outdoors activities that the trip was mostly focused on.
We wandered along the banks of the Yarra River, where there was a festival of some sort going on - carnival rides, and that sort of thing. There was also some sort of sporting event downtown (rugby or Australian Rules football - hard to tell), so there were lots of people walking around in football jerseys. We watched a bit of a water-ski jumping competition on the river, then, driven by curiosity about a spire we saw above the trees, crossed over to a large park containing the Shrine of Remembrance, the Royal Botanic Gardens, and the Queen Victoria Gardens. We never did find out what the spire was, but after we got back, I found out that it was St. Peter's Church.
We were pretty exhausted from all the hiking around, so we headed back to the hotel, walking through Chinatown along the way. Then the whole fiasco with the washing machine started - it wouldn't fill with water (the water was cut off at the pipe coming through the wall), then it took like an hour to wash a load of clothes (while we were starving waiting to go to dinner). We eventually got the clothes into the dryer and another load in the washer and walked a block down to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner and a t-shirt. I think the coolest thing they had in their collection was probably a guitar signed by Springsteen circa Born in the USA. The place wasn't crowded, the food was pretty good, and it was nice to have a bottle of ketchup on the table to go with my fries. After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to wait out the washing machine and dryer, and get packed up for an early flight to Townsville the next morning.
Monday, March 14th: Stuck in Melbourne
The day started off with some problems, and really only went downhill from there. We had an 8:15 flight from Melbourne to Townsville, so we left the hotel around 6 AM. When we got to the parking deck, we found out that it was a public holiday, the deck was closed and locked, and wasn't opening until 9 or 10 AM. That was problematic. I went back to the hotel to see what I could do about getting the car out of the deck, and luckily, the desk clerk had a key that would open the gate, so he took my cash and let us out of the deck.
We made a wrong turn or two on the way to the airport (their roads do weird things sometimes, so even when all you have to do is stay on one route number to get where you're going, you still get shafted) but we got there in plenty of time, got the car turned in, got our retroactive toll road charges paid, and checked in. This was our first domestic flight, on Virgin Blue airlines, and it turned out that we had way too much baggage. But the check-in guy was sympathetic and let us slide because we were international travelers, which was greatly appreciated. We got to the gate and waited for our flight while watching the fog roll in, and it wasn't long before we found out that our flight had been cancelled. Worse yet, they called all the Townsville passengers over to the side and told us that the next flight to Townsville was at 6 AM the next day, and that they couldn't do anything for us - if we wanted to complain, we'd have to e-mail or call the Virgin Blue corporate customer service people.
There was yet a glimmer of hope for us, though. We had planned to fly into Townsville and pick up a rental car, and drive the 4 or so hours up the coastal highway (the Great Green Way) to Cairns, where our next hotel was located. I really hated to lose the drive up the coast, but we asked if they could get us to Cairns any quicker than the next day. Luckily, there were a few options there, so they booked us onto a flight at about 3:30 PM and gave us passes into the Virgin Blue lounge. So we had to go collect our bags (which was looking like an ordeal, as we tried to describe our non-descript "large black bag and small black bag, and large blue bag and small blue bag" to a baggage handler ("so, two large blue bags and two small black bags?"). I was in the process of writing it down for him when our bags magically appeared, so that worked out.
We went and checked in again (and got the same check-in guy, who was pretty surprised to see us back again so soon), then tried to take care of our rental car situation. We had a car reserved in Townsville with Hertz, but found out that they didn't have anything available in Cairns. We inquired with Avis, who apparently don't try harder in Australia, at least, because the desk agent just pointed at the telephone that I could use to try to book the car myself. But they did have a car available in Cairns, so we booked that one and cancelled the one in Townsville, then settled into the lounge for a few hours' wait. The lounge was pretty nice, with some Playstations and a putting green and a small movie theater, but we just sat around, read, looked out the window, and watched all the flight delays on the screens. Sometime around 2 or so I started realizing that the plane we were supposed to leave on wasn't actually going to make it to Melbourne, so I talked to the desk agent in the lounge. She was very helpful, and informed us that our flight had been cancelled AGAIN. At least this time we were in the lounge, so they were a little more helpful in rebooking us and giving us food vouchers and stuff, but our new flight didn't leave until after 9 PM.
So, we basically lost an entire day in Australia sitting around the Melbourne airport from 7 AM until 9 PM. If the chairs had been comfortable, I'd say it was at least useful to have a total day of rest and recovery, but even in the lounge, they had those unique airport seats that actually make you more tired when you sit in them. All things considered, if you disregard the horrible scheduling problems, I was pretty pleased with my Virgin Blue experience. Aside from the helpful check-in guy, apparently the airline employs only hot 20-something women, which goes a long way. Everybody we dealt with was pleasant and as helpful as they could be, so everything was great except for that whole "spending an entire day and night in the airport" thing.
On top of this, we were also somewhat worried (going back to a weather report that we saw on our first day in Sydney) about what we were going to find when we arrived in Cairns, as a cyclone (southern hemisphere hurricane) passed somewhere north of Cairns a few days before we were to arrive and was threatening a return engagement. Luckily, everything was fine - aside from a bit of rain the night we arrived, the weather was gorgeous and there was no damage or anything. We dodged another bullet at the airport, in that the Avis agent was still at the desk when we arrived after midnight. The Cairns airport was small, one of those that shuts down when there aren't any flights due in, and we arrived MUCH later than we had anticipated when we reserved the car, but everything worked out OK.
We found our hotel, roused the night clerk from her bed, and checked in in a dark lobby. The room was fairly utilitarian (and was another of those "stick the key fob in the slot to activate power in the room" places), but the hotel was pretty nice overall. It was a bit hot and humid the first night, as we went to bed before the A/C really had a chance to catch up, but at least we weren't spending the night in the Melbourne airport.