Travelling in Australia, Part 4

Our next stop was Bonegilla. We were going to spend two nights there with Debbie and her lovely family.

 

When we had left Melbourne the weather had been cloudy with a bit of a promise of rain in the air but by the time we reached Bonegilla it was hot. And it was to get hotter. Nothing like the recent weeks have been in Oz but close to 36 degrees. But it was nice and cool indoors. And there was no fire danger.

 

Fire danger rating sign

 

This is where we saw our first live kangaroos. As we took a drive to Lake Hume we passed Latchford Barracks, an Army base, and there they were in a fenced-in area doing nothing. One supposes that they´d at least would bother to hop along but no. They were grazing in the grass and were determined not to come any closer.

 

But that was only the beginning of our animal encounters. Later in the evening Debbie had arranged for us to meet Bruce and Bouncer, 2 young wombats being cared for by registered wildlife carers. It was amazing. We got to hold them and were told how their mother had been killed in some sort of an accident. They weighed about 14 kg and loved being patted after they were sure that we meant no harm and they had their carers close by.  As far as we could tell, they were the happiest wombats on this earth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Nature wombats dig extensive burrow systems with rodent-like front teeth and powerful claws. You can see their claws and teeth in the picture. One distinctive adaptation of wombats is their backwards pouch, which is very handy when they are digging; that way they do not gather dirt in their pouch over the young. Although they are mainly active during twilight and at night, wombats also venture out to feed on cool or overcast days. They are not commonly seen, but leave ample evidence of their passage, treating fences as minor inconveniences to be gone through or under. They leave behind distinctive cubic droppings so you´ll know they´ve been around. So to get to hold them and observe them at such a close range was something not even all Aussies have done.

 

Wombats are herbivores; their diet consists mostly of grasses, sedges (which superficially resemble grasses or rushes), herbs, bark, and roots.

 

Wombats' fur colour can vary from a sandy colour to brown, or from grey to black. All three known species of wombats average around a metre in length and weigh between 20 and 35 kg.

 

Female wombats give birth to a single young in the spring, after a gestation period, which like all marsupials can vary, in the case of the wombat: 20–21 days. They have a well-developed pouch, which the young leave after about 6–7 months. Wombats are weaned after 15 months, and are sexually mature at 18 months.

 

Wombats have an extraordinarily slow metabolism, taking around 8 to 14 days (!!!) to complete digestion, which helps them survive in arid conditions. They generally move slowly. When threatened, however, they can reach up to 40 km/h and maintain that speed for up to 90 seconds. Wombats defend home territories centred on their burrows, and they react aggressively to intruders. The common wombat occupies a range of up to 23 ha.

 

 

Next day we went for drive in the mountains rounding Lake Hume. It is mainly a water reservoir and man-made artificial lake formed by the Hume Weir on the Murray River just downstream of its junction with the Mitta River. It is beautiful and it is easy to believe that its shores are used a lot by people going on a picnic or swimming, diving, fishing, boating or camping. I was told that it gets really packed with holidaymakers during the holiday season.

 

 

Scenery near Lake Hume

I am not quite sure if these ponds qualify as billabongs. Anyway, billabongs are ponds that are formed when river or creek changes direction and the billabong is cut off from the main source of water. Or maybe they are just watering holes for the cattle. An Aussie would know….

 

 

 

The lake looks funny because you can see dead trees in the middle of the lake or live trees a few metres from the shore marking maybe the previous waterline. Now there was plenty of water but it was obvious that that had not always been the case. When the lake was completed Tallangatta township had to be removed to a new location eight kilometres west from the original site, the old town is still there in the bottom of the lake.

 

Pelicans in Lake Hume

 

Hume Dam is the major operating storage of the River Murray system. The storage regulates the River Murray, and re-regulates water discharged from the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme.

Releases from Hume Dam and downstream tributary streams supply irrigation, domestic and stock and urban demands to Victoria and New South Wales, and provide about one-third of South Australia's entitlement.

 

 

 

 

 

We stopped for lunch at a general store. Does it not look like something you would expect to see in an old movie? Only the horse wagons and ladies in long skirts are missing.

 

 

 

Plenty of delicious food to be had

 

But also other stuff was for sale or on display…

 

Beautiful old things

 

 

 

Then for a pint in a pub run by an English lady. The only Australian beer brand that we knew of was Foster´s

lager and it  turned out not to be sold in Australia. But there were others….

 

 

 

 

 

One customer had had enough…

 

So many things beer can do for you. Here is just one example.

 

 

Some customers had obviously left without their bras. Some had been sent in later. Jasmin and I walked out wearing ours…

 

 

 

 

Travelling in Australia, Part 3

We had loved our time in Melbourne but it was time to move on and since we knew we would be coming back for our flight back home, we weren´t too sad to leave. We also managed to get our SatNav working with the help of our host who went online and solved the problem for us. It only needed rebooting and it was business as usual. Happy days! That was the one thing that we could not have done without. Take note.


The few days that we had already spent in Oz had given us reason enough to fall in love with the country and its people. Every day we had been faced with something new, something surprising, and something fun. The only thing that we had not laid our eyes on yet was the kangaroos. Not that it really was very surprising as we had been staying in Melbourne. We did not really expect the roos to be hopping about in the Melbourne Metropolitan area, the same as somebody would expect the polar bears to be roaming the streets of Helsinki, or maybe not quite! But the evidence of the kangaroos´ presence was made quite clear when we hit the Hume Highway; the carcasses by the road spoke loud and clear. Hardly surprising, given that there are 45 kinds of kangaroos and wallabies in Australia and their number is estimated to be over 50 million and counting. The roos are most active at dawn and at dusk so we decided to avoid those times if possible and when it wasn´t convenient to do so, drive very carefully keeping an eye on both sides of the road. 



Kangaroo warning sign (NB the innovative use of an old milk can as a mailbox)


However, there is not an awful lot you can do if the roos decide to cross the road where you happen to be driving. All the guide books told us to try and minimize the damage, of course, and if the worst came to happen, just let the roo take the shorter end of the stick.  After the hit, we were told, you should always check the roo´s pouch for live joeys (baby kangaroos), because the females usually have one in the pouch. Wrap the joey tightly in a sweater or any warm piece of clothing you have handy and take it to a vet in the nearest town or call Wildlife Rescue Services. Most vets, we were told, will treat native wildlife for free.
We were lucky not to have any accidents on the road or anywhere else, for that matter. The closest we came to wildlife on the road was to see an echidna (sometimes known as spiny anteater) cross the road in the rural part of our trip.





He was quick to start burrowing


We also witnessed flocks of cockatoos fly peacefully over the road. One of the amazing things that we who have seen these lovely birds only in gages in pet shops find hard to believe real. The rest of the fauna kept themselves well out of our sight. We did, however, find a stowaway in the car. It was the biggest spider we had ever seen. We found it hiding on the body of the car when we opened the back door. It gave us a scare but then we remembered that the small ones were the most dangerous and just shooed the guy away. Later we found out that it was a huntsman spider, the largest spider in Australia. It can bite you if it feels threatened but the bite causes only mild discomfort. It doesn´t weave a web to catch its prey, but stalks its prey and catches it running. So it moves very fast.



Our first acquaintance with Mr Huntsman


Here watch a nice video clip somebody made on the huntsman: http://largestfastestsmartest.co.uk/largest-spiders-in-australia-huntsman-spider/

Australia is a very big country, and while driving is a fun and interesting way to get around, one has to remember that getting from point A to point B might take several hours, although the kilometers might not always seem to indicate that or you might not think that they do. For instance, driving from Melbourne to Canberra, about 660 km, will take you about 7 hours ‘solid driving, which I don´t think anybody (in their right mind) wants to do. One of the biggest killers on the roads in Oz is fatigue. The rule is to take a 20-minute break every two hours. You think it is BS when you read about it, but once you are on the road, you very soon notice that the endless, monotonous road ahead will get the better of you. This is very true about the Hume Highway. First you admire the scenery with great enthusiasm but after a while you notice that it is the same all over again, as is the road ahead. You are tempted to drive faster and faster to break the monotony – or without even noticing it, if your car doesn´t have cruise control – but we were advised not even to think about it, not even a smidgen, in Victoria. New South Wales allows you to exceed the speed limit by 10 % but Victorian police will book you at 113 in a 110 km zone. And there are no 120 km zones, in case you wondered.



Not enough…

…to keep you awake…


…but they are trying to do something about it!

If this doesn’t wake you up…

…maybe this will…

…or this…

…or this…

…or this…

…or this…

…or this…

...you must be ready to take a break now!

Somebody cautioned us to be aware of the merging traffic. We forgot to ask how one is supposed to go about it, so we followed the gentleman´s rule: whenever a car was ahead of us, we let it go first. We later checked the rule online and it proved to be the thing to do. The zip merge.
 

This is a Zip Merge. The "new" one, introduced during the year 2000.

If any part of the other vehicle on your left or right is ahead of you, then you must give way. Zip Merges happen at any place two lines of traffic are forced into one line or lane and there are no lines to cross.

In the more remote parts of Australia there are a lot of road trains. Since we drove in Victoria, New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory, we did not see many of them but the ones that we saw were pretty impressive. And what are they? A pity I did not have a camera handy when we saw them and as they were on their way to the opposite direction – luckily – we do not have a picture of them.

A road train is a tractor trailer with multiple trailers (not a simple two-trailer truck). These trucks can have up to four full-size trailers behind them, and they can haul anything from food to cars to logs. Road trains really are enormous in length, some stretching over 50 metres in length, and weighing around 200 tonnes. So you would need a really long passing lane before you even start to think of overtaking these “babies”.

Oztransport supplies this photo online

Driving along the Hume Highway you get a few roadside cafés. They are the same as everywhere else. Junk food, coffee, a petrol pump, and a shop selling this and that. It is also quite easy to pick an exit and go to explore the small towns, which are normally no further than two to five kilometres from the Hume Highway. Some of these towns are really nice and provide a nice break, often also lunch or a cup of coffee with nice pastries. Or should I say really NICE pastries. Some of the towns boast antique shops but that is not what we would call them. Not that they do not have interesting stuff for sale, but antique I would call it not. As petrol stations seem to be few and far between these little towns are a safe bet.

Our mobile phones had different service providers (mine Telstra and his Vodafone), luckily, because most of the time one of them was without signal when we were driving. We found that very strange but thinking back we remembered somebody mentioning that earlier. The small towns that I mentioned earlier had coverage, which was good because we wanted to keep our hosts informed of our progress.

We had the phone numbers of our hosts on our phones´ address books but little did we think when we copied them that we should have been more careful writing down whether they were mobile or land line numbers. It is very difficult to tell which is which in a strange country, I can tell you that. So we ended up sending messages to people´s land line phones. Silly us!

On this happy note, I wish each and every one a very Happy 2013. May your travels take you faraway but also safely back home.

Next post by 20 Jan.

Travelling in Australia, Part 2

Glimpses of Melbourne metropolitan area

Melbourne, often called the Garden City and "cultural capital of Australia", is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2011, the greater geographical area had a population of 4.1 million.

The metropolis is located on the large natural bay known as Port Phillip, with the city centre positioned on the estuary of the Yarra River (at the northernmost point of the bay). The metropolitan area then extends south from the city centre, along the eastern and western shorelines of Port Phillip, and expands into the hinterland. The city centre is situated in the municipality known as the City of Melbourne. The metropolitan area consists of a further 30 municipalities.

Melbourne was founded in 1835 (47 years after the European settlement of Australia). It was named by Governor of New South Wales Sir Richard Bourke in 1837, in honour of the British Prime Minister of the day, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne. Melbourne was officially declared a city by Queen Victoria in 1847. In 1851, it became the capital city of the newly created colony of Victoria. During the Victorian gold rush of the 1850s, it was transformed into one of the world's largest and wealthiest cities.

Melbourne was ranked as the world's most liveable city in ratings published by the Economist Group's Intelligence Unit in August 2011 and again in 2012. The metropolis is also home to the world's largest tram network. Melbourne Airport, the main passenger airport, is the second busiest in Australia and the Port of Melbourne is Australia's busiest seaport for containerized and general cargo.

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Melbourne has a moderate oceanic climate and is well known for its changeable weather conditions. This is mainly due to Melbourne's location situated on the boundary of the very hot inland areas and the cold southern ocean. This temperature differential is most pronounced in the spring and summer months and can cause very strong cold fronts to form. These cold fronts can be responsible for all sorts of severe weather from gales to severe thunderstorms and hail, large temperature drops, and heavy rain. During our stay we witnessed very heavy rain with thunder, cloudy and chilly mornings with temperatures ranging from 12˚C to 16˚C and then a sudden heat wave in the afternoon with 36˚C. One afternoon the prevailing temperature of 35˚C dropped to 20˚C in half an hour! We had never experienced anything like it before, but there again, we had never been to Melbourne before.

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Yarra River

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Driving in Melbourne can be challenging. Roads can be confusing, there are trams everywhere, and there is a rule about turning right from the left lane at major intersections in the downtown centre (which leaves the left-hand lane free for trams and through traffic). Here, you must wait for the lights to turn amber before turning. Also, you must always stop behind a tram if it stops, because passengers usually step directly into the road. Add to this the general lack of parking and you'll know why it's better to get on a tram instead. Melbourne has the oldest tram network in the world. Trams are an essential part of the city, and a major cultural icon. Several hundred trams run over 325km (202 miles) of track or so one our guidebooks told us.

A new automated ticketing system on all train, tram, and bus services has been introduced in the Metropolitan area public transport: a reusable smartcard called MYKI.  Here is the information you get online:

Interstate and overseas visitors can now purchase the myki Visitor Pack, for travel on Melbourne's train, tram and buses throughout their stay.

The myki Visitor Pack includes:

·        A myki smartcard pre-loaded with enough value for one day's Zone 1 travel

·         Instructions on how to use myki

·         An inner Melbourne tram map

·         A myki protective wallet designed by renowned cartoonist Mark Knight

·         Discounts at 15 attractions worth more than $130 in savings

The myki Visitor Pack is available for full fare, concession, child and senior visitors.

·         A full fare myki Visitor Pack costs $14.00 including $8.00 myki money

·         A concession, child or seniors myki Visitor Pack costs $7.00, including $4.00 myki money

The myki Visitor Pack is now available from the PTV Hub at Southern Cross Station (near entrance at Collins and Spencer streets), the Melbourne Visitor Centre at Federation Square and SkyBus terminals at Melbourne Airport and Southern Cross Station.

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Although MYKI was just what we needed, it proved very difficult to obtain. Since we had our rental car, we never bothered to find out where at the airport they would have sold the card. Thus when we actually found ourselves being in need of the card, we were nowhere near the places where we could have bought it. With the help of our hosts we managed to get to the centre and to the Melbourne Visitor Centre. Since our means of getting there were not totally legit, I will say no more. The curious thing was that you could not buy any tickets at the station where we boarded the train. If they were saving money by not employing staff to sell tickets, they could well have used one of the guys who kept showing people how to get their MYKI card touched on and off to do the job. Although I must say that they had done a good job of hiding the electronic card readers on the side of the exit gates, thy-high (thus the guys pointing the screen to people). Even the locals seemed to struggle to find the touch-off pad. When you entered, it was pretty obvious where to touch on because the pad was where one expected to find it, on top of the automatic gate box.

And the three Ts are: top up to put money on the card, touch on to have a valid ticket, touch off to pay the lowest fee.

The City Circle Tram is the best way to get around the centre of Melbourne — and it's free. The burgundy-and-cream trams travel a circular route between all the major central attractions, and past shopping malls and arcades. The trams run, in both directions, every 10 minutes. The trams run along all the major thoroughfares including Flinders and Spencer streets. Burgundy signs mark City Circle Tram stops. Normal trams stop at numbered green-and-gold tram-stop signs. The free tram has recorded announcements of the most important places and tourist attractions in the vicinity of the next stop. The problem is that with all the clattering and general noise around you they are reduced to practically incomprehensive mumble. If you want to know where you are, it is best to carry the route map with you – not that there is any danger of getting lost.

The centre of Melbourne has so much to offer sight wise. Since we chose to spend only ONE day in the CBD, we had to limit our visits to the places we most wanted to see. We decided to skip Royal Botanic Gardens because we wanted to see Australian flora and were taken for a personal guided tour by our hostess to Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne, which is an absolute must for all garden enthusiasts and a feast for the eyes for anybody. For the same reason we gave Melbourne Zoo a miss and went to Healesville Sanctuary, which specializes in Australian animals, instead. More about both these places later.

Old Melbourne Gaol would have offered plenty to see and a special thrill in the form of a night tour by candlelight. This is the place where bushranger Ned Kelly was held a prisoner and where he eventually died.

Melbourne Aquarium offers a chance to see penguins being hand fed by the divers and an enormous walk-through tank with sharks and rays, among other things. But we were told that it more often than not has a very long queue to enter so we ticked it off too, since we had already  been to Minnesota Sealife Aquarium, which is the world´s largest aquarium with 10 000+ creatures.

We decided to see Melbourne Museum and it was worth the choice. It took us better part of the day but it was very interesting.

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The real thing: dissected from people who donated their bodies to medical education and research (on loan from The Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, The University of Melbourne)

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State Library of Victoria is a nice place with its exhibitions, bookshop, and café.

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Myer, Australian´s largest department store chain, has a store in Bourke Street. That was our next stop. Because it was November, their Christmas Windows had just been launched (9 November, 2012). Every year the new theme of the Christmas Windows remains a well-guarded secret while the artists, animators, and craftspeople are creating their magic for over six months to bring this Christmas tradition to Myer´s visitors. And attract people the windows did. There was a continuous line of people, old and young, but mainly parents with their children, waiting to view the windows up close. This year the theme was a tribute to a much-loved children´s book, Russell´s Christmas Magic.

Once we got past the queuing crowd we decided to have lunch at their café. The food was good, the service was swift, and the sparrows were ready to share your meal. Their presence is well explained by the fact that the café on the ground floor had partially open walls to the nearby street.

Prices in the store were sky-high but we managed to buy a little something for our kitchen at home.

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For every tennis enthusiast the place to visit is the Rod Laver Arena at Melbourne Park on Batman Avenue. Too bad we could not be in Melbourne in January, when the Australian Open is played. There are guided tours but we left it too late and missed them. But we will be watching the tournament in January. And we will definitely be back for some AO tennis!

St Kilda is the melting pot of arts and culture. From fish ´n` chips to fine dining, cafés, laid back sunsets on the boardwalk, to live music and community celebrations, and St Kilda Botanical Garden. And people jogging and even more people cycling. If you want to sit down and enjoy a great latte with a view, the pier café is just the place for you.

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Brighton beach, Bayside

This place puts you in a very good Aussie mood. People enjoying their Sunday afternoon out on the beach, even though the water was freezing, children and adults alike seemed to be loving it. A truly unique place.

The Brighton Bathing Box Association Inc. provides this information on its website:

For many years in the late nineteenth century, Brighton was Melbourne's favourite seaside destination. Brighton is located in the City of Bayside, which has 17 km of foreshore to Port Phillip Bay. Nestled on Dendy Street Beach, the Brighton bathing boxes are a popular Bayside icon and cultural asset.

Bathing boxes and boatsheds are intrinsic to Port Phillip Bay and Western Port. Much has been written about Victorian morality and its impact on how people went about bathing and enjoying the seashore. As a result of this morality bathing boxes had their origins not only in Australia but concurrently on the beaches of England, France and Italy. European bathing boxes exist to this day.

The 82 Brighton bathing boxes are unique because of their uniform scale and proportion, building materials, sentry order alignment and a Planning Scheme Heritage Overlay on a beach owned by Bayside City Council. As simple structures, all retain classic Victorian architectural features with timber framing, weatherboards and corrugated iron roofs. They remain as they did over one hundred years ago, as licensed bathing boxes. No service amenities such as electricity or water are connected.

Although approximately 1,860 bathing boxes, boatsheds and similar structures are located around Port Phillip Bay and Western Port, the Brighton bathing boxes are the only remaining structures of their kind close to the Melbourne central business district. As a functional remnant of a bygone era, they provide a cultural and historical resource that is constantly being photographed, painted or drawn.

Licensees choose to differentiate their bathing boxes with minor structural, artistic and colour variations. When viewed together they turn the beachscape into a collective work of art that can change by the hour according to season, light and colours.

If the thought of owning one of these bathing boxes crossed your mind, you might want to rethink it, unless, of course, you happen to be loaded. We were told that their prices are sky-high and that they are hard to come by but I wanted to find some evidence. Here it is. See below.

An article published in Sunday Herald Sun, May 29, 2011

THE auction of two Brighton bathing boxes is expected to raise $400,000.

Bayside council is building and selling two bathing boxes - numbers 58A and 58B - on Dendy St Beach.

The sale is part of a plan to build six new boxes, potentially netting the council about $1.2 million.

The first of the new boxes was auctioned in December and raised a record $215,000.

"What you are buying is an iconic space at the famous Dendy St Beach," Hodges Brighton director Sam Paynter said.

"It's an opportunity that doesn't come up very often."

The unpowered huts have soared in price over the past 10 years.

Locals were stunned when a box sold at auction for $46,000 in 1999.

Bayside council owns the land for each box and charges an annual fee of about $500.

The auction will be held on June 18.

Chadstone and Westfield were our designated places of shopping. Not that we actually bought anything much but it is nice to see what´s on offer. I especially like to see what the supermarkets stock and I also look to buy something special for the kitchen and bathroom. At least the selection of shops and stores made a nice change. There were very few shops that we had even heard of. We soon came to know what the most affordable places were, though. Big W and the Reject shop seemed to be where people did their Christmas shopping. We always look for new board games, too. This time we were not lucky. Also the shopping centres provide a good escape from the Melbourne 39 degree heat. For people like us who are used to the high prices of sushis, the sushi restaurants proved to be a paradise. Also the Chinese bakeries caught our eyes, or should I say mouths. One has to be careful with the parking though. The sings indicating the parking time are very inconspicuous, at least to a European eye.

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Williamstown was our last day target. Nice little town with some interesting shops. And the best ever park for dog walkers!

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Very dangerous :-)

There is so much to see and plenty to do in the Melbourne Metropolitan area that we feel that we hardly even scratched the surface.

This is my Christmas post and while I hope you enjoy reading it and sharing our experiences for a passing moment, I would also like to take this opportunity to wish each and every one a very Happy Christmas.

I hope to be able to post again in the first week of January of 2013, towards the end of the week. Watch this space!