Australia part 7
I rejoiced! I got to wear my jeans that had traveled all that way! It was in the 60s (F) Sadly because of all the rain we didn’t get to go to the beach because of poop. But we did want to see PP Island and it was a long drive!
I had thought parts of Melbourne were touristy but here is where we saw the equivalent of our Cape Cod in terms of signage, types of vehicles and having a single point on entry onto the island. Despite the cooler weather a lot of Aussies were still out on the road! We took the time to get gas and were all excited about finding Diet pepsi!
I didn’t write many notes or take a lot of pictures because I wanted to be in the moment. I listened to the radio, we chatted about story ideas and just took in the roadside. Frank guessed correctly that there would be parking at the Nobbes Center and for a rainy (and to the Australians) cold day it was still crowded. The building was nice and we grabbed lunch and that is where we had our worst meat pies. They didn’t ask, they just gave us a condiment cup full of tomato chutney and for once, I welcomed my tomato sauce overlords. We had a great view from our seat of the seacoast.
Sidenote: Everywhere we went to eat, no one expected us to bus our own dishes. It was odd because here you’d better clean your mess AND put it in the proper containers. One of the employees made owl eyes when we set our stuff on the catering tray and threw away our paper plates.
But we braved the high winds and went out onto the boardwalk. It was windy (like ‘hold yer hat, Martha!”kind of windy) and there was some drizzle but it actually felt kind of nice after so much heat. (You Australians are laughing, I understand. If it could be 68-72 degrees all the time I’d be pretty happy)
Frank took some great pictures. The water was an amazing blue where the foam churned it up and all the folks kept going on about the penguins. I guess the penguins go out at dawn and come back at dusk so there are actually Penguin Gates to keep out cars at certain times so they can come back safely. That there were penguins was no mystery -there were nest boxes, a ton of advertising and I could smell them. I didn’t see a lot of feathers but then-wind.
I was a good pedestrian and kept to the left and was amazed at all the folks in winter jackets and shorts. *shrug.* I’m sure people thought we were crazy not to have jackets. We went on all the boardwalks we could and then started stopping at random points on the outer loop road. One of these was a beach at low tide-here I found really interesting flotsam of sponges, seaweed, starfish and shells. I would have loved to bring some back for ravena_Kade but customs. Here I did see feathers and penguin trails up to the additional nesting burrows. I looked at tide pools and they did have as many active critters-mostly snails and I saw no crabs or other small critters. I did not put my hand in any of them for lots of reasons-including blue-ringed octopus
Some fisherpeople passed us-all bundled up for the wind. They said hello. Frank drew me a heart in the sand-very romantic. We went around as much as we wanted to see THEN stopped at the mall on our way back. Because we had an early flight we went back fairly early and to bed.
Frank’s entry
http://fbhjr.livejournal.com/1130804.html#cutid1
Next stop: New Zealand