Hobart to Sydney

We had a few Griswold adventures today.... We woke up around 8am and had a leisurely breakfast of tea, yogurt, breakfast bars, and bananas in the hotel room before checking out. We had arranged for the airport shuttle, which we had prepaid, to pick us up at 845 for our 1055 departure. When we were at the hotel desk, the clerk told me the shuttle left at 915 and the next one was at 1115!

We hastily hailed a taxi and a nice lady took us to the airport, where I paid the $55 fare on my Visa. After saying our goodbyes, we got to the check in counter where we showed our passports, which I had retrieved from our trip ' folder'. We proceeded through security and were waiting to board when the gate agent paged me (?) to the counter.

Seems I had left my visa card with the taxi driver who returned to the airport to turn it in to the airline! I wouldn't have noticed until we had arrived in Sydney otherwise. Furthermore, she paged me AGAIN and presented me with our trip folder, which I had abandoned at teh check in counter. Not an auspicious start to teh day.

THe flight to Sydney was uneventful, adn Marc and Barbara met us at the airport and ferried us around town and then to lunch, after a stop at a beautiful viewpoint to see the Opera house and the bridge across the harbor. What a magnificent site, and the cruise ship terminal is right between them.

Marc deposited us at the Condo and they returned home to their COMPANY and will pick us up again tomorrow for a day's outing, dinner on their barbie, and an overnighter at their home. THey are great folks and it is great to catch up with them again.

A drizzly day in Hobart

We awoke to a typical Victoria winter day in Hobart. Temp around 15C with a drizzly rain coming down. We elected to take a hop-on, hop-off, city tour ($26Ea) but stayed aboard as the weather didn't cooperate. Saw some typical homes from the 1800's where the city's affluent resided near Sandy bay and down below, the one bedroom servant's quarters. Seems the servants were freed convicts, and Hobart's gentility didn't want them living in their homes for fear of theft. The servants got no wage, only food and lodging for their labor. Also saw the statue of the former governor of Tasmania, Mr. Franklin, who led the ill-fated expedition in search of the Northwest passage.

We saw an Antarctic exploration ship provision and set sail this morning for a 6-8 month stint on the ice continent. We also toured the local museum/art gallery and saw some exhibits of the aborigine's crafts; water ewers made from kelp and baskets woven out of iris stems, as well as an Antarctic exhibit describing life in the research facility on Macquarie island.

Hotel is nice and modern albeit with a squeaky door to our room with a latch that doesn't always.

We had brunch at the hotel's 'Tasman' restaurant for $56 for two. Not quite the same as our normal friday fare at Radar's roost, and not as good.

Tomorrow AM we catch the airport shuttle at 915AM to get our Jetstar flight to Sydney at noon. Kind of blows of a day travelling, but we are looking forward to Sydney, seeing our friends Marc and Barbara, and warmer, drier weather.

Hobart, Tasmania

We took a coach tour to Port Arthur today via a little town, Richmond, on the southeast coast of Tasmania. As we left Hobart, we met a lady on the tour, Shirley, who as it turned out, lives in Nanaimo!

The coach and 8 of us tourist wound its way over the countryside past boutique wineries and grassy fields that were brown dirt a year ago. After 5 years of drought, teh region is recovering and the agricultural areas we saw are quite verdant now. Hobart is home to around 200,000 residents and the average age of Tasmanians is around 65!

Richmond is a quaint little town with many of the buildings dating back to the 1800's and many of the buildings were constructed using convict labor. From there, we travelled to Port Arthur, the site of a British penal colony in teh mid 1800's that housed over 1100 convicted 'criminals' many for life. Crimes included negligence in the death of a master's sheep (7 Years) to stealing a painting (life imprisonment). Needless to say, conditions were pretty gruesome and only two recorded escapes over the 40 year span of active incarceration. The prison was self-sustaining even to the extent of turning a profit through the sale of manufactured shoes, clothes and produce.

Afterwards we returned to Hobart and a great meal at the Drunken Admiral, a quaint 30 year old establishment that served great mussels (Brian) and Thai peanut stir fry veggies with prawns and scallops (Peggy).

Penguin Parade, and now Hobart

We spent our last day in Melbourne travelling the west side of the large bay to Phillip Island.
We arrived around 3:30 and then we visited a farm homestead and saw Wallabees and then to a Koala reserve for an up close and personal with some of the marsupials. The reserve had an elevated boardwalk, allowing you to walk amongst the Eucalyptus trees at eye level with the little critters.
Weather was 'iffy' with fairly steady winds from the NW and rain showers.

After dinner in Cowes, with David and Sue from Virginia, we travelled to the Penguin Parade center at Summerland beach arriving around 7:30. We donned rain ponchos and ventured out to the viewiing area where around 8PM, several thousand small 'fairy' Penguins arrived through the pounding surf onto the sandy beach and made their way past the grandstand we were seated in and over the sand dunes into their burrows located along a boardwalk and up the embankment leading away from the beach. The penguins were around 30-45cm tall and weigh about 1KG. They eat half their body weight each day and have returned to Summerland beach in this way every day for thousands of years. They are now into breeding season and, once they found their respective burrows, started a cacaphony of squacking and shreeks ( and those were the MALES).
Peggy and I were both amazed to see this phenomenon 'up close and personal' and didn't mind getting a bit wet and cold to witness it. We left the reserve around 9;00 in a downpour for a 2 hour ride back to Melbourne.

This morning, we were up at 6:30 and caught the airport shuttle from teh Hotel to Melbourne's main airport for our flight aboard Jetstar A320 to Hobart. After checking in and unpacking a bit, we ventured down to the marina area for a bite to eat. The harbour area reminds us both of Bergen, Norway, and even has a mountain as a backdrop, Mount Wellington, with views of the city and harbor.

The Great Ocean Road

We took a Grayline coach tour with Adrian our driver/tour guide along the Great Ocean Road. T he road was created as a 'make work' infrastructure project for soldiers returning from WW1. It is about 200KM in length and winds along the southern coast of Australia.

We stopped for lunch in Apollo and sat with an Asian couple from Virginia who were also on the coach. We also stopped at a point of land that demarc's the joining of the Pacific ocean and the Indian Ocean at the "Bass Strait'. The only thing between that point of land and Antarctica is 2000 miles of Ocean.

The highlight of the tour was visiting the 12 apostles. The Twelve Apostles have been created by constant erosion of the limestone cliffs of the mainland that began 10–20 million years ago. The stormy Southern Ocean and blasting winds gradually eroded the softer limestone, forming caves in the cliffs. The caves eventually became arches and when they collapsed rock stacks up to 45 metres high were left isolated from the shore.
We took a heli-tour for 8-10 minutes along the coast for $70Aud each but it was well worth it, judging by Peggy's smiles. We learned about the wreck of the Loch Ard, which ran aground near Muttonbird Island. There were only two 18 year old survivors, a ship's deckhand and a girl passenger, of the 50+ on board who came ashore on what is now known as Loch Ard gorge.
Muttonbirds migrate 30000 miles from Alaska to brood on this rock every year. They spend the day searching from food, returning to the rock in the late afternoon. The Helicopters are grounded so they don't interfere with the birds' routine.

We returned to Melbourne around 754PM and had a late dinner of Pizza and pasta at a small cafe in Degrace lane, around the corner from our hotel, before turning in.

MELBOURNE

Had a great day touring Melbourne on Saturday. Melbourne reminds us of NYC in some ways. It is very clean and feels very safe with several greenbelt parks and tree lined boulevardsI swear many of the 3.7M Melbournians were in the city.
We took a bus tour around the downtown core, and met two ladies from Brisbane. We went to the top of the 57 storey Rialto tower for some outstanding 360 views of the city and had lunch there.We then walked the river walk on the South bank of the Yarra before stopping back at the hotel for a rest and change of clothes (Melbourne cools when the sun goes down and the onshore winds pick up).
Back to the Rialto for the sunset and a night perspective on the city finishing with gas fire plumes erupting in front of the Crown Casino complex. Met the Brisbane ladies once more and spent dinner with them and exchanging emails.

Off to St Kilda today with Susan Thomas, Olivia and Miles.....

A series of firsts.....

A series of firsts: First flight on a 747 (now to do an A380) First time crossing the international date line First time crossing the equator ( when we went north of the Arctic circle, we became 'bluenoser's'. Does this mean we are now... brown-nosers?) First time visiting Aussie-land after a 30 (count 'em) 30 hour trip! (blew into Tokyo on the heels of a Typhoon to find NO SUSHI!).

We are now 'resting' in our hotel, a fairly spartan place, but clean and right downtown Melbourne.