Australia Day 2
Google Maps has its usual problems -it doesn’t really announce turns until you are making them and you have to hope you chose the right turn-off in a roundabout (rotary) And it’s a good thing Frank grew up driving around in Boston because like our large city, it has no signage, just towns and highways that could be going by up to three names. Frank is beginning to get used to disappearing lanes and merges. We find that Aussies are good at queuing and amazingly polite drivers. One hazard (which we have at some intersections) is that even if you have the walk light, some folks have the green to turn and you can’t just walk out without looking.
Today was Pat the Wombat Day, the Day Frank has been looking forward to for months. And as it turns out-it was good he didn’t take the zoo worker’s advice and just sign up on the day because ALL the slots for ALL the animals are filled.
The drive to Yarra Valley was gorgeous, with hills filled with vineyards, farms and livestock. And when I say “lots of vineyards” I mean A LOT. In fact one enterprising tour company apparently loads up the customers and takes them to the zoo (Wild Wombat winery tours-)
The feel of Healeville is a combo of Gatorland and the Bronx Zoo-modern buildings, wide paths and lots of places to buy food/drink. We grabbed meat pies (Tasty) and started on our path. Since our encounter wasn’t until 2:00pm we managed to take in all but one part of the zoo. I made two swings through trying the see the lyrebirds but they mostly sat in the trees and moped.
Side Note: Mynah birds seemed to take the place of grackles and lorakeets and cockatoos were flying all over the place. Most of the Aussies felt about their birds as we do about ours but these are pet exotics in the US
Plenty of other Americans around.
We saw kangaroos for the first time up close but they were allowed to bounce around in a fairly open area with easy contact with humans which surprised me (oh but was I in for surprises later…) they couldn’t give a rat’s patoot until designated staff came by with feed trays. There were a lot of enclosures with what we called “airlocks” that is, a space/foyer that couldn’t have both doors open at the same time to prevent escape.
Saw a cassowary for the first time and then as we looped around for Wombat “Pat and Play” that’s when they had to evacuate the park. People were surprisingly orderly. We received free tickets to return and told we had to rebook online.
Note here: we never got the sim card accepted by AT&T and were essentially phoneless the entire trip. So no calls to anyone or anything, we relied on Facebook to keep in touch with people.
So we headed back to Melbourne and Frank brought us up onto the tallest building. We didn’t do the “skydeck” but that was fine we did the ‘walking on glass over tremendous heights’ things for my 50th.
And when for supper at the Belgian Beer Café which wasn’t crowded and the place people seemed to come for a beer after work. It was here I observed that waitstaff are much more mellow. You can sit as long as you like and enjoy your food. It is NOT like that here in the US!
From there we went walking at the river and saw a sea lion frolicking in the water! I wouldn’t have noticed except another couple stopped to look at it. And it took us a couple of tries to realize it was a sea lion not a seal (we only get seals) and then headed back to our apartment.
Frank's Entry: http://fbhjr.livejournal.com/1129121.html
Next: Museums!