Phillip Island, more penguins than people

Here’s where we spent Christmas… We spent 3 nights in one place to unpack & unwind from the long driving days.

The first day there, we took a really long walk (7 miles) along the beach, and up this point of coast.

The high coastline was really cool, with green areas – where some rare birds nest.

The point of the coast has really huge rock formations that are still changing as the wind & wave break them down – these rocks are 300 million years old.

The colors of the water on the other side of the point were unbelievable.

There were all kinds of wildlife, including birds (and a broken egg shell), lizards, butterflies, and a few animal skeletons… There were tons of animal tracks in the sand, too. We also saw these weird clusters of snails all over the plants.

That night (Christmas Eve), we went to see what makes Phillip Island famous – The Penguin Parade. There is a colony of Little Penguins (also called blue penguins or fairy penguins) that lives on the southwest corner of the island. They waddle out to sea every morning (pre-dawn) and waddle back to land every night, to feed their offspring. The (Department of Conservation??) has set up a raised, non-invasive viewing boardwalk around the colony, and the penguins walk right by to their nests. They are noisy and clumsy, and it is really cool to watch. The babies sit at the “doorways” of the nests and squeak/shout for their parents to return. About 1700 penguins return each night (it varies because some stay out at sea for a few days at a time).

Here’s Vince in front of his giant penguin friend… (it's not real).

No photography of any kind is allowed once you’re outside (heavily enforced), so we have no pictures of the penguins. These are from the Penguin Parade organization - but it looked just like this!

On Christmas, we took another walk, and then sat here and read our books.

Then we cooked ourselves a little feast including marinated beef roast, broccoli, sweet potatoes (or yams?? What’s the difference?) salads with avocado, rolls, and red wine. It tasted better than it photographed, I promise. And we weren’t taking our contacts out at the dinner table, that’s just a contact case that we used to hold salt & pepper while we’re traveling. We also had delicious apple pie a la mode (NOT homemade) for dessert.

Merry Christmas, and Bon appetite!

Lakes Entrance, it is what is says

We continued our journey south from Canberra on the inland route towards Lakes Entrance, a small town on the southwestern coast. This was just a one night stop-over to break up the drive to Phillip Island. We stayed in a motel off a dirt road on a bluff above the ocean and fended off some bugs during the night.

The drive south from Canberra passes through some drier portions of the country, a departure from the lush coastline and forests we had grown accustomed to.

The last portion of the day’s travel was a winding drive through several national parks. There were some great views coming over some of the crests and great forests all around.

Lakes Entrance derives its name from a series of long narrow lakes, with a thin sand barrier to the ocean, which flows into the ocean at a single point.

Down at the lake there is a small stretch (maybe 3 blocks) of shops and restaurants overlooking a harbor. We crossed it along the foot bridge pictured above and walked out onto the beach, pictured below:

The beach was a wide stretch of fine light colored sand. Along the way we crossed many seashells, washed up jelly fish, and a pair of black swans.

We walked along the beach up to the end at the lakes entrance, where the waves crash into outflowing water. We ended the day crossing back over the foot bridge to this beautiful time of day over the lake.

The next day we followed the inn-keeper’s suggestion to visit Raymond Island, which is barely an island. There is a very narrow stretch of water that separates it from the mainland that can only be crossed taking this absurdly slow ferry. It takes it about 10 minutes to cross what we could probably swim in 3.

The reason to visit Raymond Island is to see koalas (as demonstrated by Vince and a random kid) in their natural habitat. They have a well-marked path through the houses on the island and we saw four in total, including this mother and baby (the baby is hard to distinguish, the mother is holding it).

Another recommendation from our inn-keeper was to see the inside of “the church next-door to McDonald’s” as he put it. The ceiling and altar paintings, done by an Italian immigrant, were quite impressive by Australian standards.

We were later briefly stopped by our one and only cow crossing.

Right before Phillip Island is a wind farm up on a hill overlooking the ocean. You can drive right up to these huge, white windmills that we would later see more of them in abundance along the south coast.

Canberra, with a capital C

This picture is from the top of the “New” parliament building, with the “Old” parliament building immediately behind, and the War Museum in the distance (across the river and against the mountain).

Canberra is the capital of Australia. It’s a perfectly (or imperfectly, if you don’t know your way around) planned city with strange, concentric circular roads, and buildings lined up in a scenic way. It’s extremely clean, extremely green, with waterways and bike paths and wide roads – really livable. It’s a small city, so you can always see where you’re trying to go, but all the circular roads make it nearly impossible to see how to get there.

We only spent one night there, and we had time to quickly see all of the major attractions.

The first sight we went to was the War Memorial & Museum. It has a collection of memorials for different wars, leading to the main museum. The museum was much more than we were expecting, consisting of extremely well-done memorials & exhibits of the wars and battles that Australia has been involved in. I must say, I never really realized that they were such a military presence, but they certainly have been – they have made major commitments (and huge sacrifices) in both World Wars, as well as most of the wars that the U.S. has been involved in (including Vietnam and Korea).

There were 2 corridors of walls like this, with the names of all the Australian soldiers who have died in battle.

We learned a lot about the battle of Gallipoli. We heard about it while we were in Turkey, and then we learned a lot more in Australia – but I had never even heard about it before traveling. It was a huge battle in World War I (1915), where the losses where huge – (46,000 allied lives lost total; nearly 9,000 were Australians).

The museum had these dioramas of many important battles – What’s cool is that the displays are really accurate – I’ve never seen anything like it. The museum worked with historians, artists, and eye-witnesses and photographs (whenever possible) to make these intricate displays accurate – down to local vegetation and uniform details.

It was just really interesting to get another “history” of the wars from another non-European country, especially World War II – Australia joined before the U.S. did, possibly because they were so close to the Japan/Pacific side of things.

This is the “Old” Parliament house, built in 1927 – it’s now a museum:

And this strange one is the “New” Parliament house:

There’s me with another Christmas tree, in the lobby of the parliament house:

And here is the chamber where Parliament gathers:

This is a bell tower on the river:

Finally, we took a stroll outside of the National Art Gallery, fun sculptures…

Blue Mountains, not Blue Ridge, but a bit of John Denver

The Blue Mountains are a popular day trip from Sydney, but even in our two days there we felt like we only got a taste of what the area has to offer. It is a large region of little mountain towns, incredible mountain passes, breathtaking views, and natural wonders.

The most affordable accommodations happen to be in the Carrington Hotel in Katoomba, which was originally opened in 1882. It had some really nice old fashion charm, a great location, and a killer continental breakfast. Of course, we stayed in the budget, shared bathroom wing, not the fancy suites.

The Three Sisters are the poster child of the Blue Mountains. They are quite stunning set along a mountain ridge overlooking a huge forest covered valley. The table top mountains with shear cliffs give a Grand Canyon type feel.

We walked up to an overhang in the back of the three sisters. From there we continued our journey down the Giant Stairway, a series of steps along the side of the mountain that descend to the valley below.

The walk down to mountain and through the valley was surrounded by lush forests with ferns, moss covered rocks, streams, and some large trees.

Our hike back up from the valley was steep and wet, as we got caught in the rain with just one umbrella. For some reason the other one got left at home. Megan was drier, but equally as cold. We passed by a series of cascades alongside the path.

Thankfully the rain finally let up and we got another great view from the top. The picture shows plumes of steam that were rising from the forest below, which was a very cool site to see.

The next day, we had a beautiful drive on our way to the Jenolan Caves, which included some pretty steep, narrow roads. You actually drive up through this massive cave called the Grand Arch to get to the ticket office and parking lot.

The Jenolan Caves were first explored in the 1860s and has a large network of caves. They have several different tours that take you to different parts of the caves and we joined the most popular one that takes you to the largest caves. We crawled through a long system of caves with tons of interesting formations including the broken column and interesting bacon-like formations hanging overhead. Concerts are actually held in one cavern we visited that is several stories tall and has great acoustics. Famous performers include none other than John Denver.

This is another massive cave called The Devil’s Coach House. It is absolutely enormous and is lined with interesting limestone formations. There is also a hole in the roof that lets in beams of light that give it a special feel.

This is the view from Evan’s Lookout over some sheer cliff sides. It is kind of reminiscent of the Grand Canyon with its flat mountain top plateaus with sharp drop-offs into the valley below.

We hiked down the mountain to get this view of the huge Wenworth Falls. It was pretty windy so the water was being blown all over the place, including all over us in sections of the hike. The light was hitting the spray from the falls just right and we were treated to this huge rainbow within the falls.