Great Ocean Road and more

 Today we took as a quiet day as we fly again tomorrow. This will start with our fun long day yesterday.

It was another of those “set your alarm “ days as we were walking to the meeting spot for the tour. We left at about 6:45am to make our 7:15 meet up time a mile away.

Not sure why the light pole had this horse/unicorn on it. It was the only one we saw, so felt it was picture worthy 

This is the Queen Victoria’s women center

Here is what it said when I googled the place

The Queen Victoria Women’s Centre is an iconic Melbourne landmark that supports women (cis, trans and non-binary inclusive) through creative experiences, community resources and the power of connection.

Thought it was pretty cool building and mission statement

This is as we were getting to our pick up and drop off place, near the Yarra River 

These are tinted blue as they were taken out the window as I saw a couple of cool art displays

This one looked like a faerie condo

Once we left the city, we headed in land as this was a reverse trip and we were starting near where many other trips end their great ocean road part before heading back to Melbourne. This was a small group eco trip. Eight guest and the driver/guide

Our first stop, except for a bathroom break and tea, was near the twelve apostles rock formation

I have included these to show you the general area we were

There was a lot of driving this day, but also an active day with steps and hikes

This is from the view point the opposite direction of the rock formations

These are the rocks called the twelve apostles in the background 

We then drove a little ways down the ocean road to another area you could access the beach by climbing down a steep set of stairs. At the bottom we got a bonus as there has been so much rain, there was a small waterfall

You can see the start of the rocks we were by earlier in the background 

This was the first of several beach walks we got to take

Dale went to check out the makeup of the rock cliffs

We then went to this funky place for lunch. The food was pretty tasty for a one person operation and the surrounding were very unusual

It was a combo, museum, farmer market, small grocery store, cafe, and antique shop

A lot of the things around had price tags so I assumed they were for sale

Babs spent some time peering out the window as we headed to our next adventure a bit inland 

We took a hike in to see this falls

It was again a large number of uneven stairs and a muddy trail, but I managed to stay on my feet today on our hikes.

This was in the rainforest as we were walking back from the falls

It has been a wet winter and spring here, so plenty of water and vegetation 

Next we took a drive and then a stroll through what is now a park area, but started out as an experiment to find lumber trees

They brought redwood and sequoia trees in not realizing how long they took to grow, these are a little over a hundred and fifty years old.

There was a small river, one side was redwoods and sequoias and the other was native trees

Our day took us back to the ocean road. We then headed into Apollo Bay which is the main resort town for this part of Australia 

We grabbed some ice cream before heading for our walk

Here is another of those beach walks I mentioned earlier

This town was not all modern stores, even though it was a main resort area, it had a small town feel 

The trees at the park near the beach were so perfectly shaped by nature

As we continued down the ocean road a way for our last real hike of the day

This was our obstacle course as there had been so much rain many of the area was quite boggy

We saw delightfully bright parrots 

And sleeping koalas

I had seen both in the many wildlife parks we have stopped at, but it was cool seeing them in the wild

We then continued down the great ocean road heading back to Melbourne looking out for kangaroos in the wild. We saw one but as it was in the distance and we were on the road moving, no pictures were captured

We had a brief stop off  at another beach just to stretch our legs and hit the bathrooms before our final two hour stretch back to Melbourne 

This was the beach club and safety training building by where we stopped

As we headed out to return, the sun finished it’s daily journey in the sky here. The trip was about 12 1/2 hours from when we left on the tour until we returned to our starting point. According to my watch we walked about 7 miles this day and did 35 flights of stairs. This included our mile walk to the tour meeting and back to our hotel

Today was laundry day as we have gotten a bit muddy the last few day and did not want to pack such dirty clothes

The whole gang walked the couple of blocks to the laundry facilities and now we have clean clothes. I spent most of the day cleaning up emails and working on my iPad. Dale took a walk mid afternoon. We are going to the theater in a little while to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Tomorrow morning we are flying out to Tasmania.

See you all later, hope you are doing well.

A wild life today

 Today was a tour day

We planned on taking the free city circle tour of downtown Melbourne at 10am this morning

We wandered up the street and waited at the bus stop with a couple of other people. We got there slightly before 10am and it still had not come by 10:40 am so we gave up. As we were to get picked up at 12:30pm for today’s tour.

We went back to our hotel and got things ready for our tour, then went out to find lunch. We decided to eat here on the name alone

I was pleasantly surprise at how good it was. Asta definitely approved 

It very much looked how I pictured a 1940’s diner

Our guide picked us up for our small group tour and we headed here first

I had not feed the kangaroos at any of the other Australian animal parks we have been to, but our guide gave us food to feed them today, so I figured, why not

We also got a really good look at the kookaburra 

A Tasmanian Devil

These huge geese

And the new like ones

Including this wallaby and the baby in her pouch, the one whose head is peeking out near the ground

This is the most active that I have seen a koala 

This dingo is just so beautiful

And it was snack time for the wombat 

We had a couple of scenic stops. One was at this lovely windy beach of Cape Woolamai

The water bill as a lovely blue and the beach sand was soft 

Next we drove around Phillips Island to the surfing beach, where a number were enjoying the waves

The area we had driven through to get to the island after we left Melbourne, was dairy farm country 

We next stopped at seal rock lookout. It is nesting season for the seagulls and they dotted the hillside by the board walk.

These goose are all over on this island, but almost extinct elsewhere

We were told these Rocks house a large fur seal colony, but as they are a mile off shore and this was the best my camera could get, I will just have to believe what I was told

They had a small nice visitor center there

We then drove a ways down the coast and had another picture stop to show how rugged the volcanic coast is

This is the bay right next to the one we went to for the penguin parade

This is the bay we were going to for the penguin parade as seen from our photo stop

We got to the visitor center in time to grab some dinner before our ranger guided tour

These penguins are burrowing ones and where the soil is extra hard, the ranger have made some wooden burrows

This is another of the birds they preserve is helping to come back from near extinction by getting rid of the predators that man brought in. Mainly the foxes

This family of endangered geese are out for a pre dusk stroll

Usually these penguins do not come ashore until dusk or a little after and then mainly in groups as hawks and birds of prey are their biggest land worries.

There were also some wallabies out for an early evening

These are a couple of other early birds using the safety of the raised walkway. These birds are, when full grown, less than a foot tall and weight only a pound or two.

This is the beach they will come in on

We had some awesome sets, but these the last pictures we were allowed as it was almost dark and no pictures were permitted after dusk as it disorients the penguins if flashes go off. They just band all photography so there would not be any problem. We sat here for about twenty minutes and watched as they came ashore in groups of 70 to over one hundred. They are quite noisy also as they gather in the shallows and come ashore in masses. After twenty minutes we walked back to the visitor center on these walkways with penguins walking right by them, so we got up close views. It was so fun

Back at the center Asta posed with a taxidermy penguin so I could show how small they are. The kangaroo is only about 6 or 7 inches tall

I wanted to grab a postcard of the penguins, but they were sold out, so I got this magnet instead.

The colony on Phillips Island is the largest in the world of these fairy penguins, who are the smallest of the 18 different kinds of penguins. They believe this colony numbers about 40,000 on the island. But in one night one fox can kill 40 of them. Also only 1 in 5 chick live to the age they can reproduce. 

We got back nearer 10pm and I am just getting this out before heading off to bed.