6.03.2007
Melbourne'06
I know! This is like half a year late! I'm such a procrastinator. I think I'll have to rack my brains to remember the things we did back then!
21st December'06
We set off for Phillip Island early in the morning. I was the navigator and it was stressful (as usual), even more so because I couldn't trace our entire route with the directory. Halfway through tracing, the map had "End of Maps" at the edge of the page. So where do we go from there? We realised why along the way, though, it was so ulu that it'd be silly to make a map out of that place, with six big squares and a road running through the centre of the page! Still, it was easy enough to get to the place, thank goodness for tourist road signs.
It was a hot and sweltering day, due to some bush fires raging someplace in Victoria. We almost couldn't make out the beach and the ocean while on the island! Poor Xueting was in wool and boots.
We got this really fun place called Amaze 'N' Things.
Fancy my head?
We had so much fun mucking around with 1-way mirrors, playing with treasure chests and defying gravity in strangely-oriented rooms, that we forgot to take pictures. These are the only few I've got.
Who's taller?
The coolest thing we did was to try out the vertical slide:
Vertical Slide
The above picture was taken by Xueting just a split second after I slid down. Free falling is cool! (I still don't wanna try bungee jumping.) This was good enough! To give you guys an idea of what I did, let's take a look at this picture:
Let go!!
Us in our workman clothes
I did have a professional shot of myself free-falling, but I didn't purchase it because I looked completely calm in the photo. No kick!
We spent our whole evening and night watching the Penguin Parade thereafter. Photography wasn't allowed, which explains the absence of cute little penguin photos in this blog entry. That's really sad because my words alone will not be enough to let you guys know the extent of their cuteness!
Apparently, one of the parent goes out to sea to hunt for food every day, while the other stays at home with the kids. At dusk, the penguins gather at shore to raft up for protection in numbers, cross the beach, and waddle back to their burrows. They are seriously cute! We sat at the shore anticipating their arrival for approximately ?45 minutes, when the first group of penguins came to shore, appeared, got scared, and shot back into the sea. "Aawwws" echoed through the crowd. They appeared, reappeared, appeared, and did that jig for a few times before an impatient little one apparently had enough of the dawdling and just went for it! So it waddled away at the front leading the pack, and thereafter the place was peppered with penguins! Imagine 45cm tall penguins waddling tirelessly away to get back to their burrows =P Pretty soon, the place was filled with excited squawks and calls of excited penguins greeting their respective partners. Some penguins lost their balance and fell down face-first in the sand. Nobody would think that it's easy waddling up a slope of sand, ay? =P
We hung around the beach for quite some time before we decided that it was getting late and we better head back to Melbourne. Still, we observed heaps of penguins burrowing away at the side of boardwalks, followed some to their home, and accompanied some who lived so far inland on their walk home. It was at least another 45 minutes before we well and truly left that place! Penguuiiiinss...
On the way back I was so sleepy I kept nodding off into the street directory, giving directions like "turn left" when what I really meant was "turn right". We got on the wrong highway and only managed to make it back to YHA well after midnight. Yikes.
22nd December'06
Gold Mining at Ballarat!
Xueting offered to relieve me of my navigator duties and I must say I was very grateful. Also, she's a natural. Haha!
We reached Sovereign Hill just before lunch (I think). I was charmed by the antiquated little village.
Horse-drawn Carriages
Pretty dresses
Then again, no one dresses like that anymore unless they want to be mistaken for a life-sized doll.
Red Coats
That's the parade with a total of six soldiers. Haha!
Gosh I look so short
That's the cutest soldier among all of them, even Yuwei said so!
Gold Panning
Cold Panning is apparently a must at this attraction. However, for the life of us we couldn't figure out what the heck we were doing with the pan and shaking! After a while we just gave up and wandered around the place.
We went for a Gold Mine Tour, in which we were taken to this really cool (literally) place to have a glimpse of what gold mining was like in the past.
Our guide
The Widow Maker
This contraption was designed to take the miners to new places and deeper underground. It is so noisy in use that many miners apparently went deaf. It is also dangerous to work with, and an accident with it can easily kill a miner, hence the name!
Gold
There's some of the gold that they were unable to mine because doing so might make the tunnel collapse.
There is still a lot of gold left in that area. We reckoned that we should be buy a house there and just start digging underground! Dig-a-dig, a-dig, a-diggity-dig...
Gold Pour Demonstration
Confectionary
There was even an old-fashioned confectionary in the village where I greedily bought Humbags and Boiled Candy. =D
Rainbow
Saw this rainbow as we were having dinner at Red Rooster's. I rushed out to take a photo!
23rd December'06
Spent the day wandering around Melbourne City, shopping and eating. Nothing much exciting!
Forgot what this place was
Choco Santa
Train Station
Horse-drawn Carriages in the city
24th December'06
Finally, Great Ocean Road!
Bells Beach
The weather was still cool then, windy, but sunny too. Nice beach!
Here's where we had our morning tea. The flies bothered us so! One thing about summer, there are lots of flies.
Great Ocean Road
That's the famous arch. Everybody just has to get down at this point to take photos!
Just some pretty pictures of the ocean along the road:
Koala stop:
Curled up sleepy koala
That's one of the best pictures we got. The rest just depicted a faraway furry blob on a mass of branches.
Then it got darker and darker...
And when we reached the 12 Apostles, it was totally FREEZING.
12 Apostles
Just to let you guys have an idea of how strong the wind was...
No face
At Loch Ard Gorge...
Very cold!
Yuwei was very excited over finding Xiao Long Nv at the bottom of the gorge, but I thought the probability of finding a Kong Long was higher.
London Bridge?
Pamela Anderson Rock
No prizes for guessing why it's called the Pamela Anderson rock or something like that...
We headed back to the city with rest of the tour group after that. *snooze* Then we spent a large part of the night wandering around the freezing city, on Christmas Eve! A lot of them were in winter wear, while the three of us were... unprepared. Xueting was like in a denim jacket and capri pants. She just keeps wearing the wrong things!
We expected a countdown of sorts, but couldn't find anything likethat. The concert that was screened over a large screen ended at 11.30pm, with the host urging us to go home to welcome Christmas. We thus concluded that Christmas is very much commercialized in Singapore and family-oriented in oz.
Which, is very nice, except that we have no family here! Oops.
So we brisk-walked back to YHA as fast as possible to escape the cold.
And that pretty much ended our trip... Cos we just took a plane back to Sydney on Christmas Day itself to meet the rest of our friends and celebrate Christmas together!
=DLabels: australia, melbourne, travel
