The Trip

We've been in Melbourne for a while now and have just been too lazy to blog. We've also only just blogged about Cairns. Life is so hard when you're on one long holiday ;-) We've done alot while we've been here so this will be a long one - put the coffee on!!

It was actually a very busy time to be in Melbourne, the Rugby World Cup is on and Ireland were to play Australia on Saturday 1st November, that day also started the racing festival as Tuesday 4th November was Melbourne Cup day and there was also the International Rules Match (Australia and Ireland) on 31st October. It was like being back in Ireland there were that many of us in the city.

The day after we arrived we went to meet my Aunt Maura (my mothers sister). She has a daughter, Angela and the last time I met her was about 12 years ago when she backpacked around Europe. Now she has a lovely 14 month old baby, Olivia. After having lunch in Port Melbourne with Maura we went to Angie's house nearby. We had a lovely day with them all and even ended up staying for dinner. Even though I barely know my cousin it felt like we were old friends catching up and it was one of the best days we'd spent in a long time - I think we might be finding each others company lacking sometimes ;-)

We got tickets for the International Rules match, it was the second (and final) game of the series and Ireland needed to win by more than 10 points in order to take the series. However, it would be Austrlia's first time winning on home ground as Ireland were only able to win by 3 points. Still, it was a bloody fantastic game - so fast paced and exciting. Dare I say it might be better than Rugby. It's also handy for us that next year the games will be in Ireland!!
We couldn't, as might be obvious, get tickets to the Rugby match. We ended up watching it on the telly, which was just as good. I hate to admit it but I find watching rugby really frustrating.... I guess I just have to learn the rules or something.

We were actually on Phillip Island when we watched rugby match. It was so difficult to get affordable accomodation (indeed any accomodation) in Melbourne that weekend that we headed out of the city for the weekend and spent 3 days on Philip Island. We got the train to Stony Point, not knowing of course how infrequently the ferry runs. Having arrived in Stony Point, which is not much more than a train station, a small shop and a pier, we discovered that we would have to wait 3 hours in the rain for a ferry. It was such a relief to find that Cowes (Phillip Island) is much bigger and livelier.
It is a lovely place, especially when the weather clears. We went to a wildlife park, which is like a zoo but better. We got to feed wombats, pademelons, wallabies and kangaroos. The kangaroos and wallabies are free range and it is so nice when they hop up to you and let you stroke them.
We also went to the now very famous penguin parade - just as the sun sets hundreds of fairy penguins march up the beach returning from a day (or a few days) fishing. It's really quite cute as the fairy penguins are so small.
At one stage I was watching a number of penguins walking up towards their burrows, when suddenly one of them turns around to the penguin behind him and start squealing and flapping. I said (out loud), "Oh excellent, we get to see a penguin fight!". At this stage the two penguins were squealing and on the ground when the nice American man standing beside me said " No, honey, they're having sex - it's mating season!". How innocent can I be? :-)

If you are going to spend any time in or around Melbourne we would both recommend spending some time on Philip Island.

Then we went to Tasmania for 5 days. After arriving in Hobart and spending a night there (disappointed to find the Antarctica exhibition closed down) we rented a car to explore the island. In the 5 days I think we managed to explore the whole place. Jamie normally doesn't like driving too much but he seemed to love it in Tassie. The roads lack a certain Irish charm - namely they're wide, straight and flat without potholes or indeed traffic! The only unfortunate thing about driving in Tas is the amount of road kill on the roads, although I imagine it's more unfortunate for the people who kill the animals. Still we managed to miss our suicidal possum sitting in the middle of the road at night.

Some highlights of our time in Tassie are the little town of Ross, which has a nice craft/antique shop and a wool museum but is really just a nice town. The Port Arthur historic site is well worth a visit and you should definitely go back for a ghost tour in the evening. In general the scenery reminded us of home, it is a very beautiful place.

On our return to Melbourne we were planning on driving the Great Ocean Road for a couple of days. This would require us to change our flights, and at the Qantas desk we discovered that would be impossible. We were disappointed to discover that we wouldn't be seeing the Great Ocean Road but hey, this means we're heading to New Zealand tomorrow - wahoo!!!

Ok, we've been really really lazy about blogging but then we are on holidays!

Cairns seems like a dim and distant memory even though it was only about 2 weeks ago. Basically we were on there for 5 days and spent the first day organising ourselves and our last day posting things home and preparing to fly down to Melbourne. That left us 3 days to play with and we had 3 destinations in mind, all in seperate directions. It was day-trip time. Don't get me wrong, organised day trips can be great and the ones we took were probably the best around but 3 consecutive days was too much.

First up was of course the Great Barrier Reef. After our snorkelling experience in the Whitsundays we were excited about more encounters with the colourful fish and coral. So at some ridiculous hour of the morning (barely daylight) we boarded our bus and headed to Port Douglas to join the Quicksmart boat. Basically it's 5 hours over the reef in 3 different dive sites which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, Hilary (who only learnt to swim a year ago) got a little vertigo when snorkelling in 12m of water. It was quite unnerving and frankly the snorkelling was much better off the Whitsundays. Basically, because it was low tide you couldn't swim directly over the shallow reef and everything else was too deep so you'd just swim around the edges. Nice, but nothing like the close encounters on the Whitsundays. Hilary got used to the depth at the next two sights and floated around with me for a while but on one of my lone expeditions I saw a shark!. He was just cruising up and down the edge of the reef about 10m away from me. And he wasn't one of the pissy-little 3ft sharks we saw around the boat, this was a scary looking 2m Black/White tipped Reef Shark. Oh, and I have a photo at home to prove it.

For anyone thinking about diving or snorkelling on the reef (and err... why else would you be in Cairns?) you must go to Reef Teach. This is an entertaining and very informative lecture about the marine biology on the reef. Essential for fish spotting or just telling you how to take good underwater photos. Unfortunately, we went to the lecture after being on the reef. Interesting note: A water temperature of 26C is considered cold on the reef!

Day 2 saw us head south-west to the Atherton Tablelands which is basically an area of mountain which provides a cool contrast to Cairns humidity. Basically, it was really beautiful and we'd need to spend a few days camping up there. Yet another thing to add to the must-do-next-time list.

We took another early morning trip up to Daintree and Cape Tribulation on Day 3. This is basically the start of the north Queensland rainforest, but again there was too much to do in a day.