Nina and I with our Penguin Pals en route to Phillip Island
On the way to Phillip Island we also stopped at a Wildlife Center where we each picked up a tupperware full of dried alfalfa and pellets to feed to the resident Kangaroos, Wallabies, Emus, and Koalas (though Victorian law being, well, Victorian we weren't allowed to pet or even touch the furry fellas). There i saw my first Joey - which i wasn't expecting to be as odd as an experience as it was. The leg poking out of the Mamma Roo's pouch looked long enough to belong to a fullsize Kangaroo so I half expected another kangaroo only slightly smaller than the mother to pop out almost like a Marsupial Bubushka Doll.
This Kangaroo does not in fact have legs coming out of its stomach, its a Joey!
Post-pondering the absurdity of the Marsupial species, we hopped back on the Van and crossed the bridge to Phillip Island where we headed straight for the Nobbies. The word "Nobbie" led me to believe that we were going to be seeing impish weasels or seals or whatever but I was pretty sure we were going to get to observe something living and small and evil. No such luck. The Nobbies are rocks. Beautiful rocks, but rocks nonetheless. If I ever sit down with the Phillips Island naming board I will definitely suggest that they change the names of the Nobbies to something a little less animate, devilish and diminutive especially as the rocks are GI-NORMOUS.
Nobbies
At last it was on to the long awaited Penguin Parade! As we pulled into the huge concrete Penguin Center, I sensed I was once again in for a different experience than I had in mind. I knew there would be bleachers but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so commercial. I was also expecting it to be more intimate - just me and the penguins. Turns out, the center boasted a cafe, lolly shop, and gift shop and almost 2,000 people a night show up to see the little guys dash from the ocean to the land.
Despite my disappointment about the business oriented Penguin Center, the penguins themselves did not disappoint although like the Nobbies, the experience was misrepresented. The penguins do not so much "parade" as they do tentatively scamper out in clots, sometimes rushing back into the ocean if they feel that it hasn't become dark enough for them to be safe from predators on land. But i guess Penguin "Dash-like-bats-out-of-hell" doesn't quite have the same ring as "Penguin Parade" and depressingly it all comes back to dollars. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the affair (they say because the flashes hurt the penguins, and they don't trust tourists not to use flash but i suspect its so they can get you to buy their morbidly overpriced pictures) but I've inserted a picture of a fairy penguin, sorry "little" penguin below so you can try to imagine how adorable it was to see little clans of them warily run up the beach, then get scared and run back and then restart the whole process from square 1.
"Little" Penguin
Morbid Sign at the morbidly developed Penguin Center
We got back to the city late Sunday night and immediately conked out (my dreams were rife with scampering penguins, by the way). Monday, after checking out of the hostel promptly at 10 (we learned from Dan who had the previous day gotten locked out of the room when he decided to shower before checking out late and had to make his way up to reception in nothing but his towel) we grabbed a quick breakfast in one of the many alleys off of Flinders Lane and headed across the Yarra to Eureka Tower, the tallest residential building in the southern hemisphere and home to "the edge" a glass cube (with a glass floor) that protrudes 3 meters from the building facade.
Going to Eureka itself was totally worth it for the perspective it gave on Melbourne and to imagine what it would be like to live that high. The Edge, however, was similar to the Ice Lounge in that it sounded awesomely extreme and turned out to be awesomely laughable in its tameness. First tip off that we were about to be disillusioned was the exorbitantly dramatic music they blared in the cube. Hearing it you couldn't help but think they were compensating for something. Then came the glass effects, which were probably the coolest part of the whole thing. Essentially different glass panes would switch from being frosted to clear in the space of a second. Click! Suddenly all of melbourne lay below your feet. Click! Then it was gone.
They wouldn't let me take my camera in "The Edge" either but I managed to surreptitiously (although, not even. I think the guys were just nice) snag photos of the overprices photos that they took of us and have attached the best one below.
Eureka Tower. In case you were wondering, its vertical in real life.
View of Melbourne's CBD from Eureka
We survived the edge!
After returning to ground level, we jumped on the tram to Fitzroy, a bohemian, mildly grungy area of Melbourne, and poked around some shops and used bookstores. I felt it was a bit commercial which was odd considering there wasn't a chain in sight. I was also confused by the extent of its diversity - with musty vintage shops abutting grimy looking fry-shacks, sandwiched between an organic coffee shop and a store hawking american designers at jacked up prices. It just didn't seem to fit together into a cohesive whole like many of the other more bohemian strongholds I've visited like Newtown, Surrey Hills and Glebe in Sydney. Not to mention it was super quiet which i found strange in such an eclectic area. Perhaps I'm not being fair because it was monday and one of the shopkeepers told us that Monday a lot of the shops in the area are closed. But then again, a lot of the shops in the area were open and it was still quiet so I don't think I'm completely unmerited in saying Fitzroy was bizarrely calm.
I was still glad to have visited Fitzroy because I felt like we did a lot of touristy things this weekend and I was keen to get out of CBD and see some of the other neighborhoods - but to be honest Fitzroy was not my favorite and I even felt it was a bit sinister.
"Welcome to Sunny Fitzroy". This sign would be more accurate if you substituted a C-A-R for the middle letters.
Well, that pretty much covers what I got upto in Melbourne this weekend. I probably wont update between now and next monday after I return from Cairns but you can be assured that it'll be an action-packed post as my plans in Cairns are as follows:
- Hike in the Rainforest at Cape Tribulation
- FIND NEMO while scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef
- Struggle down Level 5 Rapids in a raft with other nutjobs who chose the "extreme" whitewater rafting option without ever having rafted before
- Avoid becoming chow for the Crocodiles at a beach frequented by them
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