First we took a hop on-hop off city bus tour, first stop the Sydney fish market, second only to Tokyo Japan in size, where we pigged out on the fish platter for two. Baby octopus, squid, battered fish, oysters (raw and cooked), crab legs, fries all washed down with a bottle of very good Australian Sauvignon Blanc. Scrumptious. Then we waddled back to the street and resumed the tour.
We stopped and viewed the Sydney Harbor Bridge, Loreen declined to hop off and climb to the top of the bridge. I pretended to be really upset, thank god she stood her ground.
Then on to the Sydney Opera House, what an amazing piece of architecture.
We then caught the bus out to Bondi Beach, the most famous beach in Australia. Great beach, acres of white sand, big surf for the surfers along with some great swimming areas. The scenery was lovely, I am talking about the buildings and surrounding hills! Although the beach was nice also!
Melbourne- what a city, again a population of 4 million and growing. Population count may be a bit different here as they seem to include outlying communities, like if it was Calgary we would include places like Okotoks.
It is big and modern with sports arenas all over. The Melbourne Cricket Club arena holds 100 thousand, the new soccer arena 60 thousand, this on top of football and rugby fields and world class tennis courts. It has an amazing amount of green space through out and broad well maintained streets.
Australia is not cheap, a lot of things are more expensive than in Canada. Traveling is maybe similar to costs in Europe. We have established a new hobby during our three days in Melbourne, we go into stores, including a trip to the Costco, to compare prices to home. Meat is cheaper here, restaurants are more expensive and so on! Convenience stores charge more here, although navel oranges from the US are about the same price, while good Aussie wine is cheaper. Guess what I buy! The Australian dollar is also on par with or higher than Canadian urrency right now.
Southern Australia, although not right now, is in a drought, has been for the last seven years. This has wrecked havoc with the agricultural industry. Yesterday we drove through miles of really productive farm land sitting fallow, because the water reserves are too low to irrigate. Most of the farms were vegetable farms. There are some massive dairy farms here, milking 900 to 1,000 head of cows. Lots of hay being put up for the dairies, as the sheep and beef cattle can graze year around. They do fatten the cattle on a 100 day program of grain and dry feed.
At present the state of Victoria is building a $40 billion plant to take salt out of ocean water and convert it to potable water for drinking and irrigation. Seems to be quite a hot political topic as some say the rains will return and others are saying they need it in case the drought continues.
We spent a day visiting some wildlife areas. First we stopped at a sheep and cattle ranch that also has a pen of wombat, kangaroo, wallaby, emu, peacocks and tame ducks and geese for the tourist to have an up close encounter with.
Wombats are a little creature that seem a bit lazy, they do like carrots and have teeth top and bottom similar to our beaver.
Kangaroos and wallabies - the two are different but even a ranger at the Koala park could not really explain to us how. It is all about foot length compared to body length, or some thing like that. Not simple like deer and moose! So we found a couple that liked us, or maybe it was the cup of Alfalfa pellets we bought for them. I think these were "Roos" but I did take some pictures of wallabies in the wild.
Emus are a big flightless bird, Loreen said they look prehistoric, but they liked us too and ran up and down the fence in their compound grunting happily to get a few pellets.
Then back on the bus to beat the other 15 tour buses to the Koala Conservation area. Koalas are cute little duffers that live entirely on a diet of Eucalyptus leaves. They have special enzymes in their systems to break these leaves down and it can take up to 10 days to digest. So they hang around sleeping and resting 20 hours a day. These guys are in their natural habitat an kept in family groups by fibre fencing. Only problem is now with the drought the trees are not growing enough food to sustain the population so the rangers go out and cut some feed for them every day.
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| Mommy and the Joey hanging down |
Then there was the penguin parade. I did not know there were penguins in Australia, but there are quite a few places in Australia that have penguins. We went to Phillips Island where the smallest penguins in the world live. These little guys are about 12 Inches tall and weigh about 2.25 pounds. They live up to 800 meters from the sea shore in burrows in the sand dunes.
They spend two to three days at sea fishing for food for their young which they swallow and then regurgitate like most birds do. During their time out fishing they can double their weight in undigested fish. They can stay under water for up to a minute and can dive up to 30 feet. They come ashore at dusk when the eagles and big gulls can no longer see them from the air. This is called the Penguin Parade and it is quite amazing to watch 20 to 50 at a time of these little wee blue and white birds waddle across the beach, climb up through the rocks and start up the cliffs and hill to feed the young in the burrows. About 1,400 came home that night.
No pictures are allowed as the flashes from the cameras scare them and they may go back into the ocean for another three to four days, sometimes causing both their own death and that of their young.
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