Tag Archives: Victoria

P-p-p-pick up a Penguin*

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Tuesday 3 September 2024 – Today’s excursion involved a couple of ferry journeys, and so we were very pleased to note that the high winds of the previous days had dropped. The forecast for the day was reasonably good – some sunshine and no rain. Our target for the day was a pair of islands south of Melbourne – French and Philip Islands – and we would be part of (yet) another “small group” tour.  We hied ourselves to the designated pickup point at the appointed hour – and waited for just long enough to be worried that Someone Had Blundered. Some 20 minutes later than our appointed pickup time, we phoned the organising company who reassured us that we were in the right place, just that the traffic was bad.

A few seconds after ringing off, a man came for us.  He was called Bill (photo later) and was in charge of a 20-seater bus which was going to be full. So, a “fairly small” group tour, then. The traffic was, indeed, pretty bad as Bill wrangled his bus through interminable queues and waits at traffic lights with only the odd acid remark about the driving ability of the other motorists. As well as that, he managed to engage us, and all the others he picked up, in conversation, and did a very skillful job at it, too – he could chat about any number of sports, political situations, a smattering of science, and he was very engaging. He also managed the very fine trick of being laconic and talkative at the same time – no mean feat.

The ferry to French Island leaves from Stony Point, over 80 km south of Melbourne, and Bill had a lot of pickups to do and a target of 1150, which was the time the ferry would leave – with or without us. He made it with seconds to spare and basically bundled half of us on the the ferry with instructions to meet (a) Scott, the catcher on French Island and (b) him later on (after he had taken the remaining passengers on a different tour), at about 3.30pm in the pub by the jetty on Philip Island. And so, come about 11.15, we were met by Scott

and his transport for the day for us.

This is an OKA, built specially for taking tourists round potentially tricky terrain.  It makes few concessions to comfort inside

and has quite the control bunker behind the wheel.

Before we set off, Scott briefed us on French Island, which is a very unusual place. 75% of it is National Park and officially a biosphere reserve, and 25% is settled.

The island has 110 inhabitants, no running water, no electricity. No rates, no police, no roads (just dirt tracks). There’s a single general store, which is also the post office and the fuel station. There’s a primary school, which has six pupils and two teachers. Some of the inhabitants are farmers, and there are sheep, horses and beef cattle on the island – no dairy farming, as it would be too expensive to deal with the milk.

The first thing we did was to go for lunch to meet Lee and Celia, a couple of inhabitants, at their smallholding, Mandalye Park Homestead.

There was a bit of a distraction as we exited the OKA, as, by the gate, there was a koala in the tree – and she had a young’un with her, which caused the usual ripple of excitement.

Scott estimated the age of this baby to be about five months. Koalas were introduced to the island over 100 years ago and have been so successful that they now have to be controlled as a population; they are so dim that they will simply eat a eucalyptus tree to death by consuming all its leaves. The Kangaroo Island koalas came originally from French Island, apparently.

Eventually we trooped inside the farmhouse for a fairly basic, but very pleasant lunch

and a chance to chat with Lee, who had been there on a permanent basis for about seven years, having started out as a weekend visitor to the island. We were nearly joined by a peacock, which caused a bit of a stir,

and outside one could see the evidence of how strong the winds had been over the recent days.

From talking to Lee, it was clear that the island’s appeal was very niche. Life is entirely off-grid: his water comes primarily from catching rain, although he has a borehole which is only slightly brackish, so livestock will drink it and it can be boiled for human consumption; electricity is from solar panels and battery with a generator backup; sewage is based on a septic tank; mobile coverage drifts over sporadically  from the mainland; vehicles can only get to the island via a barge (see later) which can take a couple of cars or a truck and is very expensive. It’s a strange life, but our chap wouldn’t now exchange it for anything else.

For over 70 years the island’s economy was dependent upon chicory – cultivated for the root, not the familiar salad leaf. The root has long been cultivated in Europe as a coffee additive or substitute, it was, inter alia, the basis for ersatz coffee such as Camp Coffee. It was introduced to the island in 1895. The site had an old chicory kiln, used for drying the roots.

After lunch, Scott bounced us around the island in the OKA, with occasional stops. From a wildlife point of view, we saw a couple more koalas, any number of purple swamp hens,

Cape Barren geese (here with their goslings),

black swans,

and, excitingly, an echidna, an animal Jane was very keen to see. This one was a short-beaked echidna.

This is also known as a spiny anteater and, like the platypus (which I am very keen to see at some stage) is a monotreme, meaning it only has one bank of oars is a marsupial mammal which lays eggs but suckles its young. They are normally very shy, so we were lucky to get such a decent view of one.

As well as the wildlife, we saw some tamelife: beef cattle

and horses.

We also saw some sheep, which were being guarded by an alpaca, but sadly whizzed past them before we could get a photo.

Not all life is welcome on the island. It has a problem with pests such as rabbits and, increasingly, deer; but the real demons are feral cats, which they are trying to eradicate because they cause such havoc among the other wildlife which have no defences against them. There are cat traps across the island

(apparently KFC is the bait of choice) and motion-sensitive cat-cams such as this one.

Yes, there it is. There.

We passed the island’s fire station

with its indicator of likelihood of bush fire;

the school, and the general store.

Approaching the coast, we passed mangrove swamps

and reached the barge which enables vehicular access to the island.

Apparently it costs about Aus$900 to use the barge – a very expensive way of transporting anything.

The principal roads across the island are high-quality dirt tracks, but Scott took us off these on to rougher trails

which run through the National Park, showing how densely scrubby it is, as opposed to the open spaces of the settled portion of the island.

Then it was time to return to the jetty

and await the ferry

which would take us on to Philip Island. It was clear that A Lot Of Shopping had been done on the mainland.

We speculated that this might possibly be stock for the General Store.

And so we said goodbye to French Island – a funny old place, with a funny old lifestyle. I dare say we could have seen a lot more of the allegedly diverse birdlife on the island, but to do so would have taken a lot of time.

Although it’s smaller than French Island, it’s immediately obvious that Philip Island is more conventionally settled.

Amusingly for us Brits, one lands on the north of the island at a place called Cowes; but the island, although it also has a place called Ventnor, is much smaller than the Isle of Wight.

We settled down in the Philip Island Hotel for coffee and beer whilst we awaited Bill. He came along and we rejoined his bus for a trip out to the area where live the animals that have made Philip Island famous – Little Penguins; the island supports a colony of some 40,000 of these, the smallest known penguin species. En route, we noted that penguins weren’t the only wildlife to be seen.

Although the island is noted for its penguin population, it is also home to short-tailed shearwaters (commonly called “mutton birds”), fur seals, wallabies (like the one above) and eastern barred bandicoots. We’d hoped to see one of these last creatures, but failed, sadly.

We eventually reached the western point of the island, where the penguins make their burrows. The westernmost point is marked by The Nobbies

where there is a visitor centre and a boardwalk along which one can walk to examine the various burrows of the Little Penguins.

Bill

walked us around the boardwalk, pointing out penguin burrows both natural

and man-made.

At one stage, people lived in the area and this threatened the penguin population; so the people were actually moved away and these man-made burrows created to help re-establish the penguin population. It’s now self-sustaining so there is no need for more man-made burrows.

A couple of the burrows had, we thought, got penguins inside them. It was difficult to be sure, though.

There were cape barren geese here, too

along with their goslings

and I caught sight of a white-faced heron among the rocks.

The general view was quite striking

with lots of breaking waves

contributing to the general mistiness of the air. As we got towards sunset, the area became very popular

as people gathered for a daily event for which Philip Island is widely-known – the Penguin Parade. There are even signposts to the Penguin Parade Centre and Car Park, such is the popularity of this fairly unique phenomenon. After some time at the Nobbies, Bill took us to the Penguin Parade Centre which is quite gob-smackingly big.

When I saw this, my heart sank, as I envisaged the ruthless monetisation of some poor unfortunate penguins.

The whole Penguin Parade thing is a well-oiled machine, with people turning up in their hundreds as the sun goes down, all to see these penguins making a dash from the sea to their burrows on land.

We were actually booked to be part of a premium group – a ranger-led viewing of this parade and prime seating.  Our guide for this was a nice lass called Annie

who explained at length and with great enthusiasm about the penguins, their life cycle and what was going to happen. She also explained that photography was forbidden, something I found very frustrating. I had read that the flashes on cameras and phones were distracting and stressful for the penguins and so I thought that meant that a lot of care would be taken to avoid flashes going off. But no, all photography was forbidden. I can understand the reasoning behind this, but that doesn’t stop me from being annoyed that I was penalised for the stupidity of others who simply don’t know how to turn off their cameras’ flash functions.

Anyhoo…

Having carefully briefed us and equipped us with binoculars and earpieces so that we could (almost) hear her commentary, Annie led us towards our prime viewing spot, via a couple of displays in the centre, such as this rather cute one,

which looks rather cute and pointless, but actually portrays something valid and important – helping penguins after oil spills. When these happen, volunteers seek out penguins who have been affected, and put them in these jackets (knitted also by volunteers) to prevent them trying to clean themselves and so ingesting the oil while they’re being transported to somewhere where they can be cleaned off before being released back into the water.  We particularly like the jacket on the left, which is a nod to a certain publisher.

There’s also a display of a fox with a dead penguin in its mouth. Foxes have been a huge problem on the island, as they don’t just take one bird but can kill several dozen in a frenzy. There has been a fox eradication programme on the island over the past quarter-century, and they can now declare the island fox-free.  Just one problem, though; there’s a land bridge over which foxes could make their way on to the island, so there’s a motion-detecting camera by the bridge to alert people when a fox comes over. This way it can be tracked and eliminated.

We joined the crowds heading towards the beach

and took our reserved seats in a brand-new grandstand which offered us a, well, grandstand view. The sun went down, and the only light came from some orange and yellow lamps illuminating the area; apparently, penguins don’t see well in this part of the spectrum, so it doesn’t affect or distract them.

The penguins’ main predators are hawks and other large birds. Their strategy therefore for getting from the sea across the exposed area of beach to the safety of their burrows in the dunes, involves a) waiting until after dark, and b) making a run for it in sizeable groups where there is safety in numbers. In almost complete darkness, it was difficult to see clearly what was going on. They must have emerged from the sea, but it seemed that groups of penguins just materialised and started making their way up the beach on their penguin highway – the path that they take time after time as they leave the water and head to their burrows, which might be quite some distance away. I was a good boy and didn’t try to take photos; OK, officer, it was too dark, really. The centre is good enough to provide some, like this one, which shows the penguins leaving the water.

There’s also a YouTube video showing what happens

though Jane found something which is far more fun – an Andrew Cotter commentary special, done in his own inimitable style.

The whole penguin journey is, indeed, hugely commercially exploited. But Annie pointed out that the centre is entirely and only paid for by visitors, and their contribution enables research into these penguins and funds conservation and protection for them. And it is rather well done; tightly controlled so that crowds don’t distract and distress the penguins, and ensuring an environment that means the penguins can survive and thrive.

In theory, we might have seen a bandicoot, but I think the darkness, the noise and the crowds make it near-impossible to see a live one.  The best we could do was one in a display case.

The final thing Annie showed us was an artwork made entirely out of the detritus found on the beach and in the water. She asked us to guess what it was that the seals were made out of,

and no-one got it right: cigarette butt filters. That was a sobering message to leave us with.

By this stage it was about 7.45pm and we had a two-hour journey back to Melbourne, so it was very late by the time we arrived back at the apartment. However, we hadn’t got an early start for the next day, the main feature of which was going to be lunch with friends, so that wasn’t a problem. The morrow would be our last full day in Melbourne, but unlikely to feature anything particularly worthy of comment; so it’s likely to be a couple of days until I next update these pages. I hope you’ll be here to read them when that happens.

 

* For those giving the title a blank look, this is a reference to a 1970s advertisement for a chocolate biscuit bar called a Penguin. The voice over was done by Derek Nimmo, an actor who achieved wide recognition for his ability to portray posh people who had a stammer.

Melbourne – Modern and Historic, Handsome and Scruffy

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Monday 2 September – Having escaped satisfactorily from Kangaroo Island, we now had to escape from Adelaide via a flight to Melbourne yesterday. The process of dropping the bags off was trouble-free, but on arrival at the airport security, it looked like it might take us some time.

Appearances were deceptive; the queue moved swiftly and we got through security smoothly. It helped that small liquids and phones could stay in bags and the only things that needed putting in separate trays were laptops and aerosols. Generally, I’ve been impressed with air travel within Australia.  We’ve used Qantas-based flights so far and their online check-in and at-airport bag drop processes have been well-designed and swift.

Our next flight will be Virgin Australia; I will report back on their User Experience.

The weather for the flight was largely cloudy, so there weren’t many aerial photos to be taken.  However, as we approached Melbourne, we got our first glimpse of the city

and I noticed that some areas appeared to be very densely-packed housing; so densely-packed that at first I couldn’t make out whether the objects were parked cars or houses. This, for example, is the Mt Atkinson area west of Melbourne. The houses appear to be really crammed together.

We had arranged to stay at a friend’s airbnb apartment in the Southbank area of the city, and accordingly followed instructions to pick up the keys at a local convenience store. The code number we had been told to provide proved to be “invalid”, and so there was a great deal of to-and-fro and sitting outside cafés drinking coffee whilst we waited for some kind of resolution. There had been a delay in the cleaners dropping off the keys and so we eventually got our hands on them and headed off to the apartment… where the keys we’d been given turned out to be the wrong ones.

Bugger.

To cut a long story short, we ended up staying the night in a hotel, the rather oddly-named but perfectly comfortable Mantra hotel, where we had an apartment. With milk in the fridge and Earl Grey beside the mugs. The fridge thing gave me an idea, so I went out to get some gin and tonic, which was available in a very convenient local grocery store. And so passed our first night in Melbourne.

A word about the weather, here: we had been booked on a “moonlight kayak tour” on the Yarra River which runs through the city. However, as the exceedingly lumpy but nicely-handled landing at Melbourne showed, it was very windy, and we’d received a message apologising for cancelling the kayak tour. As it happened, given the difficulty with the keys, it was just as well.

Yesterday’s kayak tour was supposed to be our first real glimpse of Melbourne, but the weather put the kybosh on that. We had a three-hour small group walking tour of the “Lanes and Arcades” of Melbourne booked for today, so this was now our chance to get a flavour of the place.  We headed to the meeting point in Federation Square,

where it was reasonably easy to find our guide, Isabel, who was wearing a very distinctive yellow beret. Imagine our surprise, however, when the other members of the “small group” turned out to be Stephanie and Garret, an American couple who had been, alongside the Great Danes, our companions on our Kangaroo Island tour! Life is enhanced by such coincidences.

We actually passed some interesting sights en route to the start of our tour;

Striking building exterior

Melbourne Arts Centre

View across the Yarra

Federation Square is just by St. Paul’s Cathedral

and Flinders Street Station, which is an impressive building (more pictures of it later).

There had apparently been a move to replace the clocks in the picture above with something more modern and, well, operational, but the outcry ensured that the classic clocks remain there above the station entrance.

As in Adelaide, there are many handsome buildings in Melbourne, although everything is more densely-packed and the high-rises rise higher and overwhelm the smaller, older buildings more.

Above is the old GPO building, now owned by H&M. Alongside it is a very narrow alley

which even though it’s had eateries added along its length, shows the scrapes of the old horse-drawn carriages along the side and the warnings about the devil motor car.

What has been done well is to keep the facades or exteriors of some of the more notable buildings, such as the old post office building above, and also to keep as much of the interior as makes sense.

Here’s another example.

A mall off to the side of The Block, a very handsome arcade,

features some great mosaic work

and is generally very photogenic.

It features the oldest tea rooms in Melbourne, called The Tea Room 1892. I wonder how old it is, really?

The Block is also home to L’Occitane, which has a wonderful hand-painted ceiling.

Another very handsome arcade is the Royal Arcade.

Isabel also showed us into the Manchester Unity Building, which has a sumptuous interior

and surroundings

including Melbourne’s first-ever escalator, originally installed in 1932 to much excitement and lining up for a ride.

We had a very engaging chocolate tasting in The Block, at a specialist boutique called Mörk (Swedish for “Dark” – the operation has a Swedish connection in its ownership)

which, apart from very delicious hot chocolate drinks, offers some unusual variations on chocolate flavours.

Blue cheese Caramelised Yuzu, apparently

As well as the handsome buildings, many of which could do with a bit of a tidy-up,

Isabel showed us some of the street art. We saw one or two larger installations

and there are many more of these around the city; but we didn’t have and won’t have time to explore these. What we saw was much smaller-scale and very much less formal.

Caught them at it!

It’s difficult to distinguish between what’s art and what’s graffiti, which is why I say it’s informal – we even saw a couple of guys adding their last touches to something or other. One of the best-known streets for art is Hosier Lane, which is either a riot of colour or a complete mess, depending on your point of view.

I’m sorry I couldn’t do more justice to Hosier Lane, but it was hurling down with rain at this point, making photographic essay work somewhat unrewarding.

A side note: we returned here later at night, having met a friend for cocktails, and walked through an after-dark Melbourne to get back to the apartment.  As we walked down Hosier Lane, we were passed by a van with a pressure washing trailer.  We chatted to the two guys operating it, and they had been given the job of removing some of the graffiti towards the bottom of the street. The plan was to paint it over with black, and their view was that it would last maybe a couple of hours before someone started daubing again.

STOP PRESS

The black area is still there. We discovered this on the way to meeting other friends for lunch. We found some more street art en route, and so the complete set of photos of it is on Flickr.

We also saw a couple of inexplicable installations on Russell Street

and some nice brass work in the paving outside city hall.

The after-dark walk enabled a different perspective on Melbourne.  Flinders Street Station’s impressive building

is quite something else when lit up.

Federation Square

and the view over the Yarra

also look very different after sunset, as does the Arts Centre.

Sadly, we’re not likely to get more time to explore Melbourne; I feel we haven’t been able to spend long enough here to get to grips with the place at all. But it has been interesting to see what we have seen, despite some very poor weather. Tomorrow we have an all-day outing, and the day after we have a lunch date with friends, and who knows what state we’ll be in after that. I will, of course, report back, and I hope you’ll visit these pages again to find out how everything unfolded.

 

Butch Art

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Monday 22 August 2022 – Today was going to be such a simple day, doing just two Tourist Things – visit the Butchart Gardens and have Afternoon Tea at the Empress. That would leave plenty of time for processing a few photos and writing a brief blog entry for the day.

Why, then, have I somehow got to get about 90 pictures into a coherent story of the day, which included extra activities that weren’t in the plan?

Brace yourself, reader, for a plethora of photographs!

The Butchart Gardens started life in 1904. With a former limestone quarry for her backyard, Jennie Butchart envisaged landscaping a sunken garden in its place, transforming the property for her family—and visitors—for generations to come. You can find more history on its website. Long story short: it’s a brilliant way of spending a couple of hours wandering around being dazzled by the riot of colour, moved by the elegance of presentation and impressed by the skill of organisation. There are a million plants spread across 55 acres of different types of garden – sunken, rose, Japanese, Italian, Mediterranean; there are special features – fountains, statues, a carousel, a performance lawn and stage; and it’s all laid out so it’s easy to walk around.

The gardens lie some 45 minutes from downtown Victoria; buying a ticket gets you a coach journey there (and back, happily) and entry to the gardens. Our coach was driven by a larger-then-life chap called Dan, who, it transpired, used to be an Ice Road Trucker until he visited Victoria, after which he saw no reason to return Up North. He gave us a stream of useful information and terrible jokes on both legs of our journey.

Here are just some of the many, many photos we took at the gardens.

There’s a Rose Carousel, which the kids love. All the animals are hand-carved.

There are fountains.

The flowers are lovely.

It’s just generally a nice place to be.

I could go on. OK, I will.

We got back from the gardens with time to spare before our booking of Tea At The Empress. So we decided to visit the Legislature, because one can and it is very close. It’s an impressive building, both outside

and in.

We had to queue a bit and they didn’t approve of the penknife that I habitually carry, but we came to an agreement that allowed me to pick it up on my way out and it was generally an interesting place to wander about inside – there are free tours which one can join to get more detailed information.

Then we had Afternoon Tea at our hotel.

It’s very posh (well, the surroundings are), and very expensive. We were served with grave courtesy by a waiter whose name should be Karl, but probably isn’t. We took photos of the food. No, you can’t see them. A waiter back in Vancouver told us that it is among the top Teas In The World and that people travel to Victoria just for Tea At The Empress. I suspect that many people travel to Victoria and take Tea At The Empress, which is subtly different. It’s easy to mock, but it really was excellent and we enjoyed it.

After it, though, we needed to walk it off. So we took a stroll around towards Fisherman’s Wharf and beyond.

Fisherman’s Wharf is very photogenic.

and having gone that far, we completed the loop, visiting Ogden’s Point, a sundial art installation, the native art on the breakwater, the world’s tallest totem pole and Beacon Hill Park.

Sorry for all the photos – I left out several dozen – but it was a lovely 5-mile walk discovering a whole section of this very lovely city. It’s very easy to understand how people can come to visit and simply stay.

Tomorrow we leave Victoria, after three very enjoyable days here. To use C. W. McCall’s phrase, “we’re gonna go chasin’ bear”, although he wasn’t talking about what I’m talking about, if you know what I’m talking about. To understand what that last bit of rubbish was really about, come back to these pages. It’s possible we may be off the grid for a bit, so you might have to wait for the next update. You might be mightily relieved about that, I don’t know. Anyway, see you soon, I hope.