Melbs Part 2

March 11th/12th - Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

The next day we decided to get out of the city and see some of the surrounding sights. Our friend Deepa and her sister Priya were hiring a car for the day to explore an area called Mornington Peninsula and Philip Island and were more than happy for us to tag along!!!

We got the tram to where they were staying in another suburb of Melbourne in the morning - it was a very pretty and affluent suburb where lots of families lived and really easy to get to on the tram. Deepa drove us out of the city towards Mornington Peninsula and we stopped by a pretty beach with painted beach huts to have some breakfast (ie. we all ate our packed lunches early!)

The beach where we had breakfast

Afterwards we drove on further down the peninsula to where all the beautiful, big, rich houses were. We went for a paddle and then into the pretty little seaside town for one of the biggest ice creams I have ever had - we all felt a bit sick afterwards!!

View of the bay from the top of the hill

Messing around on the pier...

The bay - lots of people seemed to own their own boat...

Ice creams - the salted caramel flavour was amazing

Afterwards we drove right to the top of the peninsula where there were some incredible views:

A group of very drunk, middle-aged Australians pulled up and insisted on taking lots of photos for us...

To continue our day of food indulgence, we next drove to a pub and sat in the garden with a loacl cider, before going strawberry picking!

Feeling very stuffed it was finally time to head to the part of the day I was most looking forward to - to see the penguins!! Philip Island is famous for its colony of Little Penguins that live there. Each evening, hundreds of visitors go and take a seat to watch them come in from a day at sea, waddle up the beach and try to find their way to their burrows further up the beach. They leave their babies in the burrows while they go to fish during the day and when they come onto the beach at dusk the babies start making a noise and waiting for their parents at the opening to the burrow. The parents follow the calls home. Unfortunately you are not allowed to take any photos as the flash temporarily blinds the penguins and they can't find their way home!!! You will have to take my word for it that they were unbelievably cute. We didn't have a great view of them coming in from the ocean, but we stayed for ages following them really closely as they found their way home. They have built a boardwalk over the beach so you can follow the penguins without interfering too much. Some of the burrows are really quite far inland and we were warned to check under our car before leaving in case on was there!!! Read about them on wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_penguin) and check out the pictures of them there; there is also some cool info about when they once trained sheepdogs to protect the penguins!!

Our final day in Melbourne was spent leisurely wandering around, eating some more local food and finishing with a drink on a rooftop bar. 

Rooftop bar

We really enjoyed Melbourne, and now we have finished our travels in Australia we both agree that it was our favourite city there. The climate was perfect - hot in summer, warmish in winter and not humid; there were loads of quirky things going on and a really big music scene; and lots of great places to eat! It was the closest city to London and felt like it would be easy to make the transition there. Deepa's sister was there because she has just moved there with her husband so it will be interesting to see how they get on living there. 

Anyway, time to head out of the city and back into camping out in National Parks - to Wilson's Prom!