The drive was pretty uneventful, I am really getting the hang of driving here and the differences don't concern me so much now. Once I got out of the Melbourne metropolitan area, things opened up quite a bit. It definitely felt like I was in the middle of nowhere. I didn't really get lost, but the directions that I had from Google were not correct (incidentally, I have had a lot of trouble recently with directions from Google maps; everything from wrong turn directions to roads that don't exist). Luckily, I had a big map in the car and was able to plan out the rest of my trip from that. About an hour and a half after leaving, I got to the sanctuary. The place was nothing fancy. There was a small building that acted as the gate, restaurant, and gift shop. Beyond this, was a rather large open area where the animals were.
One of things that attracted me to this place was that they let several of their animals lose in this big wide open area and so you can walk around while interacting with and even feeding many of the animals. So, I set off with my bag of food and map. They had enclosures for some of the animals (I would assume to keep some animals separate). I saw a few dingoes who were sectioned off from the rest of the population (for obvious reasons). They had several birds and a collection of frogs. I saw a Tasmanian devil sleeping (they are nocturnal). The main attractions (at least from my perspective) were the wallabies and kangaroos.
They had an area called the wallaby walk where the wallabies and kangaroos spent most of their time. They must have had more than 15 wallabies and at least 8 kangaroos. The cool thing was that they were very accustomed to people coming by and so they were very friendly (and interested in being fed). Most of the wallabies were very social. Shortly after I started walking down the trail, I encountered 3 of them just sitting along the trail. They saw me and I was pleasantly surprised that they weren't scared off by my presence. Once they knew that I had some food for them, they became very interested in me. It was fun to see them jump over to where I was standing and they were very curious. I found out that, even though they look rather small when they are jumping around on the ground, they can actually extend themselves quite far while still standing on their back legs. The bigger of the 3 could probably reach about 3 or 4 feet off the ground just by 'standing up straight'. I got scratched a little bit since they would often reach up with their paws to hold onto my hand (thus securing their food). Then never dug in with their claws, but some slight scratching was probably inevitable.I moved on from the first group of wallabies and ran into several others along the trail. Many of them were resting in the shade or around fallen trees. The flies were pretty bad and I had to keep swatting them away from my face. As I was doing so, I became somewhat distracted and, upon looking down again, saw that I was only a few feet away from what was, by far, the largest wild snake I had ever seen. I don't know much about snakes, so I have no idea whether it was poisonous or not. However, I think assuming the worst is probably the best way to go in cases like that. The snake saw me and picked its head about a half a foot to a foot off the ground and stuck its tounge out at me. I started to attempt to move around it and I think that scared it because the snake decided to slither off the path back into the trees.
Followi
ng that encounter, I made my way over to where the kangaroos were hanging out. Unfortunately, the kangaroos were much more timid and less trusting of humans than the wallabies. I approached a few of them and they jumped away. The sound that they made when they move is pretty funny - they bounce with a pretty loud thumping sound. Their back legs are pretty big and it is fun to watch. I was determined to make contact though, so I just took my time and moved very slowly toward one of them that had decided to lay
down under a tree. As I moved closer, I was startled by a few leaves that dropped on me from the tree. Then I thought about tree snakes and I tried very quickly to reassure myself that it was probably pretty unlikely that a snake would fall on me from a tree. Anyhow, I kept moving slowly toward the kangaroo and finally came close enough that I could extend a food filled hand toward the kangaroo. I was surprised that he didn't get up and jump away, but rather, came forward to eat out of my hand. Eventually, I tried to pet him (the wallabies liked this) but the kangaroo did not like that. He quickly jumped up and moved a few feet away. I walked over to where he was now standing and was still able to feed him a little more before he decided to bounce back into the trees with the other 6 or 7 kangaroos that were all just kind of hanging out.
After spending quite a bit of time with the wallabies and kangaroos, I went back to see the koala (and managed to get a picture with him. Apparently, koalas sleep about 20 hours per day. So they're only awake for a few minutes here or there most of the time. In this case, the koala was comfortably cuddled up with a eucalyptus tree and clearly taking a nap for a while. In any case, it was still a cool photo opportunity. Following that, I made my way out of the sanctuary and was off to the next stop on my trip!Next, I drove to the Red Hill Estate winery. This was a recommendation from Anita and the view certainly did not disappoint. Getting there was not trivial though... I was driving on all sorts of back roads and I pretty much felt like I was going to fall off the face of the Earth a couple times. In particular, there was a dirt road that I had to drive on for a few kilometers. Luckily, Anita has a Land Rover (that is pretty much a tank). So I didn't have too much trouble with the dirt road. But the ruts in parts of the road were so bad that the car was almost slipping and moving all over the place. In some cases, it actually seemed worse than driving on ice.
I just went slowly and was glad when I finally made it back to a paved road. I finally arrived at Red Hill Estate and promptly made my way to the wine cellar to taste some of their wines. They had quite an extensive selection of wines encompassing almost all of the 'major' grapes - and they were all very very good. I tried most of what they had to offer and decided to buy a bottle of sauvignon blanc for Anita as a 'thank you' for letting me use her car. Then, I went up to the restaurant and enjoyed a very nice lunch with a fantastic view. I decided to splurge and have their filet mignon. It was absolutely excellent and I was glad that I treated myself to something a little bit nicer (even if it was just lunch). As Dr. Freeman often likes to say, "things could be worse."After Red Hill Estate, I made my way over to Ten Minutes by Tractor. Another winery, Anita had also recommended this as being a good place to get Dr. Freeman a bottle of pinot noir (shhh, don't tell him, it's supposed to be a surprise). They had a more restricted selection of wines. They had several grades of chardonnay as well as several grades of pinot noir. I tried many of them and finally made a selection. Then it was time to head back to Anita's house for the evening's festivities. Anita had invited me to a cookout at one of her friends/co-worker's house. First, I had to make it back to Hawthorne...
This proved to be more difficult than it ever should have been. It turns out that not only were the Google directions totally worthless, but the map that I had wasn't accurate either. I was traveling on a road that was supposed to dead-end at the road I wanted to be on (so I figured, no problem, right?). No, turns out they added on to this road (maybe?). In any case, after a while I ended up overlooking the harbour that is south of Melbourne. About the only thing I had going for me at this point was that (pretty much just by sense of direction alone) I knew that I was on the western portion of the peninsula, so I knew which way was north. The map didn't list any of the roads that I was on, so I finally just picked one and started driving more or less north, hoping that I would eventually run into a town or something that was on the map. After about 15 minutes of driving along a road that didn't intersect with any other road (in the absolute middle of nowhere, of course) I came to a road that I recognized from the map and I was able to identify where I was! (incidentally, the coastal views of the harbour were spectacular... I wish I would have stopped to get pictures, but I was running behind schedule and I was a bit concerned about having no idea where I was) So, finally, I made it back to the freeway that would take me back to Melbourne. I eventually arrived at Anita's house (a little behind schedule) but we were still able to get out to CSIRO to change samples in the lab and then make it to the cookout.
The cookout was nice. There were several professors and scientists there from CSIRO and other local universities. It was nice to meet those people and their kids. Among other things, we had excellent lamb and an Afghan dish called mantu. The food was fantastic. After dinner, we played cricket. I had never played before, so it was definitely a learning experience for me... I'm still not entirely sure that I understand the rules completely, but I did get the general feel for the game and it was fun to play and get some exercise.
After the cookout, I took the train from Anita's house back to Melbourne and eventually back to the Graduate House. There were a lot of young people on the train clearly going out for a night on the town. It was fun to make some observations about that. First, apparently it is at least moderately acceptable to carry around and drink from open bottles of wine and beer (even on the train). Second, I find the styles and choices of clothing to be comical, at best. Melbourne is definitely a more formal city in that people dress up a bit more to go out. But at the same time, probably 80% of the people who I could identify as 'definitely on their way to a club or some other nightlife activity' looked as though they were going to an 80s party. At first, I thought maybe they were going to some themed event. But I kept seeing more and more people dressed that way and eventually came to the conclusion that it must be normal... I'm glad I didn't ask anyone on the train if they were going to an 80s party - haha! I wish I could have gotten a representative sample of photos to explain this better, but I don't think taking random pictures of people on a train would be such a good idea. After the train ride, I walked around downtown for a bit to get a feel for the nightlife scene (at least from the street). I'll have to get a more 'inside' look at it some other time. Eventually, I hoped on a tram and made the rest of the trip back up to the Graduate House. After a long day full of exciting activities, I think it is time for bed...
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