Melbourne made all its public transport free for NYE - Charlie and NC on the Tram Due to a demanding work schedule back in DC, Charlie needed to leave Oz a week earlier than Nancy. Since Charlie's last night also happened to be New Years Eve, we decided the best way to spend it would be in the middle of the madness in Melbourne. After experiencing predominantly blustery, chilly weather both along the Great Ocean Road as well as in Tassie, it came as a big shock when we walked off the airplane onto the tarmac at Melbourne International and slammed into a wall of sweltering 40+ C heat. Summer had officially arrived in Victoria, and it wanted its presence known. We joked that now Charlie and Nancy could actually experience the legendary heat of Oz, instead of the New England style weather that seemed to never want to leave. It was just too bad that Charlie didn't have more time to have a true Aussie beach day. Little Creatures NYE Beach Party! After checking into a local caravan park, we did our best not to pass out from heat exhaustion as we got ready for the evening in the city. Our stifling cabin, sans-air conditioning, was basically an oversized EZ Bake oven with beds. As the sun dropped to the horizon and covered the city in pink and gold, we made our way to the Little Creatures Brewery restaurant, located in the heart of the Fitzroy, a fantastic, semi-grungy artfoodculture district that has become one of our favorite parts of Melbourne. It felt good to be going back to Little Creatures, as it was one of the first places Gareth took us when we arrived in Australia 8 months prior. Taking Nancy and Charlie there made it feel like Mar and I were officially finishing the circle we had drawn around the continent. Pshhh, who can't do that? We soon discovered that Little Creatures had been a particularly sweet choice for New Years. For its NYE festivities, the restaurant was hosting an indoor beach party, complete with beach umbrellas and poolside lounge chairs (and most importantly no cover charge!). The employees were dressed in wonderfully ridiculous costumes, most of which involved either spandex or hideous wigs, including one fabulously gross mullet wig. Between some delicious frites and pints of liquid heaven, we were thinking our choice of NYE venues was pretty great, but our satisfaction soon turned to delight when the entertainment took to the center of the room. Little Creatures had hired two burly circus performers to dazzle the crowd intermittently throughout the night. They did the usual, amazing, two man acrobatic tricks, but what really impressed us was when one of them pulled off an armless headstand, perched atop a wine bottle. I don't care who you are, that shit's awesome. As midnight loomed closer, we left Little Creatures and wandered with the masses down to Federation Square for the fireworks. We soon found ourselves in a sea of people, though it wasn't oppressively dense so we were able to stake a claim on some open street real estate in the center of it all. It was in the middle of this great, multicultural gathering of people in this international city that all of us realized we had never been a part of such grand New Years Eve celebrations before. Those big televised parties that we had always seen on TV had become a reality, only better, because as we were celebrating New Years in the summertime, everyone was comfortably partying in the warm night air (rather than getting frostbite). There was the obligatory drunkard dragged away by police, and the not so expected Indian, bhangra drum dance party that both helped to set the mood for the night. Live music was everywhere and we became hypnotized by all the sights and sounds, until the abrupt start of the midnight countdown took us by surprise. At 12AM, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by a 360-degree fireworks show. All the major buildings, and a station on the river, were shooting off beautiful fireworks for what seemed like half an hour. It was an uplifting experience, an almost cliché New Years event, with all manner of folk wishing each other a Happy New Year, hugging, kissing, and singing and dancing in the street. The evening was a magical end to 2010 and, hopefully, a good omen for 2011.
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Our serious holiday adventures began with a trip down the Great Ocean Road, a long drive along Victoria’s stunning southern coastline through quaint surfing towns and national parks. Inspired by the coastal highways of California, the road was a kind of Australian WPA project to provide employment for returning soldiers from the First World War. Our first day mainly featured driving and the weather was a bit rainy, but our first views of the Southern Ocean and rounded seaside cliffs were glorious nonetheless. We spent our first night in Apollo Bay, a small surfing and fishing town right next to the water. To celebrate the official beginning of our holiday road trip, we had some wine that we had bought in the Barossa Valley and ate at the local fish n’ chips shop for dinner. This was the first opportunity we had to introduce Nancy the Ketchup Addict to sweet chili sauce, an Australian phenomenon. This fateful introduction resulted in her purchasing roughly 2 liters of sweet chili sauce to bring back home (despite our insistence that you can easily get this sauce in the states). Our first koala!! He didn't seem to share our enthusiasm. On our second day along the Great Ocean Road, we had our first taste of Nancy and Charlie’s “animal magnetism,” which would become increasingly evident as the days progressed. Seven months, six states, and over 22,000 kilometers had passed since the two of us had arrived in Australia and neither of us had even caught a glimpse of a damn koala bear. We were beginning to think they were a myth, a ploy of the Australian tourism industry, which probably planted animatronic koalas in zoos and in the wild for episodes of Jack Hannah’s Animal Adventures. As we drove through patches of gum trees toward Cape Otway, we noticed a few cars pulled over and some tourists looking up into the trees – a good indication of wildlife about. We quickly spotted a fat ball of grey fur, dozing lazily and a bit precariously on a limb directly over the roadway. YES! We couldn’t have been more excited, a real living, breathing, squishy KOALA in the WILD! As we were giddily taking photos of this unconscious little dude, we realized that we were surrounded. We paced up and down the road looking through all the eucalypts around us, spotting little furry snoozeballs everywhere! Within a few hundred meters of where we stood, we took note of at least 30 koala bears in the trees. In the words of the late Mitch Hedberg, “Cutest infestation EVER.” This place was the koala Mecca we waited seven months to stumble upon. I say this not only because of the sheer number of koalas, but also because of how closely we were able to observe them. We walked down the road towards the cape and off to our left we found ourselves five feet away from a momma koala and her baby! They were positioned on a tree branch just above our heads and the two of them seemed quite unaffected by our presence, therefore giving us plenty of time to take close to 500 photos of slightly different poses...we get a little trigger happy with the ol' camera sometimes. Koalas: the stoner slackers of the marsupial world For those who don’t already know, koalas really don’t do anything but sleep, mainly because they are constantly dehydrated and the oil in the eucalyptus they eat drugs them out pretty hard. So, when the sun came out from behind the clouds and woke a few of them up, they began to move around a bit and you would have thought the sky had begun to rain kittens. It’s too funny how humans react to furry things doing the most mundane crap, but we’ll be honest, we were right there with everyone: “Oh my god look, look, it’s scratching itself” “WOW, that’s soooo awesome, he’s yawning” “Aw cuuuute, look at that one, it’s passing out again” People are ridiculous, but we had a blast. Why I do declare Mr. Beauregard, are those gum tree leaves for me? Our luck seemed to improve even more as the day progressed. That afternoon, as we were driving back from a lovely walk along the vegetated dunes of Cape Otway, we spotted another koala, awake and munching away, this time right at eye-level next to the path. This little dude proved to be quite content with us right next to him, as long as he still had a branch of eucalyptus to devour. NC actually got to feed him when he ran out of leaves, handing him a huge branch of eucalyptus, which he eagerly snatched. Koala-tastic! On several occasions we took a few hikes through Otway National Park and some beautiful rainforests. Like many places in Australia, these walks felt like a step back in time and you half-expected little dinosaurs and minivan-sized insects to burst through the ferns and giant gum trees. The epiphytes and mosses alone were a spectacle, with so many varieties, all of which looked so soft and inviting, you just had to stop and pet each tree affectionately. The waterfalls, as you might expect, were all lovely and every once in a while we came across some rusted, moss-covered logging equipment from the 1800’s, which was a bit eerie. Twelve Apostles in stormy seas We continued westward on the Great Ocean Road along what is known as the “Shipwreck Coast.” Stretching for about 130kms, this bit of coastline with its striking limestone cliffs and rock formations, thick fogs, and rough seas has claimed over 700 vessels since the 19th Century. The limestone pillars and platforms provide for some incredible scenery, one of the most popular sites being the Twelve Apostles, where twelve enormous pillars of rock stand free along the coast. On our way to Port Campbell, we stopped at the Twelve Apostles just after sunset and watched as fairy penguins waddled quickly in a large cluster out of the ocean and into the brush for the night. We were pretty high up on the top of the ridge and the light was very faint, but the scuttling tuxedo-clad dots were adorable nonetheless. We returned the next morning to view everything in the daylight and, while it was blustery and cold and packed with tourists, the sunlit coast was gorgeous. The limestone columns stood like sentinels in the churning shallows. After Twelve Apostles we hit up a few more sites including Lord Ard Gorge (site of a famous shipwreck), London Bridge (which, ironically, fell down recently), and Bay of Martyrs. The Lord Ard Gorge site in particular had a bunch of nooks and crannies to explore including an awesome cave. Cheese, Tea, Scones, and Mother-Daughter Bonding Hitting the end of the Great Ocean Road, we turned back towards Melbourne, but made a small detour at Timboon Farmhouse Cheesery for some free cheese tasting and Devonshire Tea. They make a “non-traditional” feta cheese here that we particularly enjoyed, soaked in oil with herbs and spices. It’s non-traditional because they make it with cow’s milk instead of goat/sheep (and it did taste a bit more like mozzarella than feta), but it was delicious. Many places in Australia advertise Devonshire Tea, which is usually a cup of tea served with scones (more like American biscuits), cream, and jam. After a day of wind-battered sightseeing, a relaxed session of Devonshire Tea in an English-style garden was just the ticket. It’s official: returning to Melbourne on December 14th marked our complete circumnavigation of mainland Australia! By plane, train, and automobile we traveled over 22,000 kilometers and found ourselves back where we had first entered the country, bewildered and bleary-eyed like newborn kittens, on May 21st. It was great to be back, and we were looking forward to spending some quality time exploring Melbourne, Victoria, and Tasmania in our remaining months down under. Roughly eight months had passed since I had seen my mom, so when she arrived at the Melbourne airport on December 16th, it was a warm and fuzzy reunion to say the least. She and Charlie (who arrived a few days later) were finally taking their first real vacation in (some obscene number of) years and, much to the delight of Ben and myself, were spending Christmas and New Years with us down under. We spent our first few days in Melbourne, showing the two of them around and walking a ridiculous number of kilometers during our daily touring. We had beautiful weather for the most part; it was unseasonably cool so the climate change from winter to summer wasn’t too harsh for them. Exploring laneways with mum! We wanted to make sure they really got a good feel for Melbourne and all it had to offer, and even though they only had few days it wasn’t too difficult since we walked in, out, and around the city until our feet turned to nubs. As we may have explained in one of our first Australia posts, what truly sets Melbourne apart from other cities is its laneway café culture. Secret alleyways and corridors are hidden all throughout the city center, each one containing anything from upscale restaurants to specialty shops to cheap cafés, awesome graffiti and public art. Soaking in all the little hidden gems of Melbourne counterculture was a great way to spend a few afternoons. Other highlights of our wanderings included the Queen Victoria Market, the Botanic Gardens, walking along the Yarra River, and (particularly for Ben and myself) the plethora of delicious, real food available to us. After eating nothing but canned food and the occasional reject orange for several weeks, being able to go to a restaurant or café or bakery was magnificent. Melbourne has a fairly large Asian population, so cheap dim sum, pho, and sushi rolls were abundant and made for some fun nights out in Chinatown and Little Vietnam. Thanks again Mom and Charlie for keeping us well fed! |
Marielle & BenWe're two people in the midst of severe quarter-life crises who decided to leave good jobs in a bad economy to travel to the other side of the world because, well, why not? Archives
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