Lots of things appeared to fall from the trees onto the "cabin" roof occasionally followed by a scratchy footed bird. We headed for The Nobbies, an unexciting rock at the tip of Phillip Island with a thorough absence of seals. There were a few surfers mainly failing to catch the surf on the north shore then onto the sea-side of Cowes, much busier than inland for a cup of coffee and journal updates.
We had decided to stop at the Koala Conservation Park as, whilst it's slightly artificial and smacks of being a zoo they do have a whiff of conservation ethic to them and I think you're supposed to see koalas [when] in Australia. There are koalas all over this part of the world, at least you'd think so given the warning signs on the roads but [here] they've built some koala and other beastie proof walls (a bit like prison walls) and "trapped" some koalas inside. The "woodland" koalas get to roam around in some acres and happily do their (no)thing about 8m up. There's an inner "boardwalk" section where they've built a raised walkway in amongst the trees -- much lower trees in case you thought we might be teetering 10m up -- and the existing trees have freshly cut eucalyptus limbs put in boxes to feed the koalas. The result is that the koalas are easily within touching distance (which you shouldn't) but make for great photos. We spent a good couple of hours watching the effervescent koalas sleep, wobble ungracefully, eat a leaf and sleep again. I'm undecided on this as they are clearly captive, subject to the touching and taunts of tourists close up but it's better than them being squished on the main road over the fence. We did get completely startled by a small roo in the woodland section who started when I was about five yards away. I hadn't seen him at all.
One the way to Melbourne we stopped at the Wildlife Wonderland/Giant Earthworm to be sadly disappointed that the "Giant Earthworm" is the building itself. There was an opportunity to see a 2.5 ton Great White shark but the photos of it being landed a) showed how big it was -- I don't think it would have noticed anyone going down unless they went in sideways and b) it looked as though it was suffering from gaseous decay. Rather than pay the hefty entrance fee we stopped on the access road on the way out and photgraphed the emus there.
We drove into Melbourne, just avoiding the toll road (Mark says that toll roads are the new sexy thing for Australia -- presumably most people will tar the PM, John Howard, for that as he seems to be a genuinely disliked man) and carrying on down the tram-lined wide-road grid-iron streets. Did you know that Birkenead was the first frid-iron town? Did you care? An amazing side-effect of grid-iron towns is that the town planner a) insists on dropping it [grid-iron pattern] as soon as possible and b) introduces one-way streets in an inconsistent fashion to keep you on your toes. A good example being the junction of Flinders and Spencer where the circle tram can turn right but cars have to run 100 yards straight on before doing a u-turn in the road.
Spencer Hotel is a funny place. It has what looks like a posh restaurant [and] an OK bar [downstairs] and a dive of an accomodation upstairs. Helen had proudly announced that she'd saved us money. The facilities were the worst bit (at least the laundry was crisply clean unlike beds or room). Three floors of about ten rooms, all at least twins, no facilities on the top floor, ours has a single toilet and two showers (each for men and women), the lower floor one toilet and shower. And the toilet didn't flush properly. A real backpackers dive. We headed into town pronto.
Our search for Internet shops took us to Elizabeth St and up to the market. I can cope with the smell of fish and meat markets but this open sewer stench was way beyond the pale. Not that that stopped McDonalds setting up shop. Most of the Internet shops wanted AU$3 per hour but we found an AU$20 per day deal for "members." Membership being AU$5, we thought this would do. A Chinese banquet was chosen [over individual dishes] because it was better value for money but as ever was way too much [in this case] average food. I didn't put the chopsticks up my nose which shows just how mature I've become.
In the Internet cafe they had Windows NT, someone who knew how to apply a policy restricting the saving of files locally and no-one [in the building] who knew how to lift it. Of course, catching up with emails meant we didn't discover that until way too late to undo our membership. Ah well. This was another Asian run shop (we were in Chinatown!) which means that they've had a monopoly on Internet shops -- one's we've used and most of the ones we've looked at. Is this the modern equivalent of the corner store? So we mucked around for a bit then went back to the "hotel." On the way, the city circle trams have been replaced by two restaurant cars. Dine in style on the city loop. At the hotel the general mingingness of the place got to me, at least, and we're going to depart tomorrow. Hopefully we'll get our money back for tomorrow night.
Not much sleep either with people creaking about on the stairs (inside and out), a very noisy fan coming on and off every few minutes and it being far too hot.
Hotel Spencer, Melbourne S37.80958 E144.94908 Elev. 12m
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.