Mornington Peninsula and Phillip Island

Since spring is finally here *blissful sigh*, and Sarah's Mam is away, leaving her house on the Mornington Peninsula empty, Sarah, Erin, David and I decided to have a weekend down there so that we could check out Phillip Island. The Mornington Peninsula is about an hour South East of Melbourne, around Port Phillip, and it is a beautiful area.

We started off by visiting the Maru Koala Park on the Peninsula. It's tiny, but one of the best animal sanctuaries I've been to in a while as you can get right in there with the animals. I had never realised how big kaolas can get, or how smelly they can be! After that, we headed around to San Remo to have lunch before heading over the bridge to Phillip Island.

After a rather disappointing start, where we discovered that the free samples at the chocolate factory were only free if you paid to go on the factory tour, we headed to Rhyll, on the coast of the island, where the Conservation Hill Reserve has a boardwalk through the wetlands, and a laughable 'view' from the viewing platform. The wetlands are the home to a vast expanse of mangroves, but as for 'wet', at first there was only vague glimpses of slightly muddy patches. In less droughtful years, I'm guessing that it used to actually live up to it's name as the 'Rhyll Swamp', rather than just having a river running through it. It was a peaceful and sunny walk though. The viewpoint was hilarious - (no joking about this by the way) it looked over the main road, a couple of trees, and a sign saying "Rhyll Swamp". And that's it. The information sign began by saying that if you look really hard you can see the concrete posts that hold the fence around the reserve, and these concrete posts were laid in an effort to create employment in the area in 1957. It went on for a while, but that was pretty much the substance. David had thought that I was making it up when I read the sign out, but then realised that unfortunately, I was telling the truth.

After that we opted for lying on the beach at Cowes for a while. Cowes is, to all intents and purposes, Phillip Island's main town. It's tiny, and kind of peaceful. Next stop, Summerlands, for the Penguin Parade - the main reason for most visits to the Island. After being told to arrive by 6.45pm, we were slightly confused by the fact that the penguins weren't expected to arrive til 8.20pm, but nonetheless, we took up our position on the beach to wait. To the uninitiated, the Penguin Parade is basically where you sit on the steps leading to the beach at sunset and wait for the Little Penguins (their real name) to come out of the sea and run up the beach towards their burrows which are inland. Really, they must be thinking that the humans are such a bunch of morons for sitting on the beach to watch them. They are tiny, super cute, and arrive in far greater numbers than I was expecting! Later you get to stand on the boardwalks and watch them some more. Hellishly over-priced at $20, but entertaining for sure!

After a late finish we opted for a slightly more lazy day on Sunday, heading out late to take a drive up Arthur's Seat, a big hill on the Mornington Peninsula right next to Dromana where we were staying. The view of the peninsula from the top would have been awesome had it occurred to someone to trim the tops of the trees that have grown in the foreground! Still I managed to get one pretty good shot. [pic to follow]

We drove on to Red Hill, where first of all we went to the local Red Hill Brewery for some beer tasting and a cheesery for some cheese tasting (surprisingly enough). Unfortunately, the brewery only does weekday tours and the cheesery wasn't big enough for tours. Next we went on to Flinders, which is a small town on the other side of the peninsula, looking out onto Phillip Island. It is a peaceful and pretty place, and the beach would have been lovely on a warmer day. (I can't complain though, I had a nice catnap in the sunshine so it can't have been that cold)

On the way back to Dromana, via Cape Schank Lighthouse (which we decided we couldn't be bothered to pay for when we got there), we stopped at The Blowhole, which is a little 'bay' where the waves come crashing over the rocks, and presumably shoot up the middle of a hole in the rocks. I was far too chicken to go and investigate (such a scaredy cat), and the tide was definitely coming in! It was nice to see the power of the waves though.

The drive back to Melbourne felt long, though it's only an hour or so. I'd been ridiculously tired all weekend, but had just put that down to not sleeping well through the week. On Monay I discovered the real reason! On waking up I discovered I had a badly painful elbow (and no recollection of injury), which proceeded to swell up during the day, go bright red, hot and start throbbing. So many people expressed concern about spider bites that I bit the bullet and paid for a doctors appointment (you KNOW it's bad when I do that!), only to discover that I had cellulitis. From what I can work out, it's and infection in the skin cells around my elbow due to bacteria getting in to a cut of some kind... maybe a spider bite. Ouch! Antibiotics and a ridiculous amount of sleep later, it's finally gone down a bit :)

This evening I am flying to Brisbane for the weekend! My excitement definitely increased when I realised yesterday that I wasn't flying with Tiger (Australia's answer to EasyJet) Airlines, but in fact Qantas. Hooray! Okay, so Qantas aren't that great, but better than Tiger...

Mt Macedon and Hanging Rock

[i'll add some photos when i can]

It's festival time in Melbourne. Just as the Fringe Festival draws to a close, the Melbourne Festival is beginning. Half the time I wonder what exactly the word 'festival' is supposed to mean; take the Fitzroy St festival in St Kilda last week. I couldn't work out what that was, except for a whole bunch of people hanging out on the patch of grass near the end playing giant chess. Apparently there was even a Victorian Seniors Festival on this week too. Even after 7 months here I can't quite get used to hearing the word 'Victorian' used to describe people from the State of Victoria rather than people from another era. Weird.

I hadn't seen anything at The Fringe Festival, which is a shame, especially since it ended on Saturday - so I was glad to catch the closing night of Titus Andronicus. The Melbourne Festival is actually an international arts festival, which opened on Friday night with bell ringing displays. I had to laugh when I read the description on the events page as a 'splendorous event'. Jen and I were going to head down to watch, but got distracted by food... maybe I'll catch one of the shows later this week.

The Leica/CPP Documentary Photography Awards exhibition is touring nationally at the moment, and as it's in Bundoora, which is helpfully on a tram route that passes near my house, I went along to check it out. I'm not normally a documentary photo kinda gal, but you gotta check new things out. I hadn't realised that the Bundoora Arts Centre is actually a historical house - and it's apparently haunted (if that's your thing). It's at the edge of Bundoora park and it was a beautiful day, so I wandered around the park for a while after I checked out the house.

We've been planning to go to Hanging Rock in Mt Macedon (two places with what could be the WORST tourism websites ever made - especially considering how many people go to Hanging Rock, and apparently the basis for a creepy movie I now discover) ages ago, but kept getting foiled by illness and injury (and not just my own). So today Sarah, Erin, Dave and I decided enough was enough, and jumped in the car for a day trip. It was a beautiful day again, and so amazing to get out into the bush and away from the city for a day. I was really struck by the fact that spring here almost looks more autumnal than springlike and had to laugh when Sarah said everything was looking really green at exactly the moment that I said everything looked a bit dead... and there we have the main difference between Australia and England. Water!

I discovered last week that my work contract ends in 5 weeks, when I'll be jobless once more. Yet more revisions to the visa laws mean that no extension is possible. I definitely can't afford to be without a job, and don't think I want to go through all of that looking process again, so there's a few big fat decisions to be made.

Ballarat

Seeing the months stack up on the side-bar is scaring me a little! Where did the time go? I can't believe it is October already. I am fairly convinced that it must be spring, due to the new leaves that are budding on the trees, but am still waiting for the warmth. We have the odd nice day now, yesterday being one of them, most of which I spent in St Kilda chilling out with Toni.

I've spent a fair amount of time this past week with my camera. I have been learning some more techniques with processing and just generally feeding my growing obsession with (fixed) visual art. I had a couple of walks in the city after work a couple of nights and managed to get some fairly good pics, and hope to make it a habit. If you're interested, I'm trying to post new images to my flickr page at least every week.

Continuing on a photographic theme, I discovered a listing for a exhibition called Ballarat International Foto Bienalle which ended yesterday after exhibiting for a month. It consisted of lots of photographers who were invited by the organisers, along with a whole host of photographers who requested exhibition space, showing their work in exhibitions at various venues throughout the city of Ballarat. I decided I should check it out, and also Ballarat while I was at it. My favourite of the exhibition by far was an Australian photograher, Tim Griffith.

Ballarat Town Hall (montage of 15 images in fleeting blue skies)

Ballarat is about 65 miles west of Melbourne. About 80 minutes away by train, it is one of Victoria's historical centres - being a Gold Rush town in the 1800s. They say there's still lots of gold in them there hills... While the wealth was on the increase, they set up the town as though it was going to be a major city - with all the big, important buildings and municipal parks etc - and it was until it was surpassed by Melbourne. While all the old ornate buildings still stand, it's so quiet that you can hardly imagine it being a bustling metropolis. I kept wondering if I had gotten the day wrong, so many shops shut considering it was Saturday. At the train station there is a single A3 sheet that lists (in detail) every train that leaves the station every week. One A3 sheet. That's not a lot of trains.

Ballarat Train Station

The area is really drought stricken after years of low rainfall, and especially after this year, which has seen the lowest rainfall ever recorded in Victoria. It was really evident at Lake Wendouree, where it took me a little while to realise that at one point I was standing on the lake bed. The boat houses are on stilts which look a little odd now that there is no water to be raised above. It's difficult to believe that this was the location for all of the rowing, kayaking and canoeing events for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

The boathouses on Lake Wendouree. Everything in the foreground used to be under water

The path around Lake Wendouree. The lake should be in the lower left corner of this image. This track is a 6km circuit - I just read that the record time this has been run in is just over 16 minutes. That is seriously fast!

The train journey itself was a bit of an eye opener drought-wise too. After a moment, I realised that the dirt track we were following was actually a river bed. After that I started noticing the empty lake bed, and the yellow, patchy grass. It's still beautiful though. The scenery kind of reminded me of home, just not as green.