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...
