Dateline Down Under - January 30 and 31, 2008

Dateline Down Under – Melbourne
January 30 and 31, 2008

We hit the streets and walked all over Melbourne (that be “Melbunn” if you are an Aussie as we were soon corrected). Melbourne is quite a cosmopolitan city, sort of a contemporary London if you will. It is a large city, there are mobs of people from all over the world living and working here, you hear twenty languages being spoken at once, but the pace is a LOT more laid back than in the States (except the drivers, whose main second Language is New York (immediate use of the horn for ANY transgression…. Steve cannot wait to get into the driving mix here, especially since he will be the furriner driving on the wrong side of the road). Melbourne has the largest tram system in the country here, and it the best way to get around the city and surrounding areas. Downtown is even free. We hit the outlets so Steve could snag a new pair of Tevos (no self-respecting Aussie wears regular shoes except to work) to break in.

We spent the remainder of the day walking around, meeting and greeting the locals (they loved our “strange” accents and words), cruised through a large summer evening TUPAS (totally useless piece a s…) market, bought dinner and snagged a bottle of vino as sleeping medicine (not that we really needed it by this point). The Aussies are amazingly friendly and laid back people. Steve loves them already because they are right in your face with their questions, humor and comments, which suits him just fine.

T.V. news here is real cool. They start out giving you the straight skinny and then sort of slide into a “this is a dramatization of what we think happened” part of the same story. Big news of the day (well one-of-two) was about this Aussie Rules Footie (football over here, which is a brutal – Steve LOVES it – combination of Rugby, soccer and tackle football in shorts and T-shirts!!) who evidently beat the heck out of his girlfriend in a Miami hotel room. So they start the news piece and we are getting into it, and then the screen shows this sign “dramatization” and the entire fight is acted out… think Access Hollywood on steroids! Second item of interest, surprisingly enough, is the U.S Presidential election, which sort of floored us, but the Aussie’s got the major question right…. WHY does it take TWO YEARS for you guys to elect a new president? We gave them the correct answer, of course… “well, the T.V. networks need the money!” Every one just laughs and shakes their heads.

Tuesday dawned drizzly and warm, so we slept in and then headed off to Starbucks so Carol can keep her string of “Bucks Around the World” alive. Even with the exchange rate, food is more expensive here (at least in Melbourne). It was interesting though to walk into a Starbuck’s at almost lunchtime and find the place fairly empty. There are a lot of them but they do not seem to have caught on as much here.


After lunch it was off for our first tour of the trip, and it was a good one. We first went to a Koala Bear preserve where we learned all about the little guys, then spent an hour or so filming them in the wild. They are really interesting marsupials and are sort of a slow motion teddy bear. Of course Steve took plenty of photos which you can find out at our Melbourne Album on Google Picassa.


Then it was off to the main event for the day, which was the Fairy Penguins of Phillip Island. Steve had been here once before, and although the tourists (read Japanese tourists) had been warned NOT to use flash because it hurts the little critters’ eyes at night, as soon as the penguins hit the beach he said it looked like it did when Barry Bonds was seeking the home run record and swung at a pitch! So the Aussie Rangers just cut out ANY photos or video, so we have nothing to show you. The pictures you see are from the Penguin Parade website, to tell you the truth, they look just like this. For those of you who would like to see these little guys...take a look at the Phillip Island Penguin Parade website.

Anyway, these little guys and gals have been doing the same routine for hundreds of years. They hit the beach and the water at O’Dark Hundred and feed for a day or two, then return just as late dusk is hitting, returning to their burrows to feed their young. They do this because there are nasty Pacific Gulls (Giant Seagulls) and other predators out there waiting to attack and eat these little folk (they are only about a foot tall), so they come back in just as it gets dark. It is a truly amazing sight. You are sitting there (we had special beach passes with a Ranger so we got to sit right where they usually first appear) watching the stars come out and all of the sudden, there they are! They are all lined up like a fat little white and grey army, all huddled together, and when they think the time is right for safety purposes, they begin waddling as fast as they can (which ain’t too fast) across the beach to where their burrows are. Their little tummies are swollen with food. Just above them in the sky, about 20 to 25 feet above the water, birds called short-tailed Sheerings are flying in HUGE swarms toward their burrows, which are co-located with the penguins. The Sheerings migrate from the Aleutian Islands to Phillip Island every year, a flight of some 15,000 miles in early summer here, and then all the way back! The closest approximation Steve can give is a giant swarm of Starlings like we see in California swarming through the fields around the San Joaquin Valley Delta.

We also got our first clear look at the Southern Cross this night and it is beautiful. It looks like sort of an upside down diamond in the sky, bright and clear like the North Star is in the Northern Hemisphere.

And now for the question of the day from Mr. Science that a number of you asked us to verify: Does the water drain from a sink or toilet down here in the reverse direction at home? The answer is that it appears that it does. Toilets we have been exposed to since getting here are designed different than U.S. toilets. They have a “soft flush” and “hard flush” button, and the water shoots in from both the front and back of the bowl, making it impossible to tell how they drain. However, we did test water in the sink and it does appear the drain cyclone actually does spin in the opposite direction of the northern hemisphere. Water draining from the sink drains so fast, once cannot tell. We will continue to experiment with this “myth of meteorology” and get back with you!

We figure this will keep you coming back for more…

Until then, we remain, Steve and Carol, wandering around the world!