Crikey: Australia Zoo!

I have fallen behind with this blogging business due to a combination of laziness and lack of internet access. I'll carry on writing about stuff that we did last week, starting with Australia Zoo.

After arriving at Sophie and Dan's awesome house in Brisbane, the first thing that we wanted to visit was Australia Zoo, founded by the legend that was Steve Irwin.

Although it is sad that Mr Irwin is no longer around, the zoo is awesome.

We drove from Bisbane to the Zoo, the final part of our journey being down the recently renamed Steve Irwin Way.

Upon entering the zoo, the first animals we saw were rhonoceros iguanas:

To be honest, we found the rhinoceros iguanas a lot less interesting than the lizards that were walking around on the paths through the zoo. We think they might have been eastern water dragons but we're not sure:

There were lots of menacing crocs too. Most of them seem to have been captured by Steve Irwin himself. This one looked like it definitely wanted to eat us:

We stopped off at the cafeteria for lunch. There were wild birds (which we kept seeing throughout southern Queensland and northern New South Wales) trying to eat people's scraps:

While sat in the cafeteria, we were able to observe the action below in the Crocoseum. This involved various animals performing awesome tricks for our entertainment, including snakes, birds and, of course, crocs. The high point should have been the crocs. Check out this scary looking guy:

In fact, the most exciting thing that happened was when one of the bird trainers tried to get a flock of birds to land on the arms of a few of the audience members but the birds just flew away instead, causing much panic and/or mirth.

Parcticularly awesome was getting to meet the kangeroos:

The kangeroos seemed pretty lazy to me. I can definitely relate to that.

We also saw some fairly tame tigers:

We visited the elephants and were able to observe them up close as they had lunch:

Hannah enjoyed meeting the ewoks (koalas):

No visit to an australian zoo would be complete without meeting a whole load of uber-scary snakes. This little guy isn't one of the most deadly but is definitely the most interesting looking:

We had a great time visiting Australia Zoo and I would definitely recommend going, if you have the chance.

Byron Bay, Nimbin and Surfers Paradise

Byron

On the way out of Lennox Head, we briefly visited its northly neighbour, Byron Bay. This was as the Lonely Planet guide had described it; more touristy, busier and a bit more tacky.

We visited Cape Byron Lighthouse. This is situated on mainland Australia's most easterly point.

There is also a lovely beach nearby:

They're everywhere... They wanna save the earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad...

After visiting Cape Byron and Byron bay, we still had some time to kill so we headed for the world's 9th best hippy town, Nimbin. Alas, Nimbin appeared full not of hippies but of curious backpackers like ourselves. Things that we noted about the town:

• Funny smelling smoke in the air from time to time.
• Brightly coloured psychadelic shop fronts.
• Some bloke asking us if we wanted any dope as we walked by. What a friendly chap!

We visited the Nimbin Museum, which was quite interesting. There, we learned that "the man" is trying keep us down by banning marijuana and being mean to be people with alternative lifestyles. We also learned that multiple police officers had been sent to Nimbin to try to stop people taking drugs. Clearly, they were doing a bit of a crap job, based on what we observed earlier.

On the way out of Nimbin, we drop past Mt Warning, the summit of which is the first part of mainland Australia to see the sun every morning. Exciting, no?

Surfers Paradise

After crossing into Queensland, we headed up the Gold Coast. We had decided not to stay in Surfers Paradise because we had heard it was pretty tacky. Still, we stopped for a few minutes in order to check it out.

First things first: the beach was pretty awesome and totally crowded with holiday makers. There were even a few surfers.

We then headed into town and discovered that the Australians have indeed done to Surfers what the British have done to the Greek islands. It involved a lot of concrete, tacky bars, fast food establishments and alcohol-fueled bad behaviour.

Still, it wasn't all bad. Before leaving town, we dined in style. At McDonalds.

Yamba

On our way up north from Bellingen, we stopped for lunch in a lovely town called Yamba. Yamba advertised itself rather well; the sign on the highway read as follows: "Yamba, Australia's number one town!" Apparently, it really was voted the top town by some magazine or other: http://www.australiantraveller.com/component/content/article/362

Anyway, it had quite a nice beach, as this picture shows:

Lennox Head

On Friday (by which, I mean Friday 11th December, what with me having fallen behind

with this "blogging" business) , we travelled to the lovely seaside town of Lennox Head. Our decision to stay in Lennox, rather than nearby Byron Bay, was partly driven by the fact that our Lonely Planet guide described Lenox as being less tacky and touristy than Byron. Mostly, it was due to our inability to find vacancies in any of the Byron Bay hostels that we tried.

Our journey from Bellingen was relatively easy by our standards, given that this one "only" took six hours, including time spent having lunch in Yamba (which I "blogged" about "here")

Our arrival was slightly complicated by the fact that I appeared to have caught an ear infection in Manly. This was confirmed when I visited the local doctor's surgery and antibiotic ear drops prescribed. Sadly, I can't get my ear wet for a few days now, which might put a dampener on various water-based fun. Once that small matter had been dealt with, we had a chance to acclimatise to our surroundings. Our accommodation was the local YHA. Very nice it was too. Our double room actually had a fridge in it, which impressed us no end. The hostel itself was a mere stone's throw from the beach. By "stone's throw", I mean "down the street to the end and then across another street and then up a grassy bank" but it was still pretty close. The beach was great too:

We had lots of fun on the Saturday, playing in the sea, me trying to make sure that my ear didn't get wet and Hannah trying to ensure that she didn't get out of her depth.

Here is a picture of me enjoying the sea, confident that nothing bad is going to happen:

...and here is a picture of me, my ear still barely dry:

We also went to Lake Ainsworth, which was a similar "stone's throw" away. This is a lake, separated from the sea by a bar of sand. The waters of the lake are brown with tannin from the surrounding trees which, we were told, is great for the skin. To be honest, though, it was just a bit creepy.

All in all, Lennox Head is a great place to visit with a great beach. Highly recommended.

Bellingen

We have now arrived at the small town of Bellingen and checked into the town's YHA.

Bello YHA feels like the first "proper" hostel that we have stayed in; everywhere so far has seemed a bit too posh and slick to be classed as a youth hostel. This place feels like a proper backpacker hostel, from the copious bugs that keep freaking Hannah out (mercifully, all the ones that we have found so far appear to be harmless; no poisonous spiders and snakes have threatened us so far) to the Hindu and Buddhist imagery on the posters around the place and the cool hippy-sounding tunes that our friendly proprietor plays on the stereo.

We also have a lovely view from the veranda where I am writing this:

As if that wasn't enough, the hostel also has a resident cat:

In all, this place gets ten out of ten for awesome cool-ness.

Neighbours Part 2

It seems that Monday night did not give Hannah her fill of Neighbours action so we went on the Neighbours Tour (B) on Saturday morning. This was a bus tour taking in the areas where Neighbours is filmed, including Ramsey Street and Global Studios.

We were picked up from our hostel at 8:05am on the dot by our jovial tour guide, Sophie. Sophie is an ex-pat Brit who seemed to enjoy her job ferrying backpackers around the sights of the Melbourne area and who seemed particularly knowledgeable about all matters Neighbours.

Once all the punters had been picked up (and after Hannah had bought Dr Karl's CD, Live At The Elephant), we set off to our first destination: Ramsey Street (real name: Pin Oak Court, Melbourne).

The first thing that struck me is how unlike Ramsey Street it actually looked. While a few of the houses looked familiar, the layout of the street itself looks completely different on television. In real life, it is a cul-de-sac with six houses. On television, they manage to make it look much bigger by never showing much of the road at a time. Another clever trick that Sophie explained to us involves the Neighbours characters never crossing the road (even though it's easy to do in real life, what with a six-house cul-de-sac having little traffic) but, rather, walking all the way round to whatever their destination is, the camera following them the whole time.

After taking multiple cheesy photos, we set off for our next destination, Global Studios. Here, we got to see awesome sets such as:

Lassiters!

Carpenter's Mechanics!

Charlie's!

.

That bus stop that Toadie got handcuffed to on his stag night!

After that, we got back in the minibus and headed back to St Kilda, where we were due to meet a mystery Neighbours cast member. Annoyingly, it turned out to be someone that I had never heard of who hasn't been in the show for several years. Worse, the minibus made Hannah travel sick and the former Neighbours actor had the cheek to suggest that she was worse for wear due to drinking the night before. How very dare she!

Manly Sydney

We have now arrived in the Sydney area and checked into the awesomely named Manly Beach House in similarly awesomely named area of Manly, just outside Sydney.

Manly Beach House is run by a jovial chap of Indian origin from Zimbabwe named Dev.

Despite it not actually being on the beach, we enjoyed our stay greatly, not least because the beach was only a few minutes away. It also helped that the beach turned out to be awesome:

Drought

Victoria and southern New South Wales appear to be going through a bit of a drought at the moment. Being from the UK, we were used to green grass and rivers that actually flow. There's not much of that at the moment. Here is a pic from our journey between Melbourne and Sydney:

Rivers round here are somewhat pathetic at the moment. We became accustomed to driving across mighty bridges over enormous valleys, only to look down and see not much in the way of water beneath. One assumes that the rivers occasionally swell to mighty torrents but, for now, a river is identified merely by the valley that it occupies and the unusually lush vegetation in the bottom of that valley.

The drought was also evidenced by the frequent posters warning of the danger of bush fires in the area (which was high). Looking at the parched landscape, it was easy to see why this was the case.

One very interesting feature of the landscape in the farmed areas that we passed through was that every little valley had been dammed. While there was no water flowing through when we passed, each dam caused a small pool of water to accumulate, giving the livestock somewhere to get a drink. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to take a picture of any of these pools but it was nice to see the local farmers making the best of the erratic patterns of precipitation. Still, you can't help but get the impression that Australia's lack of reliable rainfall is a real problem, even in the most fertile areas.

Melbourne to Sydney

While we were in the Melbourne area, one thing struck me as rather unusual: I didn't see any car number plates from outside Victoria. After we left Melbourne and started driving towards Sydney along the coastal road, it was a very long time until we started seeing New South Wales number plates. I now realise the reason.

If you lived in Sydney and wanted to go to Melbourne, would you drive it? Not likely. It took us two days driving from morning to evening each day to get from Melbourne to Sydney. I imagine that you could just about do it in a day but only if you went flat out, with few breaks. Alternatively, you could fly and be there in a few hours. With the benefit of hindsight, that's what we should have done.

Of course, driving allowed us to see some wonderful scenery:

The trouble is, we didn't have time to stop in many of the wonderful places we went past. In order to properly do justice to the journey, you'd need to spend a lot more time doing it. We didn't have time. We're on a schedule, dammit!

Penguins

On Saturday, we drove to Philip Island, a few hours southeast of Melbourne. Philip Island is special in two ways:

Firstly, lots of the towns on the island are named after towns on the Isle of Wight. For example, we stayed in Cowes and the main attraction that we visited was in Ventor.

Main attraction? Oh yes, the second awesome thing on Philip Island is the penguins. Now, I hadn't realised that penguins ventured north of the Antarctic but apparently there are multiple species of penguin to be found throughout the southern hemisphere. The penguins on Philip Island can be seen emerging from the sea every evening at dusk. We sat, along with a massive crowd of people, and watched as the penguins predictably emerged from the sea and waddled up the beach to the sand dunes where they make their nests. We could then observe the penguins up close from the board walk. They seemed completely un-bothered by our presence. We watched a penguin family going about its penguin-ey business. The daddy penguin collected bits of grass to line the nest while the mummy penguin followed the baby penguin around and tried to keep it out of trouble.

Sadly, we weren't allowed to take any pictures of the penguins (apparently, a camera flash can be rather hazardous to their health) so here is a link to some pictures that someone else took:

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/8ed7f/1c8d67/

Chinatown

While in Melbourne, we visited Chinatown. This seemed to occupy the entirety of one long and narrow street. As you can see from the picture, it is an exciting place, lined with Chinese restaurants.

We had two meals in Chinatown during our stay. The common factors seemed to be:

1. Awesome fried dumplings


2. Portion sizes that were far too large for the two of us. Check out our first meal:

For the second meal, we decided that, if we wanted to stand a chance of finishing the meal, we'd better not order so many dumplings. I ordered something called "fish with chillies" for my main course. This turned out to be a portion large enough for a whole family.

Apparently, not many people order that particular dish. I managed to eat a tiny fraction of it and very tasty it was too but Hannah was unable to help me out and thus I wouldn't recommend ordering it just for yourself.

The Great Ocean Road

On Friday, went for a day trip along the Great Ocean Road. This is a road along a stunning stretch of the Victoria coastline southwest of Melbourne:

Before we could tackle this awesome road, we needed a car. Luckily, the friendly people at Hertz were only too happy to charge us an arm and a leg to hire us the vehicle that will carry us around Australia for the next month.

Not too long into our journey, we passed our first awesome landmark: the lighthouse from the series Round The Twist.

Not even the lighthouse could compare with the awesome majesty of our ultimate destination, The Twelve Apostles. Kind of like Durdle Door on steroids:

The way back proved to be a little more challenging than the way there. Firstly, the satnav decided to be a bit "special" and direct us down every tiny suburban street in Geelong, presumably in order to shave fractions of a mile off our journey. This proved to be highly stressful.

Worse, the only pair of shoes that I had brought with me decided to malfunction. Behold:

Luckily, I was able to get some new shoes in Melbourne, with which I will have to make do until I can glue the soles back on to my old broken shoe. Phew!

Brekkie

When we went for breakfast yesterday, I was expecting it to be like British or American food: you know, unhealthy, drenched in fat, fried. That sort of thing. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Aussies seem to be seriously into healthy eating. I had avocado and mushroom on toast. It was both good tasting and good for you. Meanwhile, Hannah had beans on toast. I must confess to scoffing, under my breath, at her having gone for a can of Heinz beans on toast. Not so: the beans were actually fresh. Nice.

Later on, we went for coffee. It turns out that Aussies are also great at making coffee. My coffee not only tasted great but was also beautifully presented. It didn't really help us to get over our jetlag, though.

Oh yeah, we also explored Melbourne a bit. Which was nice.

Neighbours

Having safely arrived in Melbourne, we did what any self respecting jet-lagged backpackers would do and went to a Neighbours theme night. This involved a pub quiz, meeting some actors from Neighbours. The only one of whom I recognised was Alan Fletcher, who plays Dr Karl Kennedy. Sadly, I didn't get my picture taken with Dr Karl but I did shake his hand. Wowser. Here are pictures of me meeting some of the other Neighbours guys. I'm not quite sure who they are.

This was then followed by the most surreal part of the night, a set from Dr Karl's band Waiting Room. Dr Karl clearly fancies himself as a rockstar, as he was really going for it, playing covers of such classics as I Predict A Riot and Mr Brightside.

The most surprising thing about the whole night was that Dr Karl appears to be a major international sex symbol. Seriously, the ladies loved Dr Karl.