Healesville Animal Sanctuary

Hot & muggy Sunday at the 3rd zoo in Victoria.

The pics. . .

Healseville Sanctuary

Werribee Open Range Zoo

The second zoo in the trio of Victoria zoos is the Werribee Open Range Zoo.  Went today with Bill C. and Jatupong J. from work.  I preferred the Melbourne Zoo, but I did enjoy it.

The pictures:

Werribee Open Range Zoo

Grampian Mountains

Spent the day hiking with Chuck W. from work in the Grampian Mountains a couple hours away from Melbourne.  The first hike was to "The Pentacle" a dramatic cliff edge.  The hike was mostly on large rocks, which was unlike any trail I've hiked before.  Lots of climbing up, and down.  The Fitbit said it was around 90 flights of stairs, which is close to the Empire State Building.   The view was awesome.  The next 2 views were ones that we could drive to and the last was hiking down to a waterfalls.  That last one did my legs in.  I'm just not use to that much climbing.  All told the Fitbit said I climbed 153 flights of stairs for the day.

At the end of the day, we took some off roads through the large park to try to spot some koalas. We saw kangaroos, emus, yellow-crested cockatoos, but no koalas. A fire pretty much devastated the park in January 2014, and I guess the animals aren't fully recovered yet.

The pictures:

Grampian Mountains, Victoria, Australia

Melbourne Zoo

Australia Day is Monday and the Melbourne Zoo was packed today.  Still managed to have fun taking pictures at the zoo.

Melbourne Zoo

Queen Victoria Wednesday Night Market

Went to the Wednesday night Queen Victoria Market again this week.  It was hot and crowded, but I had fun snapping some pictures.

Melbourne Queen Victoria Night Market

Awesome Melbourne Graffiti

Melbourne has several alleys that are given over to graffiti artists.  Really love this stuff.

Melbourne CBD (Central Business District) January 18, 2015

Pictures from the Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia

Saturday off and I hit the road.  Drove down the Great Ocean Road, west towards the Twelve Apostles.  Windy and windy, the road followed the coast.  Pictures don't do justice to the color of the ocean.  On the way through the woods to the light house I saw several kualas in the trees.  I didn't have a zoom on my camera so I didn't stop to take pictures.

Great Ocean Road, January 2015

Little things

Interesting the little things that are different from the U.S. here, like red-tipped bananas. 

Or having to pull into the far left part of an intersection to make a right turn after the light turns red. 

Rental Car Blues

Not having great luck with rental cars in Australia. This summer I punctured a tire by missing a curb. Today I discovered I left the interior lamps on when I parked the car in the hotel garage on Saturday. The battery was completely dead. I called Hertz roadside assistance and they sent a battery guy. He tested the battery and said it was bad and had to be replaced. 

Thank goodness for full liability coverage from Hertz. 

Driving down under

My rental car for the next few months is  a fairly new Honda Civic. It feels nothing like my old Civic, probably because I'm driving it from the right side of the car. 

Luckily Hertz puts a reminder in the corner of the windshield (or windscreen in Aussie) for us Americans driving down under. 

And the Trip Begins

So long Winter

Hello Summer