I write in Melbourne airport, at the end of our Australian adventure which feels simultaneously to have gone extremely fast, and to have started an extremely long time ago. It is a curious and contradictory feeling. I suspect the cause is that we have in fact been here down under for some time, but we have changed exactly where every three or four days, so Australia has really been a series of short mini-breaks. They have, however, all been pretty bloody great.
We began the journey in Melbourne, mainland Australia's cultural capital, its artiest and least poisonous-animal-inhabited city. We spent a happy few days taking in cultural performances of high art (we went to see Black Panther), living like locals (staying in a hotel) basking in the dry, non-humid heat (in the shade obviously) and making the most of Melbourne's thriving food culture (actually did that one). Even for aimless wanderers like ourselves though, Melbourne is so aggressively cultural that you can't help running into it. On one day, while attempting to find lunch, we wandered into a Brazil festival, complete with mini-Carnivale and a samba band, then shortly afterwards blundered into a Japan festival in another square about half a mile away. It's a good time! But of course the most momentous happening was something entirely unexpected, something truly drastic and, in many ways, terrible to behold: I cut my hair. Which is a big deal for me. Admittedly the main lasting consequence has been that my hat fits on my head again, but it still feels important.
Anyway, our next stop was the scenic holiday-home-destination of Philip Island, across the bay from Melbourne itself, most famous for its large mega-colony of Little Blue Penguins. 32,000 of them in fact. Every evening, after a day of fishing, all the penguins gather at the seafront and then rush across the beach in groups, to avoid being eaten by sea eagles. And let me tell you, when the tourist infrastructure at the Penguin Parade lets you get within a couple of feet of this waddling mass of penguins, it is about the cutest thing you could hope for. They are just adorable. Needless to say, we went twice. Philip Island is also home to a bunch of nice walks and beaches, a surprisingly large and well-presented museum of the Vietnam War (in which we accidentally spent about four hours), and a couple of nature reserves. In one of these you get a bag of feed with your ticket and can hand feed a whole load of extremely tame wallabies and kangaroos (here we deliberately spent about four hours), and also some geese which keep trying to steal the food from the marsupials. This too is super adorable. This reserve is also home to koalas, emus, dingoes, Tasmanian devils, sea eagles, quolls, cockatoos (one of which kept saying "hello!" to us, with a notable Aussie accent), a dozen different poisonous snakes, and some giant wombats. So Australian Animal Bingo went very well that day.
We then travelled to Wilson's Prom, the southernmost point of the Australian mainland. This verdant peninsula is abundant with beautiful beaches and stunning vistas, and its fair quota of interesting wildlife to boot. That being said, it doesn't make for great reading; we hiked around a lot and gawped at all the gorgeousness. Also we made friends with a Canadian man who was, like all Canadians, lovely. One notable highlight was Squeaky Beach, where the sand is formed in such a way that it squeaks like an over-oiled basketball court with every step. Amusing for mature adults like us.
The final stop on our very select Australian tour was Tasmania, which some have referred to as New Zealand's West Island. I can see why. Tasmania is pretty great! The people are universally friendly and outdoor-adventure-loving, there's virtually no traffic, every restaurant serves pies and the scenery is spectacular. So basically it is New Zealand. In a good way. Tasmania had many highlights: we hiked around Cradle Mountain, where we saw our first poisonous snake in the wild; we saw the world's oldest surviving beer in an extremely wide ranging museum (other exhibits include shipwrecks, dinosaurs, World War One, Alice in Wonderland-themed illusions, trains, and space travel. We also vsited our first ever planetarium here!); we visited more beatiful beaches, most notably Wineglass Bay; saw a pod of dolphins while kayaking on the sea and spent my birthday getting free ice cream and touring some ridiculously tall pine and eucalyptus trees.
And then, after a foreshortened day visiting another museum about boats, we are back to the airport, on our way to the Philippines. Back into seriously hot weather again, as opposed to just very hot. Thanks to an unfortunate collection of poor planning choices and flight times, we are now in the midst of spending a solid 24 hours in four planes and five different airports before we get to where we're actually going... yay! Luckily for me I had this to write, so that's killed an hour.
Happy travels friends.
