Wonders of Australia - Day Thirteen

Wonders of Australia – Day Thirteen – Wednesday 21 October 2015

Weather: Pouring rain until noon. Cloudy after. And cool. So beautifully cool.

I got a great night’s sleep and was down for breakfast when it opened at 6:30. The bus showed up at 7:15 and did the hotel tour before dropping us off at Federation Square.

My tour was AAT King’s Magnificent Melbourne City Sights. Our driver guide is Paul – unless we think he does a terrible job. Then his name is Tim.

I like him already.

He said he was originally from the U.K. and that he only had one regret in life.

He should have never stolen that loaf of bread.

Yup. His name is Paul.

We head out and Paul pointed out some buildings liike the Royal Melbourne Hospital which he said was a gift from Douglas MacArthur as thanks for caring for American soldiers during the Second World War when they took R&R in the city.

We drove by some Victorian heritage homes that he said were a minimum of seven hundred thousand dollars.

We made a brief stop at the building that was the Australian Parliament until Canberra became the capital in 1927. There was competition between Sydney and Melbourne for the job as the capital city. To solve the problem, they showed up at a sheep paddock a few hundred kilometres away and built Canberra. Paul said that eighty-five percent of the population work in government jobs and it’s a city that is open from nine to five.

He showed us St. Patrick’s cathedral which was built between 1860 and 1920.

It took a while because the labour took off for the gold fields before it was completed.

Our first stop is Fitzroy Gardens. The 26 hectare (64 acre) gardens date back to 1848 when the area was permanently reserved as a public garden.

The Conservatory was added in 1930 and four years later, the cottage belonging to the parents of James Cook was purchased by Australia and shipped from England to the gardens were it was reconstructed.

It’s not known if James Cook ever lived in the cottage but they believe he had at least visited his parent there. It was put up for sale in 1933 and Australia succeeded in purchasing the structure for eight hundred pounds. In 1978, a cottage garden was added. The furnishings are not original but are representative of the period.

In one room is a map of the world and when you press all three lights, it shows you the routes that Captain Cook took.

As I’m checking out the interior, it starts to pour outside.

And I had left my rain jacket on the bus. Oh well. I stop at the Conservatory on my way back.

We passed by the Melbourne Star ferris wheel. It was opened in 2008 but had to be closed forty days later and subsequently rebuilt and reopened in 2013.

Next we drove by the cricket grounds and other sports complexes. Apparently, in the 1980s, Melbourne was looking for an identity the same way the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge gave one to Sydney. The answer was sports. They figured that if more than a billion people can watch a tennis match, the exposure would be invaluable to promote the city. They poured money into the arenas and Grand Prix Circuit and it has proven to be a good investment. With the Australian Grand Prix, they have a hundred million seeing the city promoted during the event.

Other events include the Melbourne and Caulfield Cup (horse racing), Moomba Masters (waterskiing), the Asian-Pacific Triathlon Melbourne, Australian Open (tennis) and more. We’re told that there is a seating capacity of over a million at all the venues in the area. This has all resulted in Melbourne seeing six percent more tourists than Sydney.

Now Sydney is looking at offering something that would have the same draw.

We take a slow ride around the Grand Prix Circuit in the rain.

Paul noted that the population of Melbourne has shifted about. After the Second World War, the city’s population increased and many went east for the larger lots but it required a commute that the younger generation has not wanted to do and this has seen a substantial increase in the population of the central business district. Paul said almost two thousand people move into the area every week and the population has doubled from a hundred and fifty thousand to three hundred thousand. Apartment buildings being built are required to be sixty-five percent sold before it is even allowed to begin construction to prevent the losses that might result from an economic downturn.

From here, we go to the Shrine of Remembrance.

The Shrine is an Australian war memorial designed by two First World War veteran, Phillip Hudson and James Wardrop. The design was based on the Tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus and the Parthenon in Athens. The central sanctuary contains a granite stone on which the words “Greater love hath no man” are engraved and on 11 November at 11 am, the sun beams through an aperture in the room and illuminates the word Love. The foundation stone was laid on Remembrance Day in 1927 and dedicated on the same day in 1934.

We get some time to wander the Shrine.

It includes books of remembrance outside the main chamber.

And a display of the medals that Australians have earned. I wasn’t able to find the medal we were given for serving in Bosnia and later learned that Australia had not sent peacekeepers during the war.

I get up to the top for a few photos.

We head back to Federation Square where we can have lunch before starting the afternoon tour. I pick up a sandwich and check out the closest arcade and the graffiti art on the laneway.

Yup. If there’s a cat, I’ll find it. At least, I think it’s a cat.

My second tour is AAT Kings’ Phillip Island: Penquins, Kangaroos and Koalas. Having seen the kangaroos and koalas in Cairns, if I had my time back, I would have opted for the tour that only included the penguins. That would have given me the afternoon free which would have been a great chance to recharge.

Our guide is Adrian and he is a wealth of information about the local flora and fauna. As he headed out, he talked about the trees and how fire is required for germination as shown to us at the Blue Mountains. He said the eucalyptus tree has the fibrous bark that helps protect it from fire. It can be up to fifteen centimetres thick. By comparison, trees in a rainforest will have a smooth, thinner bark as fire is less of an occurrence.

He went on to explain how the trees affect the penguin population. In Victoria, the snowpack is the size of Switzerland and most of the melt drains in the swamps where the swamp, and trees like the teatree, filter the water. However, mankind cut down a lot of these trees which left nothing to filter the water. This runoff affected the seagrass in the ocean. The creatures depending on the seagrass began to disappear and the penguins depended on that sealife for food. Replanting many of these trees is helping restore the local ecology.

drian noted that the penguins don’t mate for life but return to the same place every year and will spend two hours looking for the mate. If they don’t find their mate after two hours, they’ll check out eharmony and find a new mate.

The penguins lay a couple eggs in a shallow hole. Each one will spend two days on the eggs while the other one goes out to feed. The chicks hatch in less than a month.

It’s easy to see which holes are active as they have excrement leading out from the hole.

The chicks will live off their fat while they learn how to fish but competition from the seals and birds as well as the loss of seagrass means a high mortality for the young penguins.

At three, we pull into the Maru Koala and Animal Park where we can see kangaroos, koalas and more.

Or not.

It was a much smaller establishment than the Cairns zoo but there were more kangaroos and they were much more interested in the food.

We were given an hour to look around.

I said hello to the koalas.

It started to get cold near the end of the visit and I expected I would need more than my jacket, so I picked up an Australia fleece and a pair or merino wool gloves.

Which will get a lot of use back home.

As we left, Adrian noted that the zoos and parks are often used to preserve a species and are appointed certain breeding stock to ensure that one zoo doesn’t end up with inbred animals. He said the government doesn’t tolerate bad zoos and pointed to a closed facility on the side of the highway.

We cross the bridge over to Phillip Island.

The island is about twenty kilometres long and has a population of six thousand but this can swell to a hundred thousand in the summer as people come to swim, surf, fish and birdwatch.

By five, we pull into Cowes, a town on the north coast of Phillip Island.

We get an hour and a half to have dinner on our own. I walk up the main street and come across a subway. I picked up a sub and took my time going back to the bus. Adrian pointed out pictures of the penguins wearing sweaters and noted that they weren’t for fashion but that they were used to rehabilitate injured penguins. He had a stuffed one in the bus.

The penguins we will see are called the little penguin or fairy penguins. They are the smallest species of penguins on earth. They weight about one kilogram on average and live about nine years, though the oldest is known to have lived to twenty-six. Their blue and white colour works as camouflage in the ocean where they can eat one third of their weight in fish. Adrian would later email us some good photos of the penguins (like the one below) since photography is prohibited on the beach.

The penguins have been tagged. Adrian says that if we see one with a metal tag, it’s at least fifteen years old. In 2000, they changed from metal tags to microchips. The penguins go out to sea in the day because it’s the safest time for them to go to sea and they can go out as much as sixteen kilometres in one day. Their eyes are sensitive to white light which is why no photography is permitted. The lights used at the facility are sulfur lights which don’t affect the penguins. If they are exposed to the white light, there is a risk that the light would confuse or frighten the penguin and cause it to return to the sea at a time when predators are active.

But before we show up at the Penguin Parade, Adrian takes us to see the Nobbies.

The area is a nesting ground for half a million gulls.

The area also has thousands of penguin burrows and Adrian looks to see if any of the nests are occupied and we can take pics from the bus. There are a lot of wallabies about as well.

He takes his time heading to the parade facility because he said we can take our time seeing the coast or we can sit and freeze on the platform for an hour.

The couple from Indian across from me appreciate that. They’re bundled up for a Canadian winter.

Adrian makes a couple more photo stops.

And then we make our way to the facility. My ticket included special seating up front, so we didn’t need to rush. Our seats were reserved. We had a chance to hit the washroom before walking down the boardwalk to the beach. The sun is down by the time I get there and the staff is trying to get people to settle down as too much noise and movement can scare the penguins.

And they have to keep telling people to put the cameras away.

Before long we can see shadows down on the surf. They would waddle out, look around and run back into the surf. Then a bunch of shadows showed up and slowly wandered onto the beach. Sometimes one would run back and the rest would follow. Then one got brave and headed for the break between the bleachers. The rest would follow.

I watched three groups come ashore and then went back to the boardwalk where you can watch them up close heading for their burrows. Some are close to the beach, others have to go up to a kilometre or more. They warn people to be careful in the parking lot as some could be up there by the time we leave.

There were a lot of Chinese tourists at the event and I don’t think anyone told them why photography was prohibited. I had to remind a few people. Seriously, why can’t people respect the wishes of the facility? I really think they should prohibit cameras period.

I picked up some postcards which are better than any photo a cell phone could take. This is the postcard of the bleachers on the beach.

And this are the little guys as they emerge, stop and look around.