Mar 19, Melbourne

We started the day at the Melbourne Museum, a little disappointed because the indigenous galleries were closed. The most interesting displays were of stuffed animals from all over the world, arranged by continents. Below them was a computer screen with pictures of the animals on it. If we touched a picture, it told us about the animal and if it was secure, vulnerable, endangered or extinct. Very well done. We saw dinosaurs from Australia, sea life, minerals, an exhibit of Melbourne from early days to present. The famous race horse Phar Lap was even on display there.
In the same area was the Victorian Exhibition Centre, built for a world's fair tpe exhibition and restored and used today. They were getting ready for an international flower and garden show the day we were there.
We walked around the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, RMIT, with its modern architecture, then to the City Baths. Built in the 1880's as a Turkish bath with separate men's and women's pools and separate first and second class pools, it now has pools and exercise rooms and is still a beautiful building.
The former Royal Mint is now the Hellenic Museum. It houses exhibits on the immigration of Greeks to Australia. Some came as early as the gold rush, sailors jumping ship to seek their fortunes. The majority came in the 1950's when the Turks invaded Cyprus. There was an example of a small church, icons, a collection of pottery and casts of statues. And there was an area where we could listen to the stories of Greek immigrants.
We walked by the Supreme Court Building and saw the statue of justice without a blindfold, but with open, innocent eyes. Through 2 shopping arcades, little covered walkways with shops on both sides and offices above. These arcades go back to the early days of Melbourne. I was tempted by a shop selling macaroons. They said the most popular flavor was salted caramel and it was wonderful, melt in your mouth good.
We were near St Paul's Cathedral at 5pm and they had a sung evensong at 5:10, so we stayed. The boys choir sang and it was a lovely way to end the day. I am surprised by how many people attend the services in the downtown churches in the evening.
Pictures of Samson and the Exhibition Building, RMIT Building, City Baths

Mar 16, 17 Phillip Island, Melbourne

Mar 16
The day started out rainy, so I did the rest of the laundry.
We mapped out the trip beyond Melbourne to western Victoria. A day just to chill.

Mar 17, Melbourne
Drove from Phillip Island to Melbourne to the campground. It's north northwest of the city center and after we got settled, we took the tram into town.
Being St Patrick's day, there were lots and lots of travelers out for the Gunness.
We took the hop on hop off bus around the sights to get our bearings. At St Paul's Anglican Church there was a long procession walking outside and some men were carrying a statue of Mary & baby Jesus into the church.
The Melbourne Grand Prix was going on near the downtown and we could hear the cars going around the track. We went back to the camper and to watch the race. The race started at 5 pm and we were thinking about the long Indy 500, but this only lasted an hour and a half - we saw the last few laps.

More abbreviations they use here: bikies for members of motorcycle gangs, and 'your footy pub' might conjure up strange pictures, but it's a place to go to watch a footy match (football game)

The picture here is of a replica Chinese seismograph machine. Inside is a ball and when there was an earthquake, the ball would drop out of a dragon's mouth into a frog's mouth. That closed the entry to all other dragons and the frog that had the ball indicated the direction of the earthquake.

Mar 18 Melbourne

We did our first real Skype with Kate, Jake & the kids. It was fun seeing Adrian & Tonight we went to see the Penquin Parade. Every day the Little Penquins, just 13" high, go out to sea to eat and every evening at dusk, they come back to their nests. That's the parade. It's quite an operation. There's a long boardwalk over the penquin burrows to the beach where there are bleachers set up. And there were lights on the beach itself. Tonight the crowd was small, about 800, compared to the 3,000 maximum. So we all waited till dark. A little before 8 one little penquin waddled out of the water and went quickly across the sand to the areas where the burrows were. Several minutes later a little group of penquins gathered at the edge of the water, started across the beach, got scared and ran back into the sea. They got back together again. Waited for more penquins to join them and them scooted to the burrows. This happened again and again at several spots along the beach. After about 50 minutes we walked back up the boardwalk and there were so many penquins there. We could see babies that had come out of the burrows to meet the parents and get food from them and we could see the groups of well fed penquins waddling up to the burrows. Who knew there were penquins in Australia? in their green St Patrick's Day shirts. Funny thinking it was Sunday there and Monday here.
Then we headed downtown. We take a tram in, electric street car, and it takes 45 min. or so depending on the number of stops it makes.
Monday, most museums are closed, so we went found some that were open and walked around a couple of parks.
We went into St Patrick's Cathedral, Catholic, a big, beautiful old church. Nearby was the City Museum in the former Treasury Building. There were gold vaults in the basement to hold all of the gold that was found in the gold rush of the 1850's and a display that told about the gold rush. Over 6 million ounces of gold were found and that made Melbourne the richest city in the world at the time.
Then we walked around the Treasury Garden to see a memorial to John F Kennedy. In the Fitzroy Garden there was Cook's Cottage. It was originally owned by Captain James Cook's family in England. In the 1930's it was dismantled and shipped to Melbourne and set up in the garden. Down the path from that was the Scarred Tree. Ancient Aborigines had removed the bark from the tree to make a canoe. Now all that remains is the trunk of the tree.
We joined a tour of the Victorian Parliament House. It was built from 1851 to 1890 and because of the wealth of the new state, it is grand. The predominant color of the lower house is green and it is arranged like the federal parliament. The upper house is crimson. On the ceilings, walls, just about everywhere, was gold leaf and it was beautiful. The house sits tomorrow, so there were preparations for it going on, sound checks on microphones, cleaning and so on.
Chinatown was close, so we walked down the streets of restaurants and shops and found the Museum of Chinese Australian History. It was well done. It started in the basement, telling the story of the Chinese who came over for the gold rush, stepping onto a 'moving' ship, then down into a gold mine. There were displays of stores, temples, Chinese opera, the things the immigrants would have experienced. From there we followed the dragon tail up to the ground floor.
It was the largest processional dragon in the world. It takes 8 people to move the head and 100 for the immense tail. There was a display of processional dragons. Amazingly, when the Chinese wanted to build a dragon in the 1950's, they went to Foshan in China. They found the nephew of the last dragon maker, but no one knew how to make a dragon, because of the Chinese Revolution. So the Melbournians gave them pictures and specifications and the Chinese built one of bamboo, silk, and wire. That restarted the dragon industry in China.
The upper floor had artifacts from the Chinese in Australia later. There were costumes, tools, store fronts, Chinese inventions (noodles, chop sticks, the abacus, a replica of a seismograph). The 2nd floor dealt with contemporary Chinese and Asian immigrants and their stories.
The Greek section of Melbourne was very near, so we stopped for lunch. Samson had a focaccia with eggplant, red pepper and feta. I had fried cheese (it started with an x, but I hadn't heard of it before), lettuce, tomato, cucumber and hummus on pita with Greek coffee. Good choices.
We walked to the State Library. A magnificent building, with a central dome over the reading room. Around the dome were exhibit areas. There was one exhibit on significant books of all kinds. Old books; a page that predates the Gutenberg press, a folio of Shakespeare's work, John Knox's Bible, early printing of Chaucer. Art books that explored the limit of what book means. Books of early explorations, and on and on. Another exhibit covered Victoria, with a section on Ned Kelly that included a replica of his armor and a death mask.
It's a research library and also housed journals, media, databases, geneolgy.
It was getting late, so we wandered to St Francis Catholic Church. They were having mass, so we went in. We were surprised to find that the celebrant was Ken, our glider pilot, known here as Father Boynton. We were able to say hello to him briefly, before an evensong service for St Patrick.
Busy day, back to the camper and rest.
Pictures of Flinders Street Station, the dragon, reading room of the State Library

Mar 15, Phillip Island

We drove down around the east side of Western Port Bay to Phillips Island. It's a fairly commercial tourist area, with mini golf and vacation cottages, hotels and lots of caravan parks. There are a couple of things we want to see here, the Koala Conservation Centre and the Penguin Parade. It was cheaper to buy a ticket for those that included the Churchill Island Heritage Farm, so we did.
The Heritage Farm had a nineteenth century farmhouse. That featured nine rooms, but was laid out so that some rooms could only be accessed by going outside to another door. It had lovely gardens; kitchen, cottage and herb. There were farm animals and they did sheep shearing, cow milking and so on there. There were a couple of ferrets in a cage and they explained that the farmers put the ferrets down rabbit holes to flush out the rabbits. Rabbits are a big pest here.

After lunch we went to the Koala Conservation Centre. It was a natural koala habitat, but so many were being killed by cars on the nearby road, that they built fences to keep the koalas protected. In a small part of that they built board walks that go up into the eucalyptus trees, so we could see koala sleeping high in the trees. It was very exciting to see them in their habitat.

Tonight we went to see the Penquin Parade. Every day the Little Penquins, just 13" high, go out to sea to eat and every evening at dusk, they come back to their nests. That's the parade. It's quite an operation. There's a long boardwalk over the penquin burrows to the beach where there are bleachers set up. And there were lights on the beach itself. Tonight the crowd was small, about 800, compared to the 3,000 maximum. So we all waited till dark. A little before 8 one little penquin waddled out of the water and went quickly across the sand to the areas where the burrows were. Several minutes later a little group of penquins gathered at the edge of the water, started across the beach, got scared and ran back into the sea. We could just make out dark shapes as they came out of the water, then when they stood up, we could see their white bellies easily. They got back together again, waited for more penquins to join them and then scooted to the burrows. This happened again and again at several spots along the beach. After about 50 minutes we walked back up the boardwalk and there were multitudes of penquins there. We could see babies that had come out of the burrows to meet the parents and get food from them and we could see the groups of well fed penquins waddling up to the burrows. Who knew there were penquins in Australia?
One of the prohibitions with the penquins was no photography, the flash hurts their eyes. This picture came from a postcard.

Mar 14, Marysville, Healesville

We drove down to Marysville, a town that was almost destroyed by a bush fire in 2009. A lot of rebuilding had gone on and it had the look of a Colorado ski resort, all angular, alpine-looking buildings with brown wooden exteriors. We walked to the base of Steavenson Falls, a lovely cascade, then hiked to the lookout on top of the falls.
From there we took the Maroondah Hwy through yarra Ranges Natl Park. It was spectacular scenery; tall, tall eucalyptus trees formed the canopy of the forest and tree ferns grew in abundance underneath. It looked like something prehistoric that could include dinosaurs.
In Healesville we went to the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary because they had platypus and Tasmanian devils there. We looked at the wallabys and kangaroos sleeping in the shade, saw many birds, and made our way to the devils.
There were 2 young ones (2 yr olds) asleep in a glassed case, all cuddled together. One of the sanctuary interpreters gave atalk about them. In Tasmania the devils have a type of contagious facial cancer that has been decimating the population, so for several years healthy ones were sent to the mainland for breeding. That's what they did there. Baby Tasmanian devils are the size of a grain of rice and live in their mother's pouch until they learn to live on their own. Usually only 4 babies out of 40 per birth survive. And they have been introducing them back into the wild in Tasmania.
After the keeper threw some food out, the devils came out of their case to fit over the pieces and eat. At the sanctuary they try to replicate the diet of the wild and only feed them every few days. They were pretty cute, like little black bears with long tails and pinkish ears.
Then we worked our way to the platypus display. It was set up so that we could watch the platypus swim under water and go up for air. They are nocturnal, so the display was kept fairly dark with just a few lights. So we were excited when one swam by a light and we could see it clearly. One man watching them said he has a big one by his house that he sees occasionally, but this was the first time he had seen one under water.
We watched a flight show with a kite, a cockatoo, a buzzard, a barn owl and a wedge tailed eagle, the largest bird of prey in Australia - huge wing span. The dingoes were also sleeping in the shade.
From there we drove down to the Dandenong Mts and took the road through them. There were houses perched all along the narrow road and the traffic was busy because we were mayb an hour north of Melbourne. Pretty, but too crowded.
Out of the mountains we ran into bad 5 o'clock traffic. Once out of that we stopped at the little town of Koo Wee Rup and bought a pizza. We got the vegetarian; tomatoes, capsicum (green peppers), onions, olives and pineapple. The owner of the shop told us about a free camping spot nearby so we took our pizza there. The pizza was really good, or we were really hungry.
The camping spot was a rest area and there were 4 campers there when we arrived. We set up camp, then Samson was talking to another camper who invited us over for a drink 'after tea'. So we sat out with Jan & Ed from Eden NSW and two other campers, Simon & Louise, a young couple from the UK. Jan & Ed were retired and had just started out on a month long ramble. Simon & Louise were on a one year work visa. They had bought a camper van and were going to travel until the money got low and then find work. They thought they could last until Perth. Both interesting and both extremely nice. While we were out, some ring tailed possums appeared in the trees. They're much cuter than our possums, brown with long dar furry tails and a bit of a dark mask on their faces.

Mar 13, Benalla, Shepparton

Mar 13

Last night Samson went to the Gliders Club of Victoria, to find out about our chances of gliding. He had a couple of beers with the mates and listened to their stories. They all share a love of flying and gliding and they help each other out and have fun.
So at 9 this morning we went back to the club and sat in on the morning briefing, where the flyers learned about the weather conditions for the day.
After we paid for our flights, we went out to the launch zone and waited for our glider pilot, Ken. He towed his glider out there and gave us an overview of the instruments and what to expect. Then he and Samson put on their chutes and climbed in and buckled up, Samson in front, Ken behind.
The glider was hooked up to the tow plane by a long rope. The tow plane had a modified Chevy S series engine 460 hp, with a radiator, which allowed the plane to gain altitude more quickly. The tow plane took off with the glider rising behind, going up in a gentle spiral to 4000 ft, then Ken had Samson release the tow rope and they were on their own. He could tell by the way the nose went up or down when they approached or left a thermal (rising hot air). They maneuvered in the thermals for 45 minutes.
Even though it was cloudy, he could see mountains in the distance and back to Glenrowan and down to Benalla. There was a river and a few irrigated fields, but mostly dry looking land with trees here and there and some cattle grazing.
As they maneuvered, they slowly lost altitude and when they were about 1000 ft up, Ken positioned them closer to the field for the landing and they came in right down the runway.
Then it was my turn. I noticed how quiet it was up there. Ken and I could talk easily and he talked about farming in the region and Ned Kelly and what the glider was doing and he warned me when we were going into a couple of areas of turbulence.
Ken is a Catholic priest from Melbourne, who has been a glider pilot since the 70's and is also a glider instructor. He doesn't own the glider, but uses the club's and the club gets the money we paid. He also does some spelunking. We couldn't have asked for a nicer person to take us up.
From there we drove back into Benalla to see a Gaudi-like structure that the town built with volunteers and some famous artists. It was covered in terra cotta tiles, some plain, some decorated and looked very organic.
Our next stop was Shepparton, a large town that calls itself the food basket of Victoria with food processing plants and other manufacturing. Our destination here was the Bangerang Aboriginal Culture Centre. It was a round building with displays set in a ring. On the outside wall were artifacts, stone axes, baskets, boomerangs, beads. There were bark paintings, burial trees, totems, a dugout canoe.
On the inside walls were dioramas of Aboriginal life; hunting, fishing, ceremonial gatherings and one on the gathering of begong moths. There is an area near Mt Buffalo, where the Aborigines gathered in October for the moths. The men when up into the mountains and smoked the moths out of the caves. Some were roasted over fires to eat right away, some were cooked and rolled into balls to eat later. It was also a time when boys went into the mountains for initiations.
There was an Aboriginal man there who helped us get some of the lights turned on. He was wearing a Chicago Bulls tshirt that his cousin had brought back from Chicago.
We drove south through Euroa and are now parked in a picnic area on the way to Alexandra. There is a field of cattle across the road and an orchard behind us.

Mar 12, Myrtleford, Beechworth, Chiltern, Glenrowan, Benella

Mar 12

We took a walk around Myrtleford this morning, seeing their Big Tree, an extremely large Eucalyptus. We love the 'country towns' as they're called. There is so much history there and the people are happy to share it with us. The homes are a mixture of old and new and some of the older ones are charming.
Myrtleford is in a tobacco growing region and most of the growers are of Italian descent. There is a picture of a wooden tobacco kiln, like our tobacco barns, used to drying the leaves.
On the way from Myrtleford we drove to Beechwood, one of the best preserved of the gold rush towns. Someone said they owe their architecture to the American miners who came here after the California gold rush.
From Beechwood to Chiltern we startled a wallaby by the road. We were on our way to the Yeddonba Aboriginal Art Site, up a dirt road to a hiking trail. We wore our bush walking get ups as the trails we a bit more rugged than we'd been on before.
It was very difficult to see the rock paintings. They were done in red ochre and it had faded, but we could make out a snake and a Tasmanian tiger, an extinct species.
At Chiltern we saw more early architecture and the worlds largest grape vine, planted in 1867 and it's still producing grapes.
Next was the big town of Wangaratta, we were in and out of there fairly quickly and on our way to Glenrowan. The whole area we drove through today was Ned Kelly country. He was a Bushranger, an outlaw and has become legend like Jesse James or Billy the Kid. At Glenrowan where he had his final showdown with the police there was a large statue of him in his armor.
Now we're in Benalla, Australian capital of gliding and we're hoping to have glider rides tomorrow. We 're in a little campground on the airport grounds. Most of the campgrounds we've stayed in had drains for sink and shower water, grey water. Here it has been so dry, no rain in 12 weeks, they let us dump it on the ground to help save the trees