Melbourne

This weekend I got the pleasure of going to Melbourne. I spent the weekend there and had a lot of fun. I am going to have a really busy last month and a half here in Australia and am going to travel around the continent quite a bit. The traveling started this week with spending Thursday to Saturday in Australia’s second biggest city of Melbourne.

Melbourne has a population of about 4.5 million people, only half a million people behind Sydney. It is known for its Victorian style buildings, the diversity within its population and being rated the most livable city in the world. Melbourne has the second highest percentage of Victorian style buildings in the world, only behind the UK itself. This is because farmers that were living in Melbourne found gold and caused a massive gold rush in the 1850’s. The gold that was found in this gold rush was then returned to the city of Melbourne. The wealthy people built the Victorian-style buildings that are still standing today often plating everything in gold detail.

Parliament building 

Today, Melbourne is a very popular city with tourists as well as a lot of friendly locals.

My first day I took a Hop on/ Hop off tour of the city and got to see it’s amazing architecture as well as explore the Cathedral, the fairy tree park, and Flagstaff Park.

This is the Fairy tree, an art installation for children depicting the lives of fairies 

I was excited to see Flagstaff because I was a bit homesick and the park even had similar trees to home. Melbourne is a beautiful city, however after an exhausting day of exploring I grabbed some food in Chinatown and headed to my hostel where I crashed.

The next day I got up bright and early and went a tour of the Great Ocean Road with Go West Tours. Our tour driver was fantastic and was very knowledgeable about the Great Ocean Road, Melbourne, and Australia in General. He was also really happy and funny. This made the tour great. The Great Ocean Road is a WWI monument built during the depression by the WWI veterans themselves. After the war, the soldiers needed work so they were paid in beer and housing and built a road connecting a lot of the townships on the Melbourne Coast.

The water was really that blue 

This became used as tourists mostly in order to go see the 12 apostles. On the way, we made several stops to see the beautiful coastline, surfing towns, live koalas,

and Mait’s rest (A beautiful protected Eucalyptus forest).

I know this looks right out of Lord of the Rings. No, I did not see any elves

The trip was beautiful and the driver gave some great stories about the history of the area, the wildlife, and other funny stories that corresponded with the trip. He also had very punny music what were all mostly about roads. All of these places were beautiful but none of them compared to the beauty of the 12 Apostles or the shipwreck areas.

This is where the Shipwreck happened

The Apostles are limestone figures that are created by water washing against the cliffs and slowly wearing a hole in the rock and breaking it off from the mainland to make these pillar/ island structures just off the coast and fun fact there aren’t even 12.They believe that when they were first named there were 12 but at the moment there are only 9.

Look I am holding one

The water has been tearing apart the apostle and constantly making more. In one hundred years from now, there would be 100 apostles or as little as 3, it all just depends on how the water washes against the rocks.

It was truly one of the prettiest places I have ever been

After that, I got to put my feet into the Southern ocean and see the site Australia's most famous shipwreck. For dinner, I had some great Chinese food and then headed home.

Sticking my feet in the very cold southern ocean 

Ta da!

The next day, I got up early and caught a ride to the Puffing Billy Train about an hour out of Melbourne.

Puffing Billy Train 

The Puffing Billy Train was originally created to carry lumber down the mountain but now is just a fun thing to ride for the tourists. I got to feed some wild birds and meet some great new friends and then we all got to ride the Puffing Billy Train.

Feeding the Cockatoos

I met a lot of great people on this trip including Amy from London and Liam from Vietnam. I got to share stories with both and get to know them better. They made this trip a million times, better.

After the train ride, I got on a different bus and headed to Phillip’s Island to watch the Penguin Parade. Our first stop was seeing Churchill Island and their working sheep ranch. It was cool to see the Australian shepherd at work as I have an Aussie Shepherd of my own waiting for me back in the states.

We headed to the Penguin Parade. Once a day 13,000 Penguins leave the southern waters and head on land to their burrows. The leaving of the ocean and heading to their burros attracts people from all over the world to see Little Penguins (Australian native penguins) make their march. They were so cute. They ran all over the place and their calls could be heard across the area. It was truly an indescribable feeling seeing these little creatures come home. I spent nearly an hour out in the cold air watching these little guys run from burrow to burrow as they prepare for winter. It was honestly one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

You are not allowed to take pictures in the park (shhh I snuck this little beauty)

I loved my trip to Melbourne. It was one of the coolest trips I have ever taken and this is only the beginning of the massive amount of travels that I will be taking in the future.