"Come To Australia
You might accidentally get killed
Your blood is bound to be spilled
With fear your pants will be filled
Because you might accidentally get killed"
Funny, in New Zealand it was no problem to write entries every 5-6 days and even then I couldn't really fill them with anything interesting. Here in Oz, its so different. I really should have written another entry on Sunday after Blue Mountains because past 5 days have just been so full of new, funny and interesting stuff.
So back to Saturday 21st and Blue Mountain tour. For uneducated folk, Blue Mountains are part of Great Dividing Range just 70km from Sydney. They get their name from oily mist that trees there evaporate which let's through every color but blue, which it scatters around, thus making landscape blueish.
Apart from pretty crap weather, this tour turned out to be really great and fun. Mostly thanks to our hilarious tour guide Hoops(27-year old girl from Manly). She was still quite fresh guide and thus much more authentic and enthusiastic than most other tour guides I have encountered...and she was cute as well :-) Turned out that she also has finnish friend and so we had lot to chat about during drive since I took the shotgun seat next to her.
One thing we talked about was how Australia intentionally creates completely wrong image to countries overseas. For example, ask any Finn about their assumptions of Australia and their answer is: "It's always very hot there. And they have lot of shark attacks." That statement is so not true. Average summer in Sydney for example is about 25 degrees and rainfall every second day. And Australia has only 5-8 shark attacks per year which is next to nothing compared how many tourists visit Oz each year and how full this country's beaches are all the time. Australia deliberately creates this false image of itself to keep tourists coming. I just read a headline in Finnish newspaper the other week how people of Sydney are terrified at their beaches because one Bullshark attacked 2 people inside a week. Ok, I was at Manly beach last week when shark alarm went off. Reluctantly everyone walked out of the water but 10 minutes later people got bored and went back in again...so much for fear of sharks here.
Back to tour. Hoops also had hilarious way to tell stories during tour, always tuning them down to mundane level so everyone could actually understand them and also adding bit of humor to each story. Here are some of the things I learned about Kangaroos for example:
1. Male kangaroo pulls his testicles inside his body when it starts fighting with another male.
2. Female kangaroo is pregnant 100% of her lifetime. She can turn her embryo "off" if she wants to and turn it back "on" later.
3. Female kangaroo can actually choose the sex of the baby before giving birth.
4. Female can squirt 3 different type of milk from her nipples. She can even choose what kind of milk comes from each nipple.
5. Male kangaroos have so sharp claws that they can puncture each other's eyes in fight. That why kangaroos pull their head back when fighting which in essence makes it look like bitch fight(Hoops' words, not mine!)
Ok, so back to Blue Mountains. As it apparently was common, it was very cloudy there. Mountains are after all 1000m above sea level. Luckily there were few gaps among clouds so we were able to see famous landmarks such as Three Sisters here,
Otherwise it was more or less cloudy which in fact made Blue Mountains look quite pretty in totally different way. Take a look at these pics.
On Sunday I came back to Sydney for 1 night before embarking on 3-day tour to Melbourne. On Monday morning I said goodbye's to beautiful Sydney, but definetly not final farewells. I will come back hehe. So, I climb to tour bus very early on Monday morning and who is sitting on front seat again...Hoops :-) Apparently she was assisting guide on the tour learning to do the tour on her own later on. Our actual guide was Lawrence, quite a good performer as I will later explain.
Our first stop of the day was Canberra, capital of Australia. Now, everyone has always had quite bad things to say about Canberra. I just figured that since I love this country so much, I just cannot do full circle around it without seeing the actual capital city as well. Luckily we stayed in Canberra only for few hours, which was quite enough.
Canberra is funny place. It's completely artificial town. It even has huge lake in middle which is also artificial. Why? I guess most people know that when Australia was formed Sydney and Melbourne couldn't decide which was to become capital so they decided to build a capital city inland between Sydney and Melbourne. City was designed and built from scratch, there wasn't anything were Canberra now stands when it was designed. Bill Bryson describes Canberra as one big park from where there seems to be no escape. Here is pic of hill lookout just outside city.
In Canberra we visited Parliament House and sat for a while inside Senate listening some senator making a speech about "Identification of documentation" or "Documentation of identification" or...whatever :-) Here is Parliament house from outside
In Parliament House I got to see painting of my personal favourite Prime Minister of Australia, Harold Holt.
Why? Ok, I'm going to bore you again with story. Harold Holt was Prime Minister some decades ago. On his vacation he went to beach in Victoria and headed to sea for swim...and disappeared. They found his clothes nicely folded in beach but he was never seen again and his body was never found. About 10 years later they decided to build a memorial for Harold Holt in Melbourne, any guess what it was and still is?
A public swimming pool! I love this country :-D
After Canberra we headed towards Australia's tallest mountain and only ski resort, Mount Kosciuzky, height 2228m. Not that there was snow now, they apparently get snow during midwinter enough to run the ski resort for 3 months. We arrived there quite late and had quite a wild night with this custom made shot-tray(thats Hoops btw second from left).
On following day we set out to climb to the roof of Australia. Climb was made easy with chair lift that took us all the way to 1900 meters. Walk was then only 6.5km with 300m elevation. Nothing compared to some of the climbs I did in New Zealand where elevation was over 1000m. Views weren't really that impressive on top but come on! I reached highest point of entire continent, thats something. Here is pic of first 5 on the top. From left: Claudia, Greg, Hoops, Me and Jana.
So after climb we headed down to Victoria and crossed state border. Wohoo, my 5th State in Australia has been reached now. Only 2 more to go. Road was through this National Park with quite amazing views again.
We drove for quite long time until we reached south coast and small holiday town called Lake Entrance. We just barely were able to see sunset at the beach.
On final day we were suppose to visit yet another National Park on road to Melbourne but apparently that park was closed because of bushfires so we took alternative plan and headed to Phillip Island, famous for it's Penguin Parade(more about that later on). Just before Phillip Island we stopped at small place where it was possible to feed native Australian animals such as...
...wallabies...
...goats...
...kangaroos...
...emus...
...and sharks :-)
After feeding it was Phillip Island and penguins. Phillip Island is famous for it's daily event called Penguin Parade. That happens during sunset when hundreds of penguins come out from ocean and into their dwellings on protected beach. What makes this a parade is that all the penguins do it same time. So you have chance to watch 500 penguins marching like an army across the beach. Well, we weren't there on sunset but still we were able to see few penguins who were too lazy that do to go into ocean.
All good things must come to an end. It was great tour mostly because of nice people we had on tour. Unfortunately end left little bitter taste. When we got to Melbourne, our tour guide Lawrence, asked us to fill out feedback forms. After we handed them over his behaviour changed. He was suppose to drop us off to our accomodations in Melbourne but instead he dumped us to Melbourne Central station and said: "Take a tram. Ask driver where you need to get off". Err, not very cool getting left in the middle of the city with heavy backpacks during worst traffic hour.
Other thing, he told us that he has arranged dinner for all of us at Hotel Espy in Ackland Street and that he would come there as well for few drinks. First of all Hotel Espy wasn't in Ackland street, it was in Esplanade. Everyone had problems finding it. Second, Lawrence never showed up nor was there any kind of table reservation for us. Pretty rude ending to otherwise nice trip, just left bitter taste to it. Anyway we were still able to get table and raise couple of drinks before saying goodbye(sniff) and moving on in our own adventures.
Now I'm in Melbourne for just 2 nights and tomorrow heading to Tasmania, land of the inbreeds hehe. First impression of Melbourne? Dont know really...this is so different from all other big towns in Australia. It isn't as beautiful as Sydney and it isn't as appealing as Perth. I need little bit more time after Tasmania here to figure out this town.
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