Kookaburras, Cockatoos and Koalas

G'day!
We’ve been lucky to see a few. We stayed in Lorne on the GORd, and had relatively tame birds pose for us! This is Warwick, and he’s waiting on the arm of the motel owner for some meat – I didn’t realize that Kookaburras were carnivorous. The cockatoos were happy with the seeds, and the koala was eating the leaves from a gum tree beside the road.

Next we need to see some live kangaroos!

Great Ocean Rd (or GORd as we call it)

GORd is rated in the “must see” categories in most books, and we’ve been looking forward to it since we came to OZ. It didn't disappoint and is quite spectacular, even with the clouds we experienced for part of the drive. To get the perfect photos, you really need to be here at sunset on a clear day. Since that rarely happens, we bought some lovely prints.

It’s a little reminiscent of the California drive down highway 1 past Big Sur and the Hearst castle. The 12 apostles are amazing, but just past them are a couple of equally beautiful formations without all the tourists. The parking lot at 12 apostles looks like Webbers on the Friday night of a holiday weekend – just add a few buses! But just a few kms farther, there’s the arch, the grotto and the Bay of Martyrs where you can stand alone and see the magnificent natural statues. It is well worth the trip!

Melbourne, Yarra Valley & Mornington Peninsula

We had a wonderful visit with John’s cousin Mary and her husband Mick, gourmet cooks, teacher and principal. We had our own suite in their lovely home near Melbourne and enjoyed wonderful food and wine for almost a week. It’s hard to go on a diet on the road, but after all that good food, I need to lose weight!

Melbourne itself has a small downtown area, but huge sprawling suburbs; quite cosmopolitan, with a wide variety of food.

Great wineries in Yarra Valley!
• Green Point still wines at Domaine Chandon were excellent.
• OakRidge has a winemaker who produces consistently wonderful wine. James Halliday rated the winery one of the best in OZ.
• Rochford : great concert venue with very good wines
• Yering Station was worth a visit, but the wines we tasted were made for mass market and weren’t very good except for the reserves. Built before 1850, it was originally a sheep station; it was Australia’s first winery in late 1850s.

Wineries on the Mornington Peninsula
• Paringa, rated top winery in OZ by James Halliday. Wonderful chard, pinot, shiraz
• Port Phillip, very good. Convinced that the composite cork is the only way to go because it allows the wine to breathe and age. They are among the minority here as most are moving to the screw cap and enjoying the benefits of lower admin costs with fewer (or no) returns.
• Red Hill
• Tucks – excellent wine, all varieties

Blue penguins and gorges

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We hiked down the cataract gorge at Launceston and took the chair lift across to other side.

The blue penguins come ashore every night at dusk to sleep in their burrows, so we went to see them when we were in Bicheno, a small town on the east coast of Tassie. Dusk became quite dark before we saw a couple of them talking to each other -- very cute!

Tassie is dry

No, I don't mean there aren't any wines here -- just that there's a drought. A lot of OZ has a serious drought, but we didn't expect it here in the emerald isle. You'll be relieved I'm sure to know that the vines aren't affected. In fact, they are quite happy because their roots go low.

The wines we get in Ontario seem to be the best we've seen of the major wineries here. Ninth Island, Piper Brook, Tamar Ridge are the biggest and most consistent. You wouldn't believe how small some of the other wineries are : we saw one that was 2 hta -- I'm not sure that could give John and I enough wine to drink in a year!

Others of note were:
Providence -- They now have quite good wines, but their history is a sad story about the first man to try to grow vines in Tassie. He was from Provence and the year was 1955. He brought his soil thermometer and decided to start a vineyard in the tamar valley (north Tasmania), but the neighbours anfd the governments in north and south tassie would never agree to let him sell his wine. Fast forward to today and you have old vines and some really good wines.

Brook Eden -- just won a gold for their pinot noir. We had a glass for a picnic lunch in their vineyard and it was excellent. Don't expect to see it on Toronto tho -- too small, and they can sell what they have without having to sell their souls to the LCBO.

Kangas, Devils
The road kill here is disturbing -- I have only seen one live kangaroo, but many dead by the side of the road. Tasmanian devils too. Road kill. In NZ we didn't see any, but there's so little life there. It's surprisingly antiseptic.

Searching for the Tasmanian Devil

We travelled from NZland to OZ yesterday, arriving late at 11 pm. There, outside the shuttle window, were the stars in the night sky -- and the southern cross was right out my window. It was quite breathtaking!

We couldn't see it for the whole vacation in NZland. For the last month, there was a lot of fog, cloud and rain and we could never see much of the night sky. But arriving here, total clear sky at night and nice hot day today.

WE drove up Mt Wellington today, which Darwin climbed over 100 yrs ago, and could see about 1/3 of Tasmania. It was such a clear day we thought we should do that first and explore more mundane areas tomorrow. We want to do the old penal colony at Port Arthur and drive north to the wineries at Launceston next.
Cheers!
"No worries folks" as they say here!