Penguins, Trams, and Cheap Food

We arrived in Melbourne after an overnight Greyhound bus from Canberra, smelly, hungry, and tired. I'm beginning to sense a theme here. We wandered out of the bus station,  and thanks to my impeccable sense of direction almost got on a tram to the opposite end of the city. Thankfully, a kind local who happened to overhear us talking pointed out that we were standing directly in front of the hostel in question. Even luckier, once we got over our embarrassment, our room was ready even though it wasn't even 9am. Huzzuh! It was naptime.

After a nap and a shower, we realized we were starving and went hunting for food. We found a cool place called Kinfolk, a non-profit café that is almost entirely volunteer run and directs 100% of its profits to development projects in Australia and abroad. It was definitely the most expensive meal we ate in Melbourne but it was delicious and for a good cause. Fair warning: I'm going to talk about food a lot this post.

After getting Cole some new shoes in an outlet mall, we hopped on the free tram that runs around the outside of the city during the day. (Note to Vancouver: this is a good idea. Bring the little train thing that ran from Granville Island to the Canada Line during the Olympics!) We got off the tram at Federation Square, this cool place with museums, restaurants, outdoor stages and free Wi-Fi, and were immediately drawn in to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image due to the giant DreamWorks kung-fu panda out front. The centre's usual exhibits are free to explore, but the DreamWorks exhibit cost money. Thankfully my UBC student card is still valid, so we got the student rate.

The DreamWorks exhibit had tons of cool stuff. There were original models - in some cases, multiple incarnations - of the main characters from almost all of their movies, little behind-the-scene clips, explanations of how they did stuff, like make water look real (which is apparently a bigger challenge than you would think), and even this dragon flight panorama type video, where you got the dragon's eye view of the town from How to Train Your Dragon. (I'm pretty sure that last sentence was a run-on sentence but I don't have the brains right now to make it not one, so moving on). We spent a ton of time lost in animation before checking out the permanent exbibit upstairs, which was essentially a museum of notable people and acheivements in Australian film and television. I looked at a Moulin Rouge exhibit, and one of Cate Blanchett's actual Oscars. Cole played Super Mario.

After all this exploring we went looking for some street art, which is all over the place in Melbourne's well-utilized narrow alleyways. Then, we wandered through Chinatown, into another narrow alleyway, and up three flights of stairs to Ferdydurke. Yes that's its actual name. Yes those are their house rules below. It was a pretty hipstery place, but the server was nice, the food cheap, and the decor interesting. Two insanely good $5 specialty hot dogs and a jug of cheap beer later, we headed home. We met some Europeans on the roof of our hostel and drank our taster pack of Australian beer before falling into bed at the end of this very long day.

On Tuesday I seriously contemplated staying in bed all day, but Cole convinced me otherwise. We went to the sprawling Queen Victoria Market instead, passing Batman Park, Batman Hotel, and Batman Street on the way. We thought these crazy Aussies were super obsessed with the Dark Knight, but it turns out they're all named after John Batman, a founder of the settlement that grew into Melbourne. The market was cool. Lots of jewellery, iPhone cases and Australian souvenirs.  We bought ourselves a bucket of strawberries for $1, and meandered across the street to a tattoo shop I'd researched, and I got inked. That was also cool.

My arm nice and plastic wrapped, we went back to Federation Square for the National Gallery of Victoria. We spent most of our time in the Indigenous Collection. So much of the work dealt with loss of varying types, and there was a very somber atmosphere in the Gallery. I was struck, not for the first time, by how horrible people can be to each other.

We spent a bit of time checking out another futuristic exhibit and, after agreeing we don't really get most art, went in search of this burger place I'd heard of called Huxtaburger. It was a very hole-in-the-wall dinery place towards the back of an alley, but the Bill Cosby Show inspired burgers were delicious and reasonably priced. I'd go back again.

On Wednesday, our last day in Melbourne, we rented (or hired, if you're Aussie) a car and headed south to Phillip Island, where more than a thousand little Fairy Penguins make the nightly trek across the sand to their burrows from the sea. Cole was pretty nervous about driving on the other side of the road, but he was an excellent driver. Combined with my previously noted incredible navigation skillz, we made it to Phillip Island without incident, and even managed to avoid the abundant toll roads. While we waited for the sun to set, we got up close with some Australian Pelicans, which are the biggest type of pelican in the world.  They get some fish scraps from a local restaurant every day at noon, and a bit of a crowd was there. After, we took an easy hike up to the lookout on the tip of Cape Woolami. Finally, it was penguin time! We took the advice of  Emily and Sunny and got there by 5:15 to get a seat near the front.

Not for the first time on this trip did I wish we had chosen to bring binoculars. When the penguins finally began to emerge from the ocean, it was nearly 7pm. The entire crowd disregarded the instructions of the park rangers to keep quiet and not take photos (so you wouldn't scare the penguins), so the penguins steered clear of the stone bleachers we were sitting on. After a few minutes of watching them waddle up the beach it started to pour. I'm not talking a drizzle, but an actual downpour. Of course we were in shorts and light sweaters because Australia isn't supposed to be cold, but we stuck it out and were rewarded with super up close penguin views on the walk back up to the parking lot. They were soooo cute. I didn't want to leave, but we had to get up at 5:30am to catch our flight to Bali, so we drove away into the downpour.