Australia Part 3 - Melbourne

The third stop on our trip took us to the southern part of Australia to the city of Melbourne. This was much like any metropolitan city here in the US. We took a city tour and saw a lot of the landmark sites in the city.

We made it to Melbourne.

Standing out in front of a cathedral.

We took another tour in which we traveled outside the city to the coast where we were going to see the walk of the fairy penguins. These penguins come back every night from the ocean to their nests that they have built. They are fun to watch because as they are waddling out of the water if anything spooks or scares them they immediately run back into the water. The fairy penguins are just more agile in water than on land and they get spooked easily when they think they hear a predator. They travel together in groups of about 20 so it is funny seeing them all waddle onto shore, wait and then decided whether to move forward or go back into the water.

Beautiful views of the coast with my beautiful wife.

We spotted one of the fairy penguins underneath the boardwalk.

Here is a picture of the fairy penguin as it is coming up from the ocean to its nest. You weren't supposed to take pictures of them because it scares them, but I just snapped one because everyone around us were taking some.

Only in Australia would they have this kind of road sign.

We took another tour. This was a trip along the Great Ocean Road. We stopped at a golf course where our tour guide knew kangaroos liked to stay. We saw quite a few and we even spotted this mother who was carrying her baby joey in her pouch. I actually got a video of the joey poking her head out.

Another road sign that I thought was funny. I wonder how many accidents tourist had before they had to put up these signs.

Beautiful view of the coast

We stopped at another spot where our guide knew that there were usually koalas. It also just happened to be full of these birds that loved sunflower seeds. This is Jennifer's hand. It was so neat because they cracked open the shells and then ate the seeds and spit out the shell.

I was feeding them too. Such beautiful birds.

Filming the koala that is up in the tree while feeding these 2 little guys.

We were actually pretty lucky that we got to see this guy awake and moving. They usually sleep for about 20 hours a day.

Cute little guy. I was standing almost underneath it and almost got peed on by this little fella.

Walking through a rain forest and found a perfect spot for a picture.

Two of the 12 apostles along the Great Ocean Road. These free standing rock formations were formed over thousands of years by the waves, slowly forming them into what they are today. A few have gotten so small at the base that they have fallen over.

View of some of the apostles from an overlook. The pile of rocks in the foreground is the remants of one apostle that fell over about 10 years ago.

Zoomed in picture of a coastline cliff. Those animals are actually some of the fairy penguins. They cannot fly and our tour guide said that they have no idea how they get up on the sides of these cliffs.

Jennifer and I with some of the apostles.

Again trying out our new favorite dish - kangaroo. Our tour guide said that he had never been able to eat kangaroo. This is because they had a TV show in Australia that was similar to Lassie here in the US except instead of a dog they had a kangaroo named Skippy that went around and helped people out.

Melbourne was a really nice city and we had a lot of fun on our tours that we took to the Fairy Penguin parade and the Great Ocean Road. I almost talked Jennifer into going to a Australian rules rugby match, but the timing didn't work out with everything that we had planned. Maybe that is something that we can do if we ever make a return visit to the Land Down Under. Thanks for reading and God bless!