Monday, August 24, 2009

Where's Robyn (i.e. Waldow)?


Click to make image BIGGER!

I have a little less than a month to go here in Australia...so I thought that this would be time for a geography lesson...where have I been for the past two months or so??? Well, if you were paying attention to my previous blogs, you would already know...wouldn't you? ;)

I am now traveling up and down (south at the moment) the west coast, WA which is one third of the whole country. BTW - there are only 7 states in Australia, including Tasmania. To paint a better picture for you: Say the whole country of Australia was put into or on top of the USA...then I guess technically I'd be in California right now, Southern Cali to be exact!!! LOL Looking forward to coming home soon, but I still have a lot to see here :) I will update more soon. Word.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Kangaroo Island, South Australia

This is Roxy, a joey (baby kangaroo) who was rescued from her mommas pouch when she was hit and killed by a car. Unfortunately, there are plenty of kangaroo roadkill on the island :( She was really sweet, I wanted to scoop her up and take her home! Scroll down to the bottom to see the video of me petting Roxy.


In the past I've been skiing...I've been snow boarding...I've gone sledding...I've now officially gone surfing...so today I thought I'd give sand boarding a GO!!! I'm glad I did, it was SO much fun :) I didn't end up eating too much sand, thank goodness, but by the end of it I had enough sand in my pants to fill somewhat of a small sand box!!! We had a really fun group and were doing all sorts of cartwheels and flips on the sand dunes...we ended up here for hours!



Remarkable Rocks - Xenoliths are massive rocks on top of a sea cliff, and over time they are cut and shaped by the wind, salt, and harsh weather conditions finally looking something like this. And let me say, that it was sooo windy up on these rocks that they need a new word for WIND! I don't think I hit this much blowing unimaginable "wind" when I went sky diving at 14,000 feet up!!! We almost fell off of these darn rocks taking pictures, it was absolutely relentless!

Ladies and Gentlemen - The World's Biggest Rocking Horse! In the Guinness Book of World Records...Ta-da! LOL For a whopping $2 you can climb up to the top, and they give you a certificate stating that in fact you had climbed up...I am not that much of a tourist to do that, thank you very much.
We also did some wine tasting at Jacobs Creek...and that's all I'll say...
SEAL BAY - Again we had a great time just hanging out until this momma seal came out of the bushes behind us and pretty much ignored everyone as she passed. Then, she found a rock sticking up out of the sand and had a nice loooong good scratch, like 10 minutes...it was halarious!!! See for yourself! Our guide pointed out that this particular sea lion had a deep scar on her back indicating that she had survived a shark attack too, talk about a strong woman :)

A red-chested wallaby in this video, and we happened to walk upon her path.
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Sunday, August 9, 2009

I HEART Melbourne - Part II

So the last two days I've been "exploring" Melbourne, and I love it even more if that's possible! It's been pretty chilly outside and it rained today but it makes me picture what it feels like in the summer months! There is so much to do - there is so many funky little cafes, coffee houses, clubs, and boutiques (and by exploring I mean shopping) to visit...I've only scratched the surface. But tomorrow morning I have to leave this great city :( San Fransisco move over because I'm going to be leaving my heart in Melbourne! Here's just a couple of random pictures that I've taken over the past couple of days...






This video was taken the other day on Phillip Island, I just forgot to include it :) Momma and Baby Koala having a snack of eucalyptus leaves yummm

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Saturday, August 8, 2009

Phillip Island - Famous Penguin Parade

So I'm going to start from the end of our day at Phillip Island with the Penguin Parade and then work my way to the beginning of the day. THE PENGUIN PARADE was awesome! I took a day tour bus to the island to see what all the fuss was about, and it was worth it of course :) The Penguins fish in the sea all day and then come ashore at sundown (they are safer from predators under the cover of night) and waddle from the beach to their burrows in the hills behind us. We're NOT allowed any type of photos or film when watching the parade but I found a (naughty foreigners tisk tisk) clip from youtube that you can watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFO_vCEHQUs ENJOY!!! Our tour guide stopped at a secret penguin spot before we saw the parade :) These guys look pretty chubby, so we think they got lots of fishes already! How cute are they??? It is known, that they tend to get to be about a foot tall and can weigh up to 2lbs.
This is a lookout point from a place called the Nobbies, on Phillip Island - gorgeous!

Pyramid Rock - It was FREEZING cold and windy...but fun all around!


We stopped at Chocolate HEAVEN - Who needs Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner when there's Panny's Chocolate Factory?!? All you can eat samples! It was very interactive, there was several different interactive chocolate machines you could operate. I decided to buy some dark banana cremes and a dark roasted almond bar...my tummy was not so great on the way out, as I'm sure you can imagine, but it was entirely worth it!!!

This was the machine where you can make your own chocolate bar!!! It's all very dramatic really, the machine starts huffing and blowing steam but it was so much fun :) I made a dark chocolate Strawberry bar - other flavours were wasbi yuck, Vegemite yuck, and one other yuck.

I found the place where I'd like to lie down and take a nap, are those chocolate pillows???
We started our morning by taking a stroll around the Victoria Botanical gardens - these are grass trees that have been burnt in the Victorian brush fires, but they're still thriving!



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Friday, August 7, 2009

I HEART Melbourne - Part I

Hello to all - I have so much to write about, where do I begin?! Well, this past Wednesday I hopped on a plane (not to be confused with hopping out of planes, btw which I've only temporarily gotten out of my system :) from east coast Queensland, Arlyie Beach to the great state of Victoria, en route to Melbourne. That's right, heading down south for the winter!

Melbourne is such a cool city - it is know mostly for it's diversified food, shopping, sports arenas, fantastic art galleries and theatres. Unlike Sydney, the streets are wider, the buildings are not on top of each other, and the people seem to be in less of a rush. This is a city I could see myself living in...lots of parks and gardens to break up the concrete jungle of it all...


Before I even got off of the plane, everyone was raving about the Salvador Dali exhibit, so on Thursday afternoon, (I spent the morning booking the last leg of my travels:) I spent a good three and a half hours at the National Gallery of Victoria engrossed. It was fantastic! It is said to be the first comprehensive and largest collection of Dali work to ever been held in Australia. Not only paintings and drawings, but film-photography-fashion. He made a short animated film with Walt Disney for goodness sake! Did you know that? I didn't. And I found it on youtube, where would we be without youtube?!? LOL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3KeqJFsb4M ENJOY!




This is Federation Square, known for its funky architecture glass buildings.
China Town - I had some yummy shrimp fried dumplings for dinner :)


So much art is just randomly placed around the city, comical really. This is "Spaghetti" :)
You gotta love whoever placed "Cow in Tree" as community art...I mean how did the cow get stuck in the tree anyhow??? Doesn't matter - good stuff!


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Sunday, August 2, 2009

Scuba Diving - the Great Barrier Reef


Hi to all! Just got off of a 3 day-3 night sailing and diving tour (a yatch named the Anaconda III - Baby got Back!) of the Whitsundays and the Great Barrier Reef. It was GREAT!!! Not only did I go scuba diving...but we actually saw a baby reef shark, so I guess you could say that we went SHARK Diving! It was after all a baby so definitely not a scary thing, but an incredible experience to say the least :) The GBR was fantastically wonderful in color, rich with sea creatures you've only seen on TV, and we're not supposed to touch anything obviously - but there it is at your fingertips! Unfortunately, I didn't have an under water camera, so you're gonna have to take my word for it. However, the other girl I dived with did have one so she said that she'd email them but you never know :(

Our group on the boat was a lot of fun - met a lot of people from all over the world, including only the second US Citizen in my travels thus far! I'm telling you a lot of Germans, Canadians, Asians, Brazilians, Swedish, French, and Irish but hardly ever do you meet Americans! Oh well, I get enough of them at home I guess :)






No pictures of me (I'm sure you all remember what I look like :) On the yatch we were only allowed to take 60 second showers - no shampoo- no conditioner - no soap - no makeup - nothing artificial that could harmful to the reef or sea life - therefore no pictures.




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