Philip Island and Great Ocean Road

Dear Family and Friends,

                On Tuesday (Sept. 17) we went to the Melbourne Museum. At the museum we went to the aboriginal culture exhibit. It talked about how they lived, how they hunted, and how they made paint. They made paint by getting ochre and smashing it up and then mixing water with it. One of the ways they hunted was they had these woven tubes that they used to trap eels. We saw the Phar Lap exhibit; Phar Lap was a famous Australian race horse. After that we went to an exhibit on rocks. They had a 3-D video on the making of rocks which was cool because it made it seem as if there was lava on top of you when the volcano erupted.  

After the museum we drove to Philip Island to see the penguin parade. That was comical because the penguins were really cute plus they would get knocked down by the waves. Then they would have to climb up some rocks which seemed hard for them and while they were climbing they would push each other over. A ranger told us that some of the penguins homes are a 1.5 km away from the beach, and the penguins are only 30 cm tall. That’s not far for humans to walk but for a bird that size it is pretty amazing. We saw Little Penguins, which are the smallest type of penguin, hence the name “Little Penguin”. These penguins live in Australia and New Zealand and they are the 2^nd most northerly penguin.

On Wednesday we took the ferry from Mornington Peninsula to Geelong (southwest of Melbourne). In Geelong we went to the National Wool Museum, which was very interesting. We learned what types of sheep there are and the different stages wool processing (so now we know what they do with all the sheep in Australia).  I also learned that the kelpie “sheep dog” was bred using mostly smooth collies.

 On Thursday we drove the Great Ocean Road, which is a famous coastal road kind of like Highway 1 in northern California.  Our first stop was at a golf course to see the kangaroos on it and it had a sign that said “No access to golf course for kangaroo viewing” because so many tourists stop there. Then we stopped at the Kennett River to see koalas; we saw 2 koalas and about 60 parrots and cockatiels. They were landing on my dad and me and they swarmed our car. We stopped in Apollo Bay to have lunch and hiked through the Otway temperate rain forest. Then we drove to the 12 Apostles which are 12 rock pillars and went to the beach.

                                                                                                            Travis

Philip Island penguins (photo courtesy of journals.worldnomads.com as no photos permitted)

Great Ocean Road

 

Kangaroo going for par 3 at the Anglesea golf course

no comment necessary

 

National Wool Museum - each dot represents 40,000 sheep in AU

King Parrots near the Kennett River

 

Two of the Twelve Apostles rock formations