Blue Stone Buildings

For those folks not familiar with Delaware one of it's claims to fame is Blue Granite also known as blue rock or blue stone. I don't know why I thought that Blue Granite was a unique to Delaware geology -- but I did. I had just never thought to look into it.

It turns out that Blue Granite is, also, very common across much of the United States. It is the state rock of South Carolina and part of the reason the Blue Ridge Mountains are so named according to information I found on the internet since I returned home.

Blue Granite is definatly very common around Sunbury, Victoria, AU. Many of the Blue Stone buildings in Sunbury were built by convict labor with hand hand hewn stone.

This is the old Gaol (Jail) built of blue stone.















St. Mary's Anglican church on the village green in Sunbury. One of the best blue stone buildings I saw.

Fairy Penguins on Phillip Island

A couple of hours southeast of Melbourne is an beautiful seashore area. This area is home to many kinds of native Australian wildlife. One of the most well known are the Fairy Penguins. They are now called the Little Penguins as that is more politically correct. Oi!

At any rate, these amazing little birds hunt for food during the day and come home to nest at night. Visitors are welcome to observe this ritual any evening. The little penguins swim up to the beach and congregate in groups at the waters edge. When their buddies have all arrived they troupe up the hillside to their burrows in the shrubby hillsides. A group on the beach is pictured above. No photographs are allowed to protect the penguins so this image was scanned from a postcard.

Here are some photos of the Observatory where you can look into Penguin Burrows.

This is one of those places you really have to experience to get the full effect. It was somewhat cold the night we went and very windy as the land cooled and the winds turned inland. There was a cacophony of bird chatter with the mating of the penguins and the cries of the seagulls. The skies were clear and the heavens so unobscured by light interference as in most areas in the U.S. that Mars and Venus could be easily seen and were some of the brightest bodies in the sky.

Next stop Melbourne (by way of LA)...

How long does it take to get to Melbourne from the USA? It depends on your flight. At least 15 hours for a direct flight from Los Angeles plus another 6 hours from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, though. Tack on a lay-over or two and it totals a day or more to actually get there.

I advise traveling on Thanksgiving if you can (not sure what other holidays are like). On Thanksgiving day the plane was lightly booked and everyone was able to stretch out and sleep across two, three, or four seats. As a result I was able to sleep on most of the trans-oceanic flight. That made adjusting to the time change on the way over very easy. The odd thing was I even ended up on the same sleep schedule I have on the east coast of the U.S. -- go to sleep between 9pm - 11pm and get up between 5am - 7am. Strange but true.

I had arranged to stay with my friend Phil, his daughter Jess and grandson Sebastian (3 1/2). They live in Sunbury which is considered a suburb of Melbourne. Sunbury is a great town and has a suprisingly rich history. Do check the above link and scroll down for information on Sunbury.

Here is a pic of Sebastian. He is a great kid. I dunno how people keep up with 3 - 4 year olds except to say they are easily distracted and that helps.

Anyway back to Sunbury.... I believe in the United States it would be considered more of a bedroom community. Sunbury has more rural feel to it although it is a town of about 30,000 people. This is due to lower overall population in Australia. (Australia has the land mass of the United States but a fraction of the population -- most of whom live along the coastline.) The highway between Sunbury and Tullamarine airport looked much like the picture below. The main exception being a large numberof wineries. The entire Yarra River valley seemed to be packed with wineries and I would love to go back and sample them all!

Here is a picture of a roadside view on the way to Sunbury.

The cloud in the middle is actually smoke from a bush fire. Much of Australia has been under a drought for some time and brush fires are a very real threat. Most of the trees I saw were either a variety of gum tree or evergreens. Both are highly flammable -- explosively so in a drought.

Melbourne

This seems a bit odd to say but we only went into Melbourne 3 times. The first time we took the train in and rode the trams to sight see what we could from them. We, also, stopped for fish and chips for lunch and one of the top rated fish and chips restaurants. The second was to take my friend Phil to dinner for his birthday a week later. The third was to go to Queen Victoria Market (Shown below).

I love flea markets and open air markets so Queen Victoria was a huge treat. I have never seen anything quite like it in size or scope.

I took the picture on the left to try to give some idea just how big this place is. The structures on the left are all filled with vendors and there were just as many on the right out of the frame.

I got some aboriginal art prints and various gifts for friends. In hind sight I should have gotten a few more things while I was there. Sigh! See the upcoming post on the art to see what I got and links to buy them on the web.

The market runs on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. The hours vary so check ahead of time.

The picture on the left is Phil shopping in the meat and seafood area. The second is just a view of one of the many buildings that housed vendors with other merchandise.

And so it begins...

This is the beginning of a series of posts about my vacation to Australia.

This all started about 3 or 4 months ago when a friend of mine that I know from online gaming with The Stormcrows invited me to come to his 50th birthday party. There are 7 or 8 folks from the Crows guild that live in the Melbourne area. I thought it would be great to actually meet the folks I have talked to on Teamspeak for some time now and shared so many online adventures with.

The other motivator was needing a change in my life. While trying to help my best friend last year when she was battling a very aggressive form of breast cancer, I realized what a rut I was in with my own health and life and that life is precious and short and time is ticking. (Cheryl is doing great now, and I am working on losing weight and taking better care of my health, also.) I figured what the heck, going to Australia sounded like just the sort of treat I needed.

Nothing is ever simple, though. Sometime over the past 6 years, since I moved into my house, my birth certificate, marriage license, divorce decree, social security card, prior passport all got lost or misplaced. Sooo..., before I could apply for my passport, I had to replace all or most of the above. (Good thing I started planning this early.) fortunately, the forms and instructions for all of the above are now available on the internet. That made things much easier.

I finally got my passport and my visa for Australia (also available online -- ...took about 5 minutes to apply and secure this since I was just visiting) and was able to book my flights with confidence -- sort of. I shopped all the online cheep fare sites such as www.travelocity.com, www.airgorilla.com, www.expedia.com and others. I was a bit annoyed, however, to find that they all wanted to book the Philadelphia to Los Angeles leg through American or United, both of which were looking financially very shaky at the time I booked. My brother in law suggested Southwest as being reliable and solvent. That turned out to be the solution. I just booked the two legs seperatly and paid $1300 for Los Angels to Melbourne round trip and $200 for Philadelphia to Los Angeles. I, also, had the peace of mind of flying on finacially stable airlines.

The adventure had really begun.