So after John took off, I wandered around Melbourne by myself. Melbourne's such a cool city. It was my favorite of the three (Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney).
I went to Victoria Market, which wasn't that great compared to China since you know everything there is made in China but just costs more because it's in Australia. It's so hard to pay normal prices after paying Chinese prices.
Then I walked down Swanston Street, shopping and sightseeing, and at Federation Square, I caught the Circle Tram which goes around the perimeter of Melbourne city center. It's free! Isn't that nice?
Melbourne during the day.
Melbourne at night.
I caught a free art exhibition called Experimental Playground on Southbank, which was really good and made me miss Magda since I thought she'd really love it.
The next day, I did the Great Ocean Road tour. The Great Ocean Road is along the southern coast area near Melbourne. Some Australian guy saw the Pacific Coast Highway in Cali and wanted to building something similar in Australia, but because of World War I, he couldn't. But after WWI ended, they used this project to give Australian soldiers something to do when they got back. It's actually really different from the PCH. Most of the area is preserved as a national park and so not a lot of development in the area, so in ways it's a lot nicer than the PCH.
*So I started this entry about a month ago and never finished it because I had to board the plane and then I got back Stateside and kind of abandoned this blog, but I'll finish it up now. Sorry to all for being such a bad blogger, but hey, I kept you entertained for a year and I only made $4 so deal with me on this.
Here are some pictures from the Great Ocean Road tour. I went with a tour company that left really early in the morning. There was me, a Filipino couple, a girl from Singapore who barely said a word, a Canadian guy, and a Dutch guy. And a British lady joined us later.
The Great Ocean Road memorial and sign.
The one-handed portrait I now do so well.
Koalas in the wild. They're hard to spot because they camouflage in the trees and they're ALWAYS sleeping, but they are out there all over Australia in the wild. They really are as cute as they seem.
The Southern Ocean. The water out here is freezing and the waves are so incredibly powerful because it all comes from Antarctica. It's amazing, though. You really feel the strength of the ocean.
I'm on top of the world...or the bottom, really.
The tour takes a detour off the coast inland. Australia is really beautiful because it's so untouched. There are only 20 million people here in all this space, so nature is able to thrive.
Here I am in the rainforest.
Hiding in a tree. The trees just fall on one another and start growing together so you have these cool holes.
Save the rainforest! I'm a tree-hugger.
After the rainforest, we went to the Twelve Apostles, which is what they call these natural limestone stacks. I guess there were 12 of them, but over time, they've crumbled due to the waves. I only counted 8 standing and one crumbled one (which we named Judas).
It's crazy because the shore is just basically been created by these strong waves pounding on it. I guess it's like the Grand Canyon (never been, had many therapy sessions dedicated to that topic...) but it's the ocean shaping a continent. Makes you feel very, very small.
Here is a where I picked up my really annoying "Icky moss!" habit. My tour group kept running into this other Japanese tour group along the Great Ocean Road and we noticed they kept doing the peace sign and saying "Mickey Mouse!" So we started doing it too, but they corrected us and told us it's actually "Icky Moss" (I made up my own spelling) and it means "Here we go" in Japanese. So after that, we all started doing it, and I still refer to picture taking as "Icky Moss time."
Jesus and the Twelve Apostles. (Fellow tourist from my group.)
We also went further down to other limestone stacks and stuff. I don't really understand the whole science of it, but it's really amazing when you see these waves pounding on the rocks and seeing how years, decades, centuries and eons of this has created these crazy shapes.
Water pounding on rocks. It's too hard to capture on camera.
It's so loud and cold.
It's weird being back home writing this and remembering being there. It's weird, but I can still remember standing on those cliffs and hearing the waves pounding against the rocks and the mist of the ocean air being pelted at your face by the strong winds. It's one of those moments when you're just so in awe of nature and God and feel so small and insignificant. I've been home for a couple of weeks now and I still find it so strange that I'm sitting here in Fullerton, CA and all over the world, there are people I love and places I've been where life goes on as usual. How all these things are a part of me and I have left a piece of me (or in the case of Thailand, I've left clothes, shoes, books, and make-up) yet here I am back in the town I grew up in and it's business as usual. It's a feeling so difficult to actually put in words.
Anyhow, that was Melbourne.
No comments:
Post a Comment