This morning we woke with the plan to complete three tasks today – visit the Melbourne Zoo, walk through the Fitzroy Gardens and the St Kilda area. Great plans – if you had about 30 hours of time but we managed most.
We started by heading to the Zoo. We are finding the metro system very easy to use. Considering the first day we walked downtown and now we are sophisticated metro users. Of course we soon learned that the train we needed to use to get to the Zoo is shut down for maintenance so we had to figure out a new route. Turns out this was easy for getting to the zoo, but later in the day we were not so fortunate to find answers in returning - more about that later.
We arrived at the zoo to meet a hostess who was very friendly and helpful in suggesting the best approach for the day, which included being around for the feeding of the Wombat and Koala bear. So we headed down the trail which had the Wombats only to discover that the feeding was not happening as scheduled. Fortunately we returned in time to catch the feeding since without food, they tend to sleep all day out of sight.
After we completed that circuit we headed over to the birds area. In the bird aviary we met a couple of volunteers, Ted and Ann, who were very informative and interesting to talk to about the birds, travel and places to visit while in Australia.
We then went into the area of African animals. In that area is a butterfly aviary where the butterflies were so numerous it was hard to focus on any one at a time.
The one animal we both really wanted to see was the platypus but unfortunately he/she was not willing to make an appearance, even though we returned to the display twice. So the best I got was a picture of the bronze statue outside the display.
We completed our stay at the zoo by sitting and listening to a live band play. Before I leave the topic of the zoo, we noted how many young families there were around us. And it seemed that there were on average at least 3 kids per family. We learned that Australia has encouraged families as a means to create population growth and it appears to be successful.
As we left the Zoo we realized that we did not know how to get back to city center since the buses that had been put on to replace the train was not around. We followed a family as they left who commented that they would have to use the tram. We figured if it worked for them it would work for us. It worked fine and we learned more about the transit system in Melbourne. Not to get confused there are trains, trams, trolleys and buses. They have a very effective system and the ability to get to any area of the city is amazing.
We travelled back into town so we could take the train out to St. Kilda area. We had two goals there, one is to find out where we pick up the campervan next week and we wanted to see the beach and walk the pier. There is so much to say about the city skyline from the pier to the little penguin’s that live in the rocks of the breakwater. While we were in the area we considered looking for a hotel to stay in when we return from Tasmania but after looking at the options we decided to stay where we are staying on the return.
The return to the Fairfield area (where are staying) was quick and uneventful but since we have been on the go since 9 am and it is now 6 pm, we both are feeling a bit foot weary. (Yes we did not manage to fit in the visit to the Fitzroy Gardens!) Tonight we have to think about organizing to leave early and have a taxi booked to pick us up at 6:45 in the morning; this is a very early hour for us these days.
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