Week two of our holiday in Melboure was equally as fun and enchanting. It was such a pleasure to see some of Australia's countryside and spend quality time with Grandma Marie and cousin Jessica.
Our first outing to the country was to a town called Ballarat. It's about 2 hours outside of Melbourne. We of course had to eat lunch at Craig's Royal Hotel.
We visited the local museum and the three girls found a three way chair :)
The Ballarat Botanical Gardens had this neat umbrella installation
The following day we celebrated my birthday at my fave place, the Royal Botanical Gardens back in Melbourne. We had tea in the tea room and strolled the beautiful gardens.
Later in the week we went on another road trip to Phillip Island. It's about a 2 hour drive South and WELL worth it :) Our first stop was to see fairy penguins. Unfortunately, they don't allow pictures so the above is a stock photo from their site but it's actually accurate. At dusk, the penguins waddle out of the ocean after a day of fishing and frolicking to find their babies in their burrows in the hillside. You can hear the parents calling to their babies and the baby penguins calling back. Cassie and Gwen were absolutely thrilled to see the little guys waddling along, squawking and greeting their babies.
The next day, we took a chance and visited the local nature preserve. Their was hardly a soul in sight (unlike the penquin boardwalk where there were over 2 dozen tourist buses and probably 350 people). We were skeptical but we paid the fee and were given a bag of pellets each. Upon entering the preserve, an emu bounded toward us to greet us. Mind you, there were NO tour guides, no fences separating us.
This guy was quite friendly and ate right from our hands.
Tasmanian Devils even.
Dingoes, definitely in an enclosure :)
And the icing on the cake, a joey. Sweet kangaroos everywhere just hopping around and eating from our hands. Video to follow.
The emu photo bombed my picture of the roo!
This guy is the big red kangaroo, much stronger and bigger than the greys. Mind you, no barriers between you and the roos. Just biiiiig open space.
Here was a cute little wallabee or wallaroo, I can't remember.
The walk around the park was beautiful, so natural and lovely. I think it was about 60 acres with a fence around the perimeter, but I never saw it.
Here another mob (aka grouping of roos) greeted us for a peck of the pellets.
More mobs of roos (bucks & flyers) in the distance.
This guy was so cute.
Sleeping koala.
Even an echidna made an appearance (he was in an enclosure too)
Very happy campers and a truly lovely 2nd week of our trip!
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