Melbourne

There are no direct flights from Perth to the major cities in Tasmania on our favorite airline, so when I started booking our trip to Tassie I booked flights through Melbourne (instead of Sydney which would be sort of like the time I flew from Denver to Indianapolis through Atlanta...). Melbourne is a vibrant, busy, buzzing city I really wanted to visit, so after some lengthy brain cycles I finally came up with the grand plan that instead of two separate trips Travis should just tack on some extra days to the Tassie trip and we'd lump a mini-vaca to Melbourne into this getaway. So, on the way to Tassie we stopped in Melbourne and stayed for four days.

One of our first stops was the National Wool Museum. Lo and behold, it's current special exhibit was interactive and all about ELECTRICITY. It's like they created the perfect Moore family museum just for us (for those that may not know Travis is an electrical engineer, FFM loves to push buttons, and I've become an avid knitter). FFM pushed millions of buttons and levers making all kinds of machines whirr, light up, make music, and go. We also managed to sneak in some wool stuff including watching them fire up the massive rug loom which clanged and clanked and was quite impressive.

Melbourne is full of trains and trams and we spent part of a day riding the trams. Trains go 'choo choo' and trams go 'ding ding' and it took about 2.25 minutes for FFM to figure out the difference. This is also the trip where he's figured out what a taxi is and during our city stay he was careful to point out every tram, train, and taxi. It was a noisy but adorably cute habit. (ding ding choo choo tadi! And boy, he's spot on every time. If I ever need a cab he's my man.)
We also braved our first movie theater experience and went to see 'Under the Sea' (about the oceans around Australia and just north of here) at IMAX, in 3D. What a hoot. We were all reaching for the fish and bubbles escaping the screen. F's glasses stayed on for about half of it - until the movie got boring (really, there were a lot of cuttlefish... not the most interesting 'ish' in the sea).

Other than the city-scape and architecture, the trip to see the penguins at the aquarium had to be my favorite part. What an amazing exhibit. I've never seen animals in captivity so lively, animated, and happy looking before. The penguin in the lower left photo was really playing and interacting with F; it was like they were having a conversation through the glass. The big penguins with yellow on on their breasts are King penguins and were literally the size of F.

We didn't take a stroller on this trip, F walked most of the way on his own as has become his habit. But every once in a while he'd need a little lift...Our last day in Melbourne we drove the Great Ocean Road along the Victoria Coast. It's a lovely, scenic, and famous drive that's really nice, even when it's a blustery fall day. We were lucky and spotted koalas in the wild! So far we've only seen them in captivity here.Our destination along the Great Ocean Road was an outcropping known as the Twelve Apostles. I was counting and counting and counting....and I never found 12. I finally found the sign that said that there ARE 12 but that you can't actually see them all from the shore. Here are a few of them:And here F and I are getting BLOWN AWAY by the amazing wind. We were laughing our heads off, but it was a little scary at the same time.

In one of those small world events we managed to meet up with our friends Greg and Ana from Denver who are working in Melbourne for six months. They're amazingly smart people doing amazingly scientific things, this go round with water. Lo and behold, the company they are working for is doing some water testing in relation to a project that Black and Veatch is working on in Melbourne.

I felt right at home in Melbourne...I think I better start buying lottery tickets so I can escape on a few weekends...