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...

Home Again

I really like Australia. Melbourne and Tassie were great fun, even though I ended up with a nasty cold on day 3 of our trip and was pretty slow the second part of our trip.

As it seems to happen on trips/changes of scenery FFM had some big changes and lots of words suddenly appeared. He also suddenly got a lot more independent (OK, totally stubborn). The word 'No' uttered from an adult mouth appears to translate directly into toddler speak as, 'Please feel free to go ahead and continue doing that dangerous/offensive/naughty activity that you are doing.'

He also responds to any question with the word 'No', although we figured out it's just a response and that he simply doesn't use the word 'Yes' yet. No is an all purpose affirmative or negative response... It's great fun to listen to him identify every conceivable form of transportation that he sees and make all kinds of animal noises as we drive by farms. There was a trade off, albeit not quite an equal one, a single two-word combo has made an appearance 'more please' although it sounds more like 'mor peas.'

I also decided (again) that while it's really a US thing that I DO like it and think that if you're going to travel in tightly packed public transportation you really should shower and use deodorant. Please.

Gone

We'll be away until after Easter, so no more blogs for a while. But I'm sure I'll have a picture or two to share when we get back.

We're off to Melbourne and Tasmania, or Tassie, as Aussie's fondly call it. They all say Tassie with a wistful, dreamy look, even if they've never been there, so it must be a really wonderful place. We've been looking forward to this trip since before we left Brisbane, and it's finally here!

To further your expanding knowledge of Australian geography, Perth there on the left, Melbourne is the red dot and Tasmania (Tasmania is an entire state, Melbourne's in the state of Victoria where the bushfires were) marked by the yellow dot. If you were to drive from Perth to Melbourne it would be the equivalent of driving from Las Vegas to Pittsburgh. I'm very glad we are flying.

Outdoor Store

We just returned from a very quick errand at an outdoor store. Compared to Colorado, they are much less numerous here, and considerably smaller (and very pricey since it's pretty much all US stuff anyway). After a nifty parallel parking move I fed copious amounts of change into the hungry parking meter for my maximum allotted 1/2 hour and F and I ran into the shop. Oh, our little boy was SO excited. Tents, boots, rope, TENTS. TENTS. And the ramp to test boots, that tied with the tents for the coolest thing he'd seen in weeks. Now, back in November we got in trip or two to REI, but perhaps the scale was just to big for him or he was distracted by the slide shaped like a canoe. But I do believe we've got an outdoorsman in the making after all.

Joondalup

That's one of those cool town names that's just fun to say.

Joondalup's part of greater Perth, about 25 minutes north of where we live. I poked around this morning and discovered they were having a festival this weekend. With the fair fall weather and the lazy heads around here partially due to the time change (we fell back an hour last night but Mr. Man was still up at his regular time) a short and low key trip north sounded good. With our slow start this morning it was about all we had time for before needing to squeeze in an afternoon nap.

It turned out to be a decent fair for a suburban event. First up, the bizarre petting zoo. FFM was intrigued by the half dozen caged furry, fuzzy, noisy creatures. Especially this one...

...which then suddenly squirted him with water (out of the blue bump). Other 'animals' rumbled/vibrated, had cyclops eyes that periscoped up and down, and one had a high pitched screech that escalated when you pet it.

Lunch was across the street from the kiddy rides, and it was all we could do to keep FFM off the 'Dragon Wagon' roller coaster. He made do with this ride, the BIG TRUCK RACE, which was much safer for his 1.75 years of age. He's in the white one.

The horns honked, the steering wheels turned, it was bliss for our vehicle obsessed child.

Faster, faster!

Other highlights were the singing, dancing duck (person in costume), the BMX bike show, and some Chinese acrobats. The duck sang "If you're happy and you know it" and FFM dance boogied.

During dinner I peeked out the patio doors and instead of being blinded by the setting sun, now that the clocks have changed, I now catch the end of the sunset. It was quite colorful tonight and I tried to catch it by frantically running upstairs to grab the camera and the better view off the balcony. Two shots, within less than 5 seconds of each other. Blurry since I was in so big a hurry to catch the last rays I didn't bother with changing any camera settings or even trying to stand very still.