We didn’t show you yesterday the view from our AirBnB. Not too shabby.
Also had this visitor who insisted upon being fed. He is a King Parrot.
Across the road we had more koala spotting with this one looking totally wiped out.
Our koala count is now 21. In the many years when we use to live in Australia we can never remember seeing koalas in the wild.
Admittedly you need to be in the right area but there now seems to be an abundance of them. The koala is found in coastal areas of the mainland’s eastern and southern regions, inhabiting Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia but not Western Australia.
Now this photo looks absolutely boring but this is what you would call a Bear jam in Canada. In this case it is a Koala Bear jam🤪
Koalas typically inhabit open eucalypt woodlands, and the leaves of these trees make up most of their diet. Because this eucalypt diet has limited nutritional and caloric content, koalas are largely sedentary and sleep up to 20 hours a day. Koalas have few natural predators and parasites, but are threatened by various pathogens, such as Chlamydiaceae bacteria and the koala retrovirus, as well as by bushfires and droughts and not to mention cars!!! Nothing sadder to see than a dead koala on the road or burnt from bush fires.
We then went to Cape Otway to investigate the light house which was built in 1848 and one of the original telegraph stations in Australia. The Great Ocean Road is known for at least 400 ships that were wrecked when trying to get to Melbourne. The poor buggers endured 4-5 months at sea having left England and come around the Cape of Good Hope to pick up the winds of the roaring forties, only to be dashed upon the rocks so close to their final destination.
They called it The Eye of the needle between Cape Otway and King Island. On this map it looks like there is plenty of room but there are many hidden reefs and a lot of this coast line had not been mapped before migration to Australia began.
They use to of course use flags to signal the ships as they came past the lighthouse and we were told there are approximately 10,000 nautical flags that the mariners use to use. In this number you would be including not just the coding flags but all ship flags.
Had a spectacular view from the top of the lighthouse.
We commenced our drive towards Melbourne for a bite to eat and were accosted by a couple of King Parrots who let it be known that if you wish to eat at this park bench it included sharing your lunch with them.
As you can see, they were not backwards in coming forwards!!
Had a slow grind of a drive into Melbourne as we got caught in the rush hour traffic so our last 100k took us 2.5 hours👎. We have settled ourselves in with Shelly and Sam who live in Elwood which is not too far from St Kilda, south east of the city by about 8 k’s. We are here for two nights before we move into an apartment in the city over the Christmas period.
We went out to a pub for dinner and stumbled across this 15 piece brass band there who had the best sound ever. They were playing some Glenn Miller (as you do) and other pieces that we recognized but couldn’t name. As you can imagine, the place was packed. They are on every Tuesday night so we are going back there for more in the coming weeks.
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