Been a little recalcitrant these past few days as have been having a good browse around Melbourne with sister and brother in law. On Friday we trammed down to the Victoria Street markets which are held nearly every day of the year.
The markets are renowned for their fresh food and vegetables and had plenty of mangoes that are in season. They are absolutely magnificent to eat. Up in Queensland, everyone just about has a mango tree in their back yard. You could get three large mangoes for $2.
It was very difficult to go past a stall without purchasing some delicacy.
Cheeses were to die for and so much cheaper than what we pay in Canada. As many of you know, there is a rat that lives in our fridge back home. Well it was thought it lived at home, but it appears to have followed us over the Pacific Ocean and adapted to the South Pacific cheeses very well!!
Having dropped off our bag of goodies we popped in to see Fraser’s parents and have a tea and freshly made carrot cake from the markets. We spent the remainder of the day wandering around the shopping precinct and trying to avoid all the other shoppers and tourists.
So Saturday started with a quick breakfast and then tram down to the Melbourne zoo for the day. It was a great day to go as the temperature was only going to get to 24c which makes it more bearable to walk outside.
It is a very old zoo but they have kept up with modern animal enclosures which were large and replicated their normal environments.
Emu’s that are quintessentially Aussie.
They have two extremely large turtles in an enclosure and they wanted to pass one another with a tree one side and a large rock and limited room. It was most entertaining as it turned into a shoving match with their of them wanting to give way to the other. These guys can live up to 200 years old.
There was a large promotion at the zoo to recycle and use recycled products such as loo paper. They provided the loo but no paper – dah.
They had the coolest lemur enclosure. You actually walked through their enclosure and they wandered around you. There was no encouragement for you to physically interact with them and quite a few zoo keepers were in the enclosure with us.
They were also educating about this highly endangered frock that lives up in the “snowy mountains” of New South Wales, but when we saw the real frogs they were no bigger than a 50 cents piece.
We spent over five hours at the zoo and our feet were painful and swollen. Headed back into town and tried to avoid the crowds again before heading over to South Bank on thenYarra River and had some dinner. Whilst walking back to the apartment we came across the some carol singers who had ramped up the standard carols and had the audience bopping away.
Oldies home for some apricot slice and cuppa tea and bed!
Rowkin Rovings Blog 