Another day on the road... after a late start we drove to Healesville for the obligatory meet and greet with Australia's fauna. A nice afternoon was had by all.
After that we went to Eureka tower's skydeck.. this too was a great experience, no big crowds, well organised and reasonably priced. We also did 'The Edge' experience, where you enter a glass cabin, that is pushed out on rails over the edge of the building 285m up. The floor is glass, with an LCD style switching mechanism, making it transparent one minute, and not the next. All good :)

After that we strolled to the blue train cafe for dinner, which unfortunately is no longer a place I'd recommend.

I think I'll let our photos explain the rest.

Tomorrow is shopping day!

This is a great little cafe/deli/second hand book shop. They have many delicious cheese for you to buy, ice cream, local produce fair trade products and much more. You can get a great cafe lunch while browsing their second hand books. Unique!

Today we randomly decided to go to Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary which is 'an hour outside Melbourne'. We set off on the tram (our first tram) down to Flinders Street, then caught the train to Lilydale which took about an hour. The instructions on the website said we had to take a bus after that, so we waited about 20 mins and caught the bus to Healesville. An HOUR later we finally arrived in Healesville, stopping a few turns beyond a sign that said 'Healesville Sanctuary 800m on right'. We assumed we could walk from here but the bus driver assured us the walk was about 4.5km (in 35 degree heat) and we should wait 25 mins for the bus that went there. At this point frustration, heat, thirst and hunger started to get the better of us; it had so far taken us 2.5 hours to get to the sanctuary '1 hour outside Melbourne', and we would be arriving at about 3.40pm when the park closed at 5pm.....

We almost gave up and came back another day but decided to persist after a rejuvenating muffin and caught the bus to the park. The lady gave us a discount for arriving so late and explained that only 4 buses per day came to the park and we should have coordinated our train and bus but assured us that the bus we would take to return would be direct to Lilydale rather than connecting at Healesville. We then started on a power-walk view of the sanctuary, starting with koalas, kangaroos and emus, then on to elusive wombats, echidnas and rock wallabys, the night-time prowling ring-tail possums, bush-tail possums, greater bilbys, sugar gliders, antichidnas, flying squirrels, velvet-marble geckos and knob-tail geckos. Finally we saw flying foxes (bullying one another upside down), and dingos.

At 5.30pm we went to catch the bus again and when the 586 bus arrived we didn't get on, believing the direct bus to be the 585 to Lilydale. The bus driver explained that there was no 585; that he WAS both the 585 and the 586 and no he didn't go direct to Lilydale. By this point we were pretty tired of these persistently conflicting directions and I started to argue but he said I could wait if I wished but I'd be waiting a long time.

We decided not to argue. So we jumped on the bus back to Healesville and started the arduous journey back. Fortunately for us, and for the housemates we had agreed to cook for, we were lucky with our returning connections and finally arrived home at around 8.20pm after spending 5 hours traveling for an hour at the sanctuary. None the less we had had a good day, and had finally satisfied my long-standing need to see some real Australian wildlife after having seen none in 3 months of being here!

Healesville is about an hour and a half out of the city. Healesville Sanctuary is one of the three animal parks you can visit in Melbourne. The first is the Melbourne Zoo, which is close to the city. The second is the open-range zoo in Werribee, and the third is Healesville Sanctuary. Healesville Sanctuary could probably do with being re-named Melbourne Bird Park, purely because the park holds only a handful of mammals and reptiles, but about fifty thousand bird species. (I'm exaggerating, don't get too excited! My point is, there are a lot of birds.) But all the species at Healesville Sanctuary have in something in common: the fact that most of them are unique to Australia. You won't find giraffes, flamingoes or water buffaloes here. If you want the quintessential Australian native species experience, Healesville is the place to visit. Here, you can pat koalas, hold baby wombats, have lunch with kangaroos and witness the eccentricity of the platypus. The Birds of Prey show is well worth seeing; it's a chance to see raptors up close, and to watch as they exhibit distinctive species behaviour. The enclosures at Healesville Sanctuary are predominantly walk-in enclosures and aviaries. As such, it's a great place to build on your Australian wildlife encounters.