I know it's been a while since I've made a posting and I apologize to those people who have missed my words of wisdom. Life in Melbourne has gone on just like life anywhere would. Week days spent at work, the gym, band practice or sax lessons mostly. A few more mundane things like laundry and grocery shopping to spice up the week. The weekends have been a little more eventful.
Back in late February Iral and I met some of his friends at the Melbourne Zoo for a picnic. The Zoo itself is fairly small, maybe half the size of Portland's. Having seen most of the native animal in the wild, seeing then caged up isn't that exciting. The zoo did recently have a new addition as one of the Indian elephants gave birth, A first for this zoo. The lines we so LONG we didn't even try to get a look. I just kept telling Iral it looks just like the big one yo can see from here only smaller. Really it was bound to be at least 45 minutes waiting with screaming kids, annoyed parents and the general public. Who wants to wait in that line without any hot men to watch while standing around? Sure as hell not me! So we made our way over to what for me was the highlight of the day, the enclosed butterfly sanctuary. It was a large greenhouse with hundreds of native butterflies flitting around you. The enclosure was made in the native habitat with lots of green foliage. The temperatures were kept fairly warm and humidity levels around 80 %. Not an unbearable climate but more uncomfortable then the typically warm and dry days of February in the far south.
The only other thing worth noting was the male silverback gorilla we saw. The viewing area was packed with people but I managed to trip and old lady and kick a small child on my way to the front (just kidding I only elbowed the old lady LOL) This guy was more than a metre tall (about 4') sitting and was very impressive. His face showed he had a high level of intelligence and while I couldn't tell if he was happy to see all of the humans on the other side of the glass he definitely knew we were there. His hands looked large enough to cover my entire face and with enough strength to crush it easily if so chose. None of the other primates were close enough get good pictures of or like me they were scared of this imposing male figure near the glass.
Then during the first weekend of March we had a Monday off for Labour Day. I know that sounds wrong but when you realize it's the end of summer and March is like September here and the beginning of Autumn (they don't say Fall) just warmer than where most of you live. It does kind of make more sense. Iral and I took a road trip to Merimbula (Mer-Rim-Bu-La) on the southern New South Wales Coast. We did 16 hours of driving on a 3 day weekend, just to get there and back. So on the 1 full day we had in town to took a drive LOL! to Bega (BEE-ga) and the Bournda (Born-Da) National Park. I took a walk along the beach, explored inlet where a river met the ocean and I was able to check off one more park in my book.
Bega is only on the map for one thing. It's cheese factory. You can buy Bega Cheese in all the grocery stores across Australia. If you have ever been to a cheese factory then they're all pretty much the same. This one didn't have a tour of the manufacturing plant. but it did have a historical museum where you could view a lot of old pictures from the late 19th and early 2th centuries when Bega was just making a name for itself. The best part of this stop was of course the free sample bar of cheese and the homemade ice cream. Now we had to pay for the ice cream but who cares its ICE CREAM! And you can't get it any fresher then on a dairy farm.
Back in town and back to work after that weekend I did attend a few movies for the 2 week long Melbourne Queer Film Festival. Nothing to write home about really and probably movies no one will ever hear about any way. 3 French films, 2 American and an Isreali one. They were just the ones playing at times I was available to go. One was fairly interesting about 2 twin brothers that walk, hitch hiked and train jump their way from somewhere in France to somewhere in Spain to attend a funeral for a mother they never met. It was really a movie about brothers and only had one small scene that related to the festival. It was a good movie but only had about 100 lines in the 2 hours I sat there and all in French. I think the name translates into "Give Me Your Hand"
This blog is intentionally kept short and was meant to bring you up to speed on my wanderings.
I'm going to start another blog entry right away to let you know what I did over the 4 day Easter holiday weekend we just had. So stay tuned I hope to have it out to you before Monday. Sorry but it's already late Tuesday night here and Thursday is my sax lesson then band practice and Friday I'll be at the gym after work. I hope to put some time in tomorrow night then finish it up on Saturday before my skype call with Roger and Eddie.
On side note, my house is rented again so that's good news!
If someone would come visit it me I'd have more to write about HINT HINT!
No comments:
Post a Comment