Mountains and Melbourne

Two things happened today - firstly it was our planned trip to the Grampian Mountains and secondly we arrived in Melbourne for our one week stay.

The Grampian mountains were unusual in that the surrounding area is completely flat but then you have a mountain range right in the middle of it as you can see in the photo below. It was quite spectacular as we drove up to it from Horsham. We followed the ‘tourist route’ through the National Park and back out of it stopping at Mackenzie falls, and various lookout points. Not of course before we had stopped for more photos of yet another ‘sleepy lizard’ by the side of the road. Perhaps we have been spoilt by the endless great photo opportunities we got from the Blue Mountains but we didn’t seem to get many good shots of the Grampian mountains and spent quite some time looking for the perfect photo. We did manage to get a snap or two at one of the look out points but perhaps the best photo of the day was of yet another lizard. Chris spotted the new type of reptile (Ghecko??) on our walk back to the car from one of the lookouts and we managed to get quite close to it without scaring it away (quite an achievement considering I was being eaten alive by flies and just wanted to jump up and down yelling). We took about 20 photos before finally getting a good one. Thank goodness the days of 24 photo films are behind us or we would have had a number of lizard themed visits to Kodak!







We then headed on to Melbourne. We had booked a hostel in St Kilda which is close to the beach and also near Albert’s Park. The location is fantastic - the Albert’s park across the road has a lake with a path the whole way around it totalling about 5km so great for training, and there are a number of shops and restaurants close to the hostel and a tram stop for getting into the city centre. The hostel however, hmmm. My hostel gremlins are back. We were pleasantly surprised that we got the room cheaper than what it was quoted on the website or when we phoned up to book. But our delight stopped there. Not that it wasn’t a nice and clean place and the room wasn’t a decent size, more so because of the clientele. We walked in to check in, and I felt about a hundred years old and as if I had stepped back into Uni halls of residence. Everybody was so young! To make matters worse, they all seemed to know each other, and even by 5:30pm when we arrived it was obvious that el vino was flowing. We both felt a bit intimidated, thank goodness we were not in a dorm! On exploring the hostel it became apparent that most people were just here to drink. It occurred to us that for some people this is travelling. Just getting drunk in a lots of different countries and it really isn’t our scene at all.

I’m hoping that it won’t be too noisy tonight or it may be a trip to the ear plug shop tomorrow….