Giant Earthworms and Little Penguins
So, we've been planning to have another Saturday afternoon tea, and have come to the realisation that our weekends are ridiculously busy. We have precisely one Saturday in Melbourne before we go off to North America in a month's time. We have, however, been filling our days weekends with delightful adventures.
Two weeks ago we went to Brighton Beach for a belated picnic birthday party for one of Christina's colleagues. It was fiercely hot, so the sea was a great relief, and with liberal application of suncream we managed not to burn. (It's generally been getting a lot hotter here, with days regularly in the mid-30s. It will get much worse around January, so I think our skiing trip over New Year will be perfectly timed.) We followed up the beach with a party at the church, which involved bush dancing, sumo wrestling (with stacks of inner tubes held together with duct tape providing the required girth) and indoor soccer. All good fun, and I picked up some remarkable carpet burns to attest to my enthusiasm in goalkeeping. The following day was Christina's baptism, which was a wonderful occasion. The church had acquired a rainwater tank specially for the occasion, and I must say it looked very refreshing in the 34-degree heat. In amongst all this I was working furiously to edit a paper for submission, so it was a pretty busy weekend.
This past Saturday we drove south of Melbourne to the Bass Coast and Philip Island, in a car very generously lent to us by the Prestons. Two academic interns from Christina's astro centre, Stephan and Anna, joined us for the trip. They are both originally Swiss, although Stephan left when he was about 4. (His parents work for YWAM on the mercy ships, so his childhood involved a lot of travelling around.) We set off early for Gippsland with picnic supplies and high spirits.
Now, some background: a few months ago when we went to Wilson's Promontory at the southern tip of Victoria, we drove part of the way there on the South Gippsland Highway. When I read this name I admit that I felt a certain inexplicable frisson of excitement, because I recognised the name from a passage in Bill Bryson's travels in Australia (entitled either "Down Under" or "In a Sunburned Country", depending whether you got the UK or US version). In the section on Melbourne and Victoria, he mentions visiting the Big Worm to see the legendary Megascolides australis, or Giant Gippsland Earthworms - I know, I know, the excitement is overwhelming, but stay with me for a bit longer. Yes, these are worms. Yes, they look pretty much like regular worms, except for one crucial difference: they average 2-3m long, and can grow up to 4 metres in length and 5cm diameter. True, they don't caper about in the manner of more entertaining wildlife, but still - that's a must-see attraction if only for its peculiarity.
You can imagine the crushing disappointment, then, when we got the the Big Worm and found that we were in fact 8 years too late to see any of these majestic titans of the soil. Shortly after Bryson's visit (the book was published in 2000), the worms were placed on the endangered species list and it was no longer possible to keep them in captivity. Also, thanks to the decade-long drought that Australia is still experiencing, the worms have moved about 7m underground. The Big Worm itself has been painted with aboriginal murals and the whole place has rebranded itself as "Wildlife Wonderland" (it has a couple of dingos and possibly some other hidden delights, but I confess I had rather lost interest by this stage), so we pressed on for Philip Island.
When we got there (over a short bridge from the mainland), we found it charming. Philip Island lies just south of the Mornington Peninsula, so it's exposed to the open ocean (unlike Melbourne's coastline, which is on the shore of the very enclosed Port Philip Bay). Beautiful beaches and satisfyingly craggy outcrops of rock feature prominently along the shore, and the whole island is fairly tourist-centred. We skipped over the chocolate museum and the koala treetop walk, and instead went to Phillip Island Wildlife Park, which promised a decent range of beasties to "ooh" and "ahh" over before our lunch. (No connection there, I promise). The park was splendid - the animals were well looked-after, the enclosures were very generous and visitors received a packet of food pellets on entry, with a helpful suggestion that it would be enjoyed by the wallabies, kangaroos, wombats and flightless birds. We spent the next couple hours strolling around a delightful menagerie: echidnas and kookaburras, blue-tongued lizards and talkative cockatoos, Tassie devils and dingos, fierce cassowaries and sleepy koalas, a kangaroo having a fight with a large and aggressive black swan... In addition to the regular enclosures, there were some more interactive experiences: shortly after we arrived we saw a couple of wallabies hopping about "free-range", and approached one. As we were enjoying the experience of hand-feeding a wallaby, another little head popped out from the pouch with a hungry look, so we got to feed the baby too. Absolutely adorable. Towards the end of our visit we took a stroll through the red kangaroo and emu enclosure, which stretched about 200m square and looked like a very comfortable home for the animals.
Next stop was a beach on the south coast of the island for a picnic lunch and a cool-off in the sea, and then we headed to Nobbies Point at the far western tip of the island. "The Nobbies" (only in Australia could you give something a name like that) are two small outcrops which are connected to the main island at low tide, and the area is host to a seagull breeding colony. I know: again, hold the excitement - but actually it was wonderful. The natural vegetation on the cliffs is a stunningly verdant ground-cover with purple and white and yellow flowers, which gives the whole place a "Shire-by-the-sea" kind of feel, and there are raised wooden boardawlks to keep people from eroding this fragile vegetation. Mixed in with the seagulls is the occasional burrow with a nesting Little Penguin, and it is these penguins (Eudyptula minor if you're taking notes) for which the Philip Island coastline is famous. There is a large commercial exercise devoted to extracting money from tourists for the experience of sitting in an arena and watching the birds return to their burrows at sunset (the road out to the Point is closed to vehicles long before sunset to avoid any accidental encounters between cars and penguins). We decided to go the cheap route, and had a picnic dinner on a deserted beach while the sun went down, and then sat very still as the dusk gathered. Soon the birds came, slowly working their way over the rocks - and this took some effort for the world's smallest penguin species, which only grows to about 20cm. Three of the birds walked within a metre of us - well, first one penguin approached, and then he saw us and ran off to get some buddies before coming back. As the last light faded we made our way back up the road. We walked for about 30 mins back to our car, surrounded all the way by thousands of clumsily delightful birds. With no nearby lights, the sky above us was a spectacular vault of stars, and the whole experience magical. Now, I can't honestly speak with great authority on the Penguin Parade, and it may be that it's worth every cent of the $20-$80 (depending on your seats) that it costs, but I can't help feeling we got a better deal.
This coming weekend promises to be full of more excitement: we're off to rural Victoria to help with platypus research. The last few days have involved more frantic editing of papers while simultaneously trying to prepare for my next CSIRO visit. I'm off to Hobart next week to visit Beth and set up the next few months of thesis work before our big trip in a month's time.
Two weeks ago we went to Brighton Beach for a belated picnic birthday party for one of Christina's colleagues. It was fiercely hot, so the sea was a great relief, and with liberal application of suncream we managed not to burn. (It's generally been getting a lot hotter here, with days regularly in the mid-30s. It will get much worse around January, so I think our skiing trip over New Year will be perfectly timed.) We followed up the beach with a party at the church, which involved bush dancing, sumo wrestling (with stacks of inner tubes held together with duct tape providing the required girth) and indoor soccer. All good fun, and I picked up some remarkable carpet burns to attest to my enthusiasm in goalkeeping. The following day was Christina's baptism, which was a wonderful occasion. The church had acquired a rainwater tank specially for the occasion, and I must say it looked very refreshing in the 34-degree heat. In amongst all this I was working furiously to edit a paper for submission, so it was a pretty busy weekend.
This past Saturday we drove south of Melbourne to the Bass Coast and Philip Island, in a car very generously lent to us by the Prestons. Two academic interns from Christina's astro centre, Stephan and Anna, joined us for the trip. They are both originally Swiss, although Stephan left when he was about 4. (His parents work for YWAM on the mercy ships, so his childhood involved a lot of travelling around.) We set off early for Gippsland with picnic supplies and high spirits.
Now, some background: a few months ago when we went to Wilson's Promontory at the southern tip of Victoria, we drove part of the way there on the South Gippsland Highway. When I read this name I admit that I felt a certain inexplicable frisson of excitement, because I recognised the name from a passage in Bill Bryson's travels in Australia (entitled either "Down Under" or "In a Sunburned Country", depending whether you got the UK or US version). In the section on Melbourne and Victoria, he mentions visiting the Big Worm to see the legendary Megascolides australis, or Giant Gippsland Earthworms - I know, I know, the excitement is overwhelming, but stay with me for a bit longer. Yes, these are worms. Yes, they look pretty much like regular worms, except for one crucial difference: they average 2-3m long, and can grow up to 4 metres in length and 5cm diameter. True, they don't caper about in the manner of more entertaining wildlife, but still - that's a must-see attraction if only for its peculiarity.
You can imagine the crushing disappointment, then, when we got the the Big Worm and found that we were in fact 8 years too late to see any of these majestic titans of the soil. Shortly after Bryson's visit (the book was published in 2000), the worms were placed on the endangered species list and it was no longer possible to keep them in captivity. Also, thanks to the decade-long drought that Australia is still experiencing, the worms have moved about 7m underground. The Big Worm itself has been painted with aboriginal murals and the whole place has rebranded itself as "Wildlife Wonderland" (it has a couple of dingos and possibly some other hidden delights, but I confess I had rather lost interest by this stage), so we pressed on for Philip Island.
When we got there (over a short bridge from the mainland), we found it charming. Philip Island lies just south of the Mornington Peninsula, so it's exposed to the open ocean (unlike Melbourne's coastline, which is on the shore of the very enclosed Port Philip Bay). Beautiful beaches and satisfyingly craggy outcrops of rock feature prominently along the shore, and the whole island is fairly tourist-centred. We skipped over the chocolate museum and the koala treetop walk, and instead went to Phillip Island Wildlife Park, which promised a decent range of beasties to "ooh" and "ahh" over before our lunch. (No connection there, I promise). The park was splendid - the animals were well looked-after, the enclosures were very generous and visitors received a packet of food pellets on entry, with a helpful suggestion that it would be enjoyed by the wallabies, kangaroos, wombats and flightless birds. We spent the next couple hours strolling around a delightful menagerie: echidnas and kookaburras, blue-tongued lizards and talkative cockatoos, Tassie devils and dingos, fierce cassowaries and sleepy koalas, a kangaroo having a fight with a large and aggressive black swan... In addition to the regular enclosures, there were some more interactive experiences: shortly after we arrived we saw a couple of wallabies hopping about "free-range", and approached one. As we were enjoying the experience of hand-feeding a wallaby, another little head popped out from the pouch with a hungry look, so we got to feed the baby too. Absolutely adorable. Towards the end of our visit we took a stroll through the red kangaroo and emu enclosure, which stretched about 200m square and looked like a very comfortable home for the animals.
Next stop was a beach on the south coast of the island for a picnic lunch and a cool-off in the sea, and then we headed to Nobbies Point at the far western tip of the island. "The Nobbies" (only in Australia could you give something a name like that) are two small outcrops which are connected to the main island at low tide, and the area is host to a seagull breeding colony. I know: again, hold the excitement - but actually it was wonderful. The natural vegetation on the cliffs is a stunningly verdant ground-cover with purple and white and yellow flowers, which gives the whole place a "Shire-by-the-sea" kind of feel, and there are raised wooden boardawlks to keep people from eroding this fragile vegetation. Mixed in with the seagulls is the occasional burrow with a nesting Little Penguin, and it is these penguins (Eudyptula minor if you're taking notes) for which the Philip Island coastline is famous. There is a large commercial exercise devoted to extracting money from tourists for the experience of sitting in an arena and watching the birds return to their burrows at sunset (the road out to the Point is closed to vehicles long before sunset to avoid any accidental encounters between cars and penguins). We decided to go the cheap route, and had a picnic dinner on a deserted beach while the sun went down, and then sat very still as the dusk gathered. Soon the birds came, slowly working their way over the rocks - and this took some effort for the world's smallest penguin species, which only grows to about 20cm. Three of the birds walked within a metre of us - well, first one penguin approached, and then he saw us and ran off to get some buddies before coming back. As the last light faded we made our way back up the road. We walked for about 30 mins back to our car, surrounded all the way by thousands of clumsily delightful birds. With no nearby lights, the sky above us was a spectacular vault of stars, and the whole experience magical. Now, I can't honestly speak with great authority on the Penguin Parade, and it may be that it's worth every cent of the $20-$80 (depending on your seats) that it costs, but I can't help feeling we got a better deal.
This coming weekend promises to be full of more excitement: we're off to rural Victoria to help with platypus research. The last few days have involved more frantic editing of papers while simultaneously trying to prepare for my next CSIRO visit. I'm off to Hobart next week to visit Beth and set up the next few months of thesis work before our big trip in a month's time.
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